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Dispatches From The Land Of Lite

Thursday, April 23, 2009

After a lovely evening down at The Magician with Annalee, Charlie Jane, and so many other genderqueer folk that my tomboy heart runneth over, I took the A train home. And there, in the space between two doors, were a small handful of teenagers gettin lite. Their announcer said something about practicing for a competition, so when they paused for a break I barraged him with questions. Fortunately, this coincided between the long haul between 59th St. and 125th St., so I had lots of time! Here’s what I learned:

(Continued)

Filed in Dance, Dance Revolution, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (0)

Four Thousand Dollars for Nine Songs: Help a college student hurt by the RIAA

Sunday, March 8, 2009

(OK — note I have now REALLY fixed the PayPal link — it goes to Fab, where as previously somehow it went to me before. I have redirected all funds sent to my PayPal account to her account. Thanks for your patience! So far, we have raised about $420 for Fab — a little over 10% of her settlement.)

By now most of you have heard me talk about Fabiola, my talented, hardworking former student who I taught nine years ago, when she was twelve. Some of you also know by now that Fab is one of the thousands of students who the RIAA went after for illegal file sharing last year. I’m writing this to ask you to help me help her.

The RIAA threatened to pursue legal action against Fab for sharing nine songs. The settlement they offered her, as they did so many students, was $4000. Four thousand dollars for nine songs. (Update: Fab tells me they are asking for this in payments of $725 a month.)

(Continued)

Filed in Pa'lante, Stupid Media Tricks, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (4)

Internet As Octopus Cuisinart: The Logic Of Sanitizing For Vanity Searches

Sunday, February 8, 2009

(Updated 2/15/09)

Well, here’s one for you. I just got the following message from a high school classmate on Facebook:

Hey Jill,
Hope all is well. I am starting a new job and they have asked my to try to clear up all of my internet references…once of which is on your site, the dancing sausages sidedish? Would you mind deleting the reference to me and updating the server info? I would really appreciate it. It is crazy how searchable one’s personal information has become in this day in age![…]
Take care and thanks,
Gia

The reference she’s referring to was in a comment posted by my friend Robert Durff. The original blog post was about a minor redesign I undertook on the site; the comment Robert posted was written in traditional Robert style — in other words, in a fit of complete, Monty-Python-esque absurdity:

The blog looks great on my humble orange iBook running OSX at 800×600 and Internet Explorer 5.2: large, flower-like rotating objects, pulsating vortexes of psychedelic color, and nonsensical text dominate the main column, while the right-hand column is plastered with doctored pictures of Gia [last name redacted]. I think it’s a serious aesthetic improvement over your last version. (Continued)

Filed in Veil One: Sophomore | Comments (3)

Merry Belated Mixmas, and Joyous New Year

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Belated Holiday Card!

That’s my belated holiday greetings to you all: Este posing for the card I’ve been meaning to send for the past two years, and Colin being an asshat, as usual.

The other day I noticed Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl had posted a list of songs under the heading “Mixmas 2008″ with the following description”

Mixmas is a mix of your favorite songs that you heard for the first time the previous year.

It’s late, but I decided to make up mine. A few songs into writing up a list I got really bummed because I’ve had basically two sources for new music in the past year: David Byrne’s streaming radio playlist (yay, it has archives!) and 8bit Peoples. I feel pretty good about the latter, as I pretty much discovered it, real actual Columbus-discovered it, not by proxy, by myself. I feel like a complete sheep about the David Byrne slavishness. I listen to anything the man tells me to, and I like it. Might as well be ClearChannel. But hey, it’s not.

Nevertheless, I highly recommend the following. I’ve found places you can listen to or even watch most of them online! And actually, some of these had other sources. “Blind Mary” I found out of Gnarls Barkley slavishness. “Single Ladies” and “Ms. Independent” were on the radio constantly as I was driving people to the polls in Cleveland around Election Day. (There was a third song from that source, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten any key lyrics so it’s going to be hard to find.) The TMBG I found upon trying to complete my collection from a band I’ve neglected for a while. I added the Extra Action songs because I know they must have played something new at that smoldering hot show last January that I went to the night before I left, I just don’t know what. I’ve seen them live twice now, and yes, that was initially at David Byrne’s suggestion. And the Santogold songs… um… *cough*commercials*cough*. Weena’s, like, angrily catching on fire on her stand as I write that.

CocoRosie - Japan (video)
Goto80 - Pappap
Estelle feat. Cee-Lo - Pretty Please [Love Me] (video)
Gnarls Barkley - Blind Mary (video)
Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) (video — also watch this version for the sheer balls of it)
Bit Shifter - Chumming the Ocean
Bit Shifter - basically all of The Information Chase
They Might Be Giants - Idlewild
i, cactus - bamboo cactus
David Byrne - I Wanna Dance With Somebody
Neyo - Ms. Independent (please excuse the video)
Santogold, Julian Casablancas & Pharrell - My Drive Thru
Gang Gang Dance feat Tinchy Stryder - Princes
TV On The Radio - Crying
Santogold - Creator
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Soul Coughing - Collapse
Vampire Weekend - M79
Haruomi Hosono - Sayokoskatti
Forro in the Dark feat. Seu Jorge - Suor de Pele Fina (Zeb’s Forrotone Mix)
The BPA feat. David Byrne & Dizzee Rascal - ToeJam (video not really safe for work, though technically it is)
Extra Action Marching Band - songs unknown, from January 2008 concert
Ratatat - Mumtaz Khan

BONUS, from a lost 2007 Mixmas:
CocoRosie - Turn Me On (video)
They played this when they were at Carnegie Hall with David Byrne, and because it’s not their own song (it’s Kevin Little’s, and because it’s dancehall/Carib style, you used to hear it all over my neighborhood), I had the damnedest time finding a recording until I realized it might be up on YouTube, and lo and behold, fans and local arts shows have presented multiple versions. CocoRosie are twee and irritating even at their best, but it’s exactly what this overbearing-sex song needed. When I realized what they were playing that night at Carnegie Hall, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and ever since I’ve had the same reaction when the original song comes on over the loudspeaker as I browse cheap Chinese-made clothes at Pretty Girl.

