« September 2005 | Main | November 2005 »
October 25, 2005
For A War Stance
Also, I've been meaning to post a link to a Afghani rug vendor who Joel and I encountered on one of our first dates. The rugs he trades in feature images of weapons, tanks, helicopters, and other military themes. As can be expected, the explanation is fascinating.
Posted by me at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
We're An Accordion Band
Today while dressing after African dance I heard someone in the locker room having a long, drawn-out discussion of Lawrence Welk. Turns out the classmate whose lively style I've been admiring is an ethnomusicology student, and her master's is on accordion players in New York City.
Again I regret that I'm so slow to get to know people in my dance classes. Maria is totally cool.
Posted by me at 4:20 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
System update
Just wanted to post a note explaining that I've not been on email much the past few days. Between spending all weekend filming the DDR National Champtionships, ongoing back and neck pain, and our Internet connection being down at home, I've let a lot of messages slide. Bear with me. This is likely to continue through the end of the week.
Posted by me at 6:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 12, 2005
Pastafarianism
If you haven't been to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster webpage since the inital letter the author wrote to the Kansas School Board was posted -- the one that insisted FSMism be taught alongside Intelligent Design in schools -- it is worth going back.
Among other things there are an astounding number of testimonials from PhDs saying that FSMism is every bit as valid as creationism (a reminder of how witty every highly educated person in the US wants to be; half the entries attest to the "deliciousness" of the faith) and some really hilarious pieces of artwork in the vein of Hopkin Green Frog.
yea, I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage. I am totally out of love with the Darwin fish now and in love with the FSM. Makes the whole message so much clearer.
Posted by me at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)
October 8, 2005
Ideologies
I just accidentally found my way to the conservative City Journal, particularly an elderly article on how CUNY could be better by not being soft on minorities, and I am currently angrier than I've been in quite some time.
Probably because I spent two hours yesterday in a New York public school where over 50% of the kids are on free school lunch, which will generally get you sensitive to arguments about how minorities are undeserving parasites. Oh, and I've been picking up the slack left by an incompetent college counsellor with Fab and a friend of hers, who are taking the SATs for the first time in November, as seniors. Having not been advised to take the PSAT last year.
City Journal was upsetting, but then I found my way to some random conservative mom's blog from there. I don't usually read the conservative blogs -- in fact, I don't really read blogs at all! Ha! -- but this one also frustrated me beyond belief. I need to read this South Park Conservatives thing... I'm concerned about the co-optation the title seems to suggest... but all in all I just don't get why anyone could call Republicans a "big tent" party or why a "rules-based" party makes any kind of sense at all... I'm not explaining myself well... Something about the very unusualness of this woman's argument, the fact that she distances herself from fanatical religious conservatives and is aligning herself with libertarian values I'd rather see people further left adopt, really bugs me, and I feel like I need to go take a nice hot bath or a nice long walk and stop hyperventilating about this and figure out why I'm so upset.
Posted by me at 8:43 PM | Comments (3)
October 3, 2005
Warcraft Diary: Bouganvillea's Story/ Is That All There Is?
Today I didn't want to play for more than an hour or so, so I sat down with an alt of mine on Icecrown. Rozalind has so many things to take care of these days that there's just no accomplishing anything -- certainly nothing which would make any kind of progress toward levelling -- in less than three hours at a pop.
This alt is a troll, now level six. Her name is Bouganvillea, a favorite flower of mine, chosen with Jess's plan for a Horde guild called Flower Power in mind. She is not pretty, with bluish skin, a hatchet face and tusks protruding towards her beaky nose. Her limbs are awkward, and her gait is not made any more ladylike by the two-toed clodhoppers she has to run with. But she doesn't look angry, at least. And she has a fetching spray of bright pink hair to match her name.
I like my creation, but I'm beginning to develop a guess as to why various of my well-educated guildies and other friends turn up their noses at trolls as I play Bou's early quests in her hometown. Essentially, they're Jar-jars. They have over-the-top fake Jamaican accents and mannerisms. It really sucks. Here I choose a character for visual aesthetics, and find myself saddled with the slipshod isms of the developers. Again. My coarse rasta troll, and my snotty-news-anchor of a rogue. Thanks, guys.
