{ split subject }

since I already fell off the hiatus wagon...

i. oh my laptop oh my laptop!!! MY PRECIOUSSSSSSSSS. I picked it up yesterday (they were all, "oh, we called you on friday but your voicemail didn't work"), better and faster and cleaner than ever, and have since only put it down to sleep. I have whined much less than I COULD have, I think, these past (almost) two weeks; I really don't know how I functioned without it. 24 hours later, I'm mostly done recopying and reintegrating and reinstalling and redownloading everything, with Leopard and shiny new icons (largely BSG and candy hearts)! *bouncebouncebounce*

ii. we could still really use some help pimping majoritython in related communities, folks. I'll suck it up and hit choc_fic; meanwhile I'd love to get SGA circles involved.

iii. thearchive2! that is the only BSG content of this post. I'm quietly imploding.

iv. last night was "I'm Not There" with Todd Haynes, but I hated the film (and also "Far From Heaven" -- though I passionately love his early short "Dottie Gets Spanked") so I had little to say to him. since each of the interwoven stories featured a different actor, character, and genre, there was nothing to give the whole ANY coherence except one's extratextual knowledge of Bob Dylan canon. of which I have not an iota. what I was left with was an ENTIRE MOVIE ABOUT MANPAIN (how hooooooorible it is to be a famous rockstar), my very least favorite media theme. its one redeeming feature was that a good dose of the manpain came in the guise of Cate Blanchett, who was insanely hot. and David Cross as Alan Ginsburg is never not funny!

v. adding to the hilarity: the fact that I woke up yesterday at the ungodly hour of 8:30am in order to be on campus for a 10am workshop with Todd, only to discover that the workshop was actually TODAY. I maintain that nothing good ever came of mornings! all's well that ends well, though, since I told ljconscript my sob story and she relented and didn't make me go! so today I never had to change out of my pajamas.

vi. in other *facepalms* of late march: does anybody need an HP #94 black ink cartridge? I accidentally bought the wrong one.

vii. I had the First Big Meeting with whkc, and she was disconcertingly nice to me (last time she mostly yelled at me to write faster). she says I'm on track (which is very fuzzy math -- I should have TWO chapters written by now) and have an intervention in new media studies! I was worried that as soon as I actually got critiques on my work I would become demoralized about the entire dissertation, but thankfully the experience was quite the opposite.

viii. _plasticity_, poojapooja and I just finished off the last of the spaghetti sauce that _plasticity_ made me even though I called him a "promiscuous bibliophile." the problem with cooking is that, after doing a heaping sinkfull of dishes, we're left with... a heaping sinkfull of dishes.

ix. I'm going to roller derby in Boston a week from saturday. any takers??

x. to celebrate Pythia's resurrection, I will now post my Top Five Recent YouTube Finds. I've noticed that my steady stream of video genius has slowed to a trickle now that I'm not teaching undergrads, but you people do occasionally come through in your job as my internet filter, so let me return the favor:

( under the cut )

here at Camp MCM, we know how to party on a saturday night. we're entertaining ourselves by google image searching random theorists.



in one of the most frightening wedding pictures ever taken, Zizek (sporting some sort of lazy eye or brain damage) marries an underwear model (cum Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist, a distinction apparently conferred by some haptic principle via touching Zizek's penis and also her father). we hear he left his pregnant partner Renata Salecl for her.

in other news, there is apparently a vast global conspiracy to prevent me from doing homework. I'm about to eta some earlier posts with a drabble and more fandom interview-ness.

back to Convergence Culture...

Heautoscopy is a term used in psychiatry for the reduplicative hallucination of "seeing one's own body at a distance." It can occur as a symptom in schizophrenia and epilepsy. Heautoscopy probably forms the basis for doppelgänger phenomenae. [wikipedia]

also in the OED: before a vowel heaut-, comb. form of Gr. [...] of oneself, used occas. instead of the more common AUTO-: as in heau'tandrous a. [Gr. [...] man]. he'auto'morphism [Gr. [...] form] = AUTOMORPHISM 1. heau'tophany [Gr. [...] to show], self-manifestation... [there's also the more conventional Latin Autoscopy, but this seems to mean an "out-of-body" experience without the advention, necessarily, that one's body is a "double" of the self]

as in, the sort of word that, now that it's been brought to our attention, is totally indispensable to the likes of nessica_heroes, or doppelcest in general (my obsession)!

not to mention to majoritython, the new LJ community dedicated to the semi-virtual love of doppelgängers projectjulie and iamsab.

_plasticity_ and I are inspired. we're totally planning a theorywank piece about heautoscopy (which we decided, arbitrarily, should be pronounced like "beauty") and television and slash. ROCKIN.

eta: [yes, we ARE IMing while sitting on the same couch]
pandora8julie: I'm heautoscaping you RIGHT NOW
erisiansun: at least when you're heautoscaping, life isn't hebetudinous!

I have passed my orals and advanced to doctoral candidacy!!! If you would like to celebrate me, consider a donation in my honor: http://del.icio.us/projectjulie/donate

eta: corrected typos! I whined so much about the prep, but as I expected/resolved it would be, the oral "exam" itself was super fun. it may be perverse that I think that -- I just love my committee so much, and it's a treat and a privilege to have their undivided attention for two hours to discuss the work I care about. and what a spectacular night of drinking followed!

a) my phone's camera isn't working and I haven't had time to try to fix it (I suspect I need to replace the memory card?). that's why I haven't been posting pictures. in case you were wondering.

b) I just megauploaded the aforementioned Global Frequency pilot for frogfrizz and I know you want it too.

c) the past three hours were spent catching up on some comments, which was satisfying but perhaps unwise since it leaves the flist still in a state of crisis (or maybe I just won't sleep much tonight?). I'm not sure what to tell you (or myself) except that hopefully my lj-life will improve in april.

d) tomorrow after class I'm leaving for Chicago. on the way/there I have to throw together a version of the paper to present on saturday and prepare for class next week. I have yet to pack (and grade this one paper).

e) everything was sort of under control except that now I have to give this 5-minute talk for a teaching certificate on wednesday morning. I suppose I can just wing it or reprise part of my tuesday lecture? on wednesday I write my exam questions and then over next weekend I revise the paper and then the following wednesday I do my studying. or something like that. and then friday the 23rd it's OVER. (my one fear is that they'll go "omg you're obviously not prepared!" and make me postpone the orals -- that would suck.)

Dbp: cognitive mapping is about how the symbolic interacts with space.
Jlr: i'm more interested in how the symbolic interacts with your mom.
Dpb: well, so was Freud.

