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The Matrix: Revolutions--WARNING! SPOILERS!

I am so freaking excited about The Matrix: Revolutions. Unfortunately, I won't get to see it until probably this weekend. I also really want to see Gothika.

Does anyone else think Neo might be a program? Or a human/program amalgam? The Architect told Neo he is "irrevocably human" when he's at the doorway to the source, but there seem to be other indicators that he's a program. I wrote them down the other night, but lost them.

Monday gloom

I have so much work to do today. I dread teaching. I think class will go well today because of what I have planned (workshopping annotations from their annotated bibliographies), but I just don't want to do it today, you know? I am reminded of a time in my life when I was considerably depressed, and the only thing that would cheer me up was listening to my Television's Greatest Hits TV theme song CDs. So many of those songs showed such bravery in the face of sitcom hardships. Consider the theme song from One Day at a Time, my favorite when I'm sad.

This is it. This is it.


This is life, the one you get


So go and have a ball.


This is it. This is it

Straight ahead and rest assured

You can't be sure at all.



So while you're here enjoy the view

Keep on doing what you do

So hold on tight we'll muddle through

One day at a time, One day at a time.



So up on your feet. Up on your feet

Somewhere there's music playing.

Don't you worry none

We'll just take it like it comes.



One day at a time, one day at a time.

One day at a time, one day at a time.

One day at a time, one day at a time.

One day at a time, one day at a time.

Remember the opening sequence to that show? The opening chord of the song struck just as we were in a car, going down what looks to be I-94, headed into Indianapolis. There was that big sign above us. I forgot, why exactly are we supposed to be so exuberant that we're going to Indianapolis?

Happy birthday, v i t i a.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but happy birthday.

Mmmm, that's good writin'.

Not much to say lately, but thought I'd pass on a snippet of someone else's voice. My friend Libby is an awesome writer. Check out this excerpt:

My life is absolutely totally great. I love working in the sex industry. I’m sexy and young and well-edjumicated and full of bubbling energy. And my car is bitchin’.

My life is an x-rated soap opera written by alcoholic spinsters with too much time on their shaky, ring-less hands. The sex industry makes its money off of mixed signals- porn starlet as sexually empowered woman on screen, exploited and humiliated smut slave on set- which is complex and bewildering for a female nymphomaniac who tends to warp her career into her identity.

In two months I will be 30, a deadline that has been shaking my psyche since I turned 26. My sexy clothes don’t fit anymore, and I feel like a polish sausage when I wear garter belts and high heels. I spend most of my time alone, exhausted from doing nothing.

And my car is an ashtray on wheels.

I hear ya, girl.

Finally, 100 Things About Me

I know I'm kind of late to this party, but what the heck:

  1. Every time I see a bottle of calamine lotion, the song "Poison Ivy" gets stuck in my mind.
  2. Every time I fly, during takeoff the song "Keep Their Heads Ringin'" gets stuck in my mind. (In the video, they steal a plane.)
  3. I love the show Everybody Loves Raymond.
  4. I am the biggest misocapnist you know. I guarantee it.
  5. Sometimes, when my feet feel really good and I feel good all over (my feet have to feel good in order for this to happen), I think that if other people could experience how good it feels to be me, they'd never want to be themselves again.
  6. I drive a 1998 Honda Civic with the following stickers: Keep Abortion Legal, a Lucinda Williams World Without Tears sticker, and a Kasey Chambers The Captain sticker.
  7. I lived with my parents until I was 24 years old.
  8. The biggest regret of my life is caving in to family pressure and going to college in my hometown rather than going away.

PLSJ's New Look

I think Anne's new blog design is awesome--simple and elegant. It makes me even more eager to redesign my site. I'm not going to do anything drastic, just put up a new image and make the links a different color.

Notes on Feminisms & Rhetorics 2003

I got back from Feminisms & Rhetorics yesterday morning, and I want to transcribe my notes while they're fresh. Pardon the length of this post!

On Thursday, the first session I attended was "Performing or Reforming Gender in Classroom Spaces," and I heard the following papers:

  • Donna LeCourt, University of Massachusetts "Performing or Reforming Gender: Agency and Structure in a Feminist Cultural Studies Course"
  • Sara Jane Sloane, Colorado State University "From Cyborg to Oncogen to How Like a Leaf: Teaching Donna Haraway’s Theories of Knowledge and Being to Graduate Students in Digital Rhetorics and Composition"
  • Sarah Rilling, Kent State University "Challenging Notions of Gender and Power in Second Language Teacher Education"

Unfortunately, I lost the notes I took during that panel, and I wasn't fully present anyway as my panel was next and I was nervous, but here are a couple of highlights: First, I found LeCourt's choice of theory to be excellent (specifically, she talked about Butler). Hearing her talk, I got the impression that she really knows her stuff in Women's Studies as well as in Rhetoric. Sloane, obviously, discussed Haraway's uses of optical metaphors, AND her students in the class she was discussing in her talk kept blogs.

My session went okay; the people who presented with me did a fantastic job:

  • Michele Polak, Miami University "We Hear you, Ophelia: Mary Pipher and her Rhetorical Mark in the Girl Culture Movement"

  • Lanette Cadle, Bowling Green State University "Commonplaces and the Camp Fire Girls: A Feminist and Rhetorical Analysis of What It Is (and Was) to Be Useful"
  • Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau, Rutgers University "Bubbles, Girl Power, and Commodity Culture: Contested Literate Activities at One Community Organizations"

Michele and Mary went before I did, so my attention was again divided. When it came my turn, we could not get the laptop and the projector to talk to each other, so the projector was showing "no signal," and I had to do my talk without all the images I had to show. I should have brought overheads, but oh well, whatareyagonnado. Lanette's presentation was after mine, and I got to appreciate fully how great it was. She was talking about the Campfire Girls and all the things they did in their groups, including reading books about women who made a difference in their history, government, or culture. They read, for example, Helen Keller's biography and Louisa May Alcott's biography. They also learned useful skills that they could use to support themselves (as well as survival skills). Unfortunately, we don't have groups like that anymore. These girls, in the 1920 and 1930s, learned so much from their experience in Campfire Girls, and one of the overarching themes of Campfire Girls is to teach other girls what you learned. Wow.

Next, I attended a panel titled "Contesting Intimacy: Hegemony and Legitimization in Discourses of Female Sexuality."

  • Lili Hsieh, Duke University "A Queer Sex, or How to Have Sex Without Phallus"

Misbehaving.net

It seems I'm a janie-come-lately to Misbehaving.net:

misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It's a celebration of women's contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women's contributions as well point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field.

Tracy has already done a link roundup on many who have weighed in so far. Cindy has a smart post about Shelley's not being asked to join (although she is on the blogroll). I'm not a regular reader of most of the parties involved in Misbehaving, nor do I read Shelley's blog regularly, but I'm going to start paying attention to what's being said here.

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