avium

checking in!

2008-09-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

i don't have terribly much to say, but i wanted to at least jot down a little something to keep myself in the practice of blogging.

i'm a professor now (adjunct professor of communication, to be specific), teaching public speaking and rhetorical analysis. i absolutely love it. i actually love it even more than i thought i would, despite all my concerns about the process. there's a lot to learn, of course, and not everything is peaches and cream (grading is the most upsetting experience i can imagine!), but on the whole it's the highlight of my week, for sure.

i'm currently obsessed with a french dance song called rapture pt. 2 by DatA. check it out.

my car exploded (yes, pretty much literally: big bang, flashing lights, violent shaking, beeping, bad noises, the whole lot...just no fireballs) so i've been taking public transit for the past week and a half. it's been an interesting experience, and i don't actually mind it. i'm going to make a conscious effort to do it more often, even when i get a car again (but it is a bit brutal sitting on buses for three hours just to get to work).

i got new headshots and am absolutely thrilled with them. you've probably seen them by now since i harassed most everyone i know into looking over the proof sheets. if you haven't seen them, let me know, and i'll gladly share some more. ;)

yesterday i had the pleasure of going to the huntington, which is far and away my favorite place in los angeles and probably in all of california. i got to spend some more time in the gardens (there are a bunch of themed gardens like the japanese zen garden, rainforest garden, water lily garden, shakespeare statue garden, rose garden, and so on) in addition to revisiting the classic books in the library that still give me chills: a guttenberg bible, original canterbury tales, first folio editions of shakespeare, paradise lost, audubon's huge illustrated volume(s) on birds, john smith's journal upon first arriving in virginia (including his detailing of the pocahontas story), and so on. really, truly awe-inspiring. the mansion itself is also incredible, of course, with an unbelievable collection of furniture and art for those who go for that sort of thing. yesterday was particularly wonderful because they had a photography exhibit on los angeles (body and landscape), which i adored. lots of old hollywood stuff, some porn stuff (like the porn industry, not actual porn), and so on. photograph that struck me the most: marilyn monroe's dead toe and toe tag peeking out of her slot in the morgue.

the exhibit reminded me of one of my favorite photography books, a collection of classic hollywood photos from the los angeles times archives. some amazing stuff in here, pictures of stars arriving in hollywood, going to court, filming, dying, and so on.

anyway, this venture into old hollywood got me perfectly primed for a night out at the cicada club, a vintage supper club downtown. once an art deco habadashery, the cicada club at los angeles' historic oviatt hotel is now a gorgeous club with food and a full bar (including absinthe!) and two dance floors, playing live music on sunday evenings from 20s revival bands. vintage and evening wear is required, and there are several colorful (costumed) characters that run the joint, including the emcee maxwell demille, the singing coat check girl, a cigarette girl in fishnets and sky-high heels, and an elevator operator who can really cut a rug. all in all, a fabulous evening, especially for dancing with friends...and the best part? no cover! i'll definitely be making a habit out of this.

i currently live in a pattern of oscillation between being frantically busy and incredibly bored. it's not bad, though.

oh, and i finally made creme brulee. it was amazing.

i'll leave you with a link to my friend olivia's blog about canvassing for obama in nevada. she's right: the state of the nation is scary, and the fact that the election is looking as close as it is right now is very scary, as well. i commend her for actually having the courage to stand up and do something about it...it's pretty inspiring. if you'd like to donate through her obama page, the link is here.

what's new in your world?

...oh.

2008-08-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

windows versus mac: the final showdown

2008-07-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

i like to think of myself as a fairly savvy computer user. i've used them extensively for pretty much my whole life, and i have what i would describe as a somewhat above-average grasp of their workings. i've gone through quite a few computers for work, personal, and school use, including a number of PCs and, since 2004, two macs. therefore, when i state my personal preference for macs over PCs, i think i'm fairly justified in my reasoning (more on that later).

what i don't understand, however, is the RIDICULOUS animosity that i've gotten from BOTH mac AND PC users whenever i mention that i'm using one or the other. in short...can't we just grow up? i mean, really. it's gotten ridiculous.

i try to be fair to both sides, and if someone asks me for advice on a system, i'll tell them honestly which i think would be better for them. my mother recently bought a monster of a dell XPS system, and she had her reasons, which i respect. i still have my dell XPS laptop. i can coexist! it's okay. but when i'm typing away happily on my macbook pro and someone comes along to say something like "oh. you're on a MAC." i can't help but be confused by their tone. um, yes. yes i am. and when i ask for some explanation as to why they loathe macs? i tend to get some sort of huffy "they just suck" sort of response. am i the only one who gets this?

now, to be fair, i remember being REALLY annoyed before i had a mac by the super snobby responses of mac users when i complained about PCs. but i will say that i've gotten it MUCH worse from PC users since buying a mac than the other way around. best as i can tell, there are two causes to this mac-directed hatred: jealousy, and preemptive strikes being made by those who have been sassed by mac users in the past.

the jealousy, i get. macs tend to be more expensive, yup. seems to be harder to pirate software, so you actually have to buy what you use. in my mother's case, same of the (old) software she uses for business isn't available on macs, and because she's not willing to use a windows bootcamp/parallels type solution, she feels as though she is denied use of a mac. i understand these concerns (although i happen to think them not insurmountable). but why take them out on me?

with respect to the second issue...this is a real problem that seems silly at its root, but is in fact based in some actual negative perceptions that will take a bit of work to erase. i even catch myself, at times, shuddering and complaining loudly at the thought of using a PC, because even my (very expensive, not that old) dell takes forever to load, always has, and seems to inexplicably die on me all the time. i think there's a fine line between expressing my own frustration and criticizing others for the choices they make, so i, for one, will do my part to try to navigate this line with greater care. i don't intend to make PC users feel bad, but i do think that apple has thus far provided a much better computing experience for me and has been worth any additional cost.

now, i've had problems with my macs (several thousand dollars worth, in fact), but everything has been taken care of promptly, politely, and, in almost every case, at absolutely no cost to me (even outside of apple care!) by real, live, intelligent, friendly people i could sit down and talk to at any apple store. no millions of phone prompts, no people adding my name into EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE of their lame script ("i understand your frustration, X. why don't we work together to solve this, X.") so they sound like some terrifying 2001 robot. no, i'd take the genius bar any day over what i've been through with dell, HP, and everyone else.

mac isn't perfect, but it's my preference. aren't i allowed to have that? i think i should be, and i think you should be allowed yours. and if our preferences differ, we should be able to reasonably discuss our differences of opinion, if they come up, in a logical way, with articulated reasons. if you can't do that, or if you need to resort to attacking someone else to validate your own beliefs, you really, really need to reconsider the sort of stock you're placing in your computing platform allegiances.

oh, and much of this same concern cross-applies to linux users. :P

so, the moral of the story. if you want to talk to me about my computing choices, awesome. if you want my advice, i'll give it! i'll remain strong in my own opinions, because they've been formed after a LOT of experiences on both sides of the table. but please don't see the apple on my laptop screen as a license to harass me, and i'll do my best not to throw myself to the ground in a fit when you mention PC troubles (and i have horrific visions of neverending kernel panics appearing as i try to load a website). we can be grown up about this. i hope.

(oh, and by the way: most of the people who make fun of me for having a mac have either gotten one of their own since then or are planning to. heh. heh. heh.)

music love

2008-06-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

no, i'm not dead; just been traveling a lot and moving. i've now mostly settled in at my gorgeous new apartment in pasadena, where the weather is beautiful and so are the people. i'm really excited to be graduated (woo!) with my MA and a whole bunch of wonderful possibilities. i have a fabulous roommate who will be arriving in august, but until then i'm just bumming around getting my life in order; cooking, reading, and generally relaxing for the first time in awhile. life is good.

although my iphone was stolen last week and my ipod stopped working the week before, i've managed to keep my chin up, and also keep listening to some really good music. a blog i read from a friend of a friend has this cool feature where more or less monthly the author compiles a group of her favorite songs at the moment and sends them out to anyone who's interested via a file transfer software called pando. i thought this was a great idea, so i compiled a list of Ten Awesome Songs to send to her. granted, these were somewhat tailored to what i thought she might like/already have, but i still think it's a great playlist that i wanted to share. here they are, with links to whatever videos i could find:

1) Against Me! feat. Tegan Quin - Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart (video is live and therefore terrible, here's the original song with no video)
2) Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Counting Down The Hours (also live, sorry!)
3) Panic at the Disco - Nine in the Afternoon (alright, i'm a fangirl who's now in love with the lead singer)
4) Jason Mraz - I'm Yours (i actually prefer his demo version, if you can find the mp3...also, madly in love with him)
5) Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin (going to see them in LA this summer! who's coming with??)
6) Goose - Low Mode (dear god this band is good, just wait for them to explode in the US)
7) hellogoodbye - Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn (with special appearance by old school AIM sound)
8) Stereophonics - Dakota (possibly my favorite song ever)
9) Joseph Arthur - Honey and the Moon (fan video, sorry)
10) Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek (horrible video, UNBELIEVABLE song...really gets to me)

tell me what you think! if you have any top ten lists or recommendations for me, i'd love to hear...if i get a good response to this, i'll do this more often. :)

wow.

2008-05-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

you know i'm not one to rail on about politics, but. wow.

wonkette post of an AP story about west virginia voters.

just...watch.

how i study

2008-05-06T14:20:00.001-07:00

a somewhat banal post; please forgive.

i have realized at several points during my academic career that i don't exactly study the same way most students do, especially those in graduate school. i'm very lucky to have a wonderful memory, so i don't usually need to take notes on reading. i hate taking notes on the computer, i don't often make flash cards or outlines of chapters, and, until this past year, i had a very bitter relationship with drafting and revising. however, the biggest distinction in how i study is one that i think i have a really good reason for (other than laziness and a good memory).

i have never once underlined, highlighted, annotated, or otherwise marked any passage in any book ever (other than a language book where you were supposed to).

a professor teased me for this recently and suggested that i wasn't fully engaging the material. i defensively replied at first that it pains me to defile a manuscript in any way; i literally feel sick thinking about writing in a book. upon further reflection, though, i realized there's another reason that i refuse to mark up my books. it drives me CRAZY when reading a used book or a copy from a professor's book where certain bits are selected because i find myself paying more attention to/assigning greater meaning to the selected parts and giving less credit to the rest. now, you might think that this is precisely the point: annotation makes it easy to find the important parts. what if, however, i don't agree with what someone else thinks is the important part? no problem, you might say; just annotate your own books. you're not going to disagree with yourself, right? well, first, anyone who believes that seriously underestimates my ability to argue (and win) with myself on a regular basis. more importantly, however, i find that i often get a richer read of a material the second, third, or eighth time through. an already-bracketed version might alter how i interpret the original text in all its glory (and CONTEXT)...and that, i think would be tragic.

what do you think? do you write in your books? do you think the tradeoff of effectively altering the original material (or your perception of it) to create your own interpretation is worth it?

questioning quoting

2008-05-04T23:24:00.000-07:00

i can't believe that a quick google search didn't list a whole slew of results on this question...and my apple dictionary didn't mention it either...so i'm turning to my trusty readership for help.

my mom recently asked for clarification on what i have long thought of as a basic, but commonly misunderstood, phrase: do you say "quote unquote" or "quote end quote"?

i swiftly replied "quote end quote" because, really, what is an "unquote"? i believed that "end quote" is both an indication of the action you are taking (ending the quote) and also a legitimate term to describe the closing quotation mark. of course, upon further searching, i couldn't really find any justification for this at all. i assumed, however, that "end quote" was proper, and over time the swift pronunciation (which sounds like "unquote") had morphed into the eggcorn "unquote".

now i find that my apple dictionary says "quote unquote" is the informal phrase to be used, and "quote end quote" (or "quote endquote") is nowhere to be found.

am i totally wrong on this?

a quick google search pulls up about 2 million "quote unquote" hits and 2.18 million "quote endquote"...so no help there ("quote end quote" gets 11 million, but that has a lot of spurious hits). new york times and the university of iowa use "quote end quote". it's a hard thing to find online, however, since most people just use the visual quote marks rather than saying the expression, which is usually reserved for verbal conversations with (obnoxious) air quote marks.

anyway. what do you think? any help would soothe my troubled mind.

bonus question: do you have strong feelings on the noun form of "quote" versus "quotation"? the forensics community has this weird mission to end the noun form of "quote" altogether and harass those who use it as being totally wrong...but the dictionary says it's okay...is there anything really fundamentally wrong about using quote as a noun, other than the lack of distinction now between the verb and noun form and the ultimate uselessness of the word "quotation"? although when put like that...maybe that is a bit sad...

collectivism

2008-04-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

the most interesting part of this story on the recent spate of suicides in japan, where people mix detergent and another substance like cleaners or bath salts to make deadly hydrogen sulfide gas, is that many of those who killed themselves appear to have put up signs first to warn others in the area of the presence of deadly gas.

not sure we'd be so conscientious during our own nadir here in the states.

*edit: a disturbing number of people seem to have come to this site after searching for something about "hydrogen sulfide gas" "detergent" "bath salts" or, in essence, "how to make". i realize that some of these visitors are really just curious, but i can't help but worry about the others; i just can't seem to get rid of the horrible feeling that at least one of these people is really interested in killing themselves or someone else. i wish, so much, that there were something i could do for these visitors, some way to reach out...if you're one of those people, i guess i can only offer a somewhat helpless plea to leave a comment or message me in some way so i could try to help.

of course, this also brings up the larger question of whether such people should be able to find what they want on the internet...i appreciate the importance of a free marketplace of ideas and information, but...access to murder/suicide weapons? :( especially when it's so easy to get lost in the caverns of your own mind, late at night, online...takes a bit more to go to a library in broad daylight or track down a professor during office hours for that sort of information.*

the starving dog exhibit

2008-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

interesting. there's been some uproar lately about the starving dog exhibit in which artist guillermo vargas "habacuc" supposedly tied a dog up in a museum and let him starve to death to raise awareness about the problems of stray animals.

turns out, the whole thing was a hoax. the dog was fed and given regular water, and ultimately allowed to return to his home on the streets. the artist demanded that the IMPRESSION of starvation and death was necessary to make his point, however.

what do you think?

is it acceptable to use seemingly shocking, cruel displays to raise awareness for otherwise ignored shocking, cruel, realities?

i've had similar debates with myself, especially over displays like the hundreds of small graves set up in white plaza at stanford on the anniversary of roe v. wade (although that, of course, is a slightly more contentious issue, i think). food for thought; let me know yours.

a few notes on hygiene

2008-04-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

i have recently noticed that a large number of the men with whom i regularly associate have a fairly poor concept of basic hygiene skills. of course, many of my friends take excellent care of themselves, too, but in an effort to alert some of you who may fall into the first category, i wanted to clandestinely offer some suggestions.

first and foremost: tweezing
i know you think eyebrows and tweezing are buried deep within the realm of the feminine.

they are not.

you are no more allowed to have a unibrow than we are. it's unattractive and distracting when there are stray hairs between your brows, no matter how many or few. i'm not sure how much else i need to say about this.

as far as i know, there is not a woman in the world who would like you LESS for tweezing. granted, you may feel a little weird tweezing in front of others, or talking about your tweezing habits. that's fine. but you should still do it.

DO. NOT. SHAVE IT. tweeze.

get a GOOD pair of tweezers. tweezerman is regularly rated the highest for this sort of task, and they come in a variety of colors for about $20. if you get cheaper tweezers, your job will be harder and slightly more painful.

you likely don't need to tweeze anything around the brow itself, just between. if you really feel like you have some crazy outliers, go for it, but be cautious; it's easy to be overzealous here. however, those few you take out in the middle (even if it's literally just two) will make a WORLD of difference...and it really doesn't hurt much at all.

second: skin care

a few strong suggestions here. if you have blackheads, use either a special face wash (any recommendations? i don't use any) or biore deep cleansing pore strips. the latter is WAY fun, because you wet your nose, stick this thing on for 10 minutes, and yank it off when it feels like papier mache. then, you get to stare at all the gunk that got pulled out of your nose. pretty sweet, right? plus, who doesn't love putting wet paper on their face and then feeling it get super stiff? i'm not kidding.

if you have more serious blemish problems, please just take the time to meet with a skin care specialist; if you have a school dermatologist or great insurance, it might really be worth the visit. i don't mean to sound petty here, but it will help unbelievably if you take care of your skin, not just in terms of superficial attractiveness: self-confidence, work opportunities, preventing serious scarring in the future, decreased toxins all over the place. acutane works absolute wonders if you're willing to get regular blood tests.

other than that:
floss. floss floss floss floss floss. i swear by woven floss, since i hate the other kind (it hurts my gums!)...try reach gentle gum care or their new cleanpaste stuff.

listerine is also a good idea. vanilla mint is really, really good.

regular showering is a no-brainer, but think about also using a loofah or some other scrubby thing to get rid of dead skin cells. you will be soft and delicious. also, deodorant. always. no questions. if you have poofy hair, use biosilk; nothing else compares in any way. um, trim your nails. try getting an orange stick or cuticle pusher if you have bad/gross cuticles (the white part at the base of your nails). shave well. these are the easy ones.

for more serious concerns, like teeth whitening, spots on your teeth, moles, etc., check with a doctor...there are a lot of cheap and painless options for things that you may not even know about. i just want to give you the easy fixes...the quick things you can get that will, perhaps, make you a little prettier.

oh, and if you have trouble breathing or like sniffing things, these inhalation beads are the greatest things EVER (i use the sinus ones). totally clears up your breathing and smells REALLY good (peppermint, eucalyptus and lemongrass), but isn't all medicinal like vicks inhalers. also, if you use bar soap, think about getting a massage bar...it has nubs on it and feels really good when you shower. :) you can find them at the local drugstore, usually in yummy scents like milk and honey.

okay. i'm done. sorry if anyone is offended.

this message not brought to you by CVS. i swear.

i'm a visual thinker...

2008-04-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

i think it would be really, really cool if there were some sort of software for to-do/life management/organization that visually represented tasks like a huge stovetop. you'd have different clusters of burners, dragged and arranged however you wanted. different colors of flames for different logical groupings: school, work, finances, wellness, etc. then, you could adjust the intensity of the flame under these metaphorical burners (i'm imagining, like, a multi-touch surface use of "pinching" like on the iphone) depending on how important something is.

this way, i could visually put things on a back burner!

and simmer over ideas.

i want this now plz.

the end of an era

2008-04-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

i'm currently sitting in staples (actually in their office chair section), taking advantage of their free wifi while i do one of the hardest things i've done in a long time. i'm letting go of my thesis, after more than a year of nurturing, and trusting it to the hands of complete strangers.

in short, i'm waiting, as i have been for the past three hours, for ten copies of my thesis to be printed on archival paper so i can hand it to the dean's office and never touch it again.

pepperdine is weird and makes you print all that yourself at a copy center, then they'll do the binding in their ugly-as-sin green cloth cover with gold embossing. so, as anyone who has every printed anything ever likely knows, something is very likely to go wrong with the margins/footnotes/page breaks. this has required me to go behind the counter at staples and check these things (and make changes on the spot), which always makes me nervous, but.

after a minor footnote emergency (where i actually had to call the school saying "I HAVE A MINOR FOOTNOTE EMERGENCY!"), changing all my table of content page numbers, and adding a "dr." to one of my advisor's names in the acknowledgments (even if she doesn't often use the title, she still has it, so i'd better hedge my bets, right?), i'm...trying really hard to just let it go.

seriously, i have an unbelievable problem with perfectionism. even though i've proofed this thesis multiple times, at every stage of the process, i don't trust myself. my advisor has proofed it, i've hired a professional proofreader to proof it, my mom's proofed it, my dad and ian have both read it critically, the dean's reader has proofed it, and now the dean himself has proofed it...even so, i still really, really, really wanted to proof it one last time. of course, at this point, proofing it again would actually be a waste of my time and, most importantly, more likely to introduce error, as i was kindly reminded by a fellow crazy person who understands the way my mind works. finally, it would be unethical to change anything now, since the dean signed off on what he was given. so, i made the choice to NOT proof it one last time...which is, for me, a really, really big step.

of course, i'm still neurotically waiting here while they do the printing to make sure they don't mess anything up. but...i'm trying to let go of my demons, in a sort of last effort before i'm done. this is seriously hard for me, so...any support is appreciated. ;)

i feel pretty odd right now. this is the conclusion of my ninth consecutive year of college, with never anything below an A, anywhere, and (i'm pretty sure) classes every single summer as well. i've...never really stopped, and this perfectionism has dogged me through all of it. yesterday was hard, because i turned in a 30-page paper (posted here, as some of you saw), which was the last thing i may ever write for a class, ever. i feel pretty bad about that, since i wrote it from start to finish in under 48 hours, but. eh. it was okay, and i'm just being overly critical because i'm used to the thesis, which was super clean. i have to remind myself that before the thesis i never ever did any rewrites of anything, and i still got good grades.

i guess i just feel like a mess. i have NOTHING left to do. i turn this in at the dean's office tomorrow, and then leisurely read for a week to remind myself all the things i already know for an oral exam (which is worth about a third of what that paper was worth; i'm not too worried). so i'm restless, and trying to pick up the slack by starting to pack things up, do all my laundry, and catch up on all the things i want to do. in the midst of all of this, though...i felt the need to vent, and make a public note of the fact that, as of right now, i'm really letting go of a side of my life that has dictated almost everything i've done for nearly 10 years.

i currently have no plans for doctoral work, although there are one or two options that, if things fall into place, might tempt me back into academia. i'll keep mum on those for now, but pester me if you're so inclined. :) instead, i'll likely start working within a month or two of graduation, learning what it's like to have an actual income, and finally doing all those things i told myself i'd do.

i want to get really good at west coast swing, start dancing hip hop, learn violin, study french and refresh my italian and spanish (maybe german too), get better at singing, practice piano again, maybe try pole dancing (i will defend that it is a legit dance form, not some weird exhibitionist thing...it's an amazing workout that's a combination of dance and rock climbing, which i love, so don't judge). i want to get a digital slr camera and take photography more seriously. i need to look into continuing teaching ballroom. i have...a million options available to me. i should be excited, and i am...but it's also weird.