I always laugh so much when i'm with _plasticity_

And with that, i'm off to write my diss description.

eta: Psychoanalysis: a comprehensive theory of why "your mom" jokes will never stop being funny.

there are things afoot. thoroughly mundane things which nonetheless have major ramifications for my life:

i. clyde_man left hir miserable job. s/he took a fat severance package which means s/he gets paid for months and months, and isn't even *allowed* to work until 2007. so this is for the win. but it changes plans, perhaps makes the future even more nebulous. clyde's in Provincetown with partner lucky for most of december (NB: the idea of hir staying with me for part of this interim period never even came up), which means I'll be holidaying there and probably not passing through NYC at all over break. clyde has employment irons in the fire in Jersey, and none elsewhere at this point, so we're still stuck with this ongoing conundrum where s/he needs to figure out what s/he wants and needs in life and I need to be here in Providence for the foreseeable future, writing. so, continuing limbo.

ii. meanwhile I had a long talk with iamsab on IM last night, which is a rare treat, and was still all giddy today. still all awed at this love. I mean wtf? this requitedness shit NEVER happens to me. and right now everything is one-step-at-a-time, but I know there are some difficult conversations with clyde on the horizon. or rather, I have a disconcerting premonition that down the road, profound personal decisions will end up being determined for me by the geographic vagaries of the academic job market. presuming I don't manage to consolidate everyone in the vicinity of Boston, which is probably a pipe dream. I'd move to LA in a second if I got an offer, but that's equally true of NYC or Baltimore or wherever clyde may be. and unfortunately, it may very well be equally true of Missouri or New Mexico or Montana or whoever wants to put me on a tenure track (presuming anybody even does).

iii. complicating foresight further is the fact that Brown recently announced that they'd prefer to yank 6th year funding for grad students across the board, thank you very much (until now I was assured that a 6th year was to be expected, although it's not guaranteed IN WRITING). I'm fortunate enough that money will never be a dealbreaker for me personally -- but still, the bastards! I'm scrambling to figure out whether I can get special dispensation to be nominated for a diss fellowship for next year (my fifth) instead of the year after (the planned timeline), so that I don't miss the opportunity for a fellowship entirely. this would be simpler if I'd taken my exams already, like I was vaguely supposed to -- but honestly I don't think there's anything I could have done differently. I'm a cylon person, not a theorywanking automaton, and I won't apologize for that. if/when I'm on fellowship I don't have to work and can theoretically BE wherever I want, though the smart choice would be wherever I can actually write, and now that question mark might be looming much sooner than expected. and I might also have to write a dissertation abstract, like, yesterday. but I'm tripping gaily forward with the exams, in any case -- I desperately need to write this giant field essay. starting tomorrow.

iv. I may very well get a cat. not a kitten, as that would be insane with the constant demand for attention and the destroying of things and the ensuing need to realistically get two kittens, but a calm and cuddly adult cat. I've been holding out for a dog (a little fluffy handbag dog), but it's increasingly clear that a lifestyle that can accommodate one is still a long way off. cats are simpler, and I have come to like them, and they can climb up into my loft bed, and I have many friends here who would take a cat for weeks or months if I'm traveling. what brought this on is that my cousin's girlfriend is fostering a mama cat and two kittens that she found stray. the mama (they call her Sophie) is apparently very sweet (clearly socialized with humans, not a feral cat) and black with white belly and paws (not my favorite cat coloring -- I'm partial to spots and/or stripes, as in all things -- but really the former is more important), and they're looking for a home for her. I'm meeting said cat on saturday, and if we like each other and I'm not allergic I may really take the plunge.

bonus miscellaneous and less mundane thing:

v. I did my presentation for the Female Sexuality Workshop last week (twice). they only gave me 50 min. to cover alternative sexuality/relationships, which is a little ridiculous, but all my investment in outlining last spring did pay off because I have this puppy honed to a science (to mix metaphors?). Harvard coming up on thursday, where I get 2 hours -- and I talked to the organizer on the phone last week re: my previous round of workshops, and she said, "you changed me and my friends' lives. you don't know, it's just a couple hours of your time, but it totally opened up our worlds" -- which was unimaginably gratifying. it's such a little thing I do, and something I enjoy so much -- sharing my perspective and experiences. so needless to say, if YOU have any sexuality-related and/or personal questions, feel free to fire at will.

and now, mundane eljayish things which have only the most minor ramifications for my life:

vi. I've returned to the present! I believe that I am once again more or less caught up on lj (*with the exception of sitcomathon fics, and a handful of tabs still currently open). that took ALL fucking weekend. I didn't comment much during the blitz, but rest assured that I read faithfully as always. I know I say this EVERY time, but srsly I can NEVER let this happen again. if you are joining me for any of my travels, please make sure/understand when I take the time to keep up with my flist. you'd think it would be a boon to my schoolwork to let lj slide for a bit so I can focus, but it just disrupts my rhythm in the long run. I'm tempted to try to actually log this (stopwatch! spreadsheet!), but probably 75% of the time commitment is BSG fandom (split relatively evenly between articles/discussion posts and fic FB, give or take on any particular week) -- so you're not the problem, dearest flist. possibly I'm getting a wee bit burned out on BSG, in fact, but hopefully that's just the erstwhile behindness talking, because otherwise I'd be at a loss for what to do about it (NB: I am taking a week off vlogging for thanksgiving).

vii. meanwhile, I wrote three drabbles [scroll to the bottom], with one a week in the works for the near future. yes yes, I KNOW. except I'm kind of in love with my tiny distopian AU based on "Torn" (which has parentheses). plus, leavethesky wrote the best BSG spec EVER! and sheepfairy reminded me that we should be upset that Caprica apparently dumped Boomer for Three (the mesmerizing blondness of Three/Six distracted me from cylon!OTP, I admit). where is Boomer when she's not doing naked tai chi?!? *riots* *riots about all other continuity issues too, just for good measure*

viii. ashfjrhglkljskh *DED* notpiecebypiece is totally right that part 5 of Mary McDonnell's Q&A is OFF THE HOOK! MIDDLE-AGED SEX! CRAAAAAAAAAZED FANGIRLS! sadly, Mary also confirms that she does not want to make out with me (she really is astonishingly gracious about it) -- so there goes my last 1% shred of hope. and may I just say: if we're going to talk about age bias in TV sexuality, can we please talk about middle-aged (her words) characters having sex with younger characters, and not just them respectively doing it with each other?! kthnxbye. (and awwwwwwwwww Mary/Katee story in part 3!!! and also she is NOT shipping R/A, ha! it's "unfathomable" for Roslin to "get involved with a MAN at this point in her life." IJS) (I haven't been able to figure out how to capture the files since they went flash -- does anybody know how I can get my hot little hands on bootleg videos?)

ix. ummmmmmm I friended back I think one or two more galacticans, but if you're not one of them and you friended me and you care if I friend you back, give a holler and I'll see what I can do. I might also have defriended a couple of people -- not because I don't think you're lovely!

x. I never meme myself because I don't have the time, but this one is easy because YOU have to do all the work! I'm sure I could think up better questions but then it wouldn't be a meme. I am marking the freebies (those which are either [O] for obvious or [A] for given away above).

