Are there still people who do not know that using all capital letters in their electronic correspondence is equivalent to shouting?
Do these people quote from a definition of all caps as shouting as support for their position that all caps is not shouting?
I’ll be heading back east to visit family and friends in December. And yes, I’ll be in Philadelphia for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association at the same time as many of the folks who read this blog. I’d be happy to meet as many of you as want to get together at this annual shin-dig. Last year, I met up with Chuck and Kathleen in the hotel bar (and I met Steven Shaviro briefly).
This year there seem to be many more likely-to-attend-MLA bloggers who are aware of each other. With that in mind, I’ve taken the liberty of creating MLA Bloggers. If you’d like to contribute, send me an email.
Also, let’s all write to the organizers of the MLA to ask them to put the entire conference program online, so that misrepresentations of the work we do will not be quite so easy to get away with. What the heck, let’s all write MLA President Robert Scholes.
Bonus Links: “
The Academic Job Interview Revisited,” by Mary Dillon Johnson (via Prof Grrrrl).
Tonight, I spent two hours grading at the Broadway Cafe, and then headed to the Uptown Theater at around 9:00. In college, I would drink booze before a show; now I drink espresso. Go figure.
As I walked up to the entrance, the ticket taker said, “You know PJ Harvey’s not playing.” Not even a question, just a statement. “Well, I do now,” I replied. He looked irritated with me.
I arrived just in time to catch the last three or four songs by the Dresden Dolls, including a wicked cover of Black Sabbath‘s “War Pigs.” Just piano and drums, but they tore that song up. Say what you will about poor, doddery, old Ozzy Osbourne, but that’s one powerful song.
After about a 30-minute break, Sonic Youth came out. Something struck me as not quite right about this show, compared to the one back in August. Maybe the sound just wasn’t right, which is really the resposibility of the venue more than the musicians. I’ve only seem them live twice now, and they sounded so crisp and clear at the Blue Note. Tonight they sounded kind of muddy. On the other hand, they did cut loose with more abandon a few times tonight. At times the songs just absolutely fell apart and careened into long stretches of feedback, which was great. I headed up to the balcony for the last 20 minutes of the show, and they sounded much better from that vantage point.
Amusing stage banter:
Kim Gordon: “It’s great to be here in Kansas, again.”
Crowd: “MISSOURI!”
[awkward pause]
Thurston Moore: “We’re in Missouri, babe.”
I know that the proprietors of Gimpysoft and Badda Blog! were there, but I did not see them. The venue was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.
Geez, now I’ve got to try to go to sleep. Tomorrow I hope to focus on getting some writing done.
I met Joe Miller at the last KC Bloggers Meetup.. He used to write for The Pitch, Kansas City’s alternative news weekly, but now he’s working on his first book, “about the Kansas City Central High School debate team.” His blog, Kansas City Soil, is one of the best around in part because of entries like this one.
I’ve got to start seeking out the places where KC’s creative people present their work. A friend sends along a link to Andrea Flamini:
Andrea creates generative video installations. At the core of his research is the development of random and generative methods of sequencing video and sounds, a process often called ‘Computational Cinema’ or ‘Process Cinema.’ His generative videos are designed to play endlessly, in an unlimited number of random variations.