Blogs

Looks like I'm not the only one who dreamed about Chun.

We've gone live. Here's the official release note:
Announcing---

Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs
ed. Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman, University of Minnesota

This online, edited collection explores discursive, visual, social, and other communicative features of weblogs. Essays analyze and critique situated cases and examples drawn from weblogs and weblog communities. The collection takes a multidisciplinary approach, and contributions represent perspectives from Rhetoric, Communication, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, and Education, among others.

Into the Blogosphere is a first in many ways. Along with its being the first scholarly collection focused on the blog as rhetorical artifact, the editors also offer an innovative approach to intellectual property and to publishing. There are a number of peer reviewed journals in digital format. However, with an edited collection, the desired outcome is usually a hard-copy book, so the standard process has been to turn to a publisher with a proposal, then typically wait several years before the book actually comes out.

*Next time you attempt pan-seared salmon, wear long sleeves.

It was worth the little pop-burns on my forearms, though. Before cooking, I marinated the salmon in olive oil and cajun seasoning, and I squeezed some lime on it before serving it to myself. Delicious. :D

What I'm working on:

It's another prototype for a hat I'm making for my friend D.--Michelle got the first one, since I deemed it too feminine for him (but great for a woman, as evidenced by Michelle's picture). This one, too, is up for grabs if anyone wants it; I'm just doing it to get the hang of reducing in rib stitch. I want to use this pattern for the real hat.

Via My Bad Karma--you're going to think I should be taken out and shot once you see which movies I haven't seen. I added Paris Is Burning and Pitch Black to the list since I rented those tonight:

Happened to find these old exams online, for those who might want to see rhetorical theory sample questions other than the ones I've proposed. Oh, and I'm finally posting the reading list for my specialty area: feminist theory and research on gender and computer-mediated communication. Please excuse the ugly formatting; some citations are in APA, some MLA, sometimes the articles came from coursepacks and not all the publication information is there...it's anarchy!

I told Charlie about this dream I had the other night, and he thought it was odd--and VERY geeky. He encouraged me to post about it, so here goes: I dreamed that I went to my admin menu in my blog, then to accounts, then to permissions. I gave the following permissions to all registered users:

create pages

create php content

create stories

create url aliases

edit own blog

edit own pages

edit own stories

But I didn't announce it here; I wanted to see if people noticed that they had the new options the next time they logged in. After I changed the permissions, I went to sleep (in the dream). Then (in the dream) I woke up and shuffled over to the computer as I always do right after I make my bed. I called up my blog and was horrified at what I saw: Tons of people had posted all kinds of random stuff--extreme neoconservative pontification, hate speech, pr0n, you name it. And there were 27 comments under every post. I immediately changed the permissions back and set about deleting all the evidence of my failed experiment.



Charlie thinks it's strange that I dream about the web. I dream about it all the time. Back when the Ms. message boards were still around, I dreamed about some of the posters on there, even though I'd never met them. They'd just find their way into my dreams somehow, most of the time taking non-human forms. One in particular was a big glob of primordial ooze. Anyone else dream about the web, or about your blog?

How'd I miss this? On Wealth Bondage, I found this thread on W Ketchup, the practical alternative for those who wouldn't dream of supporting Kerry. At first I thought the actual selling of this stuff was a joke in the key of napalm.net, but I put in phony information, and it prompted me for a credit card number. It looks like this could be for real, but wait, there's more! For dessert, if you don't like that cold, creamy liberal goodness, you can now opt for Star Spangled Ice Cream...but that has to be a joke--four quarts of the ice cream will set you back $76.00.