the weirdest thing is that i'll always say "i got my master's from pepperdine" with a bit of sadness in my voice, and a rushed follow-up: "but i did my undergrad at stanford!" i know, maybe it's elitist and horrible from me, but i LOVED stanford and everything it stands for. i was proud of what i did there and who i met. i've done good things at pepperdine, but i don't believe in a lot of what it represents, and i don't think the division was particularly wonderful. it isn't as intellectually stimulating, psychologically rewarding, or objectively prestigious as stanford...it just isn't ME. so, that's always going to be a bit hard to swallow. but i'm very grateful that pepperdine gave me the opportunity to get an MA at no cost to me, they let me figure out my life in terms of coaching, and they were responsible for informing me about the british tour. so, i'll be thankful for that.

i know this whole thing is rambling, and won't be insightful to many people other than me. i just needed to get it out there. better post later, i promise.

for now, think of this amusing image.

i am wearing this backpack:

with this iphone case:

sitting in this chair:

(hard to see, but it's also black with the same bright red vinyl, black mesh, and silver highlights)
with a matching wallet, too.

if i were only wearing these pants:

i would officially be a superhero.

first (rough) draft of gameification work

2008-04-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

From the Front Lines to the Computer Screen:
Battlefield Blogs and the Gameification of the Iraq War

Francesca Marie Smith

On March 19, 2008, people around the world marked the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq with mixed emotions; while politicians such as President George W. Bush argued that the war had been both necessary and beneficial, countless other voices rose in a fervor of protest, crystallizing the tumultuous responses to the war that had festered since its inception. The recent Iraq War has been arguably one of the most controversial wars in history, often compared to the war in Vietnam in terms of its ability to arouse vociferous dissent amongst Americans and foreigners alike. Aside from the numerous concerns voiced by those outside of the battlegrounds, however, the Iraq War has also had a notable effect on the soldiers themselves, many of whom, much as during the war in Vietnam, are unsure of the ethicality of their actions. Indeed, just as the Vietnam War illuminated the grim realities of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the Iraq War has taken its own toll on soldiers’ morale: Recent statistics reveal that five U.S. soldiers attempt suicide every day, yet that number was less than one soldier per day before the Iraq War began (CNN.com, 2008). Clearly, U.S. soldiers in Iraq have been placed in a difficult position, pragmatically and professionally required to defend themselves and carry out orders for a war that often seems unjustified, immoral, and actively condemned by a large part of society.
If the Iraq War has forced U.S. troops to face unprecedented moral complexities, however, modern technology has also provided them with a way to work through these issues in a revolutionary fashion: blogging. Blogging, or the act of writing a “web log” of one’s activities, opinions, and ideas, has enjoyed tremendous popularity over the past several years, with scholars and media commentators alike noting that these blogs have changed the way we express ourselves, learn information, and create a sense of community (see Kuhn, 2007, for a discussion of these blogging functions and their ethical implications). For soldiers in Iraq, many of the communicative elements intrinsic to blogging may be incredibly attractive. For example, at a practical level, blogs are simple to produce and easy to read, allowing soldiers to keep in touch with family and friends back home while also making new friends and establishing an online community of supporters and fellow soldiers. Blogs also allow for the creation of an online persona, or a semi-authentic voice that can protect a soldier’s anonymity while still allowing him or her to establish an identity and ethos with which to share stories, express opinions, and work through personal struggles in the public eye. Unlike in past wars, when soldiers relied on carefully written letters to update select family members and friends, blogs provide a swifter, more easily accessible, public expression of their lives, bringing the front lines to life for countless viewers around the world who can now follow along on their computer screens.
These unique features of the Iraq War combine to create a fascinating case study for rhetorical criticism, particularly in terms of the communication of the U.S. soldiers who have taken part in the conflict; in short, soldiers have unprecedented psychological and ethical issues to manage because of the war (CNN.com, 2008; Ricks, 2007), and new communication technology has allowed them to share this process with the world at large (and potentially alter the ways in which their readers view the war, as well). Such a complex rhetorical situation thus invites the following research question: How do United States soldiers negotiate and communicate in their personal blogs the complex ethical issues surrounding the Iraq War? In order to answer this question, I will begin with an exploratory case study of one such battlefield blog, entitled Armor Geddon. Next, I will lay a philosophical foundation from which to analyze the ethicality of such communication based on the system of situational ethics espoused by Saul Alinsky. Then, I will evaluate the ethical strategies utilized in Armor Geddon utilizing Alinsky’s model. Finally, I will conclude with a summary of findings, their implications, limitations of the study, and directions for further research.

Case Study: Armor Geddon
As with the introduction of any new communicative medium, the establishment of blogging as a viable outlet for U.S. soldiers’ communication allows for two separate possibilities: Either soldiers will continue to write traditional “letters home,” but simply post them in this new format, or they will actually change the content of their missives in accordance with the unique features of the so-called “blogosphere” (or community of blogs). A large number of blogs (such as Boots on the Ground, posted by a blogger known only as Kevin) frequently follow the first pattern, with comments like “I am doing ok. I lost another good friend recently. He will be sorrowly [sic] missed” and “no time to dwell on that, we have to keep our heads in the game and stay focused” offering brief, general descriptions of the important events of life in Iraq, with minimal commentary alongside them (2005). Other bloggers, like Jason Christopher Hartley (2003), use their blogs to post pictures of their everyday lives, just as soldiers in wars past might tuck a few snapshots into an envelope to send to a family member or loved one. Other blogs, however, utilize the blog format in a decidedly different fashion, taking advantage of the medium’s public nature to publish their own account of the war, providing for the first time publicly available, nearly instantaneous, extensive documentation of the front lines from the perspective of those actually in combat. Such a direct portal into the grim realities of an already contentious war has the capacity to alter the public’s view of warfare in ways that have arguably never before been available.
Armor Geddon, written by Neil Prakash, is an example of one such blog that capitalizes on the unique blogging medium, publicly painting a picture of the Iraq War from the viewpoint of an actual U.S. tank platoon leader. What makes Armor Geddon so particularly fascinating, however, is that Prakash does not use the blog to provide outraged or even defensive commentary regarding the war based on his privileged position (such as Boots on the Ground and other blogs have chosen to do at select moments, in a nod to the common tendency for blogs to be an outlet for political opinions). Instead, Prakash’s blog provides an unbelievably detailed narrative of his combat operations with commentary (both from characters within the action and from his own external reflections) that serves to minimize the perceived negativity of the front lines; in fact, it turns the entire war into more or less a game. I refer to this genre of wartime rhetoric exemplified in Armor Geddon as gameification, or more specifically gameification blogging.
Gameification blogging merits attention for a variety of reasons. First, such blogging exhibits an intriguing sort of justification for the war, more or less effacing its ethical complexities (rather than directly addressing them) as U.S. soldiers ostensibly struggle to deal with the morality of their behavior. Second, this perspective has the capacity to influence public perception of the war, spreading this videogame mentality to millions at home forming their own opinions about the legitimacy of U.S. military operations. Finally, these strategies of gameification add further nuance to growing concerns (voiced especially by politicians such as Hillary Clinton) regarding the influence of videogames, particularly violent ones, on recent generations. With the U.S. soldiers currently in Iraq coming in large part from a generation thoroughly inundated with videogames, the tendency to deal with complex moral difficulties by reverting to gameification seems understandable, yet also worthy of ethical analysis.
For the purposes of this study, I chose to focus on the most recent entry posted on Armor Geddon (found at this site), which is a stunningly extensive description of combat operations published on October 4, 2005. The entry, entitled “12-13 November: Make Way for the Cavalry,” consists of more than 30 pages when printed, and has elicited 70 comments to date from supporters all across the blogosphere who have encouraged and complimented Prakash’s writing. This particular entry seems to serve as the most recent installment of an ongoing narrative detailing Prakash’s various missions; in general, it seems to be representative of Prakash’s typical first-person gameification narrations.
Although there is no way of ascertaining the authenticity of Prakash’s descriptions, they appear to be written from his own perspective as detailed notations of his everyday experiences in Iraq (a notion bolstered by other entries on the site that suggest he has had to modify some of his descriptions for security reasons). His online profile has been viewed over 23,000 times, suggesting a fairly sizeable viewership of the blog, and consequently the potential for thousands of readers to be influenced by what they perceive to be a legitimate account of Iraqi warfare. Prakash also lists some specific information about himself on the site, establishing his ethos as a soldier and spokesperson for the war: He lists his primary locations as Syracuse, NY and Germany, notes that he graduated from Liverpool High School in 1998 and from Johns Hopkins University in 2002 (with a degree in neuroscience) and completed his military training in 2003. He enjoys traveling, likes the films Tommy Boy and Back to the Future, and began his account with the popular blog site Blogger in December of 2004. Some of Prakash’s blog entries contain the occasional picture or video of the author, as well. Such details of his life grant authenticity to his writings and allow the otherwise distanced viewer to feel a sense of communicative intimacy with the author; even without ever having met Prakash face to face, his readers can feel as though they know him, to an extent, and can therefore trust his accounts.
The current study is thus proposed as an initial, exploratory case study of Armor Geddon, with the intention of laying the groundwork for further examination of the potentially larger phenomenon of gameification and gameification blogging. Certainly, there are limitations to this type of research, primarily because the results of any analysis presented here cannot be generalized at the outset to an entire corpus of soldiers’ communication. Nevertheless, even without quantitative results, or even representativeness, I suggest that an in-depth critical look at Armor Geddon is an instructive and valuable activity, particularly in light of the extensive (and popular) entry chosen for analysis here. This research therefore seeks simply to highlight and explicate the intriguing ethical choices made by a soldier whose words have already reached thousands, and which may both inspire and represent others in his unique position as a U.S. soldier fighting an uncertain war in Iraq. Such focused, groundbreaking analysis can then pave the way for more extensive evaluation of soldiers’ communication in the future in order to determine how pervasive the tactic of gameification has in fact become.
Prakash’s Armor Geddon employs three major rhetorical strategies throughout the narration: dehumanization, dramatization, and explicit gameification. While much of the entry analyzed here consists of fairly straightforward narration, detailing events in a temporally ordered fashion with dialogue and description as needed, these three strategies nevertheless appear time and again laced throughout the narrative. In fact, a close reading of the text reveals that essentially all of Prakash’s rhetoric serves in some way to support one or more of these strategies, particularly gameification: Even the common wartime rhetorical strategies of dehumanization and dramatization, when placed in the context of Armor Geddon, feed into the larger umbrella category of gameification. In other words, Prakash filters his experience of the Iraq War through a lens of gameification, utilizing the traditional practices of dehumanization and dramatization as well as a uniquely explicit gaming rhetoric in doing so.
Dehumanization
The process of linguistic dehumanization in wartime is by no means new (see, for example, Ivie, 1980). Particularly in American war rhetoric, the process of painting the other as savage, enemy, or terrorist is a compelling force in justifying aggression, for language choices that objectify or minimize the value of an individual strips that otherized being of human dignity and ethical value. Therefore, labels such as “zip” (which literally signifies “nothing”) used for Vietnamese people, “pig” used to denigrate police officers and a variety of ethnic groups, “kraut” to signify Germans, and countless other monikers have functioned throughout history as more than just derogatory titles; they in fact remove their referent from the realm of humanity and value, equating them with objects or animals and denying them any claim to compassion.
Unsurprisingly, Armor Geddon is rife with such examples of implicitly dehumanizing language. Although euphemistic expressions such as “liberating” and “clearing rooms” frequently serve to mask the grim realities of the homicide that takes place, Prakash also uses more direct language that helps to identify, yet also marginalize, those whom he wishes to justify killing. First and foremost, Prakash refers to opposing soldiers simply as “the enemy” 19 times throughout the entry, far more frequently than he calls them “guys” or any other human term. Such a value-laden label clearly falls in line with our typical understanding of right and wrong: The enemy is not an equal, valuable participant in warfare with legitimate concerns and rights, but they are rather the homogenous, evil other that is to be destroyed. Even more bluntly, Prakash refers to “bad guys” in the blog, suggesting that they are simply “sitting ducks” that are to be shot dead. Only once in the entry does Prakash refer to an “Iraqi,” and only twice does he simply label opposition forces as “men” like his own comrades. The rest of the time, they are “insurgents” or even “fucking insurgents,” as well as “terrorists,” once more reducing the enemy soldiers to an essential description of their rebellious and dangerous behavior; after all, it is far simpler to kill someone who is defined as existing purely to create terror and negativity than it is to kill a real, complex human. Particularly when such labels are contrasted with “friendlies,” or supporters of the U.S. military, the murder of the Iraqi “bad guys” seems justified and even necessary.
Of course, Armor Geddon also contains a substantial amount of more traditional, blunt pejorative terms. For example, Prakash refers to one Iraqi fighter as both an “asshole” and an “idiot,” and calls another opposition fighter a “fucker.” Perhaps the most disturbing example of explicit objectification appears when Prakash describes the somewhat eccentric behavior of a fellow soldier named Dawes, who recently killed his first insurgent. Shortly after his first kill, egged on by Prakash, Dawes exited his tank and approached a dead Iraqi body on the ground. According to Prakash, “Dawes came around to the body and straddled it” before he “started pretending to hump the body while he was standing up and flipped both middle fingers at the corpse.” Such objectifying behavior is blatantly reminiscent of traditional rape, establishing a firm power differential between U.S. soldiers and their enemies. Even more interesting, however, is the response of Dawes’ U.S. companions, who “all laughed” and were “shocked” yet “amused” by his behavior. While Prakash was worried for Dawes’ safety, concerned that the body might be booby trapped, no concern was ever voiced about Dawes’ treatment of the Iraqi corpse. In fact, Dawes was thrilled to report that he “got some great pictures.”
In addition to dehumanizing the opposing forces, Prakash also reduces his fellow U.S. soldiers to a variety of labels that objectify them and, potentially, makes it easier to view them as dispensable. In this way, the grim reality of regularly losing friends and companions is softened, for it is far easier to simply lose a group of “crunchies” (or infantrymen wearing armor that, supposedly, crunches when the body is rolled over by a tank, according to Allison, 2003) than it is to mourn the loss of 10 or 20 comrades. Other soldiers are called “dismounts,” synecdochically reduced to a description of their job that denies them their humanity. Finally, as is common amongst military persons, a large number of soldiers and their commanders are referred to simply by call names and numbers, such as “Terminator 6,” “Phantom 6,” and “Red 6.” A commanding officer, for example, notes, “I think Ramrod 6 really hated that building.” Once again, by labeling these individuals at a level of abstraction slightly removed from their unique, human names, Prakash has made their lives (and deaths) more manageable and, at the same time, less relevant. For both enemies and allies alike, then, language choices throughout Armor Geddon serve to dehumanize individuals and render them “good” and “bad” players in a sort of game, objects that are easily lost and replaced, and tools of war that fall outside the scope of ethical consideration.
Dramatization
The rhetorical strategy of dramatization goes hand in hand with the dehumanization of narrative subjects, for once the author has distanced the reader from the humanity of the characters present, it is but a simple matter to reduce their story to an observable, sublime, seemingly fictional drama, just like a movie or videogame. This process of aesthetic sublimation, identified as “the sublime register” by Chouliaraki (2005) in her analysis of BBC footage of the most recent Iraq War, essentially effaces all human subjects from the picture. Instead, military operations are displayed as spectacular, dramatic, panoramic visual events with no real, human victims or persecutors. This process, naturally, stifles potential ethical questions regarding such military procedures, reducing the realities of human loss to a dramatic, yet distant, visual to be played out like a film on a screen.
The entirety of Prakash’s writing style contributes to this sense of dramatization, primarily through his use of narrative prose with highly descriptive, aesthetic visuals. For example, he details the events of one Iraqi evening as follows: “I looked around in the pitch black night. … The tanks and Bradleys looked like shadows, swallowing up any light from the stars. They were like ghosts.” Prakash describes the entirety of the operative in a similar, novelistic style, providing asides to describe characters or reflect on his own thoughts as needed (e.g., “There was no question in my mind that SGT P was the driving force in accomplishing that task”). His description of how a sergeant’s voice “faded and crackled” across the radio or how he “stared into the blackness until the sun rose” help to draw the reader in, painting an extremely descriptive scene in terms of physical sensations.
Beyond these aesthetic, sensory depictions, Prakash also relies on extreme, emotionally charged language to heighten the dramatic effects of his story (and, via this dramatization, reduce the account to an almost fictionalized saga). For example, he describes his fellow troops performing “something short of a miracle” and describes the look he will “never forget” seeing on another soldier’s face. Prakash also narrates the actions of fellow soldier Langford in extravagant style, explaining how he “went maniacal with his loader’s M240” as he “grabbed the handles of his gun mount and smashed down on the butterfly trigger with his thumbs.” Similarly, Prakash described how another soldier, Dawes, “scrambled like a madman right back where he came from.” Other events, such as a car bomb that detonated close to Prakash and his companions, are described in similarly hyperbolic terms: “Suddenly there was the loudest explosion I had heard thus far in the deployment. … In the sky, a giant brown donut cloud rose into the air.” This explosion, described as “the largest car bomb anyone had faced” in his sector, also led to similarly dramatic, extreme personal reflections. As Prakash puts it, “it was impossible not to take it personal [sic]. I knew the guy was hiding somewhere, armed and watching us. Just waiting to kill us and take our vehicle. I remember thinking, God, what the fuck? Why are they trying to kill me? We’re just here trying to help this goddamn country.” This occasional emotional gravity can be found in other comments throughout the blog, such as in Prakash’s nerve-wracking description of fingering the trigger of his gun, even while knowing that “in the closest of combat, even [his] .50cal was going to be useless.” Dialogue from the soldiers, like “Jesus Christ, SGT P. I didn’t think you guys were gonna make it” or the even more extreme “GET THE FUCK BACK ON YOUR TANK. GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!” serves to further augment the emotional intensity of the blog, creating a stylized, dramatic experience.
Finally, Prakash’s generous use of dialogue and sound effects completes the impression that his blog is serving as some sort of novel or script of a sublimely aesthetized war. His descriptions are rife with quoted dialogue, such as “Phantom 6, Red 6. We’ve left the LRP and are headed to your position.” More notably, Prakash uses onomatopoeia extensively throughout the blog, with 12 uses of “BOOM” (with varying numbers of exclamation points), but also other sounds such as “POP-POP-POP-POP,” “Click-Skrrrrrr-Ka-chunk,” “R-rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!,” and “CRACK! CRACK!” Just as in the dramatized (and generally fictionalized) war comics, games, and movies that we have seen time and again, Prakash’s account of “real” battlefield life comes complete with the stylized sound effects we expect from any dramatic production.
What is most intriguing about Prakash’s use of dramatization, however, is that for all its sensory and emotional intensity, it does not in fact serve to heighten the serious, ethically suspect, human reality of warfare. Instead, when combined with dehumanizing and gameifying strategies, this element of dramatization instead functions to remove the audience from the action. The text assuages the reader’s concerns for accuracy with the promise of eyewitness authenticity (as predicted by Chouliaraki, 2005), since we know that Prakash is an actual soldier who has supposedly lived through these events, yet it still presents the action in the exact same format we are used to seeing in fictionalized, sublime, aesthetic displays. This dramatic mimesis justifies the audience’s removed observance of the action, just as we might watch a film in a theatre; in short, we can recognize the beauty of the destruction, and are carried along by the intensity of the characters’ emotion, but we are in no way obligated to feel for these creatures that have been painted as mere inhuman parts of a simple, dramatic game throughout the entirety of the blog.
Gameification
The theme of gameification runs throughout Armor Geddon, bringing the strategies of dehumanization and dramatization together in a cohesive, aesthetic representation of the battlefield as a gaming environment. Of course, many of the corollaries between violent videogames and actual warfare are not accidental; militaristic videogames regularly borrow language and concepts from actual battlegrounds. Therefore, it would be both circular and inaccurate to suggest that Prakash’s use of typical videogame concepts such as missions, enemies, and kill zones throughout the blog were in fact inspired by militaristic videogames. However, this correlation is not entirely irrelevant; it is still instructive to note that, by their very design, videogames and battlefields are already closely tied to one another, and many of today’s soldiers may have in fact learned these concepts from simulator videogames in their youth (see, for example, America’s Army: Operations, a first-person shooter game commissioned by the U.S. Army as a recruitment tool).
Many of the features of Armor Geddon that are most strikingly similar to videogame activity tend to reframe the military maneuvers in terms of strategies and plans (rather than life or death), competition over “getting kills,” and even acting out fantasies from childhood games. For example, at the most basic level, Prakash refers to the “easier” tasks of “being a hunter/killer section” and “having crunchies to clear rooms, different weapons and capabilities, [and] extra grunts to help pull security,” just as a player might amass objects and ally characters in a game. Prakash furthers the framing of battle as a strategy, like an athlete’s game plan, in his personal commentary: “Sweet. I love this plan already.” After being told to “shoot every single house you see,” Prakash comments, “This just got better … This plan is fucking beautiful. It had so many moving parts, yet it was so simple, even a child could understand it. And when properly executed, it was going to look like we had rehearsed it for years.” The language here refers to the simplicity and beauty of the plan, of course, but not its actual ramifications in terms of protecting or killing humans.
The competitive spirit of “getting kills” falls directly in line with the videogame mentality, as well. First of all, Prakash laments that his “rate of fire wasn’t as great as” those of his camerades. At one point, he was also “worried” that a sergeant friend “was going to miss the fight,” because, as he later describes, “when you’re not the one getting the kills, it feels like you’re missing out on the action.” He refers to this concern over gaining glory and metaphorical points multiple times throughout the blog, remarking that “of course [he] didn’t want to give up [his] spot and miss out on these kills.” At another part of his narrative, he regrets being so removed from the hand-to-hand combat: “Watching [the other soldiers] prepare to kick in the door and do the real man-to-man fighting filled me with a rush that I wanted to feel for myself. The fact that they were going to get up close and personal with the enemy was a source of pride that I wasn’t going to feel up here in my steel beast.” A final moment of competition appears in the comment, “How does it feel to have someone bust out in front of YOU and get all the kills!” As Prakash puts it, his group was “all still steamed about Avenger Company stealing [their] lane two days ago. But it hadn’t mattered because they didn’t kill anything … This was much sweeter. They watched as [Prakash’s team] hammered the dogshit out of this kill zone and everything in it.” A later comment even refers to “the booty [fellow soldiers] had collected,” referencing the traditional gaming practice of gaining money and other goods from dead enemies rather than reflecting on the loss of life. Although Prakash does digress briefly a small number of times to comment on the danger of the mission at hand, the overarching theme of his commentary is, succinctly, that he “wasn’t worried” about his safety and was instead more concerned with his kill count. As he puts it, “this was the stuff movies and video games were made of.” He continues, “We were living a scene that I played out in a sandbox with plastic tanks and G.I. Joes when I was six years old.” This comment sums up the entirety of his blog’s gameification: The battle has been reframed in terms of strategy and scoring points, obscuring the ethical realities of life and death.
Another theme of gameification running throughout Armor Geddon revolves around the fun and exciting appeal of warfare (and, specifically, the toys Prakash gets to play with in his line of work). Such commentary appeals to the nature of any boy (or girl) who has grown up with typical action movies, comics, and toys meant to glorify “cool” explosions, weapons like rockets and large guns, and superhuman abilities. For example, Prakash’s comrade SGT P notes of the soldiers’ thermal imaging device, “This is fucking awesome. I can see everything … Man I can’t believe how awesome this shit works.” He is “pumped as hell” at the tools the soldiers were given to use and, as Prakash comments, their technological prowess is “like a superpower.” Prakash later quotes a fellow soldier who excitedly exclaimed, “Check this shit out. Night vision!” The soldier then followed up by showing Prakash “a really cool rocket.” Other highlights include “flat paint” which “was cool,” “a giant fire ball” that was “cool as shit,” and the possibility of yet another “tremendous and wonderful explosion.”
Perhaps the most striking element of gameification found in Armor Geddon is embedded in the lighthearted, vulgar commentary provided by Prakash and his companions, which continue to reinforce the acceptability (and even fun) of their violent actions while further dehumanizing their Iraqi victims. For example, Prakash blithely notes that they “were having a grand old time in this turkey shoot” and, at one point, he was “extremely disappointed” at the thought of leaving because they “were just starting to have fun with the dead guy.” More explicitly, however, extensive use of expletives, labels such as “dude” and “motherfucker,” colorful commentary such as “what a goat fuck, sir” and positive evaluations like “YEAH! That was fucking awesome!” mirror exactly the sort of commentary one might hear in a room full of teenagers playing a videogame together or, as is increasingly frequent, over the Internet chat systems (such as Ventrilo and Xbox LIVE) that accompany popular fighting games such as World of Warcraft and Halo. Multiple instances of such lighthearted, supportive commentary appear throughout the text: One story, in particular, revolves around an ecstatic soldier “struggling to get the words out through his laughter” as he described an Iraqi who went “flying off the balcony” after a successful hit. His comrades were disappointed they missed out on the “front row seat” to the spectacle, which was alternately described as “fucking sweet” and “fucking awesome.” Similarly, soldiers call out to one another, laughing, at the “terribly amusing” scene of an Iraqi whose “ass [was] missing.” Another anecdote involves a laughing soldier describing the “funny” visual of a dog dragging around an Iraqi corpse. Finally, Prakash expresses his own irreverence by reveling in a “beautiful” event he can’t wait to tell his “grandkids when [he’s] old.” Specifically, he decided that there is “no better time to take a shit” than in the middle of a military maneuver, so proceeded to defecate with artillery fire falling all around him. Such irreverence, once more, masks the reality of the situation, instead making it no more frightening (and no less fun) than an evening of game play with friends.
Taken as a whole, these rhetorical strategies serve to obfuscate the gravity and danger of warfare while also preemptively silencing any potential concerns about the ethicality of the soldiers’ behavior. Dehumanization, while not unique to the genre of gameification blogging, sets the stage by rendering the characters at play irrelevant, mere objects to be disposed of as needed. Similarly, dramatization places these characters in a sublime, aesthetic landscape that is closely aligned with the fictional accounts of warfare to which we as audience members have become desensitized; we understand that these are characters, part of a visually stunning world of explosions and conquest in which good must prevail over evil, and these figures are supposed to be destroyed. Finally, the explicit strategies of gameification bring these elements together, placing the dehumanized, dramatic figures in a gaming environment in which cheerful “dudes” get to play with “cool” toys and perform “sweet” maneuvers, feeling “good” while they do so and even witnessing some hilarious scenes in the process. By essentializing the reality of the Iraq War as a mere game, Armor Geddon serves to justify the behavior of the U.S. soldiers by pretending that there are no ethical concerns. In other words, gameification is an amoralizing process; to be sure, such a process has likely accompanied all forms of warfare for centuries, but it has arguably taken a new (and, most importantly, public) shape in the context of modern culture. In a sublime world of one-dimensional characters and dehumanized objects where one simply carries out plans to gain points and have a good time, the moral features of life and death are not even allowed to enter into the picture.