( stalker meme! )

eta: nobody did the quiz! that's OK, I didn't really answer anyone else's quiz.

when I started writing this two hours ago, I did not expect it to be nearly so long and elaborate. xxx

you know how sometimes, when you have too much to do, you can get into this state where you're hyper-energized and happy instead of hyper-anxious and paralyzed? I have been ridiculously, stupidly productive this week. I imposed today as the deadline for finishing up the zillion little things that have been hanging over my head since the beginning of the semester, and boy did I (unexpectedly) take that to heart. since essentially monday I have:

• finished my syllabus (and spiffed up tvhere)
• done an almost-final cut of my field lists
• written my first CV
• prepared my conference paper for tomorrow
• written a BSG workshop proposal and panel+paper abstracts (well OK, I still have to cobble together one of the abstracts in the morning)
• prepared the final version of the Hairgate! piece for Camera O
• partially caught up on email

I'm still working on The List -- as you can see, the field essay is now pretty much all that's left in terms of school projects (and, you know, publishing stuff, but I can put that off indefinitely). of course, the field essay is huge and I was supposed to start it a month ago (hence the mad rush of motivation), and I'm very stressed about it and worried that I may have screwed myself with too little too late (I NEED to finish it before the holidays -- otherwise I'll be writing it in LA and taking my exams god knows when). but still, ONE thing!

as a side-effect, I've been ignoring eljay, and getting even MORE behind. sorry, folks. I'm currently hovering around october 19 on the flist; I'll be catching up but it may take a while. mom comes tomorrow afternoon for my panel, so before that I have to record some VLOG (which I was very careful to preserve time for!) and straighten up my house. then next week, eljay and more grading -- and with the way november looks, heaven knows when I'll get to the essay.

p.s. girlboymusic, are you watching Ugly Betty? just based on the first scene, you really need to be.
p.p.s. Quorum of Five? if you want to help, you could reply to a couple comments on our story. I still haven't done them.

OK, so I'm currently working on a short piece to submit to Camera Obscura's Diva issue on HAIRGATE: the way lesbian panics about powerful female characters are displaced onto and managed through obsessing about their hairdos. Currently collecting links about Janeway, Olivia, and Starbuck.

a) do you have any links for me -- particularly fan discussion and news items?
b) can you think of any other female characters who have fallen prey to hair controversies?

TIA. this is fun!

also, you know you want to sitcomathon...

i. one "star journal" left to grade, folks, ONE (the longest one, probably 40 pages and requiring comments at the end -- but still only one), and I've haplessly failed at finishing my semester by today (which is now yesterday). so I'll send it off in the morning (so help me!) and poke at LJ for a bit and then devote what will hopefully be a sizable chunk of the rest of the day (and night...) to my getyourtoaster:Starbuck story which, frankly, is all I've actually been interested in working on for the past week and counting. but it's daunting, and I can't multitask. if I don't finish it tomorrow I'm DEAD MEAT. meanwhile, in the course of procrastination, I spiffed up my lj layout a bit (working off css by faceon) and uploaded some new "loyalty" squarethings (including this shiny new default, which features cygnus). so things are looking up. wasn't I supposed to become less busy, though?

ii. your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help spread the word about our final project: Opensaurus, a playful, educational, and activist celebration of copyleft and the public domain. At Opensaurus, you can:

- Learn about copyright issues and free culture through the humorous drama Tales of Opensaurus.
- Send ecards of Creative Commons-licensed images to your friends, and add more images to share as ecards.
- Sign email petitions urging copywrong corporations to cease and desist sending cease and desist letters! You can also create your own campaigns.
- Watch and share Hallmark-style video cards supporting Creative Commons, as well as other CC-licensed videos.

the other group did a workshop and BYOMP3 party for their final project, so as a reward for poking around our site you get audio! an entirely random selection that, in the opinion of a dance-phobic nerd who doesn't listen to popular music (namely, me), has good danceability. surprise songs!

( ysi links )

this message will self-destruct (probably in less than 24 hours -- I sent them last thursday night, I think).

iii. I was going to ask lj for advice, as follows: I need a sidebar-type indicator that displays my location (city). far tinier than WAYN, perhaps along the same lines as imood. preferably with social-networking capability and/or an SMS interface, but really the only crucial feature is that I be able to update it quickly and easily.

I need this because I'm going to be running all over the place this summer (and thereafter), providence nyc boston etc. without a lot of advance planning, and you want to be able to keep track of my whereabouts, don't you??

but then I went to Johnny Rocket's with _plasticity_ (we've been attached at the hip, lately -- studying together virtually every day), who was in the midst of research for his paper on ubiquitous computing, and he said "Have you heard of Plazes?"

which led to one of those mind-blowing moments when the most intimate, intricate efflorescences of my subjectivity converge with my intellectual passions in a technology of daily life.

in short: every time I go online, Plazes logs my location and puts it on a map. it does this automatically if I'm using my own laptop; otherwise I have to log in. if it's not a location (a "plaze") where I or another Plazes user has been before, I can define its name and attributes.

there's such poetry to the idea that I, an internet-based lifeform, can leave this trace ("traze") of my physical presence every time I touch cyberspace.

and there's also such profoundly totalitarian potential implicit in this fantasy of complete tracking. I was reading this book, The Innocents, about convicts who are exonerated of their crimes after years in prison, and one of them has become an advocate of GPS anklets that log your movements at all times, a perpetual alibi.

basically I could write a paper about this right now, but I'm bundling my more extensive thoughts in with the post about privacy that cyborganize is (theoretically) going to write. but in terms of the practical concerns, I did think a lot about safety when I was configuring my profile. not that it wouldn't be easy to stalk me if you put your mind to it, but there's something about this sort of powerful aggregation of the virtual-RL intersection that seems to invite it (or at least to generate those anxieties). you can make your info visible only to your Plazes "friends," but that does me no good since none of you have joined yet (hint hint). so I opted, counter to my usual practice, to include as little identifying information about myself as possible (no name, photo, URL), and of course to give no street address for my house and other private spaces (I did put addresses for the office, the cafe, etc.).

the site's in beta and has got some bugs still -- Xs aren't showing up in the right spot on the map, for one (complicated issue with generating lat/lon data and google maps licensing, apparently). but it's going to be one of those next big things.

iv. IT'S HERE!
by Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and their secret love child I WANT ONE. and so help me, I want a black (gratuitously more expensive) one! curse you, apple. not that I'm particularly fond of black laptops (pink, I say!), but I'm even less fond of white ones (no offense to parents of ibooks). I've been saying I'll wait for back-to-school specials at the computer store, but I don't know if I can hold out until august -- I actually made an invoice today at the online store and emailed it to myself. I CAN at least hold out until I've plowed through some of the computer-y stuff on The List. or, at least until they sell neoprene sleeves in the right size, natch.

v. another Real Sex sighting on tuesday, heh. "Excuse me, did I see you on TV?" when I was all in sweatpants and grading emergency mode, too, but at least it was a bright spot of amusement in an otherwise dismal day.

i. the brain trust Quorum of Five made various advances in human knowledge at the Great Toaster Meetup 2006 (c.f. previous post). we have divined, for example, that the cylon god is a Starbuck/Roslin shipper (obviously, since those two are his chosen ones), and that, from the Jewish perspective, Jesus is totally a Mary Sue.

