{ split subject }

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. in the end I resolved (brilliantly!) to embrace my virtual existence (as well as my slacker identity) and abandon the notion that I have to be in my apartment with my books in order to prepare my field lists. I gathered up a copy of every syllabus for every course I've taken in grad school (and then some), made a list of the 10 or so additional worthwhile things on my bookshelf, and will be writing (at least the first draft) blind -- in nyc, AFTER I get back from CA. so, I'm off! not returning to provi until mid-July, is the plan. in CELEBRATION of the wireless DSL modem/router that I just set up at my grandparents' beachfront apartment, I am going to tell you a few things. the first is that I stayed up past 5am "packing" last night, as is my wont, and then set the alarm for 8. so I was pretty worthless today (and yet notice how it's after midnight, and I'm still awake). I otherwise could have been writing (or at least scheming -- Six is up), but instead I'll be poking at lj and other things that don't require too much brainpower -- WHILE SITTING ON THE BACK PORCH! at least until I get tired of squinting at the screen, and have to retire back into the air conditioning -- someone should really invent a good solution for outdoor computing.

ii. to rerun a picture from last summer (the light was bad today -- note that this round mom's not showing up until tomorrow), basically this is my view:



( photo chronicle )

iii. in unrelated news, my little bro got a real grown-up job! he's moving to Denver and it's all happening very suddenly. I'm a bit wibbly about him going off on his own, to this part of the world that I've never even been to. if you have any Denver connections that would be useful to a skinny, scruffy 24-year-old straight man, give me a holler -- he knows pretty much nobody there.

iv. I just have to brag (inarticulately) about how cool my friends are and how fantastic this wedding I'm going to next weekend is going to be. it's summer camp! you're so jealous! also note that there's an entry on the politics and meanings of marriage, and a discussion of same as one of the summer camp activities ;)

v. archiving my fortune cookie fortunes (yes, I actually "packed" them in order to do this), because who should be saving little scraps of paper in this day and age?!?

If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.
Life to you is a dashing and bold adventure.
Idleness is the holiday of fools. [that was my first one after livewireless spring break *hangs head*]
Your ability to juggle many tasks will take you far.
Success will bless a new venture if you are courageous.
Don't change horses midstream unless horse lies to you and stream is on fire. [that was a promo cookie from http://assesofevil.org]
along those lines, my favorite fortune of all time was: Depart not from the path which gate has assigned you.

did you remember to add "in bed" to the end??

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!

ack! I need to stop posting because it makes me so behind on comments. BUT. you should know a few (more) things. in baby roman numerals for pene:

i. I do adore hanging out with _plasticity_, which if you knew us you'd probably find odd. I was telling him all about Bad Girls, and he was like "dude [he doesn't actually say that -- I'm paraphrasing here], if I were going to try to create a show ESPECIALLY FOR YOU, that's exactly the concept I would go with." so true. thoughts about Bad Girls S.1, as pondered while I was supposed to be doing homework at various times since I finished watching on tuesday, and doodled in my seminar notes today:

( about eye candy; only minor spoilers )

ii. today's quotation is for all you doppelcest fans out there:
the specular image seems to be the threshold of the visible world, if we take into account the mirrored disposition of the imago of one's own body in hallucinations and dreams, whether it involves one's individual features, or even one's infirmities or object projections; or if we take note of the role of the mirror apparatus in the in the appearance of doubles, in which psychical realities manifest themselves that are, moreover, heterogeneous. (5)
he also says:
At this intersection of nature and culture, so obstinately scrutinized by the anthropology of our times, psychoanalysis alone recognizes the knot of imaginary servitude that love must always untie anew or sever. (9) [which I thought was pretty]
~ Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function" in Écrits [new translation by Bruce Fink]

iii. is a PSA: please educate yourself about HPV. I was going to try to do a more extensive resource post, but that link (the first I clicked on), seems to be concise, coherent and comprehensive (but what's up with the emo girl photo?). I'd like to emphasize:
• cervical cancer is preventable! this is why it's crucial to get regular PAP tests and to have follow-up treatment if necessary.
• current guidelines about how often you should get a PAP test vary -- you could consult your doctor about what she'd recommend for you. because precancerous symptoms can show up years after infection, it's important to get tested regularly even if you're in a monogamous relationship.
• the PAP test does NOT test for HPV -- it tests for precancerous cells. most people who have HPV have never had any symptoms and don't know they have it. once you are infected with HPV, you are a carrier of the virus for life and there's a risk of passing it to your sexual partners.
• however, since HPV has no lasting health consequences if you are responsible about testing and treatment, this is perhaps not such a big deal.
• "by age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV infection"
• bonus factoid about herpes: "most" people are infected with HSV-1 (oral herpes, i.e. cold sores) by their 20's (this fact sheet gives the figure for Australians at 70%). while HSV-1 more commonly occurs orally and HSV-2 more commonly occurs genitally, they both can go either place. there is a low risk of transmitting herpes if you are asymptomatic, but it's possible. please keep this in mind re: kissing and especially oral sex.
next time in Viral STIs... Hepatitis C