Philosophical Foundation: Alinsky’s Situational Ethics
In order to best evaluate the ethical choices made by U.S. soldiers such as Prakash in describing their battlefield experiences, we can turn to a model of situational ethics proposed by Saul David Alinsky. Situational perspectives on ethics, in general, suggest that ethical choices must be made in light of specific and unique situational criteria. In other words, universal standards cannot be upheld in all cases; instead, the idiosyncratic context of the situation at hand must dictate what is right and wrong. While some ethicists are quick to criticize a situational framework, suggesting that an ethical perspective with no absolute ideals can be modified to justify any behavior, other scholars (such as Alinsky) recognize the relative nature of truth, value, and possibility. Therefore, an individual must take into account a variety of situational factors, such as communicator roles, audience roles, power differentials, available courses of action, and urgent requirements in order to evaluate the best (and, consequently, most ethical) solution in a given context.
Saul David Alinsky was a social activist and writer in the United States during the 20th century (for a thorough biography, see Horwitt, 1989). Born in Chicago, IL on January 30, 1909, he dedicated his life to activism and community organizing, helping the impoverished and disenfranchised rise up to gain their rightful place in society (Stone, 2003). He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate study at the University of Chicago, focusing on criminology in particular, and worked in the field of criminology for some time after (Stone, 2003). During World War II, he also undertook a variety of special assignments for the United States Federal Government, and even worked for the Illinois penitentiary system before ultimately devoting himself to helping underprivileged communities organize and gain power.
Alinsky is best known for an extensive ideology of radical community organizing that aimed to grant democracy, housing, health services, and economic security to impoverished communities such as the Irish-American ghetto “Back of the Yards,” Black communities in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester, Canadian Indians, Italian labor unions, and Chicano migrant workers (Stone, 2004). His advocacy championed the importance of organizing, not charity, which led him to found the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1939 to better facilitate community organizing (Stone, 2003). His work for social change was controversial, however, for he “taught powerless people how to use conflict and disruption to force authorities to make concessions” (Bailey, 1974, p. 1). Such a message drew mixed reactions, with many classifying him as a troublemaker requiring legal punishment while others upheld him as a hero of democracy and positive change. During one of his more extended periods of incarceration, Alinsky wrote his first book, entitled Reveille for Radicals (1969), which met with similarly varied reviews: Some welcomed his insistence on the importance of organization (rather than anarchy), while others viewed his methods as impractical and overly radical (Stone, 2003). Nevertheless, Alinsky continued to spread his message throughout the world. Shortly before his death, he produced the only other book he would author outlining his philosophy of community organizing: Rules for Radicals, published in 1971. Up until his death of a heart attack in 1972, Alinsky continued to work hard to effect positive communal change, particularly in America’s White middle class (Stone, 2003). Even after his death, his ideology has remained potent in shaping the views of those activists who wish to change the world as it is into the world that they wish it to be.
Alinsky’s work spans a variety of topics, some more relevant than others to the case of wartime communication. Indeed, much of Alinsky’s writing in both Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals revolves around the instruction of would-be organizers, inspiring them to utilize the primary tool of communication (and, ultimately, persuasion) to wrench power from the elite classes and place it firmly in the hands of the have-nots. Certainly, this pedagogical work designed for the community activist (including the 11 “rules” Alinsky outlined in the latter part of Rules for Radicals) is more or less inapplicable to the study of gameification blogging. However, Alinsky also wrote at length regarding the ethics of means and ends, arguing that we must act in a world where “everything … is relative and changing,” including truth and politics (1971, p. 11). As he stated, “the standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be” (Alinsky, 1971, p. 26). This outline of situational ethics is particularly appropriate to the case of Armor Geddon, for it explains that in certain situations, such as during times of war, that which we consider ethical may be vastly different from that which one removed from the situation might expect.
In the early pages of Rules for Radicals, Alinsky (1971) explicated 11 initial rules regarding the ethics of means and ends, paraphrased here in a somewhat truncated fashion (see pp. 26-47 of Rules for Radicals for the complete text). First, those removed from a situation have the luxury to be concerned with ethicality; conversely, those closest to the issue at hand are less likely to be concerned with the ethics of means and ends. Similarly, Alinsky’s second rule argues that the political standing of an individual will necessarily influence his or her judgments of ethicality. Third, in war, the end will nearly always justify any means. Fourth, judgment of a situation’s ethicality must be made with respect to the event’s chronological position, not from any other temporal reference point. Fifth, the more options available in a given situation, the greater the concern with the ethicality of those options. Sixth, the less important the ends, the more freedom one has to be concerned with the ethicality of the means. On a related note, the seventh rule suggests that, generally, success or failure is a strong determinant of the ethicality of means. Eighth, the prospect of imminent defeat or success will influence the morality of a given means; in other words, actions taken out of desperation to avert disaster will typically be seen as moral, whereas in the face of probable success the same actions may not be seen as ethical. Ninth, the opposition is likely to judge any effective tactic as unethical. Tenth, and perhaps most crucial for this study, “you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments” (Alinsky, 1971, p. 36). Alinsky continued this line of reasoning, arguing that “moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means” (1971, p. 43). Finally, the eleventh rule suggests that goals should be framed in terms of common values such as liberty, equality, the common good, or the pursuit of happiness.
Altogether, these rules argue strongly for the situationally defined nature of ethics: Our concern for the legitimacy of means and ends is shaped strongly by our contextual constraints, and, in the end, we make do with what is pragmatically possible and effective above all else. This message offers a powerful explanation for the ethical choices made by soldiers such as Neil Prakash in evaluating and communicating their experiences during the Iraq War. Specifically, rules one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and ten all suggest that, in a situation like Prakash’s where an actor is thrust into a life-or-death situation in which he or she has little to no say in the maneuvers that are to be accomplished, the choices made must be rationalized in any way possible. Therefore, in light of Alinsky’s ideology of situational ethics, we can now return to an evaluation of Armor Geddon and the strategies of gameification, in order to answer the original research question and determine the ethical matrix underlying such tactics.

Evaluation: The Ethics of Gameification
Soldiers like Neil Prakash have been placed in a unique situation during the most recent Iraq War, with specific contextual conditions that, according to the canons of situational ethics, must be taken into account. To begin with, the war has been under essentially constant criticism since its inception in 2003, arguably even more so than the Vietnam War was. Activists, pundits, and even otherwise apathetic citizens have relentlessly denounced George W. Bush and his administration for lying, manipulating the American people, and spending exorbitant amounts on a war with no real justification beyond hegemony and greed. The costs of the war, both in terms of personnel casualties and monetary loss, have been tremendous, and (worst of all) seemingly with only minimal ethical rationale. Even with all of this public censure, however, U.S. soldiers are still obligated to follow orders, despite any ethical misgivings they may otherwise have. They are continually thrust into life-threatening situations, for previously unheard-of lengths of time, in which their fate rests firmly in their ability to carry out commands from above. Perhaps most interestingly, these soldiers are also more connected to the outside world than those in any other war have ever been, thanks to the extensive availability of Internet access and individual publishing outlets such as blogs. Consequently, the intensity and potential implications of the soldiers’ ethical dilemmas are augmented in at least two ways: Not only are soldiers more readily reminded of moral criticism from those around the world, they also have the opportunity to express their inner turmoil (or at least make a case for their ethicality) at an easily accessible, public level.
Under Alinsky’s model of situational ethics, recognizing the unique position of U.S. soldiers serving in the most recent Iraq War allows us a great deal of insight into the ethical intricacies of their behavior. As Alinsky’s ideology argues, those closest to the action, particularly those in dire straits with few options, do not in fact have the luxury of judging the ethicality of their behavior; instead, they simply must do what they have to do. However, as the Internet and other improved telecommunications systems continually reconnect such soldiers with those removed from the action (who do have the ability to more harshly judge its ethicality), they are bombarded with reminders that many feel what they are doing is wrong. Therefore, they face a dilemma: Their situation demands that they ignore the ethical complications of their situation, yet modern technology all but forces them into recognizing (and, arguably, responding to) such concerns of morality.
With this philosophical infrastructure in hand, we can thus return to the original research question: How do United States soldiers negotiate and communicate in their personal blogs the complex ethical issues surrounding the Iraq War? Based on Alinsky’s justification of limited moral perspective in times of war or political asymmetry, we can conclude that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are clearly following the first half of Alinsky’s tenth rule: “Do what you can with what you have” (1971, p. 36). As Alinsky would have predicted, evaluation or modification of their ethical choices is outside the soldiers’ hands, based on their professional and pragmatic obligations to follow orders and protect their lives. However, unlike in previous times of war, the pressure placed on these soldiers to morally resolve their actions is more pronounced then ever before. Therefore, the second half of Alinsky’s tenth mandate becomes crucial: “clothe it with moral garments” (1971, p. 36). As we have seen with Armor Geddon, the strategy of gameification is one way in which these soldiers have met these demands, resolving in their own minds and expressing to others an ethically innocuous situation.
Given the ethical principles under which soldiers like Prakash appear to be functioning, the strategies of dehumanization, dramatization, and gameification seem to be purposive, effective strategies in both negotiating and communicatively justifying their behavior. All three of these features, particularly taken together, efface and normalize the otherwise contentious ethical features of the Iraq War, neutralizing the question of morality from the outset and then presenting this ethically cleansed perspective for the world to see. Dehumanization, for example, functions to objectify those who would otherwise be victims, worthy of compassion and ethical value; this makes the ethical issue of human dignity and lives lost irrelevant, or at the very least less relevant. Dramatization frames the battlefield experience in a sublime, noble, aesthetic skin, allowing the reader to be caught up as an outside observer in a world so reminiscent of a fictionalized drama that we are desensitized to it, and also less likely to ethically judge it. Most notably, gameification serves to place the situation in a comfortable, amoral setting; by filtering the grim realities of warfare through the simple, familiar lens of childhood (video)games, blogs like Armor Geddon remove any morally charged components from their life. Instead, the audience is carried along through strategies, “cool” toys and effects, and missions during which (we already understand) points are to be scored, enemies are to be annihilated, and goals are to be completed without any concern for ethicality. Moreover, by recreating a jovial setting of camaraderie, fun, and irreverence, Prakash further intensifies the sense of gameification by drawing his readers into a world in which the soldiers are not bothered by their actions; why, therefore, should the reader be? All in all, these strategies attempt to strip the otherwise ethically dubious actions of U.S. soldiers in Iraq of any moral concern whatsoever; by making the situation seem normalized, lighthearted, irrelevant, and aesthetically pleasing, soldiers seek to circumvent an ethical discussion from the outset (since they are unable to appropriately engage in such a debate anyway), and share this ethically whitewashed view with the outside world.
Given this evaluation, it seems incumbent upon us as ethical analysts to at least briefly address a corollary to the original research question: We now know what strategies U.S. soldiers like Prakash use to justify their behavior, but is this communicative justification, in fact, ethical? To begin with, Alinsky would suggest that their evaluation is indeed appropriate, given their situation: The soldiers are left with essentially no options, so they simply must do the best they can and rationalize it after the fact. More interesting, however, is the question of whether their communication to the outside world can be considered ethical. In other words, beyond just analyzing the communication of their ethical choices, we can now address the ethicality of their communication choices.
In brief, it seems as though the choice to gameify their experience and express this interpretation to the world at large is not only ethical for U.S. soldiers, it is in fact necessary to help preserve their dignity and sanity. The outside world, removed enough from the action to have concern for its ethicality, may be quick to judge the soldiers’ behavior as unethical at first blush, and respond with harsh criticism in turn. With the increasing interconnectedness of those around the world, this criticism is not lost on soldiers in Iraq. With no other choice available to them, however, they must in some way try to justify the actions they are forced to carry out in order to avoid or minimize such harsh rebukes; if gameification is an effective justification, then, it is therefore an ethical communication choice under Alinsky’s situational perspective. According to Alinsky (1971), “all effective actions require the passport of morality” (p. 44); therefore, as U.S. soldiers undertake the only effective actions they can to protect themselves, they must seek to morally justify it to those who would otherwise judge in order to protect themselves from greater moral confusion and psychological trauma. Indeed, based on the principles of situational ethics as well as dialogical and other perspectives, it is in fact crucial for those removed from the action to be able to recognize the plight of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and, at the very least, allow them the opportunity to “clothe” their behavior with the most “moral garments” possible (Alinsky, 1971, p. 36). While such gameification may not render the realities of warfare any more objectively ethical, it can at least provide some solace to those forced into carrying out what seem to be atrocious acts; even as it seeks to mask the underlying problem, such gameification may in fact be, according to Alinsky, the only way for U.S. soldiers to retain a sense of moral dignity and avoid spiraling into the guilt and depression that has already plagued countless soldiers from both Vietnam and Iraq.

Conclusion
In order to interpret, rationalize, and communicate the ethicality of the most recent Iraq War, the author of battlefield blog Armor Geddon has relied on a variety of rhetorical strategies, namely dehumanization and dramatization to augment an overall gameification of U.S. soldiers’ experiences on the front lines. When filtered through a lens of Alinsky’s situational ethics, such tactics are understandable, effective, and ethical, as they allow soldiers with limited autonomy and moral freedom to preserve their dignity (and attempt to secure a “passport of morality” as per Alinsky, 1971, p. 44) by making the best of what they are essentially obligated to do. Therefore, both the soldiers’ actions and their subsequent communicative justification are rendered ethical by necessity, at least from a situational perspective.
What makes Armor Geddon a particularly fascinating subject for study, however, is the unique situation of soldiers like Prakash. While the United States has fought in controversial wars before, the new complications (and advantages) afforded by the practice of blogging brings concomitant new importance to the practice of ethical justification and communication, as soldiers can now easily and publicly face their critics and expose their own inner turmoil. Therefore, the potential implications of these gameification (or amoralization) processes, which may in and of themselves not be new at all, are certainly newly important, for they are being spread with heretofore unseen speed to those who remain at home and make their own judgments about the battlefield.
Certainly, the current study has a variety of limitations, and points to a number of potential directions for further research to help flesh out the conclusions tentatively posed here. First and foremost, the use of a single blog for analysis can only serve an exploratory function, not a descriptive, quantitative one with easily generalized results. The logical next step for future scholarship, then, would be to expand the current study to see if other blogs fit into this proposed genre of gameification blogging, and analyze such a corpus to see if the strategies of dehumanization, dramatization, and gameification continually appear. In addition to such methodological changes, a variety of theoretical questions can be sparked by the current research, as well. For example, one might seek to compare current U.S. soldiers’ strategies of amoralization or moral justification with those utilized by other soldiers in the past and expressed via journals or letters home; this could shed light on the question of how influential modern videogames have in fact been on the collective psyche of recent generations, or whether similar strategies have always been present. Moreover, scholars could seek to find other amoralization or moral justification strategies within other contemporary U.S. soldiers’ blogs, in order to better analyze both the effectiveness and relative ethicality of gameification. In other words, further scholarship can better address what options of moral justification are actually available to U.S. soldiers to determine whether gameification is the only, or even the best, means of dealing with the ethical complexities of the Iraq War. Finally, scholars could expand the concepts of gameification to media outside of the blogosphere, identifying films, news commentaries, music, or in fact videogames themselves that contribute to an intertextual process of gameifying warfare. This would then, of course, open the door for extensive speculation and commentary regarding the implications of such processes, including what it means to continually reduce the lives of countless humans to the amoral status of a game.
The gameification of the Iraq War as manifested in Armor Geddon provides a compelling commentary on modern society, allowing us to better understand the ways in which U.S. soldiers may in fact utilize the comfortable framework provided by the videogames of their youth to better manage and ameliorate a truly atrocious reality. In a world in which videogames have an increasingly striking ability to persuade us and shape our worldviews (Bogost, 2007), such processes are unsurprising, yet they merit our attention nonetheless. Certainly, the Iraq War is bound to remain controversial for both those at home and on the front lines, and U.S. soldiers will continue to fight to justify their actions to themselves and their critics. As Alinsky’s situational perspective reminds us, however, we must recognize the limited moral opportunities of such soldiers. Therefore, rather than criticize amoralization practices such as gameification, we must instead turn our attention to the unique contextual features and power differentials that have forced such morally questionable warfare, and take note of the effects of such newly public gameification rhetoric. In this way, we can seek to not only better understand the situational ethics surrounding the battlefields in Iraq, but also the ethical justifications required for survival in such an environment, before we can even begin to address the consequences of turning life and death into nothing more than a game.

References

Alinsky, S. D. (1969). Reveille for radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

Alinsky, S. D. (1971). Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals. New York: Random House.

Allison, W. (2003, March 23). Infantrymen thrive in the thick of things. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://www.sptimes.com/2003/03/23/Worldandnation/Infantrymen_thrive_in.shtml

Bailey, R., Jr. (1974). Radicals in urban politics: The Alinsky approach. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Chouliaraki, L. (2005). Spectacular ethics: On the television footage of the Iraq war. Journal of Language & Politics, 4, 143-159.

CNN.com. (2008, February 3). Concern mounts over rising troop suicides. CNN.com/US. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/01/military.suicides/index.html

Hartley, J. C. (2003). Just another soldier. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://blog.justanothersoldier.com/

Horwitt, S. D. (1989). Let them call me rebel: Saul Alinsky—His life and legacy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Ivie, R. L. (1980). Images of savagery in American justifications for war. Communication Monographs, 47, 279-294.

Kevin. (2005, May 26). Hard times. Boots on the Ground. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://bootsonground.blogspot.com/2005/05/hard-times.html

Kuhn, M. (2007). Interactivity and prioritizing the human: A code of blogging ethics. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 22, 18-36.

Ricks, T. E. (2007, May 5). Study puts spotlight on battlefield ethics. The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/05/study_puts_spotlight_on_battlefield_ethics/

Stone, L. (2003). Saul (David) Alinsky. Contemporary Authors Online. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from Gale’s Literature Resource Center online database.

outline version of my recent gameification work

2008-04-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

From the Front Lines to the Computer Screen: Battlefield Blogs and the Gameification of the Iraq War

Francesca Marie Smith
April 14, 2008

Research Question: How do United States soldiers negotiate and communicate in their personal blogs the complex ethical issues surrounding the Iraq War?