I become increasingly convinced that fannishness is akin to a sexual orientation, at least in terms of its powerful experience of subcultural community.

ii. I get emails like this from my friends: "I'm trying to find incestuous lesbian fan fiction/slash stuff on Lorelai Gilmore and her daughter Rory (from Gilmore Girls) for a paper I'm writing" -- so who can help?? thenewhope said she might have some leads...

iii. something I love: Sugar Rush -- basically South of Nowhere, but British and thus raunchier and grittier and with better acting, editing, and cinematography, and more black comedy than earnestness. but lacking, I hate to say, the narrative pleasure of an unfolding, angst-ridden OTP, since Sugar is a completely irredeemable bitch who Kim clearly has no hope of a meaningful relationship with. something I H8: automatic-flushing public toilets! I have been brewing a rant about this for so long. I don't know if it's the particular choreography of my bathroom habits or what, but they NEVER flush when I stand up, so I have to do it manually, and then invariably they finally flush again just as I'm leaving. also they tend to flush right when I sit down.

iv. friday's discussion consisted of the following theorywank:

• the Nike slogan "Just Do It" (alternately "I dunk, therefore I am") is the quintessential postmodern reconfiguration of the cogito ("I think, therefore I am"), with its emphasis on identity as performative and its refusal of any unified, interior subjectivity.

• debate about how my rubric for understanding my department, Team Modernism vs. Team Postmodernism, would map onto Ninjas vs. Pirates. I was arguing for Pirates = Modern and Ninjas = Pomo, because Pirates = colonialism, state apparatus, and the quest for material goods while Ninjas = globalization, information (spy practice), and stealth terror (one of my classmates helpfully added that Zombies = Realism). except that this site emphasizes Ninjas as highly trained, mass-produced, state-sponsored conformists who follow orders blindly, and Pirates as highly individualized, modular camp performers who have no moral code and care about "profit and profit only." which suggests that I have them reversed, or more plausibly that the whole Ninjas vs. Pirates nexus is so hopelessly postmodern that it can't be parsed in this way.

clearly grad school has permanently ruined me for polite society.

v. let's all read Roe v. Wade. I read it as research for my story, which is the sort of thing one does when writing fic about the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. but in this day and age it should be part of our basic political literacy, right? I had no idea how particular and provisional it was. there's a more detailed post brewing for cyborganize outlining my discomfort with the discourse of "privacy" -- you can see here how easily "liberty" (the Fourteenth Amendment) is transposed to something subtly different. the fact that the "right to privacy" is a cornerstone of the protection of civil liberties (c.f. Lawrence v. Texas, the decision striking down sodomy laws) doesn't make the route it uses to get there any less troubling to me.

this is a transcription of my notes from today's screening/discussion of Operation Atropos by/with Coco Fusco.

( BDSM, torture, consent )

Mark, bless his heart, asked Coco to comment on TV shows that have recently thematized torture -- Lost and 24, to which I'd emphatically add Battlestar Galactica. how much does this totally relate to BSG and my wingswing story?? [so now I'm departing from my actual transcribed notes] given that the torture scandals are primarily represented through television, it's reasonable to surmise that they aren't so far removed from fictional representations in TV dramas. across all of them, sex/pleasure, power, and violence are intertwined in deeply troubling but constitutive webs. what I found so productive about Coco's piece was the way it embodied that profound ambivalence, and also the ways that, in a mediascape that's saturated with it, the "real" continually recedes beyond layer upon layer of performance and spectacle.

and I also wanted to add that it lays bare the blurred boundaries of BDSM as well: on one hand, in order to gain social acceptance it's crucial to insist on the absolute opposition between consensual and non-consensual powerplay. but on the other hand, I think that part of the value of BDSM is that it provides a space to think/experience critically these ambivalent implications -- people who practice BDSM are perhaps more prepared than others to recognize that consent is complex and that military is also a fetish.

i. FINISHED GRADING THE FRAKKING PAPERS. so this is your traditional post-grading reward post. had them for three weeks (since before spring break) and still it was a mad crunch at the end. tuesday = "I have all afternoon, I shall grade 4 papers today!" *grades one paper* *gets distracted by looking at faceon's gorgeous custom layouts for an hour* *goes to class* *grades half a paper* *watches 2 episodes of House* *goes to sleep* yesterday = "well, there's still some hope that I could finish by thursday?" *goes to Boston to present for Harvard Femsex* *decides all-nighters are totally overrated* *goes to sleep* today = "OK I'll just read them real quick and write three sentences and a grade!" *spills coffee on skirt in South Station due to wobbly table* *amidst the chaos of cleaning up coffee spill, gets on MBTA train without backpack containing wallet, graded papers, and everything else* *gets off train at Back Bay and sweet talks nice T man into letting me get on for free* *finds backpack still sitting by the table in South Station 20 minutes later* *grades last two papers during the prof's lecture! which means I missed learning all about Arnold Schwartzengovernor* -- what is my problem and why do I spend 2 hours at least on each paper?? [/rhetorical question] anyway, it was a bit hairy there at the end, and I earned mild chastisement by LJ (said prof, aka ljconscript) which was probably deserved, but I correctly guessed which two students would be absent (among others -- the weather is glorious) and went over theirs more carefully this afternoon, and the long and the short of it is I'm DONE and was in pretty good spirits through the whole thing. so now (interpreted loosely) I have to read Jameson for seminar tomorrow, and after that I get to CATCH UP ON LJ (~ two weeks behind AGAIN), and write things like wingswing (which could probably use secondary betas so holler if you want a preview) and an abstract for a book chapter (the Olivia paper version 2.0! a summer project) and a presentation for Open Source Culture about fandom and a drabble wherein Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes dump their asshats and shack up together to raise their babies (which I have decided is necessary for my pop cultural sanity). yes. and maybe at some point I will FINALLY get around to reading femslash06! apparently I HAVE managed to step down my level of BSG obsessiveness as planned post-conference, evidenced by the fact that I haven't been posting at livewireless (RIP ridiculous addiction) and also occasionally think about other things (although not Jameson, apparently).

ii. with the way the past few weeks have been, I have all this TV backed up. evidently I'm addicted to House (thanks to iamsab) even in the TRAGIC absence of Stacey (oh the narrative pleasure of episodic TV!), because (as noted above) I watched that first (so I should DL S.1 at some point, I suppose). but there's still weeks of Desperate Housewives (which is on as we speak -- Lynette has a new girlfriend! co-worker! Bree has a new manvil! gosh, the EIGHT SECONDS of S.2 when they were slashy sure were nice... eta: awwwwwww OK, that was cute! angsty and then CUTE! and Bree clearly NEEDS SEX). and SVU and Conviction, which are mostly a chore at this point, frankly. and the concluding arc of West Wing! which I'm also unmotivated to watch because after I do there's no more ever, and anyway they've done a good job of facilitating my deinvestment (not like when Voyager ended! but not as bad as SVU, so there's that) -- although I actually enjoyed the past 3 seasons unlike everyone else, so there (it's just that the election is Depressing with a capital D for Heterosexuals Democrats Suck!). what's the "lesbian cheerleader" ep of Veronica Mars? I thought it was 2x15 but no, although that did make me mildly interested in committing retroactively to S.2. oh, and Sugar Rush and S.3 of Bad Girls! speaking of which, I'm still trying to find time to make good uploads, and meanwhile I've got the S.1 extras from the UK DVDs copied from giantessmess's friend. for the life of me I cannot get the Helen and Nikki interview to decrypt! I think it must be corrupted -- does anybody have the booty?? (I've got the Julies and Sylvia interview, the book signing, the Oxford prison segment, the promo, and the outtakes -- that's all the rest, right? but I'd re-rip all of them again if I could because I got a report that the frame rate was off or something, so I may try to learn a better way.)

