wow. i’m always a sucker for poor taste. i like bad puns. i like vulgar jokes. but this is just so laughably, embarassing and cringeworthy. you’ve got a big meeting celebrating the corporate merger of MBNA and BofA and how better to commemorate the event than through song? so what do you get? two stodgy dudes in button-up shirts doing a corporate spin on a rock-n-roll ballad favorite, U2’s One.
what’s great about this is how Universal has gotten a bit testy with BofA because of this, sending a cease-and-desist letter in violation of copyrights. ah, i just love it when things get litigious. check the wired article here. i guess that we’ll just have to keep dreaming about that state of “oneness”
i am a very ambitious note-taker. i was that kid in the back of your class with the fat pencil pouch filled with colored pens, rulers, highlighters, indenting, outlingin, making mini works of art while a professor gabbed away at the front of the class. so when i read, i take judicious notes too. however, over time note-taking has come to take on a new meaning for myself. back in the early years, i took really obessive notes thinking that i could really try and capture everything. over time what’s happened, is that my thought processes are intricately tied to my method of recording: that is, as i write and take notes, my brain is seriously churning along, trying to make sense of it all, i add my responses, i call authors nasty names, i make connections, i draw diagrams…the physical record of it is just the byproduct of this process.
unfortunately, how the hell do you do this in an online environment? i know several people who never print out docs, and i would love to not have to print papers out, but i lose so much thinking capital that way. i’ve tried using some mozilla extensions but they just don’t make the cut. i mean, i want to be able to respond and react to any online doc in the same that i normally to any book, journal article, etc with my own pencil.
is that just too hard to ask?
Filed under: music
deerhoof, new album, friend opportunity === awesome.
wow. so good. how so good?! the production quality on this album is amazing and it’s such a departure from previous deerhoof records that i’m just gob smacked. there’s the recognizeable guitars. there’s greg’s crazy drum madness. there’s programmed drum beats that compliment the regular rhythm compostion you expect, but in such an undeerhoofy it’s kind of shocking like really cold water when you’re really thirsty. satomi’s vocals sound like they’re right next to your ears. i’ve always liked deerhoof. actually. there was a moment a couple years ago when reveille came out and i wasn’t so into it, but then everybody told me i was wrong and i realized they were right. and then i saw them live and was totally amazed. anyhow, what i mean to say is that this album is actually an *experience* you don’t just listen to it, you feel it. i was listening to it while i was coasting down sepulveda blvd, while it was dark, heading home after a long day at school and it made me feel kind of crazy because i felt like i was being bumped and jostled at all sides. and that’s a good thing.
I am very excited to be heading over to UNC for the Social Software Symposium that Fred Stutzman is putting on. I think this is going to be a really interesing conference, with interesting people to really hash out ideas and such. I will also be spending some time at Duke University in Durham with a buddy of mine so I am muy stoked!
Filed under: academia
alright. so my previous states of frustration and anger have been partially abated. i have made a very explicit decision to *not* focus on the things that i find wrong with the discipline, but rather focus on trying make those connections where i feel they need to be. i have been reading several of phil agre’s texts on the pragmatics of graduate school and establishing your own voice of sorts (1, 2) and i guess just didn’t really give it much thought as to what exactly i was up against. the intellectual challenge was always apparent, but nothing can prepare you for the cultural landscape of academia. everyone is stressed. everyone has a million things on their plate. everyone feels cramped in some form or another…and more often than not, people show it. i can only hope that i am as generous and graceful with everyone else as i would like them to be towards me.
quarter is almost over. have one last push and then it’s break time. i wish i was still an undergrad so that i could go to panama city or lake havasu or wherever it is they go for spring break. whatevs though.
Filed under: Uncategorized
does anyone know of any good authors, articles, or books that discuss the relationships between genre and performance? there are definitely related crossover between issues of classification in IS and genre theories in literary studies, performance and play in online communities and social networks…but has anyone tried to bring this all together?
Filed under: academia
leave it to academia to make socializing exhausting. i have been at an LIS conference for the past week or so, while visiting with old homies and friends here in austin. the scanning process of academia is quite intensive; just trying to stay on top of what everyone else out in the field is doing is quite challenging. and at conferences this is especially magnified as you are constantly sifting through the presentations, the people, the bad food, etc. i have definitely been overstimulated for the past 4 days, experiencing very intense conversations at all levels of this grad school process: not just the socialization into the academic realm, but particulaly butting up against inherent issues in the field itself, and the general frustrations of not having any kind of theoretical home, and being involved in an “interdisciplinary” field. i have been told that this is a particularly typical experience for the field, but i range anywhere from mildly frustrated to horrifically indignant on bad days….or generally optimistic and excited on good days. my frustration has peaked at a certain point and through several conversations with people, i have concluded that at least i am on the right track. i certainly don’t feel hopeless and i’m not eager to just finish my degree and get on with myself. there are very concrete thigns that i want to get done during this time. i want to play in part with my work. my disappointment always come from inviduals who do not see it as “play.” i think of concepts and ideas as clay and am definitely in the spirit of molding and sculpting right now.