Case Study: Armor Geddon
• Battlefield blog written by Neil Prakash, a U.S. tank platoon leader

• 12-13 November: Make Way for the Cavalry
o over 30 printed pages of narration and dialogue
o most recent entry published
o 70 comments
o 23,000 Blogger profile views

• Three major rhetorical strategies:
o dehumanization
• of the enemy: “bad guys,” “fuckers,” simulated corpse rape
• “pretending to hump the body while he was standing up and flipped both middle fingers at the corpse”
• of allies: synecdochy of “crunchies,” call names such as “Ramrod 6”

o dramatization
• descriptive sensory experiences: “The tanks and Bradleys looked like shadows, swallowing up any light from the stars. They were like ghosts.”
• heightened emotional dialogue: “GET THE FUCK BACK ON YOUR TANK. GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!”
• sound effects: “BOOM,” “POP-POP-POP-POP,” “Click-Skrrrrrr-Ka-chunk”
• aesthetic sublimation: fictionalizes the account and strips it of ethical judgment

o gameification
• umbrella strategy to amoralize reality of war
• video game terms, strategies, and competition over “getting kills”
• exciting toys, “superpowers,” and explosions
• lighthearted, fun, supportive commentary: “YEAH! That was fucking awesome!”
• language use mirroring that of comfortable gaming scenarios

o taken as a whole, such strategies justify U.S. soldiers’ behavior by circumventing ethical questions at the outset

Philosophical Foundation: Alinsky’s Situational Ethics
• Situational ethics: Take into account unique contextual features

• Saul David Alinsky
o 1909-1972
o studied criminology
o worked as an activist promoting radical community organizing
o helped such groups as the Irish-American ghetto “Back of the Yards,” Black communities in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester, Canadian Indians, Italian labor unions, and Chicano migrant workers
o founded the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1939
o instructed would-be organizers, but also argued for the relative nature of truth and ethics
o Reveille for Radicals (1969)
o Rules for Radicals (1971)
• 1. Those closest to an issue do not have the luxury of ethical evaluation
• 2. Political standings will influence ethical beliefs
• 3. In war, the end will nearly always justify any means
• 4. Ethics are intrinsically tied to an event’s situatedness in time
• 5. The more options available, the greater the concern with ethicality
• 6. The less important the ends, the greater the concern with ethicality
• 7. Success or failure is a strong determinant of ethicality
• 8. Measures taken to avoid imminent defeat are generally seen as more ethical than the same acts taken when success is already assured
• 9. The opposition will likely judge effective tactics as unethical
• 10. “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments” (Alinsky, 1971, p. 36)
• 11. Goals should be framed in terms of common values such as liberty and equality

Evaluation: The Ethics of Gameification
• Soldiers like Prakash have few options available to them, yet are still bombarded with ethical criticism and must defend their choices to themselves and others thanks to modern technological advances

• According to Alinsky’s situational ethics, they must not be concerned with the ethical complexities of their actions; they must carry them out for professional and pragmatic reasons, then justify them in any means possible

• Therefore, gameification is used as a means to justify behavior by minimizing any potentially immorality and rendering the entire situation as nothing more than an irrelevant game
o dehumanization makes lives lost irrelevant
o dramatization normalizes, fictionalizes, and aesthetically sublimates the conflict, distancing the reader from reality
o gameification effaces the grim realities of life and death and allows the reader to be drawn into a comfortable, lighthearted, worry-free environment

• Is this communication ethical? Alinsky would suggest yes, since soldiers must secure a “passport of morality” to avoid spiraling into depression, guilt, and psychological trauma

• Limitations: Exploratory study with results that cannot be generalized; further research must expand corpus, see if such amoralization processes have occurred in the past, explore alternatives to gameification, and evaluate whether gameification appears intertextually in films, news reports, and videogames

• Implications:
o a potentially pervasive genre that addresses contemporary realities of ethically complex warfare combined with the widespread availability of blogging
o raises questions about the effects of (violent) videogames on recent generations
o draws attention to the limited moral possibilities afforded to those in certain situations
o calls us to address the consequences of turning life and death into nothing more than a game

what's wrong with me?

2008-04-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

what i have isn't even really writer's block. i know pretty much exactly what i want to write. instead, i have a crippling inability to actually sit down and write it out. it's gotten worse the older i've gotten, to the point where i'm putting off 15-page papers until the day before they're due. i manage to crank them out, sure, but only after 4-7 days of literally just laying there in bed staring at an empty word document. i feel literally paralyzed, stressed, and disappointed in myself. weird.

i've believed, since starting grad school, that i have a very strong, organic internal calendar. when i'm ready to write, i will. here's hoping that i'm ready sometime before the professor wants the paper.

in other news, my mom brought me a whole box of godiva truffles, just for me. :) i am lucky.

pillow angels

2008-03-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

i'm not sure how many of you have been following the ashley story (and, more specifically, the "ashley treatment")...CNN posted this article about it yesterday, which was the first i'd heard of it.

basically, this girl has an advanced form of cerebral palsy, which has rendered her unable to walk, speak, or take care of herself. doctors say she has the mental capacity of a 6-month-old baby.

the girl is ten years old, and her parents recently subjected her to what they call "the ashley treatment," which included a hysterectomy, removal of breast buds, and intense estrogen therapy to permanently stunt her growth. ashley is a little girl at 4 feet, 5 inches, and will now remain that way for the rest of her life, in spite of medical projections saying that she otherwise would have gained more than another foot of height. the saddest part is that the doctor who performed her operations committed suicide after doing so, although it's unclear as to why.

i found myself stunned by this story, but it also made me think. part of what got me was their promotion of the term "pillow angels" to describe severely disabled individuals who more or less can't leave bed. for some reason, this term bothers me; i feel like automatically labeling someone as an "angel" rather than a human with special needs is an odd sort of way to deal with it. in a way, it objectifies the individual through the roundabout way of trying to raise them ABOVE other humans; either way, the thing is no longer human. clearly, these parents have chosen to play god with this child, making life-altering decisions for her in a way that suggests they are above her; their use of the word "angel" to make it sound like she is above them isn't flying with me. it seems like a cheap shot to try to justify/compensate for their actions. moreover, what is the definition of "angel"? why is she now automatically an "angel" because she has developmental differences? it just seems like a strange, martyring use of language that doesn't grant ashley the humanity she deserves, yet arbitrarily pretends like she is greater than human at the same time. is it because she simply doesn't have the capacity for evil? i don't know. maybe.

sorry, i'm pretty scattered about this. i'm not really sure how to explain what i feel. i just know that it bothers me. obviously, beyond the language choices, there are some real ethical concerns with what they're doing, which i don't feel the need to get into here. however, i encourage you to go read her site, and read some of the other articles about what they've chosen to do.

what do you think? do we have the right to alter the lives of others for the sake of convenience (both theirs and ours; the parents didn't want to have to deal with her menstruation) when they can't say anything about it?

what if, within ashley's lifetime, a treatment for cerebral palsy is somehow discovered (never say never, people)? what then? what about when she "wakes up" at 35 and has a fully functioning psyche, yet permanently has the body of a little girl? scary to think about.

myspace

2008-03-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

i am somewhat disturbed by the fact that nearly 100% of the information about spitzer's call girl being reported by CNN.com is based on her myspace page.

yes, they ACTUALLY posted screen captures of the page, and quoted her musical influences. because she likes etta james, i am now better able to draw conclusions about spitzer's behavior. yup.

anyway, be careful (VERY careful) what you post.

blogflood

2008-03-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

okay, so i haven't updated substantively in a little bit...sooo...here's what's up.

spring break was wonderful. i drove to seattle with a friend, stopping in at stanford for a couple of days on the way up and back down to visit with friends. i had such an incredible time with everyone i met up with in both cities...the weather left a LITTLE bit to be desired, i suppose, but the company certainly did not. i got to cook for people (hooray!), visit pike place market (which i am in LOVE with and want to transport to LA), see some cool places, and meet some awesome people. hooray! it was really wonderful to be able to just talk with people...good, smart, funny people...for hours on end. i'm lucky.

on a side note, does anybody know of any really cool marketplaces in the LA area? maybe a little more than a farmer's market, with good, fresh food, but also maybe some handcrafted goods, organic stuff, clothing, artisan work, and so on? i got some INCREDIBLE soaps (like creamsicle scent!) and amazing slippers at the one in seattle.

on another side note (this blog will likely be full of them), i'm thinking of starting a collaborative cooking blog. anybody interested? you don't actually have to be a "good" cook...just post whatever you're interested in or things you've made. if you know anyone who might want to be a part of that, let me know.

anyway, pictures from the week should be up sometime on facebook, once kyle gets around to uploading his and once i get my camera back.

as soon as i got back, i defended my master's thesis! it was a bit hectic, since i worked the whole morning and then had to rush around to change into a suit and buy/lay out a spread of food for my committee during the lunch hour, but it ended up being as smooth as glass. the snacks were a hit, although i now have over 100 brownies stashed under my bed with two large platters of crackers/cheese and veggies/dip crammed in the fridge. i felt classy in my Classy Suit (tm). more importantly, the committee accepted the thesis! i passed with flying colors in a frighteningly short deliberation process. most of the questions directed at me were things like "so. what do you think it would be like to have condi run for president? what have you learned from this process?" rather than "why don't you address this in the thesis?" this means that the thesis was accepted with a grand total of one (1) requested sentence change (which i feel dumb about, because i knew i should've put it in the text more blatantly, but oh well. can't win them all). i think i can deal with that. now i have about 4 more revision processes to go through, but this stuff is all technical and formatting related...the substance of it is done. mixed feelings; i probably could have written something better, but everyone has REALLY liked what i turned out anyway, so, uh. cool! it's about 132 pages right now, for those keeping score at home. it will be ready for binding and library placement (!) in less than a month.

this means i graduate the weekend of april 26th. ...WOOOOO!!!

my birthday's coming up soon, which is always sort of...meh. i haven't done anything fun for it for a few years, but this year i may change that. we'll see.

alright, those are all the various and sundry life updates. i'll post separate blogs for the commentary that's been running through my head recently. :)

srs matters

2008-03-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

shoes:

i has them.

they're a little funky, but i think i love them. sadly, that picture doesn't show the coolest part: a silver embroidered outline of a leaping puma on the other side :D

what do you think?!

daft bodies!!!!

2008-02-26T11:53:00.001-08:00

this is the best thing i've seen in a long time:

i love the smell of linguistic hegemony in the morning

2008-02-26T11:43:00.001-08:00

thanks to tracy for this lovely example of america's linguistic hegemony. thanks, dunkin' donuts. i now dislike you.

because, of course, latte is a native english word. yup. also, learning to accurately pronounce the names of things from other cultures in their original language is too hard for us. better just americanize it all.

also, anyone else read "himan plu cento" on the menu as "human placenta"? because i did.

here, have some blog

2008-02-25T18:42:00.000-08:00

check out this excellent post about really dumb people saying really dumb things.

blogs like this make me seriously reconsider my previous comments on feminism. also, on state-~~sanctioned~~ mandated lobotomies.

thesis fun

2008-02-25T13:27:00.001-08:00

i really love my committee. these are the most recent three emails in my inbox:

dr. selby: Let's go with 2 then. That way we have a full two hours for the
"slo-cook grilling action." : )

dr. jones: That's right. Move over George Foreman. We are the real grilling
machine.

me: I will take care to marinate myself appropriately.

obama

2008-02-23T17:34:00.000-08:00

interesting commentary from an article by rowland and jones (one of my thesis advisors) based on obama's 2004 dnc speech:

"What hasn't been recognized, however, about Obama's widely praised speech is that it was more about a narrative than a defense of public policies associated with liberalism as an ideology. He said relatively little about particular policies, but instead focused on reclaiming the romantic narrative we have identified for liberals. In that way, Barack Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention forecasts the possibility of a sea change in political ideology, based not on policy but on narrative preference." (p. 428)

exactly some of the criticism i've been hearing about his presidential campaign. might be worth checking out.

Rowland, R. C., & Jones, J. M. (2007). Recasting the American Dream and American politics: Barack Obama's keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 93, 425-448.

when did i become so driven by food...

2008-02-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

i know, i know, this blog is starting to seem like it only exists for me to talk about food and various important news stories with one or two words of commentary. i promise, there's more to my life. even if i don't act like it.

however, this food-related event was far too important to ignore.

pocket-sized, caleb, and i have succeeded in making The Most Delicious Ebelskivers Ever.

after i went on a crazy bender to make these lemon-mascarpone filled pancakes from the williams-sonoma website, i dragged myself to the nearest w-s to buy the appropriate pan/curd needed. a week ago, caleb and i tried them out...and all 40 were gone within 12 hours. they're really more like little pancake balls, a bit tricky to make but very fun. we stuffed our first batch with key lime and mascarpone (an italian cream cheese used in tiramisu).

yesterday, however, alex came over to help with our second ebelskiver adventure. and magic happened.

i had the crazy idea to combine the orange spice french toast recipe with the ebelskiver batter recipe, to make a lightly spiced, orangey pancake. then, somebody suggested we stuff them with nutella.

um.

amazing.

unbelievable.

cannot. stop. eating.

anyway, just use the ebelskiver recipe from the w-s page linked above, then add two tablespoons each of grand marnier and orange juice to the finished batter, use orange zest instead of lemon, add a LITTLE extra flour to make sure it's thick enough, and sprinkle in a bit of allspice and nutmeg. then, use nutella instead of the mascarpone/lemon filling.

so incredible.

pocket will have pictures up soon; i'll link once i get them.

sickening...

2008-02-15T13:49:00.001-08:00

school shootings in the past ten years

super tuesday, i suppose.

2008-02-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

due to a variety of factors (not my fault!), not a single one of my family members will be voting on super tuesday. whoops. my card, in fact, tells me to vote tomorrow. the sixth. i...am not sure that is the best of ideas for me.

in any case, in the spirit of the election, i wanted to share this remarkable video, without any sort of persuasive intent...just to share.

not sure i can remember anything like this for any other candidate in my lifetime. pretty interesting.

maybe i'm just easily amused...

2008-02-04T09:20:00.001-08:00

...but i was really entertained by the joke konrad told at loma awards this year. like, i kept bursting into giggles on the car ride home.

***

two cows are standing in a field. one cow says to the other, "hey, aren't you worried about this whole mad cow disease thing?" the other cow replies, "nope, i'm a helicopter!"

love

2008-02-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

with valentine's day swiftly approaching, and the cringe-inducing pink hearts overflowing out of every store i walk past, i've been thinking a bit about love. much as we like to equate the notion of "love" with "couplehood", it really is incredible for me to realize how very much love is in my life, outside of any of those more official pairings. love is all around us, i know, i know...but sometimes i forget to notice it.

so, a work in progress, and hopefully a collaborative one. what is love?

love is...

- sharing, anything, anywhere...breakfast, your blanket, a ride, a smile...
- stacks and stacks of cloth on world of warcraft
- giving someone else the absolute BEST cookie in the whole box
- carefully placed spinach on a sandwich
- a note in your lunchbox
- a hug that lasts about a second longer than you thought it would
- an "i miss you" out of nowhere
- staying up an hour (or two, or five) past your bedtime, just to be there for someone
- knowing you'll look like a fool, but trying your best at something new anyway...ice skating, basketball, cooking...
- not thinking anyone looks like a fool when they're trying their best at something new
- thinking up a million excuses to call, before realizing you don't need any
- patience...piles of patience...
- about a million SFK runs
- as many funny, awkward kisses as there are sexy ones...but you like them all the same...
- inside jokes
- changing your route home so you can talk on the phone just a little longer
- surreptitiously memorizing a class schedule, so you can always be there conveniently when someone gets out
- waking up a half hour early just to make someone breakfast
- checking someone's blog every day...maybe a few times a day...
- sacrifice
- nicknames...especially the ones nobody else understands...
- changing clothes three times to make sure you're wearing the best combination of hot/cuddleable
- hanging out conveniently online...just in CASE you see someone come on...
- support...even when that means knowing when to bite your tongue
- proofreading. that takes REAL love...
- anything that involves tupperware...there's almost always love involved...

love is a lot of things...way more than this. love is also hard. it's not convenient. it's rarely premeditated, and there's not really any way to predict the best way to pull it off. it seems to be responsible for the highest highs and the lowest lows...so you've just got to get through the lows and try to appreciate the highs when they come along, right?

this isn't for anyone other than me. there's no hidden message, really. i am just, as richard once said, so full of love i could burst. it's hard to remember that all the time...and it's not easy to have all this love to carry around all the time...but there it is.

what is your love?

how did i never notice this before...?

2008-01-29T14:58:00.001-08:00

my car, it seems, is equipped with some sort of SRS airbag.

the only thing i can now think of when i look at my steering wheel is SRS CAR ACCIDENTS REQUIRE SRS AIRBAGS.

absolutely disgusting...

2008-01-26T11:15:00.001-08:00

bluetooth legs!

2008-01-25T12:41:00.001-08:00

awesome!

giggle

2008-01-25T01:48:00.000-08:00

CNN headline today:

Musharraf to West: 'We have our own brains'

every time i read this, i couldn't help but think of the story that i really wished followed:

"Musharraf, speaking on behalf of the pakistani zombie coalition, refused food aid today from the United States..."

yummy.

2008-01-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

alright, last recipe for awhile, i promise!

pumpkin spice bread pudding...unbelievable. found it at this cool little site, which seems to have a lot of good recipes to try. follow the link for some pictures (something i promise to be better about including in the future). mine looked more delicious than hers!

1½ cups whole milk (or 1 cup heavy cream plus ½ cup whole milk)
¾ cup canned pumpkin (this is about half a small can, by the way)
½ cup sugar
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
2 tablespoons bourbon (optional)
5 cups cubed (1-inch) day-old baguette or crusty bread (we used fresh white bread, about five slices, and stuck it in a warm oven for a few minutes to dry it out)
¾ stick unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

whisk together pumpkin, cream, milk, sugar, eggs, yolk, salt, spices and bourbon, if using, in a bowl.

if using fresh bread, spread on a baking sheet and put in the oven for a few minutes to let it dry out; be careful, though, because i completely fried the first pieces i tried in an oven set to 350. worked much better when i turned the oven off, and just put the pieces in while the oven was still warm but at a very low heat. if you've had the foresight to let your bread dry out for a day, you're good to go.

toss bread cubes with melted butter in another bowl, then add pumpkin mixture and toss to coat. transfer to an ungreased 8-inch square baking dish and bake until custard is set, 25 to 30 minutes. it took me about 40, but i was at a high altitude.

we served it right out of the oven with a scoop of slow-churned french vanilla ice cream. mmmmmm. made 9 fairly sizable squares; we had the rest with breakfast the next morning (ICE CREAM WITH BREAKFAST?! us kids were elated). also, we didn't include the bourbon. tasted like pumpkin pie, but just a little better, and i like the texture more too. mmm.

as if you hadn't had enough recipes out of me...

2008-01-19T19:07:00.000-08:00

...and there'll probably be one more this weekend, too!

anyway, we made basil garlic minestrone tonight, based on this very confusing recipe.

i'm going to make some substantial suggestions/alterations below that should provide a smoother cooking experience (and more delicious eating experience, of course).

3 ounces pancetta, finely chopped (we used bacon; flavor a little too strong)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup diced italian tomatoes (we used the kind with basil, oregano, and garlic)
6 cups of cold water and chicken stock, mixed (we used about 2 cups stock and about 4 cups water)
1/2 tablespoon salt
about ten ounces (maybe a third of a box?) pasta; i'd go with tiny shells
pinch of pepper
pinch of red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons fresh basil, very finely chopped (might just go with 1 tbsp dried)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

sauté the pancetta in olive oil and garlic until browned. then, CAREFULLY add tomatoes (if you're using plain tomatoes, a pinch of oregano here wouldn't hurt) and simmer for about 5 minutes; the wet tomatoes and bubbling oil can be a dangerous splattery mess, so stand back. after they're simmered, add the stock/water and bring to a boil. stir in salt and pasta; cook about 10 minutes or until pasta is al dente. remove from heat, add pepper, red pepper, basil, and parmesan cheese (feel free to play with the amounts). serve hot.

AMAZING with a crusty bread like focaccia dipped in it.

reed's raspberry ginger brew

2008-01-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

despite how delicious it sounds, reed's raspberry ginger brew

is gross.

it tastes like you're licking a barrel.

unbelievable breakfast

2008-01-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

as part of a weekend of "oh boy nothing to do/roommates out of the house, therefore let's cook all weekend", we made the most incredible breakfast today...

orange spice french toast, from this random site:
6 slices thickly cut Italian or homemade white bread

1 cup half & half or light cream
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons Grand Marnier or orange liqueur equivalent
2 Tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon orange zest (we used clementine, just to mix it up)
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Combine all ingredients, except bread, and whisk thoroughly. Soak each piece of bread in the egg mixture. Grill on medium to medium-hot griddle until cooked through and golden brown. Serve with oodles of real maple syrup and a dollop of orange marmalade.

grand marnier is STUPIDLY expensive...we went for orange cointreau, which looks cooler and is very slightly cheaper, but it's still $20 a bottle. i'd recommend not using real maple syrup, as the flavor is just too strong for my tastes...i prefer a little butter, a little marmalade, and non-oodles of fake maple syrup. but that's just me.

super easy to make, and absolutely incredible. i'd recommend it with bacon or veggie links and eggs (we added a little oregano to the eggs, too).

as if we needed more proof...

2008-01-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

from slate.com:

According to The Bush Tragedy, a new book by Slate's Jacob Weisberg, Bush suffers from a similar inability to distinguish between what he wants to see and what is there to be seen. This is nicely captured in an anecdote about a painting (seen above) that Bush put up in his office when he was governor of Texas. Weisberg writes:

In an April 1995 memo, Bush invited his staff to come to his office to look at a painting. … The picture is a Western scene of a cowboy riding up a craggy hill, with two other riders following behind him. Bush told visitors—who often noted his resemblance to the rider in front—that it was called A Charge To Keep and that it was based on his favorite Methodist hymn of that title, written in the eighteenth century by Charles Wesley. As Bush noted in the memo, which he quoted in his autobiography of the same title: "I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves." Bush identified with the lead rider, whom he took to be a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity.

Bush subsequently took the painting to Washington, hung it in the Oval Office, and continued to tell the painting's inspiring story, adding embellishments:

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."