iii. and now, thank goodness, we move on to the "friends" section of this post. my geeky friend bjorn, who I was visiting last weekend, has kindly informed me that there is a simple software hack to give ibooks dual display support. glory be! this has vast implications for my very identity -- namely, I now plan to leave behind ~8 years as a powerbook user and buy an intel ibook when they come out (in the fall?). because dual display support is really the only powerbook feature relevant to me, and apparently the ibook release is planned sooner than the mythical 12" macbooks. and my first-generation 12" powerbook is getting old and slow. probably I will buy a black or otherwise non-white one in order to be *different*, if that rumor proves to be true, although black is really not my color and I wish they'd make pink! but that is apparently not the way of hip tech design in the '00s. and I will also buy a new external hard drive and a Treo! so I'd better start saving my slush fund...

vi. Dear lj -- for the purposes, as I understand it, of her dissertation in philosophy, my other geeky friend cathy wants to know: What are some good examples of short stories and/or novels in which the author refers to himself, or to the characters *as* characters, or to the story itself?

v. thank you giantessmess for the book xoxoxo!! I haven't actually seen it but clyde reported from the field. I'm looking forward to putting it on my summer lineup of YA lit! Trickster's Queen (Tamora Pierce) is by my bed right now, and it's so good...

oh p.s. many somebodies already did the wikipedia birthday meme for me, so I'm off the hook...

DEAR LORD I FINISHED MY PAPER! *boggles*
it's 30 pages on the dot -- just a few lines short
the first line is: "On February 26, 2005 I made my second ever mobile post from my cameraphone to my public LiveJournal blog, the first which featured a picture of me" :). and it has this icon as an illustration on the first page (it's by iamsab, by request -- I did not credit you in the paper, sorry). "I am a cyber-exhibitionist."

I'm leaving on friday for CT - NYC - the Poconos - Australia... eeeeee!
tomorrow is a strap-on party at my house >;P

TODO: winter break
• pack (for both winter and summer!)
• holiday cards (last call for addresses -- you might want to check because at least one person's info didn't go through)
• LJ comments (and also I believe I'd be more expedient at replying to comments if I could do so instantly from within the email -- so I'm going to try to work out how to send my comments to a special webmail where this works, since it doesn't in Eudora)
• index of student projects (see below)
• Gay Girls S.2 (I temporarily dumped my 13GB of music off my internal HD to make room for the files, so I can work on it while I'm on the road)
• academic site software updates
• write course description
• edit 2 conference papers (for march and april, so I don't HAVE to do them, but it would save me the work while I'm in the midst of the semester -- they just have to be hacked down to size)
• omg drabbles! (and maybe some collaborative writing?)
• some journalling, part LJ and part perhaps not
• read trashy books -- some kid stuff and lesbian romance I have on hand
• plan sydney convergence
• defriending

a brief word about that last one. I have known for some time now that the amount of time I spend on lj is unsustainable. I've been pondering various ways to cut back, and there's really no way around it -- I'm going to have to do my first defriending-of-sorts. next semester I begin the process of preparing for my exams and my original course, and I have to focus in a new way on being self-motivated and working independently. plus, I'm going to have internet access only sporadically over break -- so this seems like the right time.

I have thus far defriended only a couple of people who I don't think will notice because they haven't been around in forever. but if you do notice, and you object, just give me a holler and I'll put you back into the more elaborate process. those who the elaborate process concerns will be hearing more about it soon.

*

I forgot to mention that my students did 9 amazingly creative and educational digital media projects on friday! I feel like it was a crash-course for ME in the latest and greatest internet trends. I learned about:

• skype -- an internet phone service modeled, rather remarkably, on IM. I wanna do it! who'll talk to me? I'd have to buy a headset, though.

• YTMNDs -- there were a couple going around LJ last week, but I had no idea what a fascinating repository of emergent and self-organizing cultural and political commentary this site is! my mind is boggled -- and I laughed till I almost cried. why are there not more fannish YTMNDs?? or are there? the technological threshold is ridiculously low compared to vidding -- all you need is an image (often photoshopped and/or animated) and a sound file to upload. yet (as with the 100x100 square, only exponentially) you can compress so much meaning into such a simple form! it seems like this is a medium that should have creative 'shippers creaming their pants. I think I shall pop over to ob_fangrrl soon and challenge people to come up with Oliska-themed ones -- they lend themselves beautifully to snark.

• mappr and geotags/geoblogging! another thing I'd love to try to do in my copious free time -- apparently there are various places where you can look up latitude and longitude coordinates for a location, including maps.google. anyway, that group did this project.

• perverted-justice.com -- which I already knew about, but had not delved fully into just how completely INSANE the whole process/organization is. yes, YOU TOO can impersonate an underage girl (or boy?) in order to entrap ONLINE PREDATORS in chatrooms, and then ruin their lives by publishing their personal information on TEH INTERNETS. dear lord, it is terrifying but BRILLIANT -- welcome to the network society. also, is the name not wonderfully ambiguous? I must DL the Dateline specials. see also the wiki entry.

• QR codes (a Japanese thing, of course) -- 2D bar codes that are scanned and read by software in cameraphones.

• the XBox game Fable, which looks awesome! I don't play video games, though -- but I like to watch other people play them.

and so on. I'm going to make an index of all the projects for my site -- and a couple of the best hypertext essays too. lord, TAing this class was fun!

OMG I WROTE 5 SOLID PAGES TODAY! which is quite the accomplishment considering that I've been saying "I must write 5 pages" every day thus far but my previous record was 3. there is hope that I will finish in TWO MORE DAYS! 10 pages to go, give or take -- and all planned out in my head (Derrida, Ernst, webcam archives, wrapping it all up with public/private spheres) in that reassuring way that the final thirds of papers are. I'm not coherent enough to explain all the ways in which this would be miraculous -- trust me, I'm going "brain, who are you and what did you do with my dysfunctional, self-destrcutive psyche?!?"

I'm exhausted and brain-fried and as soon as I finish typing this I'm going to sleeeeeep. but first I want to say:

1. I'm fortified by the daily updates from those of you who are who are also being tortured by hard at work on school crap. solidarity, yo! even though I'm not updating myself or really commenting because I'm all FOCUSED liek whoa. but I hope that you're all still alive and all.

2. could South of Nowhere be any more with the CRACK and the PORN?! last week they were frolicking in bikinis and this week of course they had to be hopping around in their undies trying on outfits. it is PURE PORN GENIUS! and, like, holy OT3some Batman -- I was all into it and I blame all you dirty bisexuals! I feel like I have totally been in Spencer's position (like a million years ago) and I've totally been in Ashley's position (she's such a fuckup and I love her for it!), and they are so adorable that I just want to have kinky, depraved sex with them ALL NIGHT LONG lick them all over squeeeeze them in a totally chaste and possibly motherly way, uh huh.

3. another thing from my gay-reality-dating-show friend! I don't think I actually know any single femmes in NYC, but just in case:

...if **YOU or any of your NYC area FEMME (lesbian/bi) SINGLE friends** would be interested in having your portrait taken by a hot nyc butch dyke photographer and be filmed for the show?

during the photo shoot, the photographer may ask you questions about yourself like "what do you do? ...what's it like being single in nyc? ...got any advise on dating femmes in nyc?..."