Bou woke up today in the Den and headed south to seek her first shaman quest. Instead, she found herself on a high finger of rock overlooking a lake. Succumbing to ilinx, everyone's favorite overlooked play style, she flung herself from the rock. Nearly cleared the shore. Didn't. Took 121 points of damage, almost her entire life bar. No matter -- the lake was inviting, with its unplumbed depths and invisible distant strands, so she strolled into the shallows.
Where she was bitten in two by something unseen.
Bou came to in a graveyard in a county unknown. Her hometown was no longer on the map. Thinking she'd exploit the situation to her advantage, she asked the spirit healer to bring her back, gaining herself a few dozen points -- no small amount for a level five -- as she discovered Rachet, a moment of minor Columbian recapitulation. Not much to do in Rachet, but there was a boat at the end of the dock. (Not a dock I've ever seen before, having never been to Rachet. Where was the boat bound?)
Who can resist the call of the high seas, the best view around of polygonal islands from the high deck of a ship? Who would turn down the chance to gain a little experience by shuttling down the coast to a new coast, new scenery? Bou missed the first boat, but perched at the end of the dock, waiting, not bothering to ask anyone where the boat was going.
Not that there was anyone to ask. Only two gnomes, a male and a female, awaited the boat. Bou, being Horde, will never have an opportunity to learn Gnomish.
The female gnome spat on her. Right there, in a Horde port.
The gnome indicated, Kiss my ass.
Bou cried crocodile tears. The female, so high in level as to be utterly inscrutable, challenged her to a duel.
Bully. Bou emitted a horrified /e shudders at their smallness, the best defense being a sound insult.
The other gnome, a male, apparently took pity on her and threw down the glove with the female instead. They went round and round for a bit. The female won. She strolled over to Bou and hugged her. She declared her love for Bou, who skulked off to sit with a goblin at the other end of the pier.
Here was the boat, and Bou clambered up the rigging to get a better view. The boat sped out into open water
and the sequence cut to a red dotted line, tracing its way across the intervening sea to the Eastern Kingdoms.
The Eastern Kingdoms! Bouganvillea, defenseless at level five, was bound for a continent where almost no-one would speak in tongues she could understand. Travel was guaranteed lethal outside of settled areas.
On landing, she checked out the shops, deciding rather casually to become an herbalist. Later, she thought, she would become an enchanter. It sounded exotic, even if her friends said it was a drag.
She went to speak to the Alliance griffin master, who felled her with a single blow. I suppose that was pushing her luck.
She awoke in a strange graveyard for the second time that day. It was becoming increasingly clear who Bouganvillea was. The ice-cream slurping child who is not contrite when found by the side of a policeman after a long day lost at the fairground. A cat with nine lives and no care to stop curiosity from taking all of them.
She went north, and was pounded into the ground by a silver gorilla before a nearby level-60 tauren she'd engaged in talk had the opportunity to protect her.
Time to hearth. It was a full enough day.
* * *
See, this is the thing. Past about level ten I don't feel like there are stories like these to tell about World of Warcraft anymore. I haven't been writing this diary much for over a month now, and there's a reason: the grind is positively dreadful. It's not fun at all. While Bouganvillea is lost at the fair, Rozalind is a sarariman, a deadened functionary sent to track down missing papers and bring factory operators (not a metaphor, she's been doing Stonetalon quests) to accountability. Frankly, the game is boring, and I've been inclined to say digital games are stupid.
I've given the game a rest a little. I've been playing the new Katamari, and Nintendogs, and old Kirby games. Kirby -- now there's a series with some joie-de-vivre. If Mario is all about the jump, Kirby is the epitome of animated flesh, with all its abilities to stretch and transform and survive incredible accidents. I love the flexibility of the game. Like Katamari, it's a highly forgiving game for beginners, and yet provides novel and challenging puzzles for advanced players. I don't feel yet like there's so many ways to play WoW -- you get the gooey spider legs, you return them to Old Meggie, she sends you out for some fist-sized spinnerets instead. Grind, grind, grind. Is that all there is? Where did you put the hidden cousins in Kalimdor, Blizzard? What enemy can I eat to become a better, more resilient person?
