I've been working on my dissertation all day and grading all night. At times like this, I think about other projects that have been on my mind for years and sometimes wish I were doing a different dissertation. From what I gather in conversations with graduate students and professors, it's a fairly common feeling. I don't really want to change topics; I'm still very interested in mine, but I experience moments of staring across the fence wistfully. Specifically: Those who have read this blog a while might know that I'm fascinated with 70s and 80s young adult fiction for girls: the middle-class, white femininity that is pretty shamelessly inculcated, from the images, to the behavior of the characters, to the grossly stereotypical representations of good girl/bad girl. Yet many women my age loved and continue to feel nostalgic for these books. Lots of cover art from a recent used bookstore trip follows under the fold [edited to put one image in the body of the post to get people to look at the others :-)]:

Forever, which was soft porn for sixth-grade slumber parties:

Yesterday on Drupal's support forum I proposed the idea of a bugmenot user account as a way for would-be commenters to avoid having to register. If you're not logged in right now, you should be able to see "register or login to post comments with username: nospam password: person" under each post and comment. I hope everyone who's not registered on a Drupal site will make good use of it.

Should I assign this book to my speech students?

Just one of many cool old books I was able to find at a used bookstore around here. More cover art to come. :-)

Aaargh. I have that blasted Don't Laugh at Me song in my mind that Jenny linked to a while back. I swear, it came at me from out of nowhere. It's like a sleeper earworm or something.

If Mohammed can't come to the mountain, etc. I really don't want to lose comments here because of spambots, so I'm going ahead and creating accounts for a lotta youze, complete with easy-to-remember passwords, signatures, and custom-photoshopped-with-love, created-especially-for-you-based-on-stuff-you-like avatars. Think of it as a special invitation. :-) So far I've only created accounts for Jonathan (blog), Prof. B. (blog), Tutor (blog), and Jenny (blog). I've got more people in mind, like Rana, Cindy, Krista, Michelle, Chuck, and many others. I'm creating accounts for people who, to my knowledge, don't have accounts at Kairosnews or any other Drupal sites.

You likey? I changed the site theme from Chameleon to Bluemarine, which probably doesn't mean anything to you unless you're familiar with Drupal, and customized it for the old design. I changed the theme so that your avatars would show in comments. I hope the problems many have had viewing my site in Safari have gone away, or at least not gotten any worse. Please let me know how it looks. I'm only going by what I've got: Windows with monitor set at 1280x1024, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.

Burn. This one pretty much covers all the bases, except maybe the lack of office space. Link widely. I miss IA!

I thought of Krista when I saw this; she'll probably have some insightful things to say about Orphan Works, a site where you can share your stories of copyright's becoming an obstacle when trying to use orphan works (works whose copyright holders can't be found). The deadline is March 25, though, so please share your stories soon! I plan to submit my story of trying to use the poem "Roseville, Minn., U.S.A." by Marcela Christine Lucero-Trujillo. The acknowledgement in the book I found the poem in is: "Copyright 1976. Reprinted by permission of Patricia Trujillo-Villalobos." The copyright clearance center at my university was never able to track her down.

Via Intellectual Property and Social Justice, a mighty fine new blog by a group of students at the UC Davis Law School. Their post about orphan works is well worth reading.