The photo-shoot would be filmed & you will appear in an episode of the show (probably btw. 15-30 seconds of exposure time).

if you've ever fantasized about being on TV, this is your chance. the photographer will be shooting your portrait on a Lomography Holga camera. [wtf? should I be excited about the camera?]

Date: first week of January... please reply ASAP
Location: Midtown, Manhattan, (address TBA)
Requirement: you're Single, femme, lesbian/bi, and camera friendly

reply to casting@cgadtv.com, ASAP!!!!
please describe what interests you about the project, and attach a recent jpg/snapshot of yourself. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to call 646.202.2976.

I don't think I count as single, and more importantly I think I should spend my precious few january days with friends. but this does not mean I'm not totally a TV whore, kthxbye.

4. I just got a spam email with the subject "Re: unimaginative remilitarization" -- which seems like a pretty apt description of the state of our union. also Leo died! I can't really process because of, you know, the paper. but I'm reeling!

5. omg, I have to think of another one, don't I? this post is my REWARD for being so productive today. also the holiday cards I bought -- there were these gorgeous but expensive hand-printed ones that I restrained myself from, but hopefully I can get them on sale in jan. k, now I'm calling happyhop to tell me a bedtime story.

I was all technologically inspired by my discussions with new media folks yesterday. does anyone want to go in on a TXTmob with me? it's basically the same as a yahoogroup-like email list, but using txt messages to/from your phone rather than emails. we could use it just to chat or for some particular purpose (ideas? fandom??). we could dump the messages into an lj to archive them (or not). I suppose I don't have any particular goal in mind (yet), but I'm interested in experiencing the system. alternately, does anybody belong to any TXTmobs that I might like to join? (the reason that I don't txt more is that the interface on my cellie is awful -- sending pix is much less hassle.)

MT was also telling us about collaboratively authoring his forthcoming book. they used a wiki, and he says "in the end I couldn't point to a single paragraph and say whether she or I wrote it." I've never written collaboratively, but I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon (I like to imagine Deleuze and Guattari sitting at a desk together, cackling maniacally). those of you who collaborate: how does it work? I've heard reports of a certain division of labor: one person writes the plot, another the smut, for example. or there's round-robin style -- like this comment porn I read today, and on a grander scale in RPGs (as far as I understand them). do any of you have ways to intertwine even further? (I'm wildly curious about the mind-melding MO of punkensab)

more importantly, would anybody be interested in participating in an experimental collaborative-fanfic-authoring wiki?? has this or anything like it ever been done before? I don't know how realistic this is, considering how little time I have to write -- but part of me wonders if I'd write more if I were posting/contributing bits and pieces of things, without the pressure of producing finished works (even drabbles). I envision running MediaWIki (unless somebody has a better idea -- it looks pretty easy to install), with pages categorized by contributing author, fandom/pairing, finished/WIP/stub/bunny (etc.) for easy indexing. fics that were declared finished (there would have to be some protocol for this -- perhaps a parallel lj comm, since wikis aren't a good architecture for discussion) could be posted elsewhere too, with all non-anonymous authors credited (though a prerequisite for this process would of course be a less-than-robust investment in one's own author-function -- I suppose the first page would have to be ground rules). is this just another one of my pipe dreams? I don't want to set it up unless 5 or 10 people are interested in playing with it (but this doesn't mean you have to write with me -- you could invite whoever you like to write whatever you like).

*

and LJ/fandom/miscellany:

• G is writing a brilliant psychoanalytic paper about representations of female masochism in film, and we all want to help her out, right? she's including Secretary (yay!) and some weird French movie about a girl who cuts herself. is there anything else? I seem to recall that when Secretary came out, there was much discussion of an earlier (80's?) film about a kinky couple -- I even watched it, but I can't remember the name or anything else about it. it was not a very positive portrayal: the relationship was creepy and sort of abusive. what was it?? I believe I was thinking of 9+1/2 Weeks -- thanks aqua_blurr!

• wallowing in South of Nowhere has me happier than a pig in shit. I picked _southofnowhere out fairly randomly from among several fan comms. no new ep yet, but the promos (vid and stills seen there) are PORN *drools* -- also joined southof_fic and spencerashley (Spashley! *squishes*). icon from _sonicons, and media (redundantly) from southof_eps.

• SVU is really so tiresome. Casey and Liz were soooooo slashy and I could only go "euw! euw!" -- I may have finally found the pairing that is too wrong even for me (though I think I have asked quasiradiant to write it in the past -- somehow it's not as squicky without the visual) O.o

• in solidarity with the boyslashers among you, I capped the recent GAY on Nip/Tuck. this show is so gay that it has to actually poke fun at its own gayness! and speaking of gayness, who wants to write me Lynette/Nina, huh? -- it must be done.

• 100 icons! and I adore each and every one. whatever shall I do?? it's the multifannishness that kills me -- there are now 13 TV shows (Bad Girls, Battlestar Galactica, Desperate Housewives, The L Word, SVU, X-Files, CSI, Farscape, The O.C., South of Nowhere, Weeds, Voyager, West Wing) and 5 other fandoms (Harry Potter, D.E.B.S., Wicked, Avenue Q, Mary Poppins, Olsens) represented among my icons, oy -- and of course that's not even comprehensive.

• buy this!! New York based Graphic Designer Matthew Powell and Photographer Matthew Baker are pleased to announce the release of their new collaborative project, Bedside Companions, a sexy 2006 pin-up calendar benefiting God's Love We Deliver and GMHC. Inspired by the work of 1940's pin-up artists, the calendar's theme captures the coy sensuality of yesteryear, though instead of pin-up girls, they've updated the style using fourteen drag queens…and added in a message promoting the fact that safer sex is really sexy. (via girlynyc2000)

I'm tired and just all full up with love for lj, in that emotional way we get when we're tired. lj who vastly increased the amount of time allowed for phoneposts since the last time I checked, thusly allowing me to record my entire lecture directly to cyborganize! my cell phone is now a digital archiving device! I'm PSYCHED! I didn't wait till time ran out -- I wonder how long one could conceivably go? dear lj, you are love. you enrich my life and you're fun to talk and think about. kthnxbye.

remember this post? well, inspiration struck just as the time was nigh and now I have http://01cyb.org! duh, numbers! I hope they are not too pretentious.

the lecture was OK. perhaps good. not spectacular. (which I know because I got to LISTEN to it!). could have been better with more preparation, except in practice that just means writing things out and I'm trying not to get in that habit. could have been better if I'd slept on it. whkc woke up with neck spasms this morning and couldn't come to school (phoneposting all the better -- she was finished listening to my talk 15 min. after I finished giving it), which meant that everything else I had to do today (except the paper meeting, which was successful -- narcissism and exhibitionism here I come!) was cancelled. lo and behold, I was so diligent over the weekend and got all my work done. so I'm rewarding myself by vegging (at ?skip=180)-- and realizing what a good strategy it is to do this AFTER I've accomplished something, rather than using the reward to bribe myself into doing it in the first place, which is my usual MO. except I'm almost too blitzed to properly enjoy it.