iv. I need a fourth thing, right, since five is the magic number? I'm off to nyc (but I'll be working on monday's presentation all weekend, if I know what's good for me). thus I won't be seeding Bad Girls over the weekend. I had the brilliant idea that I'll call my mom's travel agent to work on a Sydney ticket for me, which is far less time consuming than doing it myself.

v. this call for submissions rocks and needs to get around:

Realness Is Overrated: Rejecting the Requirement to Pass

( Read more... )

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 )

just a miscellany of bulletins for you, my friends, entirely devoid of personal interest. it appears phoneposting is finally working again, but during the hiatus much was irretrievably missed (notably two weekends of debauchery). I'll try to get back into the habit.

1. I'm coming to Sydney. except I don't yet have a plane ticket, and I suppose it won't be 100% certain until that happy event. but I've decided that money is no object, and I'm coming even if clyde_man can't. I'd still like to wrangle a cheap not exorbitantly expensive ticket, though -- any suggestions? my dates are flexible in the range of the first three weeks of January (mandysbitch, you can have your pick of the weekend of the 7th or of the 14th). I have to look into Priceline, consolidators, etc.

2. I'm burning DVDs on my computer for the first time in like 5 months!!! it was a matter of getting my hands on 4x DVD-Rs (and of figuring out that this was the problem exactly, which also took a while) -- I ended up having to order them from a special store online that sells bulk media. curse rapid technological innovation. anyway, I will now be able to share TV with people. in this vein:

( like Oz, but with lesbians )

3. meanwhile, I've also (finally) upgraded to Tiger! I *heart* Dashboard! my basic setup:

( organization turns me on )

all of these came from apple.com -- more info on request. rec me widgets!

4. I'm calling this genre Gnomic Spam:

( from Sonny Beatty, Re: News )

[there isn't even a link in this email ?!?]

5. I know I've already talked about my bourgeois guilt, but just for the record:

( my VERY EASY life )

_plasticity_ was over for a TV marathon today, wherein we caught up on BSG and Lost. we mistakenly watched Lost second and it didn't hold up well. because dear lord, I'm forgiving BSG its mid-season lull of lameness as 2x09 and 2x10 are among the best two hours of TV I've ever seen. 2x10, in particular, completely blew my mind -- most disturbing, edgy, brilliant ep possibly of all time. I can't quite believe they went there. ( very mildly spoilery ) fic, but I'm resisting (maybe I can squeeze in a drabble??). also urges to go back and read fan commentary on galacticanews, but I'm resisting those too. but damn, I'm curious what the word on the street is about this ep. I'm very glad _plasticity_ was here because we could process together and of course talk through all the possible permutations of how things may go down in January.

eta: I had a dream wherein I laid it all out for a member of TPTB at a big BSG party. it also included some QT with Mary McDonnell, who I asked to please include more long significant looks (aka eyeshagging) with Kara. she resisted. but come ON, clearly Starbuck is her special girl. and obviously bisexual (don't make me go on a rant about how most girls would hook up with another girl if given the right opportunity, and how Nip/Tuck with its soft-porniness and, strangely, America's Next Top Model are the only shows that seem to portray that). kthnxbye.

*

while the facts attached to any event born of a MUD's strange, ethereal universe may march in straight, tandem lines separated neatly into the virtual and the real, its meaning lies always in that gap. You learn this axiom early in your life as a player, and it's of no small relevance to the Bungle [virtual rape] case that you often learn it between the sheets, so to speak. Netsex, tinysex, virtual sex... it's possibly the headiest experience the very heady world of MUDs has to offer... To participate, therefore, in this disembodied enactment of life's most body-cenetered activity is to risk the realization that when it comes to sex, perhaps the body in question is not the physical one at all, but its psychic double, the bodylike self-representation we carry around in our heads -- and that whether we present that body to another as a meat puppet or a word puppet is not nearly as significant a distinction as one might have though. I know, I know, you've read Foucault and your mind is not quite blown my the notion that sex is never so much an exchange of fluids as it is an exchange of signs. But trust your friend Dr. Bombay, it's one thing to grasp the notion intellectually and quite another to feel it coursing through your veins amid the virtual stream of hot netnookie.
~ Julian Dibbel, "A Rape in Cyberspace" in my tiny life (16-17)

all human beings are capable of making a homosexual object-choice and have in fact made one in their unconscious... psycho-analysis considers that a choice of an object independently of its sex... is the original basis from which, as a result of restriction in one direction or the other, both the normal and the inverted [homosexual] types develop. Thus from the point of view of psycho-analysis the exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact
~ Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (11-12n)
[many people think I'm crazy, but I rather LOVE Freud. he also says, here, that "No healthy person, it appears, can fail to make some addition that might be called perverse to the normal sexual aim; and the universality of this finding is in itself enough to show how inappropriate it is to use the word perversion as a term of reproach" (26) *heart*]

