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April 30, 2004
Awwwww.
In an attempt to soften the harsh, chilly patrician demeanor which voters seem to be so reacting so poorly to this election season, I am now a contributor over at Christine's Adorablog. Look, don't laugh. If it wasn't for these people, you'd know jack diddly about Strindberg and Helium, OK? And you should know about Strindberg and Helium. It's scarier than Edward Gorey. Possibly less scary than Don Hertzfeldt, but that only means it's slightly less funny, too. Still. Miseryyyyyyyy! And damned if that thing didn't make you a cupcake, you gloomy turn-of-the-century wet blanket...
Posted by me at 1:59 AM | Comments (2)
April 25, 2004
Anatomy of Finals Week: Writing a paper on reality and television
... and coming nowhere even close to talking about reality television.
4/24/04
5:30 p.m.
I just discovered the coolest thing. I've been listening to music in foreign languages for so long that I can now listen to music in English without processing the lyrics as anything more than nonsense. I'm holed up in a lofted undergraduate carrel on the main campus library, and there's some big amplified folk/alternative concert going on outside... and sadly, the windows are open, so we can hear it... but I'm not as annoyed as I could be, because I genuinely have no idea what the insipid vocalist is saying. My brain refuses to know.
Can I ask why anyone would put on a huge amplified concert at a college two weeks before finals, though? I mean, come on. That sucks so hard. People are trying to work.
5:54
And what, exactly, is the appeal of listening to some dude who sounds like a slightly agitated James Taylor?
(yes. yes, I am a killjoy.)
6:12
Cognitive dissonance tends to blunt my productivity. I've been bumping up against the same contradiction all semester. I want to work in educational children's media. To work in educational children's media one ought to engage in experimental developmental psychology, as that is the dominant field of research backing up shows like Sesame Street and Between the Lions. But the more work I do, the more I find experimental developmental psychology to be uninteresting at the least, methodologically bankrupt at the worst. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. Do I just study literacy or linguistics instead and hope that they'll take me anyway?
Then again, when I started this degree I was pretty sure I was just getting the research background as an in so I could make contacts, then do what I really want with kids' media -- either writing, producing, or software development. Which I'm not sure I'll ever get to do, whether it's because I've trained myself to be a crashing bore who overanalyzes kids when they sing along with Cookie Monster, or just because everyone wants to do that stuff.
4/25/04
1:10 a.m.
Somehow I don't mind the bachata and dancehall reggae being played ouside my window at home half as much as the bad James Taylor act. I even mind the same music when the neighbors downstairs play it, making it sound like they have rented a calliope and glued it to the ceiling just to annoy me. (HOOT hoot HOOT hoot HOOT HOOT HOOT hoot...) Probably it's the tinny speakers from whichever local club is playing the stuff... it sounds more ethereal and picturesque. I imagine dowdy middle-aged women in bright, flouncy dresses dancing to it in the converted synagogue across from the George Washington Bridge bus station.
Or maybe it's because I've got a good mojito and one of those amazing cupcakes from Crumbs in me. Maybe I should drink more often. It seems to take the edge off my neuroses.
1:23
Summary of this semester: I was very unhappy because I did not dance enough.
Last semester I was happy because I had a dance teacher I trusted who made me work hard, and a class that happened two days a week. (Granted, I was also basking in a generalized sensation of near-unconditional love and support from my department, but feeling physically well was central.) This semester the teacher was ill and I could only make it one day a week. I must DANCE next semester, and this summer. There's something about having functional abs and two periods of mandatory stretching at regular times which really changes my outlook on life.
Posted by me at 1:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
April 23, 2004
The Further Adventures of Herd Mentality
Yeah, I finally joined Orkut. Anyone want to join me? I set up a Xephreniaq forum already.
Posted by me at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2004
En La Esquina
Wow, I don't think I've done a neighborhood piece since I moved to Washington Heights. It's about time...
Every evening at the corner of 181st St. and St. Nicholas, around the newsstand, there is shouting. The last couple of nights I have hurried away from the subway station exit at that corner, because the caliber of shouting seemed to be a little louder than usual, and there were a lot more uniformly-dressed young men in doo-rags involved. I don't know what was up with that. I guess I'm still a clueless agent of gentrification; can't read the neighborhood.
Tonight confirmed one of my hunches about the usual shouting at the station. Tonight it was back to normal: ardently but not angry shouting from a bunch of middle-aged Latino men in working-class dress, throwing hands in the air and smacking at articles in folded newspapers. Among them, I have often seen a bearded fellow in an odd peaked hat who I could swear read at the poetry nights I used to go to in Harlem.
I paused at the elbow of one of the men. De que estamos hablando en est'esquina? I asked. (I learned the word "esquina" -- streetcorner -- from an Aterciopelados song.)