Posted by me at 11:48 PM | Comments (3)
October 1, 2005
Reinventing
(Not that I need to reinvent myself right now -- I was just being metacognitive as I read some stuff on intelligent agents, thinking about how it fits into what I want to do.)
My mother seems to be at a point where she could reconsider what she's up to -- where she wants to live, what to do with her time. It's interesting to watch her decide, as a member of a generation which thinks about careers in a very different, much less linear way. And yet I'm the one doing the linear thing at the moment. I'm deeply sunk in academia. It feels like I'm good at it, and like academia is the only place I'm going with my life.
This was certainly not my intent when I started out here. I wanted to work at Sesame Workshop when I graduated. I wanted to be doing something good for the world but be fun and creative at the same time. Now, of course, I've seen the inside of the Workshop and seen how few people there get to be creative, and unstoppable forces (BUSH ADMINISTRATION grumble grumble NCLB grouse mutter *spit*) have changed the atmosphere there for the worse; it's not someplace I want to be. Nor do I have the TV background to do what I want to there.
So my ideas of what I want to do have changed (thankfully -- it would be bad to come out of a major educational program not having changed your goals for your life, I think). But whether academia is where I am going is another question. Certainly it would be good to have one foot in academia. Chuck keeps pushing that. I think he likes the flexibility he gets here.
There was this kid at Hampshire who shortly after graduation went on to write a book about how people of our generation will run their careers differently, based on networking and reinvention. Which, if you look at employment patterns now and how much less linear they are than they were in, say, the fifties, rings true. I took this hype to heart, and so I'm aware it probably won't just be academia, for me.
Our program at TC doesn't lend itself to being purely academic, anyway. Actually, our program is profoundly schizophrenic. We have a handful of professors who want to give us an almost classical, canonical introduction to social theory, and who write screeds about how there should be departments of education ensconced in liberal arts graduate schools, which should not be subject to practical demands. And yet the highest degree our department offers is supposed to be a practitioner's degree -- an EdD. Which the president of our very own college has insisted is a useless degree which should be eliminated. Meanwhile our department putters along dreamily, sucking its sustenance out of the pockets of masters students who take classes in things like Dreamweaver and PowerPoint. A new wave of doctoral students would like to see us take our video game program to a more commercial level, with more emphasis on design. The professors they cozy up to are a different lot than the first set, with a healthy respect for both empiricism and qualitative work, but a skill set which helps students lay more groundwork for thoroughly academic careers than ones which bridge the gap into industry. And then, there's Prof. Taylor. (Paint chips?!??!)
What my department probably needs is a retreat at which it can think hard about what it wants to be, like the one I participated in at Hampshire in my penultimate year there. Thankfully, Hampshire acclimatized me to such disconnect amongst stakeholders in an educational program, so I'm not really shaken by the ground moving under my feet at TC. (Hampshire: Students think it's either for activism or smoking pot. Greg Prince thought it was for synergy and entrepreneurialism. The founders thought it was to counteract fascism, genocide, and doomsday technologies. The faculty think it's for Marxist scholarship. College counsellors think it's for the students who can't make it anyplace else. John Zorn thought it was for Frisbee, and he was right! Jacob Chabot thought it was for comics, and he was wrong! The compost heap thinks it's for healthy amounts of unused organic kale, and is never disappointed! I digress...)
In all this chaos I'm probably getting most of what I need, so long as I work to fill in some gaps (industry experience, etc). I'm still aware, though, that when I graduate and go looking for a job I am probably going to have to rethink everything. I'm going to have to give up projects that are important to me, and think of myself in a different way.
I've done this a couple of times since college. Look, I'm an afterschool teacher! Look, I'm a media analyst! Look now -- I'm an activist! I'm a freelance writer! A journalist! A professional video game player! The problem with this is it frequently ends up significantly disrupting my interpersonal relationships, as I rethink (or fail to think about) what kind of support and complementary activities I need in my life. I wish there was a way to avoid that.
One way or another I'm not particularly looking forward to the shock of leaving this department, which is one of the most nurturing places I've ever been (certainly the most supportive place I know of in New York!)
