Looks like Enterprise might get cancelled, sigh.

This article in Salon helps to remind me why I study blogs. I tend to get asked a lot of questions about blogs and blogging; usually people want a list of good resources on blogging, or they want to know what a blog is, or they have questions about software tools or how they can use blogs in their teaching. It's not that I'm not happy to answer these questions--really! In fact, I'm flattered that those who ask consider me to be a resource. But...sometimes it feels like when I worked as a hostess at Logan's, and I had to repeat the same sentences over and over, all day long:



Taking guests by case of raw, red meat because I had to do this for everyone who came in:



"Did you know that our meat is cut by hand every single day by our own meat cutters? Then it is seasoned and aged three days for tenderness!"



When we got to the table:



"Our soup of the day is chicken noodle, and our catch of the day is halibut."



But this article in Salon reminds me of what the right questions are. Of course you have to know something about blogs before you can ask such questions, and I have nothing but love for newbies. I think that in the future, I will throw in with my informational responses a little taste of why blogging is so important to me. The article describes a pro-democracy protest in Iraq that at least one Iraqi blogger wrote about, which didn't get picked up by The New York Times:

"Here is one young man in Baghdad equipped with nothing but a camera and a keyboard who reported on news better than established media worldwide," says blogger Jeff Jarvis. "This shows what citizens media can accomplish." (It was Jarvis who put the digital camera in Zeyad's hand, sending it to him via Federal Express to Baghdad at a shipping cost half as much as the $200 camera.)



"My guess is that it would take years for Westerners to understand Iraq and Iraqis," Zeyad tells me, "but we're working on it and that's what my blog is mostly about." As it turns out, the first step may be convincing Westerners that their own press isn't always (or even usually) the best authority on the subject.

That's what I'm talking about: Blogging brings up issues of hegemony, disenfranchisement, and marginalization. It presents implications for understanding social structures and maybe even effecting social change. I wish I had more specific claims to make, but I'm learning. Those more specific questions and claims are what I'll be working on for the next few years. I know the instrumental questions are necessary, but I'm more interested in the effects of blogging.



Thanks to Jen for emailing me the link.

I'm Jean Harlow:

Which Silver Screen Siren are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

That's funny; I kind of thought I'd be Mae West.

Via Arete, who is Katharine Hepburn.

This my second beef with UPN. I was all excited about the return of Jake 2.0, which was scheduled for tomorrow night. Then, I was watching a show on UPN tonight and saw a promo for Enterprise and then America's Next Top Model! Immediately I consulted Google and learned that they have cancelled Jake 2.0. I know not many people watched it; indeed, I, my roommate, and our friend Lynda's husband were the only people I know who ever watched it, but it really is a great show, and I encourage you to help salvage what we can of it.

Mike asks: "What the hell was that?"

Well, I'll say right off the bat that I didn't see it, as I was watching Queer Eye at the time, but my roommate was watching the game in the next room and stuck her head in my room when it happened. Her initial reaction was to be disturbed by it. When she told me about the baring of the breast, I had an immediate flashback to the Halle Berry and Adrien Brody kiss, which I still think was disturbing and inappropriate, but I'm glad Queen Latifah retaliated, heh. By the way, I know this situation is completely different and that Jackson was complicit. Anyway, the link roundup: Feministe, Echidne, and Christine all have thoughtful comments.

Update: Larry Lessig reminds us what really matters in this debate.
Uh, link isn't showing up. What I mean to say is that Lessig reminds us what really matters in this debate. The link is to http://www.moveon.org/cbs/ad/. I don't know what's going on! I did the code right.

Thank you, NBC, for guessing just what it is that I, not a football fan, would like to watch tonight: three back-to-back episodes of Queer Eye.

And for aphthous ulcers, Kanka is sweet, sweet relief. Finally, I can talk without pain again.

Edited to add: The most fascinating Google query ever to point to CultureCat (as the #1 hit, no less!) is: "You don't just talk the talk. You rock the rhetoric. You're deft with the discourse. Your vocab speaks volumes."

Upon hearing that Laura Bush cancelled a tea for poets after hearing that some of them planned to protest the war in Iraq, Alvarez wrote:

The White House has disinvited the poets

to a cultural tea in honor of poetry

after the Secret Service got wind of a plot

to fill Mrs. Bush’s ears with anti-war verse.

Were they afraid the poets might persuade

a sensitive girl who always loved to read,

a librarian who stocked the shelves with Poe

and Dickinson? Or was she herself afraid

to be swayed by the cooing doves, and live at odds

with the screaming hawks in her family?


The Latina maids are putting away the cups

and the silver spoons, sad to be missing out

on música they seldom get to hear

in the hallowed halls. . . The valet sighs

as he rolls the carpets up and dusts the blinds.

Damn but a little Langston would be good

in this dreary mausoleum of a place!

Why does the White House have to be so white?

The chef from Baton Rouge is starved for verse

uncensored by Homeland Security.


NO POETRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!

Instead the rooms are vacuumed and set up

for closed-door meetings planning an attack

against the ones who always bear the brunt

of silencing: the poor, the powerless,

the ones who serve, those bearing poems, not arms.

So why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?

you’re married to a scarier fellow.

We bring you tidings of great joy—

not only peace but poetry on earth.

Just a few things I've seen online...this hasn't been the greatest past few days for me. Right now, I have a mouth ulcer that is so intensely painful I can barely think straight. It's under my tongue, on the right side, and it feels like someone has taken a knife with a serrated blade and cut half of my tongue off, leaving the rest of it there to hang on. And I'm reeling from a recent rejection from a journal, gah. I guess mouth ulcers and rejections happen to everyone, though, right? Anyway, to the links:

Some do Cat Blogging, but have you ever seen a blog kept by a cat? No? Well, that's about to change. Liat owns and is owned by the creative and brilliant Jasperboi.

Is this a joke? The article is written by a professor who has extremely severe penalties for tardiness, talking during class, and ringing cell phones. Quite lockstep, if he's for real, that is. Via La Di Da.

I want to see Super Size Me, a documentary about a man who eats McDonald's food three times a day for 30 days. He ends up gaining about 25 pounds, feeling nauseous all the time, and getting some rather disturbing results from cholesterol and liver toxicity tests. Via Feministe.

Earth Wide Moth is making me want to read some Gertrude Stein. I pulled my Norton Anthology of Literature by Women off the shelf and will soon be reading "The Gentle Lena," "Picasso," and "Ada."

It's time for a new baby blanket...all I can say about that is that it is not I who will be having said baby. Off to Jo-Ann for soft baby yarn and Walgreen's for Anbesol.