New York, Venice, Stockholm, Istanbul -- there's nothing I love more than a city veined by the sea. Amsterdam, with its rings of circulatory canals, has been waiting for me. arriving at an outer platform of central station, whose panoramic window looks out on a wide waterway glowing with early morning sun, it's hard not to be smitten.

but EU customs, you know, for some reason their stamps are almost illegibly faint. so during my europe trip this summer I outlined all of them on my passport, for my own reference, trying to identify the country and date. now, since then, I've been through probably greek and certainly turkish, US, and canadian customs, and nobody has hassled me. but here they sternly threatened me with arrest (I didn't think for a moment it would come to this, but still), pulled me aside into the immigration police office (I was the only white person there) and let me cool my heels for half an hour whereupon they let me go on my merry way after another scolding. don't write in your passports, kids -- I may have to get a new one in order to avoid such problems in the future. needless to say, this initial experience did little to endear me to the Dutch.

in its favor, however, Schipol airport features a train station, just past baggage claim. not just a commuter link with the city center, but an actual train station, with connections to a country-wide network. it's brilliant, and nothing warms the cockles of my heart like good public transportation. and it's really true -- there are an *insane* amount of bicyclists here. to top it off, I saw a rainbow through the train window, faint and fleeting amid the tatters of clearing fall rainclouds.

I'm in the lounge of the hostel, where there's indeed free wireless (paradise!), ensconsed here for the day to revise my conference paper (eep!) and prepare for section, which I'm teaching tonight at the Small Grassy Island (#92170) in LambdaMOO (hee!). tourism will come later -- though I suppose I'll have to venture out for food at some point today. and ah, the second-hand pot smoke begins o_O

livejournal is rather a conundrum. I'm caught up (post-DO) on flist reading, but far behind on comments/feedback (yet again). the semester is only going to get busier, and at some point I may have to make some structural change in my engagement here, though I can't envision what that would look like *clings*. to make matters worse, I have a habit of opening up all sorts of fic and posts in tabbed windows to save for later, and then periodically Safari crashes and I lose this crucial to-do list (as happened this morning -- in fact the computer entirely froze up and then turned itself off, which in my memory has never happened to me before). so then I have to go through my entire browser history to try to reconstruct it, which takes like an hour. and I'm never satisfied that there wasn't something I missed, something vital which will now be lost to me forever.

the past period been exhilarating but even more exhausting, and what I want most out of this trip is to feel caught up and renewed at the end of it. correspondence can eat up infinite amounts of time, and I don't know how to nurture my connections to the burgeoning number of people I love, or how not to.

*

clyde_man's family post-Rita update: people who live in Lake Charles (this would be clyde's mom and hir sister-in-law's whole family) have been told they may not be able to come home until november. ack! but the military "menfolk" who returned to the city report that there's only minor wind damage to mom's house, and no flooding. clyde's brother in Beaumont didn't fare so well -- a tree fell on his house and crushed part of it. brother in Houston is fine, but for the fact that all the Lake Charles folks are staying with them. other brother they haven't heard from but he lives further inland so probably everything is fine. clyde_man is griping that the preponderance of the aid is going to Texas, while so much of the Louisiana coast is completely decimated and not getting any attention. also note that Allstate is refusing to pay claims on flood insurance in New Orleans, because the flooding was caused by a failure of the levies and not by a natural disaster -- wow, how much do we love them?

*

I didn't watch the Emmys. I was on my way home from DO, and anyway I can't be bothered to schedule my life around dreck like that. but the other night I had a dream that heathers insisted that I needed to watch them, and lonejaguar generously provided me with vids. and then of course watching the vids morphed into me being AT the Emmys. I witnessed a playful interaction between Mariska and Allison Janney (my random RFPS OTP). then later I overheard Mariska saying she'd redesigned her horrifying web site, and I muttered "thank god" under my breath, not so quietly that she wouldn't notice. but I felt guilty and apologized to her afterwards. haha.

*

remember how I said I want to be on a reality dating show? I don't think I spend enough time in nyc to actually apply, but yay!

