Lurking is not a bad word!

Recently someone sent me a digest from a DigiCult listserv in which the users are debating the term "lurk" and its connotations.
I wish someone had asked me about it since I've been thinking and writing on LURK since 1997.
And here's what I think, in a nutshell: lurk, offline=negative social connotation, like Sartre's voyeur or Spike or Angel (vampires) on Buffy.
lurk, online=term from Usenet, appropriate etiquette that can be stretched and used to understand how many websites and online spectacles address computer users. To lurk is not negative or anti-social (necessarily). We all lurk these days but if you are placing the term in conversation with online community or participatory culture, that's another thing and complications arise.
Just don't forget that the online etymology for lurking is different than the OED version.

blogs don't die, they just fade away

So I haven't posted here in roughly, um, a year and a half. maybe I just suck at time management but I've been genuinely busy during these past months--I got married, I worked a whole lot, I got sick with various inconvenent ailments, I went to Seattle, Vancouver, California, Hawaii, California, Pennslyvania, Chicago and other places too. (Note to self: Volcanoes National Park=inspiration for every alien planet film/TV sequence ever.) I swam with sea turtles, moray eels (eek!) and beautiful fishes.

I wrote quite a lot and the book is in a good place lately, smack full of original scholarship and ideas. Am working on interesting stuff.

I took care of our sick dog and watched her die. I found us a new dog and have watched her become part of the family.

I read things great and small: more Anne Lamott, Joan Didion, E.B. White (again). Numerous issues of numerous magazines (current favorites are Blueprint, Everyday Food and that old workhorse In Style, which I always use to explain the culture industry to my classes). And for work: Foucault, Virilio, Jenkins, Chun, McCarthy, Cubitt, Galloway and oh so many more.

So why post again? It's not like I suddenly have more time or am filled with news all of a sudden.
I guess I'm just feeling bloggy thoughts. Things that belong on halfbakery. Or something like that.

Yesterday I heard these philosophers on the radio telling jokes. Here's a good one.
A snail gets robbed by two turtles. The police ask him for a description of the turtles and he replies, "I don't know, it just happened so fast."

harder than it looks

so many things in life turn out to be harder than they seem to be--or harder that one expects them to be. being an adult for instance. or writing. or maintaining a blog. all tough stuff at times. easy to slip out of the habit with such things.
like this blog. weeks pass and i don't have much to say here because i'm busy saying it in other places. teaching, doing service work, it all takes something out of you.
as does the turn to darker, colder, less green weather. lately i've been listening to rilo kiley a lot. there is a great lyric in one song about the "slow fade of love," which goes something like--
"He said the slow fade of love
And its mist might choke you
It's my gradual descent
Into a life I never meant
It's the slow fade of love"
sometimes i think that is what adulthood is all about--a gradual descent into a life i never meant. usually i like being a grown up. but every so often i miss being, oh, say, 27. when i was 27 i had wild hair and loud clothes and fewer responsibilities. and i lived by the ocean and drove my podcar. i was much more interesting then. now i live in the midwest, walk dogs, drive a different car and wear clothes in neutral shades to go with my neutral hair. how i miss my old world sometimes...with all its pain and imperfection.

yet, what else goes on these days? i am in TV-love with Veronica Mars--what an amazing show. wedding planning proceeds at a steady pace. i'm sure we'll figure out the key details eventually. i've been buried in grading for weeks now--not fun. students should learn how to use commas one of these days.

and still...the book. i had a good writing day yesterday. hopefully will have another one today. am getting ready to send stuff to publishers (very intimidating).

what it takes to blog

Lately I've been wondering about what is required to produce a good blog. There is a certain labor--a willingness to spend time in the trenches reading and responding and writing. Javi clearly does this and his blog has launched a fan base. Colin's blog is intricate and clearly in conversation with other bloggers--academic computing types, photography people, arbor-bloggers.
And yet, I wonder where I might find the time to develop good blog habits. It reminds me a bit of when I used to read Usenet some time (was that really 11 years ago?) ago. If one read a group regularly then it was easy to keep up and follow the conversations there. But if one even let a day slip by it would take much, much longer to find the way back.
So is there such a way to be a casual blogger? A reader and writer who sneaks in and out of the blog slipstream at will?

and you thought this would be interesting, right?

all my deepest darkest secrets were revealed long ago. If I were to reveal them anew I'm not certain I'd chose to do so online. Instead I meant this blog to be a place for mostly rambling prewriting. It is a trial-and-error effort.
Just like actual writing.