Politica, he said. Politica, politica. Todos los noches. He smiled.
I managed to fumble my way through a few more bilingual exchanges. He told me it was mostly Dominicans, and I believe he said they were talking about politics in their home country. I asked why they met on the corner and not at someone's house or a restaurant. He gently explained it was to eliminate the economic differences between participants. I asked him whether the men present were socialists, or democrats, or something else. All types, he said, smiling again.
Where are you from? he asked. California, I told him. People there don't like to talk about politics, do they, he asked.
No, no, si! Me gusta mucho! Y es mejor en la esquina, y en la calle! :)
I asked after the guy in the peaked hat. Aqui hay un hombre que se llama Popo? I asked. Popa, said the man. Si, si. Apparently Popa hangs out there quite a bit, and is judged to be muy intelligente.
I just looked it up: "popa" means "stern." He always seemed more sage than stern, and was prone to a definite artistic or even mischievious streak at the poetry readings, but it's an interesting appellation. I wonder where he got it.
I gave the man my name, and he told me his was Domingo. We shook hands. His were mightily calloused.
I think I should hang out on the corner more often.
Posted by me at 10:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 21, 2004
My Sister Rocks!
While I was home in Pasadena for Easter, I helped Sylvie shoot photos for a Friendster profile for her alter ego, UnSylvie. (You'll probably only be able to see these links if you're in my Friendster circle.) I swear I haven't had so much creative fun in years (aside from editing video with Robert in January). Sylvie, unlike her elder sister, really understands how to use what actors call her "physical instrument." I already knew she could tell jokes by dancing; I hadn't guessed she'd be able to fake a pretentious-girl attitude so well. My sister is a geeeeenius! of pop simulacra! (Also, I see our friend Chris Ward has created Anti Chris: An American Badass For A Better America.)
Posted by me at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)
HOPEfully you'll be there...
So! Who's coming to the fifth HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) conference this summer, July 9th-11th right here in New York Seedy? I went to one (H2K2) a few summers ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, from my first projected DDR game, to Jello Biafra's presentation of corporate conference musical numbers, to Aaron McGruder's sly exhortations, to the social engineering session where they wangled credit card numbers out of some clueless Starbucks barista in front of an entire audience of slavering, yowling hackers. My only regret was skipping the lockpicking session. Is your attendance going to be noted in your FBI file? Absolutely. Will a new file be created for you if you don't have one already? You bet your tenure it will. Be there! (GUS'S LIMITED OFFER for people I know and like who don't have crabs or cat allergies: First out-of-town respondant can crash on my couch! That's right! Genuine sleepytime on Pee Couch!)
Posted by me at 1:30 AM | Comments (1)
April 20, 2004
We're making progress
The girls and I at work have decided on our dissertation topics:
Colon: The Hidden Ecology of the Cock
Cock, Cock, Cock, and More Cock: A Liberal Arts Perspective
The Epistemology of Cock: Hegemony, Dominance, and Ludic Space
You'll notice all our colons are in order. We're set for a takeover of the Ivory Tower.
Posted by me at 12:19 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
handbag
Her husband will make an expensive purse out of her when she dies. -- Dana, on a very tanned woman in San DiegoPosted by me at 12:09 PM
De La Vega facing jail time?
New York City artist James de la Vega is facing jail time for painting a mural on the side of a warehouse in the Bronx. Thanks to James (Grimmelmann) for bringing this to my attention. de la Vega chalks vignettes on sidewalks all over the city with observations on the human condition. The Times article behind that link notes that a number of people in Harlem and the Bronx -- quite rightly -- don't see his work as grafitti. He's got work in a gallery in Harlem as well. I wish there was something I could do to stop this. When his mom found out about his arrest, she brought him thirty boxes of colored chalk -- one for each day of jail time he was threatened with.
Posted by me at 10:22 AM | Comments (2)
April 18, 2004
Detritus: Those Who Fight Further; Distributed Amnesia
This evening Sam, my computer, forgot he had some 250-odd MB of memory left and refused to save anything. I restarted, and suddenly everything was wrong. The dock was huge and immobile and didn't hold any programs I use with regularity. The icons on the desktop were out of whack. TextEdit was correcting my spelling, even though I'd told it not to. The clock was reading military time, and the calendar was all the wrong colors. Apparently, Sam's preferences got rezzed. I have no idea how.
This engenders a distinctly different feeling of virtual space. My immediate space -- the files on the desktop, the interfaces of programs -- feels fuzzy and nonsensical. Meanwhile, my blog and anything else I connect to on remote servers still looks clear, with preferences just as I left them.
Sam suffered a bump while I was on the road, and now has a skewed CD drive which looks like a misshapen jaw. Maybe that has something to do with it. Or yeah, heh -- it could be something to do with how I opened him up today to try to fix the problem...
