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.
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.
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)
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.
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)
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)
You didn’t know, but Wikipedia did. Yay Wikipedia!
Also: How many degrees of separation between Russell Hoban and Espen Aarseth on Wikipedia? Two counting the Riddley Walker page, but there’s no indication Aarseth is aware of the novel. I wonder who’s aware of both Riddley Walker and Espen Aarseth? I can’t figure it out from the Wikipedia history page.
Eee hee hee hee! OK here’s what I posted in my profile on a dating site:
Currently I’m trying to figure out why people keep showing up on my blog and asking if I’m Ashton Kutcher….
…You should message me if: you know which text box to put the words in. (You’d be surprised by how many people don’t.)
And here’s the response I got from some poor schmuck who wanted to start conversation:
Hi, what do you mean by text box? I am not sure language has categories that words go into that everyone agrees upon. Did you mean tool box?
charles
Mmm, yes. I’m sure I did mean tool box.
Oh, this guy’s a keeper, for sure. He claims to be 60 and a personal trainer, has no photo on his profile, and is listed as “seeing someone.” Oh, and lucky for us, he also says “I love to chat in chat rooms and i do like trying to express myself in writing. I love the internet.” Are you sure you didn’t mean internets?
So it appears I just don’t blog much over here anymore. Still trying to figure out how to balance the revelation/privacy fulcrum. Gumbaby’s going gangbusters, though — two posts a week now.
As I obliquely mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve started a new blog, over at gumbaby.com, which looks at the moment like it will become central to my dissertation.
Perhaps it’s the beer and cheese talking, but something just came to me as we were talking about copyright law at Christine’s party.
Disney keeps getting copyright extended every time it looks like Mickey Mouse is under threat of falling into the public domain. Right now copyright expires 75 years after the death of the author.
Roland Barthes declared the death of the author in 1967.
All copyrighted materials should thus fall into the public domain in 2042.