Yet I find my own personal stuff--the people I care about, places I love, images I want to retain--imprint themselves upon my writing even if I intend it to be academic. Why is this? Why can't I separate the personal from the professional or are those distinctions blurry for a reason?

I think it is interesting that we go along looking for something interesting in other people's lives, no matter how boring they are.

better photos

of the ring and the ring-giver...

now it's real

i know it is blurry but this is my left hand wearing the new ring that Stephen gave me. It comes with a long-term commitment and some kind of ceremony but I am not too worried about those details just yet.
yay for me and Jasper and Winston! Who thought someone would want to marry us, what with the bathroom accidents, barking and constant worrying?!

showtunes = torture

it turns out that traveling is generally more time-consuming and interesting than blogging. perhaps it has an intangible instant gratification that writing a really good post lacks?
July turned into a busy month. Lots of writing, seeing people, crashing a car, getting engaged, etc. i'm hoping that august proves to be less eventful. although next week i have to drive to erie to have dinner with my dad and "hawaiian brother" (only i would go to erie to eat with someone who lives in hawaii.
che sera sera.
or whatever.

am still writing on mobility and gaming and also working on the 70s game console chapter. The esteemed Anne F. thinks I should be sending it to publishers so that is another goal for this month.

Stephen just killed a bat that got into the house, was terrorized by the cats and injured by one cat. i contributed by acting like a lunatic and turning on all the lights and the showtunes digital radio channel from cable.
i mean, if andrew lloyd webber can't disrupt sonar, who can?

left coast

i've been working on my handheld gaming article and also on the 1970s home gaming book chapter.
i've also been getting lots of sun, checking out new places (or new to me) and seeing old friends here in laguna beach and other southern california places.
i'm also trying to get things started for my fall courses and for videogame class too. i may try and get an interview at Blizzard Entertainment, the world of warcraft people. i figure they owe me one boyfriend at the very least.
i think that's about it for this morning. except maybe for a photograph.

back on track

so the blog here has been quiet for good reasons. mainly it is because i moved and, in packing up my worldy belongings (again) and that makes me cry a lot and get completely overwhelmed.
this kind of thing rarely leads to solid writing or research. now i'm enjoying my reward and, as luck would have it, the writing is happening again. i think it is one of those things you have to be careful with and take care of. It is so easy to stop writing and, once stopped, painful to start again. but now, i'm in california--laguna beach--and writing again while looking at the ocean and being in the sun and being near friends. it is amazing how huge a difference those things make.
i began to think that perhaps the reason i find ann arbor unsatisfying is because i don't find it intellectually stimulating. maybe i am not in the right loop there. but i miss art and popular culture and good local radio. and a world that is bright and moving at a brisk clip.
and yes, i feel that energy in orange county and i feel faster, lighter. i breathe more deeply despite the haze and smog. i smell the ocean. and know i'm home.
or in the place that most feels like home even though i don't live here anymore.

and the book progresses at its own pace. but at least its back on pace.

blog politics

I heard a story last night on radio (The World) about censorship and blogs. I guess MSN's blogging service, MSN Space, is complying with Chinese government censors to block blog posts with titles that contain words like freedom, democracy, Taiwan, Falun Gong, etc. Boing Boing has a good article on it (can't believe that Boing Boing is still around!). I think one of the more frightening aspects of this trend, in which corporations like Microsoft and Google cooperate with local governments, is how local "community standards" are impacting the globally published writing that happens on blogs. Who sets those standards? Governments? Does it matter when the government setting the standard is not democratic and its constituents don't have a voice in setting those standards? Besides that, how "smart" is the software that monitors blog posts? Maybe our panoptics are a bit off?

My best flowery windowbox

My best flowery windowbox,
originally uploaded by scmy.

Container garden

Container garden,
originally uploaded by scmy.

Side Garden

Side Garden,
originally uploaded by scmy.

hummingbirds

Did you know that a hummingbird consumes half its weight in nectar every day? I learned this when I got my feeder yesterday. It seems that the garden I have been working so hard on lately actually attracts hummingbirds. This is more by chance than by design. I'm waging a war against weeds too in the most organic way possible, but that's another story involving too much shade, burrs and mosquitos. Here are some photos from the garden--or links to a Flick'r album of photographs of my garden.