Filed in The Gus Sindex, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (1)

Detritus Peripatetica: The Fate of New York

Saturday, January 3, 2009

So a few minutes ago I hear an obviously live ruckus in our building’s lobby. Not the usual Frankie Ruiz album that someone at the front of the building seems to play nonstop; not the Spanish-language station that plays on a radio in the garbage room 24/7 whether anyone’s there or not; not the obnoxious pinging of the electronic Christmas music wired up to the menorah-and-dreidel-draped tree in our lobby. A good live ruckus: cheering, chanting, and a pattern of clapping which has become increasingly familiar to me as I walk around Harlem and Washington Heights.

This is who I found:

(Continued)

Filed in Dance Revolution, Pa'lante La Dada, The Contrarian Vegetarian, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (1)

Report from Cleveland, 2 days til election

Sunday, November 2, 2008

I shot a little video today as I was out running shuttle to get people to the early voting spot in Cleveland, which is good, because I’m exhausted by now and can’t write much more. Suffice to say the lines today were quite, quite long. I hope they really did take some pressure off local polling places on the day of the election itself, because people had to wait an awfully long time to get in to the single place in the county which has been open for early voting. It’s a difficult thing, going from minimal to maximal voter participation.

(Continued)

Filed in Pa'lante, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (1)

Vote Today Ohio journal, day 1

Friday, October 31, 2008

Travel. Time outside of time, outside of everyday life. Away from your habits. It gets harder when you carry your laptop around with you — when you carry an Internet-enabled phone that lets you compulsively sniff your neighborhood hydrants no matter where you are. Cloud computing — suddenly there’s no getting away from anything, it follows you everywhere, like cartoon weather.

But somehow: here’s a little space. I forgot my for-fun-reading book. It’s Halloween, but I feel like I’ve got to be one of the few young unmarried people who isn’t at a party. (Continued)

Filed in Pa'lante, Ugly America(ns), Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (0)

New stuff!

Friday, August 29, 2008

New posts up elsewhere today! The Media Show’s first full episode after the pilot is now up on YouTube. We riff on the American Girl juggernaut of dolls/clothes/movies/books etc. in a pretty grown-up way.

Also, I just got word that my second article published in an online journal is now up, though unfortunately it’s only visible to subscribers to E-Learning. grrr. But after 18 months I have the right to post it here, or over at Pocket Knowledge or Studyplace, so hopefully I’ll remember to do that then. This article consists of a good chunk of my master’s thesis, which was on class and gender differences in high schoolers’video gaming habits.

Filed in Culture Jam, Pa'lante La Dada, Product Displacement, Veil One: Sophomore | Comments (0)

You Don’t Own G Andrews At Gmail

Monday, August 11, 2008

So not only has the Gumbaby blog started attracting its own clueless commenters (w00t! my fiendish plan is working), but I am no longer able to ignore an even more troubling bout of internet illiteracy: People have apparently started treating my gandrews email account at gmail as if it is their own. To date I have received:

  • a request from Carole Wright to Garnett Andrews to put “Please pray that God will prepare me for….. Service, Cross-cultural sensitivity, Strength, Stamina, God to teach me, The team of workers, The students, Wayne to manage, Safety” on a prayer card with edelweiss on it;
  • email from a Bertie Russell asking if Mr. Andrews wanted to buy particular “unmodernised” properties for development in London;
  • a request to Giles Andrews that 78 Lewin Road have “External walls – 50mm celotex with 100mm internal block” so that it would be to spec for thermal performance;
  • a reminder — breathlessly titled “Mr. Darcy Alert!” — that Pride and Prejudice is on tonight, apparently directed at someone at the University of Nevada, Reno; (Continued)

Filed in Stupid Media Tricks, Veil Five: Symptoms | Comments (2)

Fighting The Pointless Fight: Books Come Back And Hit You, You Know

Monday, August 4, 2008

OK, I have really, truly lost it. Two moves back and forth across the country, I swore I would jettison every bit of baggage unnecessary to my life, particularly everything heavy; I cussed I swore I kicked things, I frightened poor dear Blair and Abby who helped with my storage. I have crap in Mom’s storage and mine and Aunt Patti’s basement and Dad’s and Grandma Dee’s garage and here in the apartment where I am housesitting and at work and in the basement doctoral lab and even now the puppet studio has my childhood Lite Brite, and probably a hundred other squirrel-holes I’ve totally forgotten (Catherine – your garage?!)

And yet here I am arse-up in dumpsters again, not just again but EVERY DAY, with a disturbing amount of brownish-red organic substance all over my clothes and up to my elbows, hauling away poundage. Sneaking into the library basement on the way to and coming back from work, emerging from a door that only I and this one Asian kid who’s always out for a smoke seem to know about.

I am having feelings I have not had since I maxed out my library card at the age of seven.
(Continued)

Filed in Found Documents, On..., Personal Best, Veil Two: Treatises | Comments (8)