BUT _plasticity_ IS HOLDING BAD GIRLS HOSTAGE!! in his defense I did ask him to spirit the DVDs away to a most secret and secure location. but I want them back now, NOW I tell you. I hope he will be home soon so that I can smush my face up against a coupla eps of Helen/Nikki, drooling and kissing all over them, before I pass out.

tuesday is love (inversely proportional to how monday is not). sleeping in and yoga and friends and no class... and oh, I promise I'll do some homework too, really.

mkay, NOW I'm stressed out. my happy-go-lucky attitude has inevitably left me in crunch time this weekend. apologies to everyone whose posts and comments I'm behind on -- I'm knuckling down.

on monday:
• give big fat lecture
• grading meeting, which means I have to have preliminary notes/grades for all the assignments done
• seminar, before which I must I have done reading and writing for said seminar
• meet with other professor about seminar paper, which meeting I have no time to prepare for so I'm going to have to wing it

no problem.

then the rest of the week will be finishing up the grading and writing paper topics etc. as on friday wearemany is coming!

wish I had more to say about the lecture, but the notes are still in the infancy stage. will post them at cyborganize if they turn out semi-coherent (and pass them on to tsenft, who I still owe email to *waves*). I'm planning to phonepost (assuming I can get reception in there) the first 5 minutes (or however much it lets me) of the lecture there. so if you wanna swing by between 12:05 and 12:45 my time on monday and leave a comment, please do (it doesn't have to be deep and/or erudite) -- I'll probably check back at the end to see if there are any nibbles. kind of like a half-assed version of backchannelling.

is it strange that I'm going all split personality? how I've been thinking of the scene of virtual me in relation to my students is that I'm not attempting to hide it (just google me, heh), but I'm also being discreet enough that they could avoid it if they so chose -- hence my decision not to have this LJ attached to anything that I explicitly give/show to them.

I did my femsex workshops last week, and they weren't as fun and satisfying as they normally are. I think I'm pushing myself toward the next level pedagogically, holding myself to higher standards. everything from being aware of the problems with my body language (when I slouch, fiddling with my rings, how often I say "um") to the larger issues of what my objectives are and how to structure a presentation to achieve them. I demand a lot of myself as an educator, and have been given really no opportunities to formally learn these skills (one of the problems with grad school, imho).

*

in case I don't manage to post again before then -- I'll be in Boston the weekend of turkey day. mazily, captain_sam, will you be in town saturday/sunday?

Seen on the Green is cool! I posted one picture from here to test it, and I'll definitely be doing more. I *heart* moblogging microsurveillance art! and I try to avoid posting pix of unsuspecting strangers chez moi, so here's my chance!

( why I love ROME [spoilers thru 1x08] ) *goes to happy place* eta: afterellen.com's article [spoilers through 1x11]

also, I'm rather nonplussed lately about what I perceive as my increasing inability to conceive that any TV character (really, any person) could/should possibly be straight. I mean, it's good for me to watch TV with normal people, because then when I'm all like "oh, so Inara is clearly in love with Kaylee" (I watched the first episode of Firefly, btw), somebody is there to go "um??" it's like the girlslash goggles are permanently fused to my face. which is more disturbing when it comes to reality then when it comes to TV shows. though I know reality is a slippery beast.

I'm drinking the juice out of the empty pickle jar. is that weird?

( oh, and Lost can bite me )

i . OMG I HAVE A TICKET TO SYDNEY!!! I am freaking out both from squeeeee and from having irrevocably committed to this crazy thing.

Itinerary
saturday 1/07 :: arrive Melbourne, 09:25 ~ hi giantessmess!
fly to Sydney on tuesday 1/10 or so ~ hi my lovelies!
wednesday 1/18 :: leave Sydney, 15:20
wednesday 1/18 :: arrive LA, 09:45 (neat how I get to go backwards in time)
which gives me till friday morning, probably, with Sab. but still a proper week in Sydney -- which I hope will turn out to be a good compromise (I couldn't bring myself to pass through LA without at least a little visit).

still have to book the NY-LA and Melbourne-Sydney tix, which I'll do tomorrow. but credit card numbers have been given and there's no turning back now! I'm flying Quantas.

I really would like to organize some sort of girlslash fandom convergence while I'm in sydney. aleatory_6? there are a few peeps who aren't even on my flist who I should give a shout-out to...

let me also say that I have no expectations beyond quality time with quality people. I'm low maintenance and don't have any particular ambitions of tourism. though I wouldn't mind being shown around your lives.

ii. yesterday my advisor and I laid out The Plan for the Rest of My Life, as follows:

NOW-februay 2006 :: develop course (description due)
spring-summer 2006 :: develop field lists, study for exams
:: continue work on course proposal/syllabus/CV
summer 2006 :: write field essay
fall 2006 :: take exams (while TAing) :: Sheridan Center certification
spring 2007 :: teach course :: Pembroke seminar
summer 2007 :: diss proposal
2007-2008 :: diss (while TAing) :: (and probably the advanced Sheridan certification, now that I look at it)
2008-2009 :: finish diss (while on fellowship, hopefully -- and if so I may move back to nyc completely)

because this is the crazy way my mind works, the first item of business is creating the technological infrastructure for all of this. I'm going to actually start using cyborganize as my project blog -- so this is a good time to friend her if you're interested in following my academic work. then I have to do a bunch of painful software updating of her sister site so that the LJ can be mirrored there (like this journal + http://projectjulie.net). then, I'm going to attempt to configure/customize CiviCRM to work as an online database for sources for my exams/course/diss. because why do all that work if I'm not going to share?

next semester is going to be a bit crazy, considering that in addition to the independent work I'll be carrying almost a full courseload:
• MC0120 S02 - Cinema and Stardom: Image/Industry/Fantasy ~ T./Th. 1:00- 2:20 PM + M. 7:00-11:00 PM // Lynne Joyrich [me = TA]
• MC0170 S07 - Open Source Culture: Art, Technology, Intellectual Property ~ W. 3:00- 7:00 PM + T. 8:00-10:00 PM // Mark Tribe
• MC0210 S02 - Criticism and Culture in Marxist Theory ~ F. 2:00- 4:20 PM // Phil Rosen [audit]

iii. [the following was written on sunday night:] I'm trying to watch tonight's LIVE West Wing on tape. it's AMAZING but also both boring and very uncomfortable, much like a "real" debate. I keep having to stop it because I can't deal. I'm obsessed with gathering press about it, though, so someday I can teach it. TWoP has a thread, as does coffeejunkii here, and I posted one in cj_fangrrl here (also, there's CJ/Ellen comment pr0n by me there heeee!).

I've been sticking around and hermit-ing lately to leave time for me to do a string of homework. thus far it's proceeding apace. nice not to have to be stressed out (yet). so now that I'm up-to-date on other things I've been catching up on TV hardcore in preparation for the Bad Girls marathon that's slated for after my lecture on monday. so you get another update:

( this is becoming ridiculous )

you may now feel free to lobby me to watch other favorite shows of yours. while I cannot accept gifts of commercial goods or services or direct monetary contributions, slipping some girlslash to me under the table has been known to sway my opinion.

iv. OMG OTP!!!
Ironically, while Deleuze is arguably Foucault's greatest champion, it is he who ultimately renders the anti-anthropological Foucault impotent, and, in a way, begins the process of dating Foucault.
~ Alex Galloway, Protocol (86)
get it... DATING Foucault! (but through impotence?) bring on teh Paris68 slash...

and, I know that marveling at spam is like so 2003, but sometimes I read it and it's just SO INSANE (machine language, indeed).

