Blog Archive Jan. 03 -- Voxygen

1/27/03 1:19 PM

So, the semester is full swing, and I'm already behind. But I started behind because I had such a shitty Christmas break. So, ok. I met with Wesley and Ree Ree on Saturday for our writing group and blocked out goals for the semester again. We'll see how well I can do this. I went to the Black Box on Saturday night for a groovy show -- a comedy troupe from Florida, The Mickee Faust Club -- it was exactly what I needed. The show was heavily queer and it felt really good to be in that space for a while. So few people here get queer politics; it's really frustrating. I feel so trapped in the late 70s here. When black people looked like Sanford and Son and JJ, women still had beehives (the higher the hair, the closer to god), and politics meant reform. Shit, you can't move into the third wave, when the second wave hasn't even hit here yet.

Josh sent me a couple of cool links. Yay, Josh. One to the Chronicle of Higher Ed's discussion of cyborgs, which I threw on the Donna Haraway page. The other to a funny LotR pic giving definitive proof that Frodo failed to destroy the ring.

I also found a cool website that I've been surfing about the origin of slang words. I was looking up Cup of Joe, which isn't there, unfortunately. It's called the Phrase Finder.

I am now getting emails from merchants in Dubai. Does anyone know why? I have forwarded Faisel Ahmed's address to the Nigerians, suggesting that they have mutual interests and that they might be able to help each other out. Perhaps they will agree to giving me a cut for brokering this deal.

~LS~

77	9	81	45	73
6	82	28	32	2
25	22	95	58	41
2	93	74	30	10
22	88	76	15	87
40	19	65	67	87
28	99	37	96	27
11	43	43	65	72
43	40	47	40	37
32	4	14	14	29
68	18	98	86	68
87	84	6	92	19
45	29	13	38	31
61	88	35	71	84
94	88	55	83	86
81	70	30	71	39
93	47	60	86	47
66	41	90	50	99
53	66	58	76	38
5	84	8	54	93

~LS~

1/24/03 11:04 PM

Ok. So. I'm a poser. This is not a real blog. It's a poser blog. Tonite at dinner, my friend Josh -- oh, and Josh has a webpage, so if I link to him, this becomes a legitimate blog -- asked me what a blog was. I explained it to him and he said it sounded just like a journal. Feh. So I went to the web to look up exactly what a blog was, one more time. And I learned I am a blog poser. So this is what I learned:

1. There are blogs solely devoted to giving you things to blog about.

2. Marketingterms.com defines blogs: a blog is "a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and weblinks." Plus it has a bunch of links to sites about blogs. Ok, so by this definition, I am legit.

3. Megnut at the O'Reilly Network says that weblogs have timestamps (got it), links (got that sometimes), and a permalink. What's a permalink??? See! I'm a poser!

4. Bloggers are very cool, according to Henry Jenkins. He actually wrote a column about blogs at Technology Review. He says, "Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering, sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution." Of course, you gotta pay five bucks to read the -rest- of the article, which I refuse to do even though I like Henry Jenkins.

5. About.Com argues that blogs are just diaries with links despite what bloggers say. I always go to About.com for validation.

But two of the most important elements of the blog seem to be technology -- you use a blogger type template to update regularly instead of the clunky old just update the website and FTP it way -- and you do it regularly, like, daily. And if you go to those blogger sites, then people can comment back and stuff. In the end, it's always about the code. Why is that, exactly.

In sum, once I moved my so-called blog to svdltd.com instead of Pitas, it no longer counted as a blog.

Now I'm off to FTP.

~LS~

1/23/03 10:05 PM

Listening: Booda Velvets, Headrush
Santana, Shaman

Reading:
Slavoj Zizek, _The Sublime Object of Ideology_
Thyrza Goodeve and Donna Haraway, _How Like A Leaf_

So the first week of teaching for this semester is over. I've met all my classes and they rock. Feminist theory is going to be a blast. Lots of W.O.W. and Spectrum folk, which will make for groovy discussion. The Intro to Grad Studies class went well. I had a very neat experience in there that reminded me -again- of what it means to live in Louisiana. I have two black women in that class, Angela F and a woman who is a liberal arts MA named Katrina. Katrina thanked me for including bell hooks in the syllabus and commented on how she felt comfortable in the class. As she put it, she felt a lack of barriers due to race and gender. She said it was a unique experience at LSU. It reminded me that what is norm for me, radical/critical feminist pedagogy, is not the norm for most students at LSU.

I'm finally reading _How Like A Leaf_, which has been very fun. I was glad to hear Donna just clarify a few things. Like she says, people just aren't reading. Carolyn, Ingrid and I should have read this book before we wrote our paper. Not that it would have changed anything, but ..we just shoulda.

Ok, this looks like a journal and not a blog. Here are some meaningless links to change that:

1. Where I go for song lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/
2. Robert Bigelow from Fem. Theory (we exchanged links; oh, this link is -not- meaningless. Sorry.)

-WHY- do I keep getting emails from Nigerians who want to give me money?

~LS~

1/20/03 1:25 AM

Today I visited Pitas.com to deal with the blog there and while I was there I surfed a few of the other blogs looking for design ideas. I saw a couple of cool sites, but for the most part it was all the same. Neat designs, admittedly, with all kinda java-n-shit that I don't have time to deal with or to learn. But most of the sites were little kids. Like jr. high and high school anime freaks. I guess all the gen y kids are now at the blogging age. I wonder what the net is going to look like ten years from now when these kids are "out there" doing computer work for a living. Pitas changed so fast from a cool blog site where people posted regularly, thoughtful blogs on issues of importance, or at least good music. Now it's just like WB and the Cartoon Network anime hour. *eyeroll* And half the sites are just people posting chat transcripts full of anime emoticons. I'm so -sick- of anime emoticons. They've been around for -years-. I remember people using them when I first starting going on line like 8 years ago. These kids think they invented them!

*sigh* Kids today. <---yeah, that's what I said.

Malia is going to Digipen, the university for computer game design. I think that's very cool. I hope it doesn't end up turning her into a jerk the way med school turns most women into jerks for survival. Malia's too cool. It won't happen to her. But I worry nonetheless.

~LS~