Patty and I had dinner with people last night. It was good and funny. It also tired us out. Tonight it's work, then laundry and packing and stuff for Chicago. All focus all the time. Also, yes, White Collar and Covert Affairs. More Buffy and Angel soon!
Oh hey, I made it to the final three in WIAD. Eeek. I feel like I'm on Project Runway, no challenge wins and going to Bryant Park.
Significant updates coming to my Dragon*Con schedule soon.
Everyone should check out this piece on Tiger Beatdown that's actually several months old but I just got linked to today. It starts as a review of a book I have no desire to read because it sounds annoying. But the piece isn't really a book review, it's more about how we do discourse on the Internet. Note, I am not offering this to you in the spirit of "Oh, I have been wrong!" but in the spirit of "this sort of shit weighs on me all the time; there are no right answers more often than I'd like to think; sometimes I really hate myself; I try to do good; Good works -- very much including mine -- can be motivated by all sorts of things including spite and insecurity; God, there really is a lot of crap out there that needs to be called out; sometimes, this isn't fun anymore; please, tell me this is all hard for you too."
That said, check out Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on the Muslim Community Center slated for lower Manhattan. This is a long one, complex, and goes to a lot of places. In some ways its far from Olbermann's best rhetoric, because it's so all over place, but I respect its meanderings because he says a lot of things in it that are right to say, that another writer might have left out because it makes for a less efficient argument. It is also, among other things, in places a difficult listen, especially if you lost someone at the WTC. But it's worth listening to, all the way through.
Things I'm not linking too because they are from the department of the obvious: "Only children as social as peers" and "Teen sex doesn't always hurt grades."
The Tiger Beatdown piece: OH GOD YES THIS. Especially the lazy quoting of Internet Feminism bit. Who's got two thumbs and a rap sheet of that? THIS GUY. I especially liked when she wrote, "The people who can look at a piece of art — or, hell, TV or pop music, those work too — and can only classify it as Oppressive or Subversive, or located at a greater or lesser degree of “problematic”-ness, according to current theories of what is or is not problematic. The lack of original thought, or of aesthetic judgment, is creepy: It suggests that we’re approaching this all like math, like a standardized test to which there are right or wrong answers, rather than as art, or (preferably) life, where what matters is not just your conclusion, but how you got there."
Again, I am so guilty of that. On the other side, it's nice to suddenly have the tools and the language to explain why something feels icky. The lazy part is when it's all you use.
The Tila Tequila thing: OH GOD HORRIFIC. First off, Juggalos are known for acting like Neanderthals. In fact, that's an insult to our early man ancestors.
Secondly, someone very cogently (with a side of victim blamey) said in another discussion of the situation: "While she was on stage and putting up with the abuse, it is kind of a mutual thing. I remember a punk show or two where the performers came off stage sporting a few cuts and bruises. But the second she left that stage she should have been in a secure zone and safe to her trailer, and from her trailer to her car." (source)
In that thread is some discussion of Woodstock 2 and how crowd control at these sorts of events, featuring these sorts of acts, are hot beds of violence, misogyny, and bad times all around.
I definitely think it's a good idea to often interrogate your own arguments and why you're making them.
I'm still in the middle of a long, hard project to de-academicize my writing. For example, I stopped using the word "privilege" a few years ago. I don't talk about that choice a lot, and I would never argue that everyone should do the same. It's just a choice that's happened to work for me.
If I need to use the term, instead of following my first reaction to use the word "privilege", I actually take a few sentences to type out the exact specifics of what I mean. Often, those sentences are quite different from case to case, which leads me to believe that the word "privilege" tends to obscure some very important nuances when overused.
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Date: 2010-08-17 02:48 pm (UTC)I especially liked when she wrote, "The people who can look at a piece of art — or, hell, TV or pop music, those work too — and can only classify it as Oppressive or Subversive, or located at a greater or lesser degree of “problematic”-ness, according to current theories of what is or is not problematic. The lack of original thought, or of aesthetic judgment, is creepy: It suggests that we’re approaching this all like math, like a standardized test to which there are right or wrong answers, rather than as art, or (preferably) life, where what matters is not just your conclusion, but how you got there."
Again, I am so guilty of that. On the other side, it's nice to suddenly have the tools and the language to explain why something feels icky. The lazy part is when it's all you use.
The Tila Tequila thing: OH GOD HORRIFIC. First off, Juggalos are known for acting like Neanderthals. In fact, that's an insult to our early man ancestors.
Secondly, someone very cogently (with a side of victim blamey) said in another discussion of the situation: "While she was on stage and putting up with the abuse, it is kind of a mutual thing. I remember a punk show or two where the performers came off stage sporting a few cuts and bruises. But the second she left that stage she should have been in a secure zone and safe to her trailer, and from her trailer to her car." (source)
In that thread is some discussion of Woodstock 2 and how crowd control at these sorts of events, featuring these sorts of acts, are hot beds of violence, misogyny, and bad times all around.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-17 03:33 pm (UTC)I'm still in the middle of a long, hard project to de-academicize my writing. For example, I stopped using the word "privilege" a few years ago. I don't talk about that choice a lot, and I would never argue that everyone should do the same. It's just a choice that's happened to work for me.
If I need to use the term, instead of following my first reaction to use the word "privilege", I actually take a few sentences to type out the exact specifics of what I mean. Often, those sentences are quite different from case to case, which leads me to believe that the word "privilege" tends to obscure some very important nuances when overused.
There are a lot of words like that...
Replacing the word "privilege"
Date: 2010-08-17 05:15 pm (UTC)