The painting was subsequently recycled by the Saturday Evening Post to illustrate a nonfiction story. The caption that time was, "Bandits Move About From Town to Town, Pillaging Whatever They Can Find." Koerner published the illustration a third and final time in a magazine called the Country Gentleman. On this go-round, it was indeed used to illustrate a short story that related to Wesley's hymn. But the story's moral was a little off-message. According to Weisberg, it was "about a son who receives a legacy from his father—a beautiful forest in the Northeast and a plea to protect it from rapacious timber barons." Apparently nobody ever got around to notifying Bush's Interior Department.

long overdue.

2008-01-16T22:15:00.000-08:00

i've been meaning to sit down and write a more thorough blog post for some time, but my brain still feels mildly scrambled, so i fear this is not to be The Blog Post Of My Dreams. ah well. i'll at least try to keep it brief, then. :)

i've been unbelievably sick over the past month, beginning with the worst flu i can remember having, and ending with a rather nefarious cold/cough that has yet to go away. to make it worse, my ethics class required that we go on a hike today (?), and after about five minutes of clambering up the santa monica mountain range my lungs felt like they were on fire and i almost had to stop. yes, the whole class mocked me behind my back, i'm sure. yes, i now know what it's like to be the fat kid at recess. :( however, absent that little setback, i think i'm on the road to recovery.

my new apartment is cute as a button (with super swanky amenities), and although it will take some time to get used to sharing, well, everything with three other girls, it's only for another four months. at that point, i get to begin My Real Life...the life i have been referring to every time an adult insultingly asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up. well, in three and a half months, i'll have finished every academic goal i set for myself, and i'll be ready to grow up...at least as much as i ever will. i can't wait. :):):)

i got rock band for christmas, but have literally played about four songs total. anybody who cares to help me break it in a bit more effectively is welcome to do so!

been playing some WoW, cooking a lot, spending some time at the hot tub, and just settling back into the rhythm of school. i'm going to be working like crazy on the thesis for the next month or three, but until today i hadn't yet gotten notes back from my advisor, so i had an excuse to just kind of laze around and recover. no more, i fear. wish me luck.

dance class started this week, and i'm teaching some cool new stuff this semester. we had excellent advertising (it's so cool to see my posters all over campus!), so enrollment was fabulous, and we had a ton of fun. i have fun, talented students and an excellent assisting staff, so i'm looking forward to a pretty stellar semester.

been drooling a little over the new macbook, but i won't be picking one up anytime soon. while it's a pretty toy, and i'm super envious of the new trackpad, it doesn't offer me anything i really need, and my macbook pro just has more applicability for me right now. attempting to save my pennies, anyway. got a $50 parking ticket this week and a surprise bill from the university for "additional units not covered by my scholarship". ugh.

anyway, the main thing that i've been meaning to write about is pretty random, but it's been bothering me for almost a year now: the concept of holocaust denial laws. i still need to do some more research on it, but, in that process, i thought i'd get a few of my thoughts out and try to get some feedback from various people.

an interesting british article found here summarizes the main points, including the reasons why britain has not adopted anti-denial legislation such as those in place in austria, belgium, france, germany, spain, switzerland, and israel.

basically, i'm incredibly hesitant to support any legislation that limits people's worldview or interpretation of history; under such a precedent, arguments such as those promoted by agnosticism, atheism, or even "the da vinci code" seem like the next to go (although, granted, that's pretty far along the ol' slippery slope). basically, legislating people's opinions/stupidity just doesn't seem like a grand idea. at the same time, i understand the ramifications of hate speech, and i DO realize that it can be extremely offensive to go beyond saying "the holocaust didn't exist" and conclude "the crazy jews made it up to get sympathy" (not that "offensive" language should be banned on principle, either, but...). i guess the bottom line, to my very, very minimal understanding, is that the HATEFUL ramifications of holocaust denial language are probably already dealt with under our messy blob of free speech supreme court decisions, and can probably easily be classified in terms of clear and present danger or inciting violence or whatever. my question, then, is what makes the situation of holocaust denial different enough to require legislation in the seven countries listed above (other than the fact that most of them were very directly influenced by the holocaust, more so than we were here in the states). do they not have similar hate speech legislation, or is the case of the holocaust so profoundly important that it demands separate laws?

i'll keep thinking about it, perhaps, but if anyone has anything to add regarding this rather muddy (for me) issue, please tell. :)

p.s. come visit me if you haven't yet! we can play tennis and sit in the hot tub. it will be grand, and maybe i'll make you brownies.

<3.

the perfect lie

2008-01-16T20:52:00.000-08:00

i've been sitting here for the last five minutes listening to a pretty, popular girl on the phone to her pretty, popular boyfriend, and she has so far yelled at him for not getting work off the next two weekends in a row so she can go ski with him, whined that, since she can't find her wallet, he MUST HAVE TAKEN IT (repeated two or three times), and then demanded that he look in his car for it (although i believe he's currently driving). she has now told him he "needs to get his butt in here now", and when he protested, "lalala, i don't hear you". mind you, they're not fighting. days like this i wonder how relationships at my school ever last.

pesto, at last!

2008-01-08T22:21:00.001-08:00

after a long hiatus, i return, with some excellent news.

since i lived in florence, i have searched long and hard to find a good, simple basil pesto. living in italy, the best foods i had were surprisingly the simplest ones: generic brand pesto from the supermarket, panna cotta that my host mother made from about three ingredients, and basic caprese sandwiches from any street vender. oddly, even when eating at expensive, "authentic" italian restaurants or markets here in the states, nothing has really compared, especially on the pesto front. seriously, american pesto is just GROSS by comparison to the real stuff. i was sad, and was starting to give up hope on ever finding a wonderful, garlicky, light, crunchy pesto again.

until now.

i decided to try the pesto recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, the reader's digest live longer cookbook. i was wary, at first, since their version eliminates a lot of the unhealthy (read: delicious) oil from a basic pesto. however, i am pleased to report that this version is AMAZING, and in fact much better than the oilier alternative (oilternative?).

the only hangup in preparing this lies with your equipment. see, my roommate has a blender. i didn't know this blender didn't work until i had already poured all of the ingredients into it. after fiddling with it for a good half hour, i carefully poured the contents into a pyrex and called a friend who lives in the same complex as i do. after a bit of phone tag, he replied: "yes! i have a blender! come use it!" i got there. no blender. whoops. track down friend's roommate, who reports blender is broken. apparently there was a terrible blender-breaking scourge that swept the complex over break. soooo, we went to albertson's, where i bought an 8-speed blender for $25. it did not really work well, at all. blades were dull as all get out. basically, you may not even want to bother with "smoothie makers" or "drink mixer" type blenders. i spent a good 15 minutes pulsing the thing, stopping to smush the basil leaves around after every pulse to try to get the blades to actually cut them. it was certainly edible at the end, just a pain. so the moral of this very long story? either a) use a FOOD PROCESSOR or blender with VERY VERY SHARP BLADES, not your standard smoothie mixer, or b) cut up the basil really well before attempting to blend.

also, this recipe will leave you with leaves in your teeth. sorry. probably some very garlicky breath, too.

still, delicious, and very easy to prepare! overall cost is fairly low, too.

so, without further ado:

1/2 cup chicken or vegetable broth, preferably with low sodium
6 large cloves of garlic (recipe says slice first; i HIGHLY recommend CHOPPING)
2 cups lightly packed fresh basil leaves (this winds up to be two of those little flat plastic packets you buy in the market; again, recommend chopping it up first)
2 tablespoons toasted walnuts (again...chop if your blender sucks...i "toasted" mine by sticking them on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for about 7 minutes)
1/3 cup lowfat (1%) cottage cheese (recipe says "no salt added"; i couldn't find that)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil

in a small skillet, bring the stock and garlic to a boil; reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for 4 minutes or until the garlic is tender.

transfer stock/garlic to a food processor or blender and add basil, walnuts, cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. whirl until smooth (about 30 seconds...yeah right).

add oil, blend for another 10 seconds (no clue why this is separate, i just did them all at once :D)

serve!

this amount, which the book estimates to be 1 cup, worked perfectly with one whole bag of penne; the recipe says it should be used for 1 pound of pasta. either way, it made four very hearty servings.

per 1/4 cup serving, it has 98 calories, 1g saturated fat, 7g total fat, 5g protein, 5g carbs, 2g fiber, 224mg sodium, and 3mg cholesterol. woo!

and, for those playing along at home, i paired it with some roasted garlic and asiago focaccia and a baby green salad with dried cranberries, candied pecans, bleu cheese and raspberry vinaigrette. stellar. :)

oh, and if you try it out, please let me know how it goes!

googlicious

2007-12-18T18:36:00.000-08:00

some of my favorite referring links from google...who knew people searched this stuff?

"reasons i love my friend" (if you're looking for reasons to love your friend, you probably don't want to take mine)
"cnn grammar activities" (not sure you'd call them "activities"...i may have disappointed this colombian visitor)
"origin of the word rape in video games" (uhh...)
dozens of "gay rape", "gay rape chat", and "gay rape game" (i guess i shouldn't be surprised)
"belief that women are oppressed by men and oppression should be eliminated" (getting a bit specific there, aren't we?)

and the winner

"quotes about jesus being courageous" (ohhh, have i got a deal for you...)

unexpected...

2007-12-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

i had a very strange experience yesterday. i'm hesitant to even write about it, for fear some people will take it the wrong way, but...eh. my blog! i do what i want.

anyway, yesterday one of our classmates flew home to be with her father as he underwent heart surgery. she had asked if she could videochat with me from the ICU during class time so she wouldn't miss the review (second time we've done that this semester! macs are so awesome). what was strange, though, was that on arriving to class, i did something very out of character for me (VERY out of character, if you know me at all). i asked my professor if we could start the class with a prayer for our classmate's father (and family as a whole). of course, he agreed, and said a really beautiful prayer as we all sat down together.

now, i'm not a christian. i never have been. i don't have the patience to meditate, and have never had the inclination to pray. i tend to get annoyed when people try to force me to pray on command. but, yesterday, it was important. and it felt right.

don't get me wrong, i'm not converting, i didn't necessarily feel a connection with a higher power or anything like that. i'm not an atheist, but i'm agnostic until i feel strongly otherwise (and if you want to know more about that, feel free to ask). when asked who i was praying TO, i realized that i wasn't in fact asking for guidance from some external, omniscient being. for me, it was about the shared act of, all together, recognizing the importance of a situation, and channeling our love and thoughts and feelings towards that. it was a communal act, for me, more than one of asking for guidance or assistance from above.

nevertheless, it was important, and it felt good.

strange, for me, definitely unexpected...i'm sure my professor, who once had to reply to an email from me asking "just HOW christian is pepperdine, i don't do the whole prayer thing", could probably have been knocked over with a feather. ah well. guess times change.

Entertaining Angels

2007-12-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

Hospitality is a virtue that has long been an integral part of countless cultures around the world, regardless of religion, location, or historical epoch. Derived from the Latin word hospes, meaning “stranger,” hospitality in a general sense entails providing for a guest in one’s home, often offering food and lodging as well as protection, company, and support. In the Christian Bible, this simple notion of hospitality is extolled to an extreme degree, challenging believers to give freely of themselves as they have freely received from others (Matt. 10:8) in all aspects of life, without discrimination between friend, enemy, stranger, or kin. While it may not be practical (or even possible) for Christians to follow this doctrine in every respect, a hypothetical society that did take seriously the Biblical call for hospitality would certainly function in a way very different from our own. In particular, the practice and study of rhetoric, specifically in terms of how we conceptualize values, incentives, and exigency, would drastically change in a world where Biblical hospitality stood as our highest priority. As a pedagogical exercise to explore the pragmatic and theoretical features of both Christianity and rhetoric, then, I offer the following hypothetical account of rhetoric in light of Biblical hospitality.

Christian Hospitality
To begin with, we must establish an understanding of what Biblical hospitality is, and specifically how it differs from secular notions of hospitality. Hospitality, at its most basic level, simply means providing food and shelter for guests; this is an attribute that is, of course, praised highly by many people regardless of their religious affiliation. However, Biblical hospitality extends far beyond this simple notion of food and shelter, invoking instead a challenge that influences the entire Christian way of life. First of all, the Scriptures’ rules of giving do not merely apply in cases where an individual in need approaches the home asking for assistance; instead, Christian doctrine argues that one should consider others’ needs in a more general sense outside the home (in harvesting, for example, as per Deut. 24:19-22; see also Gen. 18:1-8, James 2:1-7, and Lev. 25:35-38). Secondly, the Christian act of welcoming and providing for an “alien” in the home entails not just material goods like food and money, but also physical protection and care. In some cases, this may even require the paradigmatic Christian hosts to risk their own safety and security, or that of their families, in order to care for their guests (for instance, see the story of Rahab and the spies in Jos. 2:1-16). A striking example of this is found in the Biblical account of Lot who, when the Sodomites demanded he turn over his guests to satiate their carnal pleasures, would rather offer his own daughters for sex than betray his guests (Gen. 19:1-11). Finally, the authors of the Scriptures repeatedly clarify that such giving and hospitality should be extended to all who are in need, including strangers and “aliens” (as per Lev. 19:34) but also potentially dangerous or unscrupulous characters such as thieves, enemies, and beggars (seen in Rahab’s protection of the spies). Indeed, the word most often associated with hospitality in the Septuagint and the New Testament is xenos, which can mean foreigner, stranger, or enemy (Koenig, 1992, p. 299). In short, the Biblical teachings do not condone partiality or judgment on the part of Christians (as expressed in James 2:1); on the contrary, all individuals should be treated alike, whether friend or foe, family or alien, virtuous man or potential villain.
Given this definition, and specifically these extensive lifestyle goals, we can conceive of Biblical hospitality as a universal rejection of selfishness and partiality. As explained in Finney (1878, pp. 143-165), selfishness is the ultimate root of all sin (beyond just greed, gluttony, and lust), and it entails the rejection of God and God’s will by choosing one’s own gratification over God’s law. Finney also clarifies the distinction between selfishness and desire: While desire is a “purely involuntary state of mind,” selfishness is a conscious choice to allow the will and action to be governed by desire (1878, p. 146). These selfish acts will often be unreasonable, but always voluntary and, most importantly, partial to one person or group (Finney, 1878, pp. 146-151). According to this line of reasoning, the only way to avoid this sin of selfishness is to give fully of oneself to all others, regardless of self-interest and the potential risk of personal inconvenience or even endangerment.
Although at first blush we may not think to apply this concept of eschewing selfishness to the caretaking of our family members or those close to us (both spatially and emotionally), a complete embrace of impartiality would in fact dictate that we ignore all of our own personal interests, including personal relationships. Notably, Finney does concede that, in some situations, our hospitality may for practical reasons be extended primarily to those in proximity to us (1878, p. 149). However, the deliberate choice to privilege some over others (such as acting to benefit friends and harm enemies, a commonly accepted form of “good” praised in Aristotle, trans. 1984, p. 46) is in fact a form of selfishness from which we ought abstain. In other words, the judgment of who most deserves wealth and comfort is not ours to make, but rather God’s; to try to claim this ability would be not only foolish, but also blasphemous.
There are three ways in which this goal of hospitality is both explicated and promoted in the Christian Bible. The first is through explicit calls to action such as “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Pet. 4:9; see also Rom. 12:13, Deut. 24:17-22, Lev. 19:34, 25:35-38, Exod. 22:21, 23:9). The second is the positive reinforcement of hospitality in Biblical narratives, found most memorably in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37), but also in stories such as those of Rahab, the widow of Zarephath, and, notably, Abraham (see also Deut. 10:18). Negative reinforcement such as the punishment of inhospitality (or the abuse of hospitality) is manifest in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:1-11; see also Judg. 19:16-30 and Acts 5:1-11). The third is through the continually revisited metaphor of Jesus as both host and guest (Koenig, 1992, pp. 300-301): God’s generosity is frequently described in terms of offering housing, food, and drink to His followers (Psalm 104), while countless tales describe Jesus as a stranger who ought be offered food and drink (Matt. 25:35-40). Interestingly, Tillich (1963) argues that this second concept of God as “other” is crucial to the overall symbolism of a living God, the nonbeing within God’s being, and of the “Divine Life” as a reunion of otherness with identity.
If we were to take seriously this challenge to both welcome and protect the “other,” sharing our wealth and ability both in and outside of our homes, our conceptualization and use of rhetoric would be significantly altered in terms of what we value, what incentives we use in motivating one another, and what topics we see as exigent (or what we use rhetoric to accomplish). Addressing each of these points in turn, I hope to establish a hypothetical image of how our world would change were rhetors, their audiences, and society as a whole to adopt the Biblical concept of hospitality.

Values
To begin with, a complete adoption of this Christian view of hospitality would alter our basic value structure, changing what we see as important attributes in ourselves and others. A rhetor sensitive to this value system would therefore need to substantially alter elements of speech that appeal to our values, particularly in epideictic speech, from the way they are enacted today. In such speeches of praise or blame, the savvy rhetor would no longer laud accomplishments of men or women that involve the conquering of other people or the establishment of material wealth. Instead, achievements that highlight selflessness and giving would become far more important, including humanitarian or charity work. Conversely, rhetors seeking to indict or criticize a subject might highlight selfishness and lack of hospitality as evidence of an unsavory character. While such elements of selfishness and selflessness are certainly utilized today in many speeches of praise and blame (such as those criticizing or supporting political candidates), they are frequently balanced with positive appraisals of wealth and power; in seriously adopting the Biblical goal of hospitality, this second grouping of “virtues” would essentially vanish from the competent rhetor’s arsenal. Remember, as well, that epideictic rhetoric assumes the audience is in some way qualified to make judgments of others’ character; a complete acceptance of Christian hospitality would, however, not allow us to take any action based on these value judgments, since we would no longer be allowed to exercise partiality. This would dramatically alter the potential value of epideictic rhetoric in swaying an audience’s opinion towards or away from some proposal.
A shifted value system inspired by Christian hospitality would also influence the way in which the rhetor establishes a relationship with his or her audience in all forms of speaking. First and foremost, this would eliminate the need identified in Burkean theory to first create a sense of shared identity with the audience before attempting to persuade them; we would no longer desire a sense of proximity, or partiality, to the speaker, since such relationships are deemed irrelevant for making decisions of whom we ought help and support. As an extension of this concept, rhetors would no longer rally support for their own cause by otherizing alternative groups or voices, as seen in the xenophobic rhetoric employed following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, but also the rhetoric used to promote Japanese internment over half a century prior. Both of these examples attempted to distinguish “us” from “them” in a way that justified oppression and exclusion, but would not be relevant in a world where Christian hospitality was vigilantly upheld. Finally, taken to the most extreme level, this concept of Christian hospitality could in fact erase the need for the rhetor’s personal credibility (or Aristotle’s all-important “ethos”) altogether; if we truly believed in Christian hospitality, we would be willing to adopt the proposals of deliberative or forensic rhetoric (if they involved giving something of ourselves or caring for others, which most proposals do) simply based on our ability to carry them out and their ultimate benefit to someone, not because we believed the rhetor to be a competent or worthy person. Such judgments of worth, as applied to the rhetor or other subjects, would no longer be within our realm.

Incentive
A shift in our society’s overall values would also necessarily shift the methods employed by rhetors in creating incentive for the audience to act. A common tactic in motivating audiences is the creation of shared need, or the sense that a proposal will, in some way, benefit the audience directly; as Aristotle explains, the audience “will be ready to attend to anything that touches [themselves],” and appeals such as “it concerns you quite as much as myself” can be valuable in gaining the hearers’ attention (trans. 1984, p. 203). In a worldview dominated by Christian hospitality, this audience-centered view of benefit and cost would essentially evaporate, since personal gain would be eschewed in favor of giving and shared rewards. In other words, a rhetor would no longer have to show why a policy would be good for the audience (and decisionmakers) directly; all that would matter is that the policy benefited somebody, in some way, and that it was within the audience’s power to provide this benefit. One example of where this change would be seen most clearly is in campaign rhetoric: Candidates would not try to “win over” certain demographic groups with promises of how he or she would help them specifically, but would instead be able to champion any policy that provided some good, knowing that their audience would not be partial to one group’s benefit over another.
Another common strategy in motivating an audience, as articulated by Aristotle (trans. 1984, pp. 103-107), is the use of fear. Certainly, fear of things such as poverty, disease, and natural disasters would still be useful as a tool to motivate audiences in our hypothetical society. However, that use of fear that suggests we ought to be afraid of other people taking things from us or betraying us would no longer be applicable. Specifically, since Biblical hospitality encourages opening our hearts and homes to all people, including those who we might see as enemies (as per Exod. 23:5), any proposal predicated on the notion that we should hoard our possessions or close our doors in the face of the enemy would automatically become irrelevant (such as anti-immigration rhetoric that emphasizes fear of the “alien” stealing our jobs).

Exigent Topics
In concordance with these shifts in the things we value and the reasons why we feel compelled to act, an embrace of Biblical hospitality would ultimately change the topics we speak about and the changes we wish to enact in the world. In other words, our entire political agenda would be changed, so our interpretation of exigency (or what needs to happen) would automatically change, along with the rhetoric and policies created to address these needs. To begin with, a rhetor who addressed an audience in the spirit of hospitality would no longer be placing his or her own interests in the forefront; instead, topics and policies intended to benefit others (including the audience, but also strangers, aliens, and enemies) would become just as, if not more, important. As a whole, persuasion would become less relevant for two reasons: first, the homogenously hospitable audience would already agree on how to behave, and secondly, without the need to convince others of right behavior that benefits another, the rhetor would have little reason to manipulate others (as the primary goal would be to offer kindness and generosity, not to force one’s will).
Even if rhetoric were still used to discuss public affairs and propose or explain new policies, the policies being promoted would look strikingly different. The domestic policies, for example, within a nation such as the United States that was suddenly in full support of Biblical hospitality would be radically influenced, as living would now be more or less communal in nature (as encouraged by Acts 2:42-47). For example, things like taxes and welfare would likely be irrelevant if everyone naturally believed that they should give their own belongings to those in need; governmental enforcement of this sharing should be unnecessary. As such, the extensive policies and rhetoric in place now that try to manipulate taxes and social services would no longer be necessary, either.
The relationship of such a hospitable nation with the rest of the world would also be drastically dissimilar from that of the United States and the world today. In particular, our foreign policy rhetoric could no longer justifiably argue for offensive war tactics that took anything (land, money, oil, or other resources) from another group of people. Foreign aid that required either payment of money, a political and cultural foothold (like the Christian missions and other religious aid programs that have been used for centuries, exchanging goods for conversion), or some other sacrifice in exchange would become taboo. Any rhetoric that proposed acts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement would become irrelevant, because partiality, or tariffs and other taxes levied on some “alien” countries but not our own, would no longer be acceptable. Indeed, immigration rhetoric would entirely disappear, since our borders would necessarily be completely open to any and all who wished to enter. In short, much of the political rhetoric (specifically deliberative) employed today would be entirely defunct; foreign policy might instead consist of explaining our policies of giving and hospitality to others, and perhaps trying to suggest to those of other, less hospitable cultures that our ways are beneficial, without needing or wanting to manipulate public opinion to ensure one group’s profit.

