February 2011
58 posts
“These sites occupied a near-mythic place in the over-all project: the boy revered them in such a way as to place them almost beyond the range of conscious intent. This boy was not by nature a “worrier” (unlike himself, his father thought), but the inaccessibility of these last sites seemed so immense that it was as if their cast shadow fell across all the slow progress up toward his clavicle in the front and lumbar curvature in the rear that occupied his eleventh year, darkening the whole endeavor, a tenebrous shadow that the boy chose to see as lending the enterprise a sombre dignity, rather than futility or pathos.He did not yet know how, but he believed, as he approached pubescence, that his head would be his. He would find a way to access all of himself. He possessed nothing that anyone could ever call doubt, inside.”
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David Foster Wallace “Backbone” An Excerpt from the soon to be released The Pale King
The only other writer I know of who is as clever and interesting as DFW in their description of the body as a site for social and personal anxiety is Shelley Jackson. If you haven’t read The Melancholy of Anatomy get on it already. It’s brilliant. In other news, Tax Day is going to be awesome this year because DFW’s book is released that day.
@loretta and @14KGoldNYC
lorettalove replied to your post: i have a box of thin mints i NEED to get out of my apt because I will eat them. They’re yours if you want them.
a tumblr cookie exchange program sounds like an idea we may need to work on further. just sayin’
GENIUS. I could make y’all ginger nuts, and I could be repaid in Thin Mints!!
I love anything with Ginger. And I love the idea of an exchange as well! I am in Chicago. I could have those Thin Mints in the mail this week. They’re staring at me and my self control is waning. Message me your address and they’re yours!
Baths//Braids//Houses
Tonight I’m going to the Baths, Braids and Houses show at The Subterranean. I’ve been looking forward to this show all week. My last attempt to see Houses ended up being a bust, so I’m pretty excited about getting to see them tonight. And the stuff by Baths and Braids I’ve heard so far has been excellent. I’m expecting an all around fantastic and chill show.
Here are a few tracks to get you acquainted with these awesome bands:
Next week’s show: Kitchens, Floors, and Weaves
Libyan revolutionaries used dating website to dodge Gaddafi's secret police →
heraldsun.com.au
“The coded conversations were used to gauge support for the cause and direct people to social networking site Yahoo Messenger for more detailed conversations. The revolutionaries would then use the messaging service and text messages to organize their activities further, avoiding scrutiny from authorities.Communications would continue through text messages and Yahoo Messenger, to avoid authorities becoming suspicious. Mahmoudi said he attracted 171,323 “admirers” to a number of profiles on the dating site before Libya’s internet crashed Saturday. He had aimed to attract 50,000 as a sufficient number to take to the streets in protest.”
What a smart and subversive use of social media tools to mobilize people. Social media are a means to an end, not the end itself. Sometimes I think social media strategists and analysts forget this simple fact.
File Under Pretentious Things I've Said This Morning
“There’s no such thing as a free gift. I say this not as a cynic but as an anthropologist.”
“We as a human society – and this is especially true of the Western hemisphere – have in the past thirty years focused very much on profit and very little on care – care for others, society, and also nature. And there is a need to return to this balance… For if a capitalist system is to function – and I think it is the best system that people have come up with so far – then the balance between profit and care must truly be preserved.”
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Jan Muehlfeit, the Chairman of Microsoft Europe
[Disclosure: Microsoft is an Edelman Client]
And if you’re not reading OWNI, you need to be.
“I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I’m prepared to make an exception for the ones I’m nominated for,” he said, adding: “The last time there was a naked man covered in gold paint in my house, it was me.”
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Banksy on being refused to appear incognito at the Oscars.
We can thank the producers of the Oscars yet again for ensuring that this year’s show will be another 4+ hour snoozefest that panders to Hollywood politics instead of celebrating actual ARTISTIC achievements. I’m still going to watch the show, mostly in the hopes that I’ll see James Franco suck at something.
“Libya is Forever Changed by These Events”: Libyan Poet and Scholar Khaled Mattawa on the Pro-Democracy Movement Amid Government Violence →
democracynow.org
“I think the regime is over even if Gaddafi manages to survive,” Mattawa says. “Libyans are saying, ‘Yes we will have a new constitution, perhaps we will have a new flag. But we do not want you or your father or the rest of your plan, so get out of here.”
This is worth 36 minutes of your time. I’ve met Professor Mattawa a few times at various academic conferences about Arab-American diasporas and Middle Eastern studies. He’s articulate, smart and remarkably approachable.
Social Media in the Middle East →
mdmorn.wordpress.com
An interview about social media in the Middle East with the editors of a fantastic blog about culture and technology, Cyborgology.
Photography, Social Media and the Uprising in Egypt →
visualcultureblog.com
“The square is a strategic point for political expression. Apart from that however, little detail is visible in the image. The masses remain absolutely anonymous. This is an important aspect because the image itself doesn’t compromise the identity of an individual protester (nor did I wish to compromise their identity by showing their profile information). By choosing this photograph as profile shot, the Egyptian Facebook user is equally willing to suspend his or her photographic identity in place of a greater cause.”