But something about it feels more sympathetic. After the constant input of the conference last week, my brain isn't allowing me to save anything to memory either. I'm sluggish. I start doing one task and end up doing two others and then lose track of all three. What with
People in my department talk about "distributed cognition" -- the process of using your environment and the people in it to think. Sam and I are currently going through distributed amnesia. I mean, I really feel it. Like a Borg I feel it. It doesn't matter that he's the dumb partner in this pairing; with the end of the semester upon us, his memory is just as important to my success as mine is. Right now, with all his broken shortcuts, it's taking the two of us about three times as long as usual to find files.
Our brain is broken. Please bear with us.
The only thing my brain is open to right now is music. Wide, wide open. Manu Chao ("que voy hacer, je ne sais pas, que voy hacer, je ne sais plus, que voy hacer, je suis perdu, que hora son mi corazon," "esperando a la ultima ola/ esperando a la ultima rola/ arriba la luna ohea!"), and David Byrne's new album, and that Stereolab song, and the Van Hunt song they gave heavy rotation on KCRW ("I am dust/ blown away over the edge/ I'm already insane") and Franz Ferdinand and
oh oh oh, tonight I had to put in my ear buds to make sure I wasn't missing any of the instrumental lines of Bruce Haack's song Electric To Me Turn (that's an MP3, control-click to download, YOU MUST DOWNLOAD TO BE COOL) on this single shit-ass speaker Sam has. And yes, it has this sublime little bass line I'd never picked up before, one which would probably not be half so charming if the song were in any way remixed.
I will say it again, Haack was an unbelievable visionary. That it took the creative directors of the LA Symphony Orchestra until this year to recognize that music from the Final Fantasy series of video games might be worthy of performance is just another measure that demonstrates how far ahead of his time Haack was to be willing to explore electronic music the way it wanted to be explored.
Our generation has been waiting for this. We've been playing video game music out of context for years. My sisters and I used to tape music off the Nintendo to take with us on family trips so we wouldn't miss it. (It's great music for exploring new worlds, of course!)
There was a girl in the UVa YWW songwriting section a few years back who only did one thing -- arrange video game music. People said, "That's not music." (I said Kiddo, it's not like the game generates these songs, there's a human being behind them; his name is Nobuo Uematsu, and you really shouldn't be ripping him off without credit...) Bands upon bands have done covers of the Mario Bros. and Metroid themes.
Is this the year of the video game, or what? Seems not a day goes by that the mainstream media doesn't do an article on them.
Oh, I am so not doing my work. Really? I can't concentrate. At all.
Posted by me at 9:07 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Detritus: A little meme spread; definite nostalgia
... just because I haven't written anything in so goddamn long:
From Elaine's site, instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Voila:
"If the aim is to recapture the participants' experience, then time-shifted ethnography falls short." --Christine Hine, Virtual Ethnography
Nobody told me this book was going to be such rough sledding. I'm going to have to reread it like five times to get it well-connected in my semantic network.
Can you *imagine* how much there is in my life I could write about? But no. None of it is worthwhile enough to get me a grade if I posted it here.
I popped the Xephreniaq mix we made a few years ago into my random shuffle on my CD player and it's currently playing Stereolab's Captain Easychord, which actually has stronger connections for me in other, seamier parts of my life... but which nonetheless are wearing off, and the real power of the song is finally sloughing off the other connotations. I'm really proud of us for the mix. The theme was "Travelling to another dimension," and there's an incredible range on it -- Chinese and German opera, Korean and Mexican pop songs, Joe Strummer's Mega Bottle Ride, Nortec Collective, the song I wrote about tadpoles being sent into space, and, um... "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran.
I think it did the theme and us proud. It makes me feel Morning Becomes Eclectic all over. I think our next joint project should be creating a temporary Xephreniaq museum with artifacts and installations. We should do a gallery opening with fancy wine and cheese and invite people who need to know us better. Among other things, if Catherine's BMW is no longer in the family (I forget if it is) we need to steal it from the current owners and turn it into a giant flower planter or something. It's *symbolic*.
Robert, I swear to god I'm going to write you soon... I was so happy to get your letter, but the semester suddenly turned to 24 karat suck. That despite the fact that I skipped my rotten NYU class 3 weeks running.
Something else that should happen, sooner than the gallery opening: a burn party. When could everybody make it? Anything before late May is totally out.
Posted by me at 1:33 AM | Comments (1)
April 16, 2004
fish grotto
Let's blow this fish grotto. -- SarahPosted by me at 2:36 AM
April 5, 2004
porn is fun
I guess it's like defining pornography: you know fun when you see it. --BCPosted by me at 1:45 PM