In summary, the relationship between rhetoric and Christian values is both clear and strong: Were we to fully commit ourselves to the teachings of the Bible, the face of rhetoric as we know it would be fundamentally changed. Of course, this brief account has not addressed the possibility of conflicting Biblical teachings, nor has it argued for the practicality of such complete devotion to Biblical hospitality. Nevertheless, I have attempted to articulate the specific ways in which the values, incentives, and exigency employed within rhetoric are closely tied to our worldview, and specifically our notions of hospitality and selflessness. As such, when reflecting upon the Bible’s seemingly simple call to “entertain strangers, for by doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb. 13:2), we can now perhaps understand a bit more fully all the ways in which such an exhortation has the potential to change our world.

References
Aristotle. (1984). The rhetoric and poetics of Aristotle (W. R. Roberts & I. Bywater, Trans.). New York: Random House.
Finney, C. G. (1878). Charles G. Finney’s systematic theology (J. H. Fairchild, Ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Koenig, J. (1992). Hospitality. In D. N. Freedman (Ed.), The Anchor Bible dictionary (Vol. 3, pp. 299-301). New York: Doubleday.
Tillich, P. (1963). Systematic theology (Vol. 3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Persuasive Games

2007-11-27T21:14:00.000-08:00

Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), xii + 450 pp. $35.00 (cloth).

In the three decades since videogames first began gaining popularity, the medium has been alternately trivialized as a mindless entertainment form unworthy of scholarly attention and vilified as a violence-promoting force corrupting our children. In spite of the frequent (and often heated) deliberation surrounding videogames in the popular press and as a political issue, however, the genre is often misunderstood, lumped in with visual or verbal rhetoric with no real discussion of the unique features of the medium. Ian Bogost’s second book, Persuasive Games, attempts to remedy this misunderstanding, constructing a compelling argument for both the legitimacy of the genre as a subject of scholarship and the unique, potentially revolutionary power of videogames to encourage critical thought and positive change. Although at times Bogost becomes embroiled in seemingly tangential theoretical or technical arguments, the book provides an engaging read, primarily as a thorough compendium of both popular and lesser-known games. Indeed, even though his broader arguments are somewhat shoddily constructed, his passionate advocacy and thorough exploration of the genre (including dozens of individual games) offer, at the very least, fascinating food for thought and further discussion.
Bogost’s book, written for a broad audience of videogame designers, critics, and players, primarily seeks to advance understanding of “a new domain for persuasion” (ix) called procedural rhetoric. Procedural rhetoric, as explained concisely on the inside cover of the book jacket, entails both expression and persuasion via procedurality, or rule-based representations and interactions. The procedural rhetoric realized by videogames is founded in the unique ability of computers to run processes and manipulate symbols based on various sets of strict rules or procedures, which can both replicate complex procedures of ideology found in the real world and, according to Bogost, invite players to disrupt or improve such procedures.
Bogost begins the book with an extensive chapter explaining the history of rhetoric, including the subsets of visual and digital rhetoric, and arguing that the rule-based procedurality of the videogame genre renders it substantively different from other types of media traditionally addressed by rhetorical theories. In order to support this argument, Bogost divides the majority of the book into three broad sections: politics, advertising, and learning as manifested in videogames. In each section, he provides a thorough explication of salient theories and historical foundations, followed by in-depth analysis of multiple videogames. The final chapter of the book argues for a somewhat unorthodox conceptualization of persuasion, claiming that a videogame can be persuasive not only by “producing assent, which can be measured with a yea or nay,” but also by simply inspiring “deliberation, which implies neither immediate assent nor dissent” (329). This concluding section functions along with the introductory chapter to create a metatheoretical bookending of sorts, explaining how videogames can (and should) fit into our understanding of rhetoric and persuasion.
Bogost’s book has a variety of notable strengths. First and foremost, Bogost’s role as both a scholar and game designer allows him to provide an extremely thorough knowledge of the field, offering obscure examples of historical videogames such as Johnson & Johnson’s Tooth Protectors for the Atari system along with insightful analysis of popular titles like Sim City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. He references several dozen games in his writing, but also includes in-depth descriptions of quite a few titles, including The Howard Dean for Iowa Game and Animal Crossing. In many ways, these various examples provide the most intriguing and memorable parts of the book; I was particularly struck by his discussion of America’s Army: Operations, a first-person shooter game commissioned by the U.S. Army as a recruitment tool, as well as his chronicling of early exercise games like Dance Aerobics. Bogost’s critical analysis of these examples is, at times, unsteadily supported; he occasionally offers either praise or condemnation of various games without fully supporting these evaluative claims or even making clear his criteria for such judgments. For the most part, however, both his description and interpretation of a wide range of games make for an engaging read.
In addition to providing extensive information on particular videogames, Bogost also takes care to explain in suitable detail relevant background information from the fields of educational theory, advertising scholarship, political rhetoric, and so on. For example, he begins his discussion of advertising in video games by clearly outlining the three major types of advertising (demonstrative, illustrative, and associative) and giving examples of each type from both traditional print media and videogames. Bogost also goes out of his way to explain how his perspectives fit in with those of other scholars and theorists such as Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and George Lakoff. For the most part, this background information serves to initiate the casual reader into the relevant academic material while also alerting his scholarly audience as to the theoretical underpinnings of his argumentation.
Unfortunately, in his attempt to include a wide range of relevant material, Bogost tends to undermine the clarity of his arguments, leaving the reader lost in a swamp of tangential theories and commentary. This tendency is most pronounced in the first and last chapters of the book, where Bogost attempts to offer the core elements of his theory of procedural rhetoric. He spends a great deal of time explaining the theories and methods of other authors in a concerted effort to differentiate his work from theirs and explain what he is not doing, yet his own voice (and the advocacy he is promoting) is frequently buried in the process. As a result, his overall claims regarding how procedurality works and how it can function persuasively are maundering and difficult to grasp; this renders the book somewhat ineffective as a guide to a new theory of rhetoric. Moreover, his writing style in these metatheoretical sections is often unnecessarily technical and tiresome to work through. At times, it seems as though Bogost inserts brief snippets of intricate programming code or production details that serve more or less to establish his credibility as a designer, not to advance a specific point. In a similar fashion, Bogost’s repeated references to his own company’s games can occasionally come across as self-serving.
In addition to the long-winded nature of his theoretical discussion, Bogost’s primary claim regarding the potential of videogames to advance critical discussions seems overly optimistic and one-sided. Bogost describes his argument succinctly in the book’s final chapter:

The humanities attempt to get to the bottom of human experience in specific situations, to expose their structures. Procedural media like videogames get to the heart of things by mounting arguments about the processes inherent in them. When we create videogames, we are making claims about these processes, which ones we celebrate, which ones we ignore, which ones we want to question. When we play these games, we interrogate those claims, we consider them, incorporate them into our lives, and carry them forward into our future experiences. (229)

Bogost continually makes this argument throughout the book, claiming that videogame consumers use the disconnect between their own understanding of the world and the videogame’s representation (dramatically labeled simulation fever) as an opportunity for “interrogation of the rules that drive both systems” (333) that ultimately leads to critical consciousness. In the case of in-game advertising, for example, Bogost suggests that videogames “expose the logic of situations” (332) in such a way that leads the player to “ask himself questions about the intersection of a product’s features with his own routine and values” (335). While on occasion this argument is tempered with conditional qualifiers such as “might” or “can,” Bogost frequently seems to suggest that such critical engagement with the videogame is a necessary and regular occurrence during casual play, yet no empirical data, anecdotal or otherwise, are offered to support this claim. Nowhere does Bogost consider the possibility of passive videogame players who simply accept the procedures represented in a given game, reifying and normalizing the ideologies promoted therein. Although the suggestion that videogames potentially encourage critical engagement is certainly compelling, Bogost’s blindly confident assertion that they automatically do so is unconvincing, and undermines his overall credibility.
Overall, while the book struggles to advance a lucid claim regarding procedural rhetoric and the persuasive value of video games, it can still function as an enjoyable read that stimulates thought and consideration. In some ways, the three major sections of the book can serve as independent reference pieces for those curious about the genre of, for example, political videogames; certainly, his wonderful descriptions of both historical and contemporary videogames are valuable in their own right without any sort of theoretical discussion surrounding them. Moreover, even if Bogost falters in supporting his claims regarding the revolutionary power of videogames, the overall premises he champions provide excellent fodder for further study and consideration. While he may be a bit too eager to believe that videogames necessarily invite criticism and reflection on the part of the player, such a notion is not unfathomable, and is indeed a welcome alternative to the commonly espoused belief that videogames simply rot the mind. As such, the book offers a valuable perspective on an oft-maligned genre, along with a rich supply of examples, that can hopefully spark interest and reflection among both consumer and scholarly audiences.

eggcorn?

2007-11-23T17:38:00.000-08:00

while myriad theories exist to explain the origin of the odd little phrase "mind your p's and q's", i've just thought of another one (which seems to make a decent amount of sense, unlike some of the others).

might it be that "p's and q's" is just an eggcorn of "'please and thankyou's" or "'pleases and thankyou's"? the "p's" could be a truncated "please" and the "kyou's" part turns easily into "q's"...

or maybe i just think about language too much.

edit: not the first one to have this thought. :(

thankful

2007-11-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

i have so very much to be thankful for...as the day progresses, i'll likely add more to this list as i remember all the ways in which i am, really, blessed. so, an incomplete account of all the things that make my life wonderful:

- the pepperdine speech and debate team, for giving me a wonderful education at no cost to me and for introducing me to wonderful people like melissa, canon, james, derek, tom, alex, stevie, april, jonathan, and the rest of the team, while also letting me stay in touch with people who mean so much to me like kasey, keyon, darryl, joe, and everyone else on the circuit.

- my parents' new house, and the people who made it possible for them to own it. i can't remember the last time i saw my mother so happy. i'm in love with the house, too...it's absolutely beautiful, and i couldn't have imagined a nicer place for my family to live. more importantly, though, i am thankful for how happy it has made my parents.

- facebook, myspace, and the internet at large for letting me keep in touch with (and meet) so many people...including the most important people in my life...people whom i otherwise might not get to talk to as often (like steve love!)...and, well, all of you reading this.

- courtney, for always being there for me, no matter what, for always bringing a smile to my face, and for being the greatest friend i could ask for.

- kyle. for everything.

- world of warcraft, for giving me something to do, something to work towards, a way to connect with people, a way for my mom to get out of her own head sometimes, a way for me to deal with my insomnia...

- dr. feinstein and modern medicine, as a whole, for taking care of me this past year.

- old friends, namely chris and jared, for always being there for me, especially during the worst of times, and for coming over to protect me when i was afraid of the dark.

- new friends, namely james and robbie and riley, for good times, good conversation, and everything else.

- j.k. rowling.

- yelp, for some fabulous recommendations, one in particular.

- google, for being amazing.

- apple, for same.

- my mother. i can't possibly list all the ways in which i am thankful for her.

- my family as a whole.

- my dogs, but mia in particular, for bringing so much joy into our lives and making me feel so, so loved.

- dr. selby and sarah for making my graduate experience incredible.

- NCA, for letting me meet people like john and reconnect with other people like bill and matt and crystallane.

- stanford, and all the people there. i can't even begin to explain all the ways it changed my life, and the people like chris, aaron, and matt, who made it incredible.

- craig and all the people from that part of my life. words don't do justice here.

- the moorpark team for making me who i am today, for giving me the chance to coach, and for taking me with them on some fabulous experiences. jim and rolland changed my life.

- the british tour, for believing in me, for giving me some of the most amazing experiences of my life, and for introducing me to wonderful, wonderful people like fitch, rob, josh, gavin, viv, james, and everyone else.

- pepperdine's campus recreation department, also for believing in me, for trusting me to run a ballroom program, for giving me that outlet, and letting me share something i really love with wonderful new people like alex, courtney, jen, and everyone else.

- everyone, even if i don't tag you or say your name, for making my life what it is today.

- most of all, for mini wheats, in all shapes and sizes.

all the world's a stage, and every word a note

2007-11-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

i realized several things recently.

a) i haven't been playing as much music as i used to.
b) i feel so wonderful when i do.

so, now that i'm pretty well settled in at the new house, with space for my electric keyboard (and with rock band hopefully on its way soon!), i think it's time to start playing and singing again.

if anyone has requests or suggestions for covers to work on while i get back in the swing of things, i'd very much appreciate hearing them...and if anything decent comes out of it, i promise to record and send it your way. also, if anybody feels like getting together and playing, i would be very interested in that possibility.

in theory, this will all happen in 2.5 weeks when the semester is over. in actuality, it will most likely be a form of procrastination/preserving my sanity DURING the next 2.5 weeks. :)

so, yes. send me requests. it will make me happy. :D

omg so delicious.

2007-11-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

i've recently been on a major cooking kick since moving out on my own, and have put together some pretty delicious fare lately.

usually, i see this as a step up from the normal packaged dinner/frozen meal.

however, there is one frozen meal that i actually often prefer (for its deliciousness, not just its ease) over anything i make myself.

three cheese stuffed rigatoni with veggies!

omgsodelicious.

it has changed my young vegetarian life forever.

devin makes me LOL

2007-11-20T00:56:00.001-08:00

A mother was sitting on the couch reading a book when one of her children walked up to her and said, "Mummy, why is my name Petal?" The mother replied, "Because when you were born, a petal fell on your head."
The next baby walked up and asked, "Mummy why is my name Rose?" she replied,
"Because when you were born, a rose fell on your head."
The last baby walked up to her and said, "BLAS CLAFLAS YIFRASSAM TASSM POONNFFFIINRTY."
The mother replied, "Please be quiet, Refrigerator."

eek!

2007-11-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

somebody please tell me this isn't real:

longer blog coming soon, but for now:

- NCA over, went well

- thesis prospectus defended, accepted

- parents all moved out

sigh. back to work.

cuddlysleepy

2007-11-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

do not want to get out of warm squishy bed.

do not want to write paper.

do not want to go to school.

the good news is that there are brownies for breakfast!

ted leo rocks my personal casbah

2007-10-31T01:48:00.000-07:00

this week, it seems, the universe has aligned itself in such a way that everything really is going my way. one example of this was manifest in tonight's activities; a stroke of luck had ted leo adding concert dates in los angeles, another stroke had me find out about them two days ago, and yet another stroke sent every one of the students in my class tonight home for some reason (and telling me about it in advance) so i was free to go to the show!

for those of you who don't understand, ted leo and the pharmacists are certainly in my top five favorite bands list, and i was absolutely blown away when i saw them live at stanford in february. the chance to see them live again was, in short, mouthwatering. (editor's note: if you don't know ted leo, i'd start with "counting down the hours", "me and mia", or perhaps "under the hedge" for a fairly accurate introduction to their rock/slightly punkish style)

my ears are still ringing and my eyes are drooping, so i fear my analysis of the show won't do it justice. however, let me say that it was, in pretty much every way, the perfect concert experience, in spite of my going alone and being sleepy, hungry, and a bit uneasy about being in downtown los angeles past midnight. it was at el rey theatre on wilshire, recently remodeled and beautiful with its velvet and chandeliers. i found free (!), safe (!!), close (!!!) street parking, with a pleasant brisk stroll getting me to the theatre 45 minutes early (in spite of nasty traffic). the venue has a lovely cafe, which actually offers appetizing vegetarian options (huzzah!), so i was able to eat. the first opening act (redundant, i know) was quite good: shortstack, from the d.c. area. the second was bizarre, and i wasn't really feeling it: quasi. now, i will say that i was slightly bummed at how late the show ran...i thought it started at 7:30, but it turns out doors weren't until 8, show started at 9, and ted didn't even appear until 11...so after the second band, i was getting a little exhausted. thankfully, el rey has lovely, comfy, plentiful seats lining all the walls, so i just chilled and waited for ted while watching the acid trippish light shows. finally, some random person starting talking to me, which i was happy about since i was alone and bored out of my mind. nice gentleman from russia who knew nothing about anything but had plenty of opinions nonetheless. after he got tired of me, i stared at the walls some more, pondered the merch booth, somewhat dreaded what would happen next...

you see, the last time i was waiting to see ted, i was sitting patiently front and center in kresge auditorium on stanford's campus. the auditorium, designed for lectures but equipped with a small stage, has approximately two feet between this front row and the stage. perfect. i got there early enough to secure this beautiful post, and suffered through a few terrible (and some awesome!) songs to make sure i wouldn't lose it. looking behind me, i saw the (lame, uncommitted) stragglers relegated to the back rows. ha, i said to myself, with just a hint of smug righteousness.

until ted started playing.

at that moment, every snot-nosed freshman who had been previously sitting in the back rushed to the front of the room and stood literally in front of me and partially on top of me, bouncing up and down in front of ted. worse, they were bouncing...and didn't know the words. THESE WERE NOT REAL FANS! these were IMPOSTORS who also thought it was okay to wear wooden wedge heels to this concert while jumping in front of/on my unprotected toes. ow. i almost got in a fistfight with a particularly rude girl who consistently elbowed me after stepping in front of my seat, then had the audacity to mock me and tell me i didn't know how to enjoy a concert. ugh.

shortly after this show, i went to see the faint, another band i really enjoy, at the house of blues in vegas. long story short: more snot-nosed kids, this time with swoopy bangs. i was knocked off my feet for almost the entirety of the show, fistfights kept breaking out, and everyone was stupid and mean. my toes got severely bruised, i literally couldn't keep my balance (much less see), and i decided i hated concerts...what was the point of dancing around like an idiot and getting hurt?

then, of course, i realized i have become An Old Person. that, however, is a different matter.

the bottom line is, i was scared to get beaten up at the ted leo show again. however, i am thrilled to report that his fans in l.a. were just as awesome as he is. the band played an AMAZING set (i love love love all of them, but especially chris, the drummer who looks exactly like my brother and grins demonically while talking to himself through the show), lasting about an hour and a half with the encore. i knew every song and sang along happily, could see perfectly, and didn't get bumped once, but everyone was still really into it and even dancing along (just...reasonably). i even sang along with "hybrid moments", which he sang with nicole from tra la la, and fantasized about him someday asking me up on the stage. also, couldn't help thinking he was singing a few songs (timorous me, anybody?) just to me, but...his eyes being closed kinda broke that dream for me. oh well.

he said many funny yet witty things, like he always does...dedicated a song to lance, his friend who passed away this past week...made a joke about how the whole band was going to dress up as chris to surprise him (beards for all!), but the real surprise was that they were just all lazy. anyway, i got a lot more out of the songs seeing them live...some of them i really connected with in ways i never had before...so my faith in concerts was reaffirmed. little dawn is my new theme song.

bought my mom a shake the sheets shirt at the merch booth (she named our new puppy "mia" after her favorite song on that album, "me and mia", which i'm totally stoked about). got myself some pins; one will be donated to darryl in gratitude for him turning me onto them. ah, darryl...best thing you've ever done with your life.

finally got home in spite of stupid freeway closures and stupider detours not having signs telling me where to go...thanks to my mom and my gps, i ended up winning that battle. take that, caltrans.

am now exhausted, and have 13 major things to do before friday morning, so should probably get some sleep...although, who am i kidding, i won't wake up anytime other than 9:30 no matter when i go to sleep or set my alarm...my body is just totally rebelling at this stage. "all nighters? nope. waking up early to study? not happening."

ah well.

long as i keep up the grades i've gotten so far this semester, i won't complain. ;)

next time: updates on the prospectus and NCA, since i know you're all DYING to know. sneak preview/hint: I'M FINALLY DEFENDING! MONDAY AT 3! THINK GOOD THOUGHTS!!!

and with that i, the happiest of clams, promise to hush until i get some sleep. ;)

*set list from memory and out of order: the sons of cain, me and mia, army bound, where have all the rude boys gone, the high party, the unwanted things, annunciation day/born on christmas day, bomb.repeat.bomb., the angels' share, i'm a ghost, a bottle of buckie, counting down the hours, colleen, who do you love, loyal to my sorrowful country, little dawn (with interlude of "one more time"), hybrid moments (misfits cover), timorous me*

a midday laugh

2007-10-25T12:44:00.001-07:00

whenever i need a laugh, or at least a bit of perspective, this dramatic reading always seems to do the job. thanks, lauren, for reminding me of it! :)

again, a brief update

2007-10-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

1. the fires are terrible, horrifying, and traumatic, and my heart goes out to all of those who are in danger or have suffered loss. i am safe, my family is safe, my home is still several miles from the flames and is tentatively okay, but my parents' new home in arrowhead is only about a mile or two from the flames. there isn't much to do but wait. we can't get up there to save anything, but we have very good fire insurance and are hoping for the best. thank you to all who have contacted me in concern; to those who have not, i realize you don't love me/live under a rock, but i love you anyway.

2. i am not sure if dr. casey is still alive at this point; my best guess is that he has passed away, ending the unbelievable pain he was suffering from this weekend. the last i heard, his liver had failed and he was on high doses of morphine to try to make things bearable, but the prognosis was not positive. i cannot begin to imagine the heartache his family is going through, with their home threatened as well. my deepest, sincerest sympathies go out to them.

3. in more mundane news, all of the schools in the area have been cancelled due to the fire/road closures/smoke, so i've just been working hard on packing and the thesis all day. will be continuing throughout the week. we left the tournament in a panic yesterday to get the students home to the dorms (thanks to a police escort), but it seems like it was all a large game of hurry up and wait.

4. it was wonderful to see so many of my debate friends yesterday, especially my old teammates. keyon and kasey really mean the world to me, and i've missed them a lot. i know i'll forget someone if i try to list everyone, but...it was wonderful to see so many people...i was surprised and happy to see nicole, and really enjoyed getting to know/work with matt and chris a bit more. as for the rest...you know who you are. thanks for reminding me how much i appreciate this community.

5. as a final thought...i've been thinking a lot lately about happiness, and what makes people happy, and specifically what makes me happy. of course, i derive happiness from a lot of things...personal success, knowledge, my environment, and other people. at the moment, though, i have a pretty simple answer for something that always makes me happy, and that i'm incredibly grateful for: knowing that there's someone who can make me smile, no matter how bad things look. that's pretty wonderful, and i feel lucky. i have good friends; thank you.

so, even as everything burns down around me, and as i hide in my room buried in presidential rhetoric...

i'm smiling. :)

various sundries

2007-10-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

a quick update, before getting back to work...