Posted by me at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
Detritus: Back to school, etc.
Ever keep meaning to write a blog post for weeks and not get around to it, then forget what it was you were gonna say? Um... I have a new roommate, who is pretty cool; I am taking three research practica and one "real" class this semester, and finally feeling like I'm doing Hampshire the right way; I constantly talk about Hampshire, much to everyone's annoyance; and Fabiola is very gung-ho about college but needs more counselling help than I can give her (I don't know applicants' averages, correct dates for taking the SATs -- which she's doing in November -- etc.). Oh, and Jess and I and Zhou and others from school are doing a new EGGPLANT lab blog. It will make us superstars of the academic gaming world!
I've meant to write about the African dance class I'm taking through Barnard for NO CREDITS aka FREE (yay doctoral exchange) with one of the best teachers in town, a man who has danced with the Ballet Nationale du Senegal. I have had my triumphs and my trials. Firstly I managed to unlock the combination lock on my gym locker on the first try. You may scoff, but I've tried to do that since sixth grade with no success, so I was pretty pleased with myself. Secondly the class is challenging but not impossible; Maguette Camara does an excellent job of gauging how much a move will need to be repeated before it is learned.
The difficult part is being suddenly immersed in a class of skinny white girls. Barnard dance undergrads. Undergrads, like young rattlesnakes, are scary to be around when they are trying to really make an impression; they don't really know how hard to bite.
The aura of the class is nothing like the all-ages, body-positive, come-as-you-are-and-show-it-all-off atmosphere I have come to love so much in classes with Nafisa and Esther. Nobody's said much about weight or fitness, but then again nobody's joking to break the tension, either. They all dress like dancers; they almost all carry themselves like ballet dancers. There's scarcely a belly, a booty, or a boob in the room. In my nastier moments I want to ask them if they have boyfriends, and if so, what a guy finds to be into if he's neither a brea$t nor an a$s man.
There were all of two black girls in the class, and one of them seems to have dropped. I mentioned my frustration at being in a class like this to the other black girl, who thanked me for bringing it up. (One of those conversations I would never have initiated before I worked in the Bronx... gee, people might actually not hate me for bringing up race, hmm...)
To top it off, Maguette doesn't seem to support diverging from a particular way of dressing, either -- I came in a loose dress the other day, and he gave me a lapa (sarong) to change into. Still, the good of having more free dance in a more convenient location (at eleven in the morning! Perfect!) outweighs the bad, so I'm sticking with it. We'll see how it goes.
* * *
The other day when I was having one of my unfortunately-ever-more-frequent Warcraft binges, someone with a long and garbled name whispered me the line HELLO SMALL CHILD, thrilling me utterly because there's only one person who begins conversations with me this way, and I did not know his avatar's name yet. And as it turns out, Glyph's avatar and Ying's avatar are not too far in level from mine, so I headed to Duskwood to meet them. The hard way -- down the river and by foot. So that the first thing we had to do together is have Glyph stand guard over my avatar's corpse and fend off the skeleton-king while I made the trip back from the graveyard.
I rarely understand what Glyph is talking about when he describes what he's doing at work, and I frequently think he's sunk in delusions of grandeur when he comes wailing at me over IM about how his new project will either raise him permanently to the pantheon of tech gods or destroy him utterly. After all, I've seen him do this since his first year in college, and his is not yet a household name. But I just scanned his blog and noticed he recently posted notice that there's an O'Reilly book on Twisted now. Twisted is part of this big morass he's been working on for years. So congratulations to Glyph and the rest of his crew!
* * *
Finally, I appear to have a boyfriend. He is from teh intarweb. For reals though, he is the kind of guy where if you Google him it turns up a whole bunch of things about computers which are completely opaque if you've never run your own server. And then you can think about how weird it is to Google someone who works for Google, which I have done, in quantity. He's not the bass player who also turns up. He's really cute, but I don't have any good pictures of him yet.
I don't know why it seems so notable to be seeing someone new. Maybe because I haven't done it quite so deliberately in four years. It's going well, though right now he is in Ireland and I miss him.
Posted by me at 1:53 AM | Comments (1)