( gay TV casting call )

*

the memeosphere tells me when you see this, post some Shakespeare in your journal (or something along those lines), so I bring you teh girlslash:

Celia entreating her father to spare Rosalind, As You Like It I.iii

I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her: if she be a traitor,
Why so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together,
And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable...
I cannot live out of her company.

I meant to write a slashtastic drabble after I saw the play this summer, but the actress who played Rosalind was wholly uninspiring, ugh.

and your academic quote -- this time about LJ! a parody entitled "The Buribunks: A Historico-Philosophical Meditation," written by one Carl Schmitt in 1918, is included almost in its entirety in Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (231-242). excerpts:

( every Buribunk, regardless of sex, is obligated to keep a diary on every second of his or her life )

and no, nobody has any idea where the term Buribunk comes from.

In this ideal [writerly] text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable (meaning here is never subject to a principle of determination, unless by throwing dice); the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language.
~ Roland Barthes, S/Z (5-6)

it was supposed to rain all weekend (hurricane Ophelia hit the Atlantic coast last thursday). instead, it was absurdly sunny and gorgeous and warm (with cooler nights).

this is to say (if the allegory is too subtle) that Dark Odyssey is a magical place.

there's a temptation to say something gushingly utopian about it, but it's not a space I want to idealize. issues of race and class and gender oppression don't disappear with sexual openness, and they're present at DO in palpable ways. along with the more mundane dose of clueless straight men (no offense) and bad boundaries and (more passively) people whose kinks and practices I don't particularly relate to -- the usual challenges of a pansexual (vs. a queer) environment. nonetheless, I was very conscious of how DO, as a community, is able to set aside in one fell swoop a crushing weight of disciplinarity that circumscribes our bodies and subjectivities under patriarchy. I know that sounds polemical, but I absolutely mean it. the honesty, generosity, validation that appear when you take away socially regulated ideas of what is public and private, what bodies are supposed to look like and do and feel, is profound. I had many moments last weekend where someone would say /do something that's completely nonsensical or inappropriate by RL standards, and I'd laugh and think "only at Dark Odyssey!" I mean, it's a life that looks absolutely bizarre from the outside -- except that I feel powerfully and instinctively that it's RL that's bizarre in comparison, that DO is the way the world *should* be. I know that most people (even most of the enlightened ones) aren't ready to be exposed to this sort of immersion, because it is intense and alien -- but it still makes me sad that *everyone* doesn't get to have this experience.

I am wildly inspired on every level of my being. I really reconnected with the fact that my alternative sexuality is the core of both my political and intellectual work, was reminded that in this very media-focused department it's easy to get drawn away from that (it's unfortunate I don't have an advisor who's a hard core queer theorist -- but one can't have *everything* in a grad program). so I'm recommitted to finding a coherent way to link online fandom (my presumed diss topic) to the broader questions of sexual politics in a mediated culture. this is not as distant as it may sound -- a lot of the issues I'm interested in are particular to the internet's reconfiguration of public/private and to sexuality as a basis for community and action, neither of which is foreign to fandom. but in my undergrad thesis I relied on a naive optimism about fandom as a political practice, so I'm going to have to find a more complex and extended route through this nexus. I even came up with a netart project I want to do with wetheaudience.org yesterday -- but I was sleep deprived and it may be stupid, so it's sekrit until I get a chance to think it through. just, DO made me feel like a superheroine, like I'm brilliant and beautiful and absolutely invincible. I'm behind now and have way too much on my plate, but instead of being stressed I'm energized and determined and have so much to SAY.

and also wonderful people, old and new. the best way I've come up with to describe DO is that it's a family reunion -- for my leather family! and I met butterflywing...

*

in non-DO news, cabenson wins the PRIZE of her choice (I'm assuming this will involve naked ladies) because she generously sent me the S.1 DVDs of Bad Girls! thanks CB -- I can't wait to watch them!! and I've promised to get them on bittorrent sometime soon (as soon as I work out my own ongoing DVD-burning problems).

also, I was emailed a new mindmap for some reason -- and I'm all encircled by my SVU girls! is it based on comment volume or amount of mutual friends, I wonder?

( mindmap )

"Intellectuals tend to be drawn to the meta-discursive in art; since what they themselves do is meta-activity, they take special comfort from other things that are meta, like self-reflexive art... This is of a piece with much gay culture. Being meta is rather everyday for queers... This is characteristic of the way we inhabit discourse. We are constantly aware of the instability of even our own discourses... and yet our stake in them is still so momentous."

~ Richard Dyer, "Idol Thoughts: Orgasm and Self-Reflexivity in Gay Pornography" (108-9)

in Gibson, Pamela Church. More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power (2nd edition). London: BFI, 2004. (reprinted from Critical Quarterly, vol. 36 no. 1, 1994, pp.48-62)