- a little bummed that i have to miss both chromeo and electric six playing this week because of work, but if anyone's around tomorrow night they should go to the electric six show and tell me how wonderful it is.

- i have recently become rather obsessed with these videos. the first three are songs, the last two dance. these are the things that i've been playing on loop for a week.

chromeo: bonafied lovin (yes that's how it's spelled on the record)
chromeo: needy girl
bats for lashes: what's a girl to do
wade robson's ramalama bang bang
heidi and benji's black mambo

- we should be all moved within two weeks. the process of uprooting 17 years of memories has been more intense than i expected; finding evidence of what my life used to be like can be pretty hard, but also entertaining. i am suddenly thankful that my mom choose to record amusing things i used to say as a child. i will not share them here because nobody other than me and my mom will find them endearing/funny.

- i went dancing last night for the first time in months, back at my old salsa haunt. it's amazing how many people i knew; i barely had a song off to rest, which made me feel good about my dancing. overall, i had an absolutely incredible time and danced more/faster/harder than i have in years. usually, i get pretty self-conscious about my dancing, but for some reason last night, everything just felt...great. it was also interesting seeing my old teacher/mentor and some of the dancers i used to work with...reminded me of a very different, notalwaysgood time in my life. also got kind of upset by the dirty dancing side of the community (the actual style of dancing, not the movie). i'd forgotten about it...and i guess i've just turned a bit more modest in my old age. maybe it's just me.

- i won something last night. that was nice. some national academic thing. i wasn't expecting it. it made me feel a lot better about what i'm doing in school/life. it was also particularly touching because i had to be nominated/supported by a faculty member to do so, and apparently somebody cared enough to do that for me (i certainly didn't ask/apply)...good feeling considering some of the concerns i'd had about not getting along with people in the department. anyway, it's not a big deal, but it came at a really good time for me. yesterday was a hard day (saw one of the professors in my division who had to leave this semester because he has cancer and may not live through the year...he was back to get things from his office, but the chemo has made him look like a completely, utterly different person...literally a skeleton...one of the most awful things i've ever seen). so, there's that.

- i'm pretty sad that it looks like i won't get to have a halloween this year; nobody i know is really that into pumpkins/costumes, nor do i have time to put something together. tragic, because i really, really love halloween. however, i absolutely will not miss nightmare before christmas 3d, even if i have to go alone. if you'd like to join, let me know! i'm SO excited!!! (also: may end up going to see "the seeker" even though i know it's horrible, just because i loved the book so much...)

- i've decided i want to roadtrip across the country when i graduate (may). am now accepting requests for stops along the way, as well as applications for companions for any/all legs of the journey. remember: i have a convertible. i can't wait.

i have far too much to do to justify blogging anything more interesting; for that, i apologize. hopefully things will calm down in a couple of months. just 192 days until graduation!

shelfari!

2007-10-12T22:27:00.000-07:00

man oh man am i excited about shelfari.

a variety of factors have come together recently and made me decide that i really wanted a way to catalogue my books, preferrably online. first of all, i have a whole lot of them and tend to forget about ones i want to read; i've had a few for years that i STILL haven't read. secondly, in the process of moving these past couple of weeks, i've come across literally dozens of books that i'd completely forgotten i had, and i'm really excited about reconnecting with these things that were such a huge part of my life for so long (and still are!). finally, i feel like few of my friends ever tell me about good books that i should read, and, conversely, i'm rarely able to spout off my favorite books when asked, so maybe a social networking implementation of my library would help.

so, after a bit of research, i decided on shelfari. so far, i love it. it works with amazon and google's library features, and interfaces with facebook as well. the design is pretty and flexible, i can (and will, soon) put it in my blog, and it has TONS of different editions so you can meticulously recreate your library!

i know i'll give up on the daunting task of entering EVERY one of my books soon, but it's fun for now. i plan to add more once i finish moving and unpack everything; the books i've input already are just ones i can currently see/remember/remember packing. anyway, i'm frescasaurus on there, if you're interested.

sad truth of today

2007-10-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

girl from class, seeing me in parking lot: "oh, hi! i didn't recognize you!!! your hair's so...small when it's wet..."

...

:(

cnn.com skippeds grammar lessons

2007-10-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

front page headline for this story: "Heat strickens 300 marathon runners".

hahahahahaha, as i was typing this draft, they changed the copy to "300 marathoners stricken by heat". good to know someone was paying attention.

to ubuntu, or not to ubuntu...

2007-09-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

...that is the veryhardtosay question.

i've always had a small place in my heart for open source operating systems, and based on josh's rave review of ubuntu it seems like i may have found a good point of entry.

anybody had any experiences with it?

i'll probably hold off until school and any other marginally important things in my life are thoroughly over, and i'm really Just That Bored. even then, i'll still have at least one mac to use as my main system. but, oh, the geek points i'd score from being able to say, "oh, linux? i use ubuntu..."

i am completely, utterly, and hopelessly in love with this song.

2007-09-24T23:43:00.001-07:00

invisible tetris

2007-09-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

strangest thing i've seen all week.

g.w.b. v2.0

2007-09-07T18:26:00.001-07:00

from cnn:

"Aboard his campaign bus in Iowa, former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee told CNN’s John King , 'I think bin Laden is more of a symbolism than he is anything else.'"

...am i missing something?

pixelated anger

2007-09-05T17:04:00.000-07:00

today has NOT been a good day for me, and i'm blaming the internet. while it's true that i woke up to a parking ticket and have had a variety of other issues in the so-called "real world" to trouble me, i didn't expect these problems to be substantially augmented by my morning browse. internet, i look to you for solace, support, and occasionally flash games or journal citations i'm too lazy to find in the library. why hast thou betrayed me?

during my internet explorations, i found three independently unreasonable news stories. i will share my outrage regarding each in turn.

1) APPLE.

yes, APPLE. in all caps. because that is how angry i am.

it's bad enough that i just found out that my beautiful new iphone, which i bought about 5 weeks ago, is now being sold for two hundred fewer dollars. wonderful. but then apple's hot news headlines site has to smarmily crow this information as though it's the best news ever.

no.

it is not.

i'd prefer a handwritten note of apology.

or a REFUND.

but not this chipper "isn't it grand how we're making the iphone so much more affordable for everyone who was more patient than you were" drivel.

i knew the iphone would be encheapened (yeah, i'm a linguistics major) at some point, and that the technology would be improved as well. however, apple generally doesn't slap its hardcore supporters quite so hard in the face quite so soon after the release of new technology. as one site so aptly put it (apologies, i can't find it again to cite it), it will make even the most impassioned of us think twice about supporting apple's newly released products in the future.

oh, and $0.99 per ringtone, plus the cost of the song? lame, apple. way lame.

(i think it may have to do with some licensing issue...but sony's walkman phone never had to do that...nor did motorola, nor any of the other phone companies that let you make custom ringtones for free...)

2) Law and Order Actor Joining Presidential Race

...what?

d.a. arthur branch wants to do things like outlawing abortion?

i just...

no.

*sigh*

i mean, i will say that schwarzenegger hasn't been as abysmal as i expected him to be. maybe there's something to be said for the exceptional few entertainers who can cross over into politics. but, at its core, the notion bothers me somewhat, because i think people already place far too much stock in what these entertainers say and do (and pay them ridiculously obscene amounts of money). this psychological edge that (i have no doubt) millions of americans give to entertainer candidates is what bothers me more than anything; i'm not saying that all entertainers are unfit for politics, but rather that they're not given a fair amount of critical analysis by the voters. sure, i guess it's possible for actors to have experience in politics and entertainment alike, but i think it's difficult to have the time and inclination to be successful at both, and i think that people focus too much on the success of one arena and unfairly apply that same judgment of success/competence/suitability to the other.

i'm disliking this trend...i thought the california gubernatorial election was a joke, and turned the state into a veritable laughingstock. i'd rather the reputation of our presidency not be tarnished any more than it already has been. more importantly, though, the thought of completely outlawing abortion is frightening to me, and i worry about what other worse-than-bush (i didn't think it possible, but he's worrying me) ideas he'll have.

one thing's for sure, in any case. i'll never look at law and order quite the same way again.

3) Dog Gets $12 million Inheritance

...i don't think i need to say much here.

the fact that a dog has been given more money than most people will ever see in their lifetime is disgusting to me. i can see the argument for keeping the money that you earn if you're going to use and appreciate it, but...this is ridiculous. there are SO many people in need, and...it's sitting there being unused, with a dog who doesn't need it and really CAN'T appreciate it.

on the other hand, i find it pathetic that a housekeeper who worked with the dog's owner for three months is trying to get the inheritance because she got bitten multiple times. how greedy can you be? i understand the inheritance is outrageous, but why not try to convince the estate holders or some judge that that money should be put to some charitable cause because the dog obviously can't use that much of it (trust me, i know, my mom's a dog breeder and we've spent just about as much money on dogs as anyone conceivably could, and we're far short of that mark). anyway, getting bitten over a three-month period in ways that were not bad enough to merit a legitimate case previously should probably not all of a sudden be given new legitimacy now, regardless of how much money the dog has.

apologies for how inarticulate this is. i'm riled up.

your comments, as always, are welcome and encouraged.

tweet!

2007-09-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

i'm in the process of changing things around on the blog. i realize this is irrelevant since most people likely access this site via a feed of some sort anyway, but i did want to highlight one cool thing: my twitter badge.

i really like twitter.

at first blush, it may seem like just another weapon in the swiftly growing arsenal of stalking tools available to us via the interwebs: check my last.fm and you'll know what music i'm listening to when, check your facebook homepage and be alerted to any changes in my relationship status, and, now, check my twitter to find out exactly what i'm thinking or doing at any given moment. better yet, have these updates sent to your instant messaging program or SMS inbox! exactly what you wanted, i know.

in all sincerity, though, twitter is fairly fun. while i don't know many people on it yet, it is pretty cool to get little updates about interesting (or even mundane) things that people i care about are seeing, thinking, and doing. sure, sometimes you'll get an update that's little more than "Mmm Snickers" (one of my own rather profound offerings). however, i'm okay with that, and if you're not (or if you have a limited text messaging plan and start to get worried), then you can turn off your text or IM updates. whoa, that's a lot of parentheses.

basically, it's like a more advanced version of facebook's status updates. as the grammatically conscious among us will appreciate, twitter doesn't force you into a "Name is ___" construct (I love it when people rebel and say things like "John is Traffic sucks"). also, twitter is available to anyone. finally, twitter gives you more ways to update and be updated; you can "tweet" (the verb form of "Twitter") from a text message, instant message, or the web site.

so, check it out. if you get an account, please add me - my contact information is in the sidebar to the right.

if you don't add me...well, enjoy stalking me thanks to this dandy little badge.

judge me, please.

2007-09-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

i return from a long week in which things began, things ended, and i ate way too many cookies. as i sit here on the couch nursing my bruised ego after accidentally setting off my own car alarm, its plaintive bleating informing the entire world that no, i am not, in fact, cool in any way, i decided to post about a similarly ego-bruising experience that i have endured in silence for weeks. no more, i say!

i. hate. facebook's "compare people" application (and its new competitor "superlatives").

why? because while you might make "the sexiest person on facebook"'s day, you've inevitably insulted quite a few others who notice your decree and find that they are not, in fact, the sexiest person(s) on facebook. worse, how about being ranked #4 in most desirable of so-and-so's friends? oh, that's great. i'm not even a rebound. i'm a rererebound. thanks! some would say "hey, at least you made it in the top ten!" ...no. not cutting it for me.

i suppose these sorts of judgments are made by people every day. maybe you have a secret idea of which one of your friends is the smartest. to me, however, it's not that easy. i don't simply rank my friends in a static ordering of "smartest" or "hottest"...i try to, i don't know, appreciate each of my friends on their own merit, and recognize that a) i do not know every facet of every one of my friends and b) many people have different attributes, or different forms of the same attribute, that aren't directly comparable with those merits held by other friends. while a comparison of two people might come along every once in awhile, i can't say that i've ever tried to rank every one of my friends in comparison to one another...and even if i did, i sure wouldn't tell them about it.

really, it strikes me as purely heartless to have these things posted publicly on your profile. hey, guess what, i don't find you kissable! i didn't even bother to rank you amongst my most kissable friends! yeah, that's really the message i wanted to see when stalki--checking up on you. if you DO think that your roommate/best friend/significant other/person you have no chance with really is "the most dateable" of your friends, don't you think you could, uh, just...tell them? and not hurt my feelings? or does that information REALLY need to be shouted from the metaphorical rooftops?

now, maybe my opinion will change if i add the program (something i've continually refused to do) and find that someone has, in fact, named ME their most kissable/marriage-worthy/intelligent friend. who knows. even if one person thinks that, however, i'm pretty sure the competitor in me is still going to be pretty bummed about everyone else who felt the need to make it clear that they DON'T think i'm kissable/marriage-worthy/intelligent. and that's no fun.

so, please.

think before you superlative.

badger badger badger

2007-08-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

thank you, other gavin, for making my day with this news story.

crotch talk!

2007-08-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

i have returned, dear hearts, with perhaps the trashiest post to date.

while bored in colorado, some friends and i were discussing the (swiftly passing) fad of scrolling LED belt buckles. seeing one in a mall, i decided i simply had to have a bright purple one with "bling" around the edges. upon purchasing this delightful accoutrement of self-expression, however, i found myself at a loss for things i could imagine my crotch wanting to say. thankfully, my friends stepped in, and we came up with the following list. please, feel free to add your own, or vote for what you'd like my crotch to say next.

note: it worries me that nearly all of these were offered by debaters at a christian school. their minds are DIRTIER THAN MINE!

wish you were here
$5 admission
tips accepted
must be this tall to enter/ride
please insert here
beaver dam
thank you, come again
no vacancy
trespassers will be shot
caution: slippery when wet
caution: contents may be hot
your mom was here (...?)
master debater (oh, i've never heard that one before)
cunning linguist (nor that one!)
pets welcome
keep off the lawn/carpet
now hiring all positions
picture yourself here
contents may have shifted during travel
maximum capacity: ...?
rogues do it from behind
true north [arrow down]
feed me a stray cat
objects may be closer than they appear
i can't get no satisfaction
open for business
purr
i voted yes on panda sex (thanks, arkansas)
no lifeguard on duty
enter at your own risk
hungry? why wait?
just do it
have it your way
cave tours: apply within/reserve your spot today
caution: tunnel ahead
caution: protective gear required
we reserve the right to refuse service
may i be of service?
take a number
not all bushes are bad
druids do it like a bear
tastes like chicken
the other, other, OTHER white meat

i'm embarrassed by how much this excited me.

2007-08-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=14024263&RN=395

it's so cool.

it's a KNIFE BLOCK without SLOTS!!!

you just cram the knives in anywhere you like!

and it HOLDS them!!!!!!

crazy little plastic or rubber or magical stalks are compressed in the middle, but separate to allow blades to enter.

seriously, just go to your nearest bed bath and beyond and play with one. it will change your life.

reasons why i love my friends, part 2234906

2007-08-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

c: i just madeup a word
oabnsocious
it sounds like it could be a word
seirously

me: no it doesn't.

c: the socious part makes it sound real

moving day!

2007-08-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

so, i am now more than halfway moved in to my new home! i'm in love with it more than ever, although there are a few things i still need to fix (like, you know, getting hot water there). also, since i don't have internet or phone service until saturday, i won't be officially moving in til the weekend. however, the majority of the moving was done today. i'll recap the highlights here.

1) i want to live in this trailer. it's the one right next to the storage compartment where most of my stuff has lived for the past year.

great, right? so great. wait, there's more, on the other side of the door (yes i know that rhome)...

i am too lazy to make it turn. turn your head. or your screen.

2) i dislike black widows. i dislike finding them in my furniture.

3) there is a rock formation that, by day, looks like a capybara humping a lizard. by night, however, it is clearly two beavers humping. i have thus christened it humping beaver ridge.

4) my Favorite Jeans Ever went from being perfectly whole this morning to having a small hole in the knee and another two in the thigh midway through the day to now having a giant rip exposing half of my knee. god, i hope i don't get kneeraped. i'd be asking for it.

5) internet and phone companies are terrifying quagmires of bureaucracy. i recommend vonage tentatively, however. will report more accurately once it's all installed.

6) i adore rich people. i have gotten for free in this move: one really nice brown suede couch (super comfy!), the aforementioned wardrobe that will transport me to narnia, a steamer trunk from the turn of the century, a large chest, a brown leather settee, a coffee table, an entertainment center, a ship's wheel, a globe, a scent diffuser, various cleaning supplies, a chrome dishrack, a brand new sonicare toothbrush, a wardrobe, a dresser, a playstation, a dreamcast, and a banana republic newsboy cap.

unfortunately, i look very dumb in this last item, so if you know any tough-but-adorable brooklyn kids who might be willing to rally their friends into forming a union while singing, dancing, and attacking their foes with marble slingshots, please let me know.

pictures may be provided of any and all of these things on request.

7) my parents are insane (see below) and, aside from the usual telling me how to decorate my place, also inform me to the tenth of the mile how far it is from major and not-so-major landmarks. like an intersection.

8) my dad...is particularly insane. he insisted on inserting himself into this picture to get advice on whether i should keep this super bizarre deco lamp that's evidently worth like $600. didn't know if it would go in my very vintage 50s kitchen with the suede couch and modern glass table next to it. yeah, i totally have a theme. it's vintage spaceship rockstar.

if anyone has comments, advice, or is willing to rotate my pictures for the small price of my admiration, go for it.

various and sundry updates of an uninteresting sort.

2007-07-27T11:37:00.001-07:00

1) i now have an iphone. i love it. it is beautiful and amazing.

in all honesty, my sony ericsson w600i is more functional for me as a phone; louder ringtones, customizable sounds, sleek/small design. however, the sheer awesomeness of the iphone far outweighs anything i've ever had...treo, siemens sx66, the sony ericsson...there's never been anything quite this beautiful. more updates will come as i have more time to play with it.

2) i move in one week. i am ecstatic.

my new home is everything i could have ever hoped for, plus horses. i think the three top things i'm looking forward to are:
a) baking cookies (two batches at a time!) in The Cutest Oven Ever.
b) the new wardrobe i got that has a freaking LION with its mouth open as the keyhole. dead serious. trips to narnia commencing soon.
c) finally having my very own swiffer. oh, you heard me. i will be swiffing night and day. i will have an original swiffer and i will have a wet swiffer. and i will swiff.

3) i'm done with school for the summer, and am very happy about how this class turned out.

reestablished some things that i personally really needed to be sure of...like my ability to write a 24-page paper, with citations, in the morning before class and get 100% on it.

4) i still have not read or seen the new harry potter book/movie.

i know. i know. am going to remedy at least one of these problems this weekend.

5) i am happier than i can ever remember being.

smileys can't do justice to how wonderful my life is at the moment. if you've talked to me in the last year, you'll know how much i needed this. ...yeah. no more words.

for all those times you thought i was lazy...

2007-07-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

...well, i am. sorry. i am lazy about quite a few things: cleaning my car, baking those cookies i still have the toffee bits for, getting my dell/paperweight fixed...

however, there is one thing i am not lazy about that may surprise you: grammar.

yes, ladies and gentlemen, my general lack of majuscules (isn't that word grand? i learned it today. it means big letters.) is a conscious choice.

let me explain.

you see, i'm a linguistics major. this makes me a bit of a nerd overall, but more so of one when it comes to language. moreover, i am a former debater, which makes me somewhat of an activist. finally, i am a graduate student in communication, which makes me both pretentious and insane. mix all of these together, and you have...well, me...but also, an interesting approach to language. in specific, one that chooses to avoid capitalization as a form of commentary.

now, i will be the first to admit that when i first began typing on a regular basis i almost undoubtedly "devolved" to a lowercase style because a) it looked cool and b) i was lazy. i'll make no pretense there.

however, once i started thinking about it, i had A Thought. this Thought was interesting to me, and it ran more or less as follows: why do we capitalize the first-person personal pronoun "i" in english, yet not "you" or "he" or "she" or "we" or "they"? isn't that just a bit rude? i looked into it a bit, and found some interesting things, and didn't find something even more interesting. namely, i found that a whole pile of languages such as italian, german, russian, dutch, and written polish tend to capitalize the second-person pronouns in the singular, plural, or both ("you" in english). what i didn't find was any language other than english that capitalizes the first-person pronoun. of course, many religions also capitalize the names of their deities, but capitalizing yourself? that is a special form of egocentrism reserved only for us english speakers.

so, what to do? i found a problem with consistently placing greater importance, linguistically speaking, on myself rather than the people to whom i was speaking. i didn't want to capitalize every person i talked to, because that would either confuse people more or leave out the people whom i wasn't talking to and therefore wasn't capitalizing. so i could capitalize every person ever referred to in my communication, but that is not only unwieldy, unattractive, and difficult to remember (for me), it also is specifically anthrocentric. now i'll be the first to tell you that there are some basic differences between humans and animals that i'm pretty happy about, but i also think that, in some ways, we have a lot of problems in our world right now that stem from a complete disregard for anything other than the human race. so do i capitalize everything that's living? what about the ocean? does that live too? should we respect that as much as we do, say, a cow? what about dead people? i don't know anymore. how about other parts of speech? do adjectives count in any way? brain begins to melt rather swiftly around this point.

so i chose what i felt was a simple and elegant solution: place all symbols and their referents at the same linguistic level, except when needed for the sake of clarity or humor (see above; aren't i hilarious?). and there you have it: my reasoning behind my consistently low-profile typing style.

oh, i also don't really capitalize at the beginning of sentences because a) you generally don't need to, thanks to the magic of punctuation (tm), and b) i think it breaks the flow of the writing. especially in instant messaging, and in my particular style of writing, sentences aren't always complete; forced capitalization gives the sense that they are. this choice is mostly an aesthetic one, however, and not one i really intend to defend very staunchly.

now, i admit that i still use "proper grammar" for assignments, or for writing to people who likely wouldn't understand/appreciate my point of view (or whom i need to impress without sounding like a total nutcase). perhaps that's cowardly of me, but i don't think so. i am firmly of the belief that i can work within a potentially oppressive system and gain credibility therein before slowly beginning to implement my own advocacy; therefore, i should stockpile respect (and good grades) for awhile longer before i start rocking the academic boat. a friend of mine is the sort who always writes "woman" as "womyn", for example, but i find that people just get annoyed and don't take him seriously because he hasn't really gained the credibility to have an alternative voice yet. sure, there are arguments both ways, but i'm not egotistical enough to think that i should run around making all my professors very confused and disgruntled and change their way of understanding papers just because i have had A Thought (see? funny again!). more importantly, i'm not altogether sure i'm right. sapir and whorf were both wanks, and while i think linguistic relativity (hey look, i learned how to close tags) has quite a bit of validity, i could be wrong about this one. yes, it has happened. i'm sorry to disappoint.

if you were curious, this deep level of introspection resulted from my realization that, while i used "proper grammar" when i first starting writing in this blog, i have recently shifted back into my monoplanar comfort zone. i understand that this change may have traumatized you all, likely causing many a sleepless night where you wondered why, dear lord, why. therefore, i felt the need to clarify for your peace of mind, dear readers.

so, there you have it. the rather long, uninteresting story of why my shift keys remain so underutilized.

next time on the pedant's activism hour: expletive constructions - worthy of expletives or no?