Writing went well yesterday--I got a lot done. We took dinner over to Jennifer's and Brian's place and Stephen got to meet the baby. Today I meet with the college computer folks and I hope to resolve yet more laptop problems. Then more writing and trying to keep up the pace.

production, distribution, exhibition

I'm thinking this might be one way of organizing the Digital Theory course. I already have 8 major points of significance in new media--stuff like...
• Do it yourself, document yourself
• Wireless/WiFi
• Surveillance
• Distance/proximity
• Ubiquitous computing
• Gaming
• Cryptography
• Audio/Video & peer-to-peer

But if I add in a layer that organizes things around production, distribution, exhibition I might be able to emphasize continuities with traditional media industries as well as point out the new of new media. I was thinking the other day that it might be fun to write something called "When New Media was New"--a play upon Carolyn Marvin's When Old Technologies Were New.
I went to Erie this weekend. Visited with Dad and Grandma. She's pretty active for a 91 year old. Had a few moments while driving where I wished I was writing b/c such good stuff pops into the brain while in the car. Erie is the same as always--I saw some kind of fire in the woods on Saturday night and that was interesting. I brought back a big chunk of the birch tree from my father's front yard. It fell down in a storm a few months ago. As a child I used to sit up in this tree, which had three trunks. Now I have all that is left of one of the trunks. I hope to seal it and make a stool from it.
This week the goal is to make some serious progress on my chapter and also move forward with my Unlimited Minutes essay. That one is due to the anthology editors in July. Today is a writing/research day.

miracle of life (high speed version)

So I doubt I'm going to get much writing done tomorrow--Jennifer had her baby tonight! And let me just say it loud: My friend is Brave, Strong and Amazing! I saw her go through contractions for a couple of hours and she barely batted an eyelash.
I got the call to come over and stay with Auggie (her three year old) at 4:30. I got here a bit after 5pm. Jennifer and Brian left for the hospital shortly after 7pm. Brian called at 9:41 to say the baby was born at 9:25 pm. It's now 12:30 am and I'm expecting to hear more soon (like a name, birth weight, when they'll be home, etc.). But it is exciting. Steve came with me for the first several hours. We even left for about 45 minutes to get dinner across the street! But Jennifer was cool as a cucumber through it all. I'm guessing most women would have been at the hospital hours earlier.
so there it is. and it has nothing to do with the book.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Zoning Out

Okay, this post is going to start off-topic just a little bit. I've been thinking about "zoning out" a lot lately. Stick with me here. What I mean is that I'm interesting in how willful suspension of disbelief, in tandem with a willful suspension of critical/intellectual engagement actually produces a kind of media knowledge.
Say you go see a movie that is more of a ride than a film (see Bukatman, Matters of Gravity). The narrative and plot are virtually non-existent. Yet the experience is thrilling on a sensory and bodily level (see Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts). Isn't this a kind of knowledge? Moreover, this knowledge is specifically related to visuality and to experiences that address the subject as a body that sees, hears, feels.

It's traditional in critical humanities work for zoning out and for texts that call for it (i.e., The entire Matrix cycle of films, video games, certain genres that rely heavily on special effects and huge leaps of logic, experiences with a specific and diffuse notion of the gaze) to be looked down upon or disregarded as undeserving of critical inquiry. Yet perhaps this new aesthetic and specific reception experience requires a more kinesthetic approach? But I'd also argue that zoning out is linked to zoning in--that such an engagement enables one to develop a critical perspective linked to bodily experiences and sensations. And perhaps this more "base" is necessary for understanding these sorts of media experiences? I'm thinking here of Krauss and Bois' arguments about formlessness and the need to understand the horizontal aspects of modernist art history. Perhaps zoning out resituates how we zone back in?

Tunneling In

So I'm changing my work schedule into one hour work blocks rather than trying to work for three hours at a stretch. Hopefully I'll be more successful at this schedule than the last one.
As I do this I'm reminded of that horrible movie "The Core," which Steve and I watched back in February. In it, Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart and a bunch of disposable science-types (Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo) get in this frighteningly phallic ship to tunnel to the Earth's core in order to reset the planet's orbit (or some other equally improbable task). Of course on the way to the Core, the phallic ship encounters problems and needs repairs and disposable scientists die left and right. Then Hilary and Aaron save the planet and (aww) find true love. It's all very ridiculous in a blunt metaphor kind of way. If one goes in deeper and deeper, one gets to the middle of things and finds what is needed. Either that or some disturbing ride inside a giant penis that is penetrating the planet, layer by layer. South Park used the plot in the episode where Cartman saves the town from hippies. Same ship and everything.

So maybe writing is kind of like the movie? I just need to dig in, full tilt and not worry about huge gaps in logic or structure, just keep digging, at least for the time being.
Today's dig is another archaelogical expedition--more on TV and early game systems. Very 1970s.