From: "Patsy Galvan" <heinrichygtg@breitmar.de>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:08:06 -0500
Subject: Windows

[a link which I almost did click but I resisted]
Tattood Nude Gay Gets Blowjob & Fucking On SofaYoung Hitch Hiker Gay Oral & Anus Fuck

A friend is someone who doesn't like the same people you do.To betray you must first belong.Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.
Christ's grave was the birthplace of an indestructible belief that death is vanquished and there is life eternal.The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.Short judgments make long friends.
Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see it is above, not against them.There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.
Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

v. this cool photographer Lizzy Kalisvaart was covering the netporn conference, and she graciously sent along some pictures she took of me. the ONLY pictures of me in Amsterdam. [for personal use only]

this is me on my panel, trying to look all hipster-professional. it's either before or after my talk, since the compy is closed.

then she did a mini photo shoot with each of the presenters in the Albert Cuyp street market next door. each person in a different crazy booth -- mine was a fabric store.

bonus meme. to prove how much I love you!
You have a total of 103 friends
You requested to guess 20 entries.
2 were skipped due to invalid content (surprising?).
You made 18 guesses.
You got 15 correct.
Doing the math for you, that means you got 83% correct
this may not sound like much, but a couple were really short and random, like "friends only: comment to be added" and "17 HS icons." I NEVER skim!! many of them I knew instantly without even having to look at the multiple choice options. I'm not a popularity whore, I swear!
eta: mkay, I was worried you wouldn't believe me, so I did it again:
You made 19 guesses.
You got 18 correct.
Doing the math for you, that means you got 94% correct
luck seems to play a role. those shortshort entries are hard!

1. current notes for my online identity/community lecture:
it's coming after a week on surveillance, where we'll be discussing Foucault's panopticon, Virilio's doomsday scenarios, and the pathology of camgirls. so my plan is to begin with a critique of the pessimism of these perspectives, which identify important phenomena but color them with regressive clutching at disintegrated stabilities like "real," "private," etc. I do want to assign Cyborg Manifesto, though it's not related directly to the topic at hand, because I adore it and I want the kids to read it. so I'll then outline the article as an alternative politics that proposes new possibilities for agency and connection/affinity from within a system of publicity and surveillance. via a nod to the broader field of cyborg theory, I'll segue (possibly using museumfreak's "we're all cyborgs here" icon, if she doesn't mind) to the ways online identity/community in particular can be understood through this lens. I'm not sure how good my summary of this will be since I don't know any of this material -- help/references would be appreciated. I'll take livejournal as a sort of case study, possibly walking them through BSG fandom as an example of the forms of centralized/decentralized networking and community that this technological architecture can provide a platform for (with the bonus of canonical cyborgs). since in the following class we'll be looking at some of the erasures and breakdowns of this model (e.g. wank, racism), I may close by touching on some of the ways that lj is far from utopian (e.g. ljdrama).

I don't have to assign them a second article, but if you can think of one that would complement Haraway, but is perhaps more specific to online community/livejournal, I'd be much obliged. my one stipulation is that it be critical theory rather than social science/ethnography oriented (i.e. not like this article) -- I think this work can be tremendously interesting and useful, but it isn't disciplinarily appropriate to the class. I'm planning to look through these at some point for fodder, but I'm not optimistic. (and I was poking around delicious, and noticed that ao, femslash, and svu are among the few tags listed as related to livejournal -- HEE!)

alternately, I could give the students various non-academic articles/meta/sites -- and this, dear flist, is mostly what I'm here to beg for your suggestions about, in your far vaster wisdom and experience. do you have links for me, pretty please? actually, in going through my memories, I found a whole bunch -- but I'd welcome more or just your input on how you'd frame this. there's plenty of material about the LJ/Six Apart merger, but I think I'd rather go in the direction of collective practices rather than of the question of how they interface with an techno-economic system. I could discuss Bloggers Need Not Apply but that's more about identity/privacy and not community. musings about lj by fans / how lj has changed fandom could make up a big part of it -- yet again I owe a great debt to cathexys for being such an intrepid archivist. coffeejunkii, do you still have the list of links you gave your students? -- I lost them. this isn't a lecture about fandom, though -- it takes up lj and specifically fandom as one permutation of the topic of online identity/community.

2. I was admonished for not blogging legs and eggs. hello, my name is projectjulie, and I LOVE STRIPPERS. also, the 3 first-year girls, who were excellent sports -- if not quite as deliriously drooling as I. the breakfast buffet left much to be desired, but was more than made up for by the legs portion of the event. (except for one, who wouldn't even look at us) the strippers were all totally sweet and HOT and got a kick out of us being there. our favorite insisted, with delightful enthusiasm, on going down the line and rubbing her breasts over each of our faces. bliss! and the conversations were fascinating -- one stripper said that most women who come in are scoping out a potential workplace or dragged in by men and tend not to engage, but another said that women customers are more able to have fun and interact (vs. the men who just sit there all stoic and predatory).

3. I wrote Cainslash (which is spoilery for Battlestar Galactica 2x10). why can't I just write fic all the time?? I have so many drabble ideas that I don't know what to do with myself. I cooked up an alphabet soup challenge so I can live vicariously through others -- any and all pimpage would be much appreciated. and aeonian is my WHORE at ficsforcharity, which leaves me just beside myself with joy. I'm all about the delegation of kinks and bunnies, yes.*

4. and now I bring you a mid-semester update on my TV-viewing habits -- because after all, TV is my LIFE. now with LJ communities!

the lineup
• dear lord, Bad Girls! I rather hate that I (and my ilk) are so predictable, but I was instantly head over heels for it. lesbians in prison = GUH TO THE NTH POWER. ergo I have adopted this popular sparklebunny icon, which is apropos. if you like dykes, run, don't walk, to netflix or tvtorrents or digital cable -- I'll bet you favors of your choice that you'll be hooked after approximately 2 eps.** if you're a girlslash writer, consider watching it to be a personal favor to me. so yes, I'm joining the mass exodus from SVU to badgirlsslash (fic) and the_pottingshed (drabbles) -- and I should really catch up on your writings there! (there's also badgirls_tv, but I'm concerned about spoilers, as the brits are up to season 7 -- don't spoil me!!)
• speaking of the devil, I'm pretty zen about the state of SVU.*** is it just me, or did Olivia's hair get rather shorter in the second ep and then go all shaggy again? the shorter I thought was bearable. meanwhile, the snarky meta (thank you, ob_fangrrl!) makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. and it was always a crap show whose primary pleasure beyond eye candy consisted in deconstructing its reactionary sexual politics, and that hasn't changed (count on svu_cort, though it's been quiet of late). mini rant: I love how gay men's sexuality is TV-friendly because it can be spectacularized as dangerous, edgy, and criminal, whereas lesbian sexuality is all about womyn rubbing gently up against one another in a frenzy of nurturing female bonding, and thus is clearly an inappropriate subject for TV drama. *fumes* I'm subbed to (and sporadically reading) svu100, lawandorderfic, casey_olivia (I'm unapologetic), and svu_rpf for fic, and taking over olivia_mariska_ is a pet project.
• ( and the rest )