What have I done...

2007-07-25T20:54:00.000-07:00

you know what sucks?

having to study for an exam.

you know what sucks even more?

hearing your mother play world of warcraft in the next room while you have to study for an exam.

This Is Not A Book

2007-07-25T08:10:00.000-07:00

"Shakespeare said it far more eloquently when he penned the often quoted line from Hamlet, 'This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.' And we would add, 'Thou canst not then be false to yourself."

...really, book? really?

did you REALLY just add a line to shakespeare that amounts to "to thine own self be true ... and it must follow ... thou canst not then be false to yourself"? no, really? being true to myself, leads to not being false to myself?!! BRILLIANT.

...i. hate. this. book.

i vote no on proposition: adultery

2007-07-24T00:08:00.001-07:00

awkward moment in class today:

professor: "anybody know what a 'reference group' is?"

me: "yeah, it's a group you look to in order to guide your choices and attitudes. so, like, if you were a christian, you might go to a group of christians and be like...'hey, i'm thinking about adultery. whatcha think?' and they'd be like...'um...nope. thumbs down. we vote no.'"

professor: "...yeah...that'd probably get a big thumbs down..."

Updates on feminism...

2007-07-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

If you're curious, read:
Dan's response to my post
or
Ian's unrelated yet very interesting take on the matter.

Evidently, Jesus was courageous!

2007-07-05T00:07:00.001-07:00

I currently have the...ahem..."pleasure" of reading a book on intercultural communication that, surprisingly enough, is in its SIXTH edition. Sixth. That means someone has actually thought about this drivel five previous times and decided that this was somehow publishable.

I, however, beg to differ.

My two favorite passages are as follows:
"In fact, although many Africans such as the Yoruba and the Neur, still follow traditional religions, however, most Africans, because of colonization and missionaries, are Christians or Muslims."

And the real zinger:
"As Carmody and Carmody note, 'Jesus was courageous.'"

Yes, these are directly quoted from this book.

Now, there are a few problems I have with this that actually go beyond my standard grammatical mockery.

First of all, the professor for whom I am reading this book ADMITTED that the book is terrible, but told me that I was lucky to be reading this one, because the good one is twice as long.

That frightens me, since this one is ~60 pages/day of repetitive drivel.

It literally hurts my brain to read.

So, the professor realizes this book is bad, yet assigns it anyway? This is a bit frustrating since a) there will be pop quizzes on the reading, and b) she reports some of it in my favorite format, Powerpoint, but not quite all of it...so I'm pretty sure what she doesn't review will be on the quizzes.

I can make it through about 10 pages an hour. That's how bad it is.

The other thing that I find ridiculous, however, is the excessive use of quotations. The example above is pretty wonderful, especially since the authors are trying to make an argument that Jesus' courage has influenced Christian people to be courageous (in a way that other religions don't do, evidently). Yeah, Jesus was definitely the only courageous religious leader. And Christians are definitely the only people who value courage. Yep.

Even when the point is valid/interesting, however, the book quotes everybody and their mother. They do it out of context, without telling us why the quotation was said or why whoever said it should be trusted. Personally, I find that ridiculous. If you're going to quote some random last name at me who said that "religion is the most important factor of culture" (which is entertaining, because I'm FAIRLY sure they directly quoted people in the previous two chapters saying that family and history, respectively, were the single most important factors of culture), you should probably tell me why I want to believe that. Or, better yet, don't make blanket superlative assertions.

It's like these authors were never taught how to incorporate research into their book. Instead, they introduce a paraphrased idea, then quote someone who says the exact same thing, and do so with no interesting transitions whatsoever. Something like, "Islam has spread far over the past two centuries. As Smith maintains, 'Islam has reached many corners of the globe durnig the last 200 years, influencing many cultures.'" Why does Smith need to "maintain" that? Why did you need to quote him/her on that? Why did you need to say the same thing twice? Argh, authors, you frustrate me.

Aside from ranting about this particular book, however, I do have a somewhat relevant point to make: Academia relies so heavily on citations and quotations these days, and I think, at times, we've gone a bit overboard. Unless you're going to tell me who said whatever you're quoting, the context for them saying it, and why it should be trusted, do you really need to be quoting? Do you really need to tell me that some random Jones believes that Islam is the most complex of all religions in a direct quotation, or could you, perhaps, make that argument on your own, citing him and perhaps other relevant individuals as scholars who agree, along with various reasons for the argument? I don't know. It's a fine line to walk, for sure, and I know it's hard in a textbook or summarizing article. It just seems like so much regurgitation. Besides, the greatest minds in our world didn't really cite...anybody. You think Foucault was busy citing anybody else who said that "power structures exist"? Or that Freud needed 12 other authors to suggest that everything is our mothers' fault? Likely not. Now, I'm not saying I'm Foucault (obviously not, since I'm actually coherent) or Freud (because I'm not insane and chauvinist), but, still. When are we going to start thinking for ourselves? Ever? Or will I forever be rejected from academic journals and classrooms without a list of people smarter than I am tacked to the back of my writing?

I realize the importance of being well informed about your topic, and of grounding your argument against others' work. However, what saddens me is the lack of arguments that are being made. Scholars tend to use a statement attributed to someone else and believe that can stand as a valid argument. No, I'm afraid, "because that dude said so" is not an argument. Please stop pretending it is one.

The world will be a better place when our libraries stop being cluttered with unimportant people quoting other unimportant people with no better justification for their claims than "" and a reference list at the end.

Oh well. Maybe I'll feel better once I'm in graduate school, where real learning begins!

...oh...

...wait...

...never mind.

Blockbuster, what do you take me for?!

2007-06-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

I recently signed up for Blockbuster Online, and have been thrilled by the resulting onslaught of films on my doorstep: Lady and the Tramp, I <3 Huckabees, and The Royal Tenenbaums have been recent favorites. As soon as I finish watching a movie, I diligently rate it on Blockbuster's site to establish more (and, in theory, better) recommendations. I have so far rated 84 films, so the site should have a pretty good idea of what I like.

...which is why I'm worried that Angel of H.E.A.T. was recommended to me. I mean, I always get insulted when the site suggests a movie that has been given 1.5 stars by other viewers (which is supposed to mean, according to the site, "I really didn't like this movie"). Really, why don't they just give me a scrolling banner that says WE THINK YOU HAVE HORRIBLE TASTE IN MOVIES! But evidently they have somehow translated my love of Disney animation into an obsession with porn, based on the description of the film:

Angel of H.E.A.T.

Full Synopsis:
Videophiles will know The Protectors, Book 2 by its original title, Angel of H.E.A.T.. Porn star Marilyn Chambers plays a secret agent, teamed up with cult favorite Mary Woronov. Their mission is to stem the world-domination plans of evil Dan Jesse. To accomplish this task, Chambers finds it expedient to shed her clothes at the least provocation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Wonderful. Put it at the top of my queue, please.

Gay/Rape

2007-06-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm getting overly defensive. Maybe I need to relax. Maybe it's my problem, but for some reason I absolutely cannot stand hearing people refer to things as "gay" (in the pejorative sense), refer to a disliked person as "fag", or inform me that they got "raped" if they didn't do well in a competition. Yes, friends, I have a new vendetta against language.

Let's address each of these terms one by one, sprinkling in bonus info on less editor-friendly terms like "pussy" as well!

According to the incredibly legitimate academic source Wikipedia, gay became popular as a pejorative term in the 1980s and late 1990s, when homosexuality was becoming increasingly discussed and, as a result, increasingly oppressed by many. Oh yes, I certainly remember that phase of my life when every teenager I knew was talking about "gay" this and "gay" that. I didn't think much of it at the time, thinking it instead to be one of those inexplicable quirks of language that I would never quite understand, such as how for a brief time "bad" actually meant "good". I'll be the first to admit that even I may have uttered one or two "gays" in my younger life, not understanding the implications.

What troubles me is that this term has not died out with the other, more transient elements of the 1990s, like hypercolor shirts or Kurt Cobain (too soon?). It is still in use with abundance and fervor, particulaly in chat on World of Warcraft (I can't speak for other games or chat rooms, as this is the only one I frequent...I am not ashamed). One of my friends surprised me the other day by saying "ghey" with a :P face following it, as though that were somehow an amusing, yet acceptable, alternative. Once again, Wikipedia comes to the rescue, noting that many have tried to use "ghey" as a non-offensive substitute for "gay", as others have tried to use "knigger", thereby only capturing the new meaning of the word without linking it pejoratively to the people it otherwise would reference.

Nope, I'm not buying it.

I can't believe that the BBC ruled that "gay" need not be offensive as a pejorative. I love you, BBC, but you've done me wrong here. There is no way you can tell me that the use of "gay" to mean "stupid" or "uncool" is not a direct (and very recent) derivative of similar connotations against homosexuals. In fact, that use of "gay" directly flies in the face of its original meaning, which suggests "happy", "carefree", and "liberated from traditional constraints". By all accounts, then, "gay" should mean "cutting edge", not "sub par".

I don't think much more needs to be said on the topic of "fag". "Fag", of course, is short for "faggot" and similarly is used in connotation with homosexuals (typically men), although it has always held a more desparaging air. This one I'm not as worried about, because it doesn't masquerade as being acceptable as "gay" now does (according to the BBC, even...for shame). This one is blatantly offensive, and links the offending person with homosexuality and thus, apparently, weakness.

Now, this is just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. The "N" word is finally all but gone from our vernacular as a pejorative (and the blacks are even reclaiming it!). I doubt these same people run around using racial slurs. So why is it okay to choose homosexuals as the new scapegoat of choice? Oh, right, because they're not being recognized as people yet. Silly me.

I'm not saying that you need to support gay marriage, or that you need to be gay. Maybe I'm dead wrong about language use and it has become separate from the pejorative, demeaning cultural psyche against homosexuality. I doubt it, though. Think about the most offensive terms we have for men: fag is a big one, followed closely by (and pardon my language, I'm just interested in the linguistics here) pussy, cocksucker, and the now-dwindling alternatives of dick and asshole. First of all, I find the obsession with body parts to be remarkable, especially those of a sexual nature. That one, I can't explain. But I do find it frightening that three of these (four, if you want to stretch it) refer directly to homosexuality. Is that really the most offensive thing we can say to a man? That he might prefer the company of other men? It isn't surprising, given our culture's obsession with "manliness". But I've always laughed when a man has been called a "pussy" in front of me, because as far as I can tell, "pussies" have more power over a man than absolutely anything else.

Nevertheless, it seems as though we as a culture are fixated on making homosexuality undesirable. So what do we do? Are homosexuals just the scapegoat of the week? If we move on from this group, do we just pick another? Why don't disabled (differently abled?) individuals get upset at our rampant use of "lame"? Is somebody ALWAYS going to be denigrated?

The Sapir-Whorf stuff about how language defines our reality may have been, well, rubbish in terms of its experimental design, but I think there's some truth to it. As long as we run around saying bad things are gay, we're likely going to think that gay things are bad, too. And I, for one, am not cool with that.

What can we do about it, then? I've had a decent amount of luck just saying to people "Would you mind not using 'gay' to mean 'bad' around me? I find it offensive." There have been three common responses: silence, a surprised "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend", and the oh-so-mature "So you're a dyke then. Lesbo." Classy, I know. But what is the alternative? I ask, dear readers, what I do now? Do I shut up and let this phase pass on its own? Do I politely suggest that people around me not use such language, perhaps reverting to such bland standbys as "bad" or "unpleasant"? Do I get over it and fall into the "it's just language, it doesn't mean anything" camp?

...or do I suggest new, entertaining vernacular!

Now, replacing "bad" with anything else is probably going to offend some people. I've thought of using some objects in that role, since they clearly can't be offended, but I fear the use of "rutabaga" is not only unwieldy, but would also upset environmentalists by saying I am now devaluing plant life and encouraging an anthrocentric mindset. Oops. Sorry, carrots. Okay, how about something that is obviously less evolved? "He's such an amoeba" has a nice ring to it, but people might have trouble spelling it. I think the safest alternative is gibberish: "That party was completely zizzlefex". Perfect. Your submissions are welcome below.

On a more serious note, however, I have failed to address the final, and perhaps most complex, term mentioned above: "rape". Rape is not funny. Rape is not something to be taken lightly. Rape is not equivalent to losing badly in a video game. Rape is a life-altering, psychologically scarring violation of your body and soul. I'm fairly sure you're not going to walk away from a debate round needing years of therapy, hating yourself, fearing all men and unable to enjoy a healthy self-image or sex life. So why do people consistently use this term in video games, debate, and other competition to describe their loss? Is it actually okay, and I'm just getting up in arms? Maybe it's because I'm female, but...such a term makes me shudder, and I think that using it consistently in unimportant settings removes that strong connotation and lessens the importance of that reality. What disturbs me even more, however, is when players or debaters support this act of "raping", getting excited about the prospect of "raping" their opponents. Not only does this devalue the atrocity of rape, it encouragessuch an act. That is something we absolutely cannot afford to do. Am I overreacting? You tell me. I'm curious to know. If I'm not overreacting, though, I think we (especially those in the debate community) need to start doing something about our colleagues and students throwing this term around like a Glow-In-The-Dark Frisbee (tm).

So, there's my opinion. I think these terms shouldn't be used in common speech. I think we need to start thinking about our language choices, because language is probably the most important and pervasive tool of ideology that we have. You may not realize it, but the way we talk about things is directly responsible for how we think, feel, and act about them (check out any number of communication scholars on this topic; Sapir and Whorf are the big ones, but there are others). That being the case, I'm not comfortable with normalizing rape or denigrating sexual choices via my vernacular. Please help me either reconcile these concerns in my own mind, or provide a solution. Until then, I will be celebrating my homosexual friends, avoiding sexual violence in debate rounds, and happily yelling about every zizzlefex fool I come across.

I am not a feminist.

2007-06-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

After having graduated with an honors thesis that fell clearly into the realm of feminist studies, speaking at a relatively intense feminist studies conference, and beginning graduate work that once again embroils me quite thoroughly in the world of feminism, I have come to a rather surprising conclusion: I am not a feminist.

In fact, I'm very near what one might call an anti-feminist.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love being a (rather liberal) female, I fully support females and femininity, and I'm far from the typical "anti-feminist" throw pillow types who prefer adhering to standard gender roles over rocking the boat. You'd be hard pressed to ever find me in the kitchen with an apron. I'm still iffy on whether I even want children. While I love makeup, I go out most days without it. I'm certainly not in support of any oppressive patriarchy here.

Another necessary caveat entails the distinction between "feminism" and "feminist studies". I fully support, and find fascinating, the study of gender roles, including their construction and enforcement. Indeed, such study has taken over the vast majority of my collegiate career. I read Cosmopolitan in order to figure out the hidden messages behind "104 Ways to Please Your Man", right alongside many of the top feminists in academia. I find the academic, analytical side of feminist studies to be quite appealing, yet nevertheless I have always felt that awkward, deer-in-the-headlights embarrassment whenever I am called a feminist. After a few years of feeling guilty for my curmudgeonly refusal to stand beside fellow women in feminism, I've finally figured out the main problems - or, at least, my problems - with feminism.

First of all, feminism doesn't exist. If you asked one hundred self-identifying feminists what they stand for, you'd likely get one hundred very different answers. Obviously, this is also true for political parties, and other movements as well. Some vegetarians, for example, are against the meat industry, while others are against the moral notion of eating another creature. Some Republicans support the party because of their economic policies, while others support it for...well, I don't really know anymore, because politics have started to scare me, but I'm sure they have a reason. In any case, however, both of these groups can unite on one key practice: Pretty much all vegetarians choose not to eat meat (what type of meat, of course, is up for debate), while most staunch Republicans choose to vote for Republican candidates. Feminists, however, don't really agree on much. Minimalist feminists (say that three times fast!) think that there really are few differences between the sexes, while maximalists think there are key differences that should be recognized. Liberal feminists want to work within the current system to include women's voices, but materialist feminists think the system shouldn't exist at all. Stiletto feminists embrace their sexual power, yet other groups see sexuality as a form of male objectification. I'm sure there are countless other subfactions of feminists who all have different beliefs; third wave feminists, cultural feminists, and others that aren't even cohesively labeled as of yet. Various groups think that "women" should be defined and empowered as a separate gender group, while others want gender labels to become unimportant and view gender as a fluid identity characteristic. So, in short, "feminists" can't agree on whether women exist, how women should act, how women should be treated, and how other genders fit into this whole mess. While I fully support individuals aligning with a cause they believe in, I find it problematic to label any one of these "feminist" when we can't even agree on what feminism is and what it should strive for.

My second concern follows from the first somewhat paradoxically, in that I oppose the "image of feminism" (which by all previous logic shouldn't exist). Indeed, in spite of feminism's amorphous nature, a surprising number of (primarily uneducated) individuals have nevertheless decided on a stereotypical feminist image. Come on, let's be honest, I'm sure at least once or twice you've associated the word "feminist" with other words and images like "butch", "dyke", "lesbian", "man-hating", "troublesome", "rabble-rousing", "liberal", and even "crazy". It's not necessarily a pleasant image that comes to mind for many people. To be sure, these associations are not without cause. Feminist groups often embrace a Black Power fist-type logo, or coopt the image of Rosie the Riveter. Feminists are often outspoken, and...well...a bit crazy at times. Gay women have often been forced to deal with notions of gender identity more harshly than their heterosexual counterparts, so it isn't surprising that they have a voice in the movement, too. Nevertheless, as noted earlier, there is no such thing as a stereotypical feminist. It isn't fair to make these assumptions. More importantly, it entrenches a negative connotation with the movement that, before you get the chance to explain what species of feminist you are, immediately turns off a surprising number of listeners. So, I suppose that's my problem. Why would I label myself in such a way that will make it harder to get my message out? Even if the stereotype weren't negative, however, I would still oppose it, simply because it isn't fair. If feminists can't even agree on what feminism is, it's probably not a good idea for the rest of the world to try to decide for them, then get it wrong and alienate themselves along the way.

My final and most personal opposition to the label of feminist is one that, I realize, may just stem from my age, and my refusal to accept that women are the only (or more important) people who have been oppressed. I realize that I have grown up in a remarkably liberal environment, where I was never told that I couldn't do something because I was a female. I haven't seen a lot of overt oppression, although I recognize there is a startling amount of mind control still going on subliminally. However, I simply can't justify a philosophy that favors women over all other groups. If feminists are fighting for freedom, security, respect, and opportunity for oppressed individuals (which is probably the closest we'll come to finding something that all feminists agree on), I can't possibly see why those values would be promoted for females, yet not other individuals like transsexuals, those with disabilities, elderly people, black people, or even, heaven forbid, men. By calling myself a feminist, I linguistically limit myself to championing the rights of the female above all others. That just seems to fly in the face of everything that I, and many feminists I know, stand for in terms of equal respect and opportunity. Besides, with the growing acceptance of homosexuality, transsexuality, transgender roles, hermaphrodites, and other things we haven't figured out how to name, I'm not even so sure I know who (what?) falls into the archaic category of "female" anymore. So why would I align myself with a group that privileges one group over another, in order to combat...you guessed it...the perpetual privileging of a different group. To play on the classic phrase, fighting privilege with privilege makes the whole world oppressed.

So, what's the answer? If I'm not a feminist, what am I? Am I just going to stand quietly by and let the world go on wronging people around me? No, of course not. First and foremost, I shouldn't need a label to believe in something; I'd rather explain my beliefs through lengthy blog posts that nobody reads. However, because labels are catchy and do give some people a shared identity to empower themselves, I've decided that I'd like to be an equivalist. I don't believe in equality, which is a key facet of "civil rights". I think "all men are created equal" is dead wrong, and an absolutely ridiculous notion to uphold. We are not equal, and I am eternally thankful for that. We all have different ideas, skills, hopes, and beliefs, and that's what makes life interesting. I, personally, will never be good at sports, and I don't want to be given a spot on the same team as Brett Favre just because I'm a person and "deserve that right". I am, however, great at other things, and I'd like to be rewarded for those talents. The key? I want to be valued and respect just as much for my abilities and choices as the next person. In other words, I want equal value, or equivalence, not equality. Now, this isn't a foolproof plan. I recognize that my job as a janitor might not involve as much skill as that of a neurosurgeon, so I'm not saying we should value all skills equally; people will get paid differently, some people will be more skilled than others, and there is always going to be inequality. What I personally will be trying to do, however, is to give people fair chances, and respect the choices they make if they're not hurting anybody else. I won't deny people respect or opportunities based on identity features like race or gender. I'll do my very best to value people equally, in spite of their differences. I guess what I am saying is that we should take a little more time to respect that we do all have differences, and that's okay. In fact, it's a good thing. We just need to start seeing the value in other people's ways of life.

Okay, so I don't have it all figured out. I don't know what will make everyone happy, because everying is different. Moreover, there are just some things that I will never respect: Those who hurt other people intentionally, for example, are pretty low on my personal totem pole. We all have intrinsic value systems that, no matter how hard we try, will probably privilege one group over another. Maybe feminists have it right, and I'm just crazy. To be sure, they do some pretty cool things, and I say rock on if that's what you want to do and be. But it just isn't for me.

After four years of identity crisis rich enough to be a Lifetime TV movie (which isn't saying much, I know), I'm finally letting go of my shame. I am not a feminist. So what do I do know? I guess, to quote The Nightmare Before Christmas, I'm gonna do the best I can.