MacReport

I keep forgetting to mention that my 12” G4 PowerBook arrived last Friday. I was sweating it a little bit, because I wanted to have it before the C’s conference and they kept pushing back the ship date. However, it arrived just as I was beginning the middle-America hospital tour. I plugged it in, figured out it worked, and then went to visit my girlfriend’s grandfather in the hospital here in Little Rock. Then, it was off to the hospital in Norman, Oklahoma to visit a sick aunt. I turned it on for about five minutes that night.

In the last two days, though, I’ve managed to figure out that just about every feature that I was concerned about, as far as applications that I use on my PC goes, is built into OS X. That was a big surprise. I had to install one freeware app for VCDs, but so far, that’s it. Almost everything else is already there. It networked with my PC flawlessly (after I figured out how to configure the PC). I transferred a few files tonight so that I can work on them while I’m away if I get the chance.

I like it. I like it a lot. While I doubt that I’ll ever go Mac exclusively (I do too much weirdo stuff on the PC), I certainly think that the notebook rocks. I’m pretty much completely over my MacFear. The really good thing to find out is that it is just as smart as it is sexy. That combination is hard to find.

Road Weary

It’s been a weird few months. Obligations without end. I finally ran down yesterday and had to sleep. I think it had something to do with driving to and from Norman, Oklahoma from Ft. Smith in one day. Eleven hours driving on the road, and then three more hours passengering back to Little Rock with my girlfriend driving. Today I’ve got more work than I can possibly do in one day to do, which will be followed tomorrow by 9 or 10 hours worth of driving to San Antonio.

I must be getting old or something. I used to love this sort of thing. I wrote some notes tonight for a presentation at the CCCC’s conference. I’m participating in a SIG on blogging with Scott and Krista and what seems like a cast of thousands. Ten minutes worth of presentation. I wonder how you can say much of anything in that time?

My focus has shifted a lot since I tagged along on the proposal for this SIG. I am no longer all that concerned about “blogging.” What interests me most is the impact of technology on discursive practice. That took me back to photography, and away from all of the nonsense about electronic discourse. Of course it leads back, but it gets there via a very circuitous route.

Looking at the statistics from the Pew Internet and American Life survey, I begin to wonder why people make so much of the race/class/gender disparities in new technology. I think if you surveyed the impact of the telegraph, the proportions would be just as astounding. I suspect it was primarily affluent white males that initially sent and received telegrams. This is surprising how?

For that matter, I wonder what the statistics are on vehicle registration? I’d bet that there are probably more cars registered to males (due to the vehicle=penis equation) than women. The problem is that this sort of statistical evaluation of the impact of technology hides the real disparities that do exist. For example, I remember thinking when I was flying last week: “Why so few male flight attendants?” I only saw one on four flights. Given that the flight attendant is pretty much a waiter (of which you will find many in earth-bound restaurants), how come more males haven’t entered that particular job. It’s probably because the stereotype of “stewardess” as a female profession persists, even in the age of budget air travel. Perhaps, more significantly, why didn’t I see any female pilots? Something tells me that something of a “good-ole-boys” club still exists there. It’s as if these gender/class disparities sometimes get frozen when an industry is new. That would tend to suggest that the fate of women in technology is similarly constrained given the history of computers.

It’s as if the newness of any technology places a magnifying glass over preexisting disparities and blows them out of proportion. It takes a lot to overcome that. The fate of women writers in the nineteenth century seems a case-in-point. Writing was a poorly paid profession, and yet it was at least moderately accessible to women. They were, however, judged by biases that had no basis in fact. Perhaps what’s needed is some sort of Internet recruitment to level the playing field. I suspect it is already underway. As more disparate cultures come online (the Pew report is exclusively American), the more even the road should become. Funny, though, that this hasn’t happened in the airline industry. Maybe it’s still a class thing. I don’t know.

The only thing I know is that my small neighborhood is probably inordinately skewed towards women (I tend to prefer their writing) and has a large foreign constituency. So when people talk about how lily-white things are in the states, I tend to think “really?” even though I know it’s true. I seldom find myself driving on white roads; they’re usually black or tan.

Mac Daddy

Well I did it. I mused last week about buying a Powerbook. Traveling through airport after airport with wireless access, and visiting campuses that have wireless networks made me lust after connectivity. So I ordered a little 12 inch G4. I won’t be able to afford the applications I really need until fall, but at least I can get the OS figured out before then.

Or maybe it was peer pressure, I don’t know. Most of the scholars I talked to this week were tapping away at their Powerbooks, or showing off their new I-pods. Maybe it was seeing all Mac classrooms. Maybe it was the depressing business of shopping for one shoddy looking plastic PC box after another.

After all this travel, my credit card won’t forgive me for a while. But a person needs the right tools, damn it! Another deciding factor was seeing that the library at the school I hope to go to has its own online reference manager software, so I won’t need to get ProCite or EndNote for the Mac either. All I really need is Adobe CS, and I’ll be set. I think I can use OpenOffice for a while; I’ve been alternating between that and M$ Office for a while. Though I like M$ Office better, I think OpenOffice is livable.

I hand code almost everything I do most of the time, but I’ll miss PhotoShop in the meantime. I’ll also miss my scroll-wheel mouse, but maybe I can get that taken care of soon. It’s not fun being poor, and thinking about all the blasted moving expenses on top of all the academic stuff I need to do. O well, if I didn’t have something to worry about I don’t know what I would do.

Checkout Time

I woke up this morning thinking “What time is checkout time?” It took a few minutes to realize that I was in my own bed. No more getting on the elevator to get to the ice machine on another floor. No more need to scan maps to see where I’m going. For now, I’m here.

It was strange to be away from computers for so long. Though we had a laptop with us, dial-up is such a drag. I barely managed to check in every few days, and didn’t feel right about posting so I didn’t. Met a lot of people, including some quite famous ones in my field. They were all friendlier than I expected. There is so much work to be done. I’m definitely moving.

And I’m suddenly getting nostalgic about this place. I’ve had my ups and downs in Little Rock, but this town is so much more than what most people think it is. It beats many of the places I visited hands-down, as far as being a vital community. And I’m also thinking about the professors I’ll be leaving behind, who have given me so much freedom at a time when I really needed it.

I know I’ll have to narrow my research focus a lot, and I’m not sure I like that idea much. But I tell myself that it’s only for a few years, and soon I can range far and wide again. It is so hard to contain myself, I’d like to blog so many things about the trip but I have a class tonight and too much work to get caught up on. I tell myself to take it one step at a time.

As I feared, my blog disappeared. So this is just a scattered way of declaring myself back in business, though I really must get some sort of priorities sorted out. I have two grants to write, a thesis to get back to, and a class to teach. Next week I have to go to Oklahoma, and the week after to San Antonio. Time is going to be increasingly in short supply. But overall, I’m happy about it. I like being busy. Not this busy mind you, but, with some careful attention to deadlines I can make it work.

I’ve not had to worry about checkout times much in the past, and now its all I can think about.

Hiatus (or not)

I had been thinking about taking a short hiatus. The reason, of course, is my thesis. It has been keeping me very occupied. But then, Jonathon came back. I have also been disappointed with the quality of my online writing lately. My academic writing has been getting raves from my thesis chair, so it’s not really a writer’s block problem. It’s just that that sort of writing takes so much focus that I just don’t have the energy left to write more entertaining things. Also, I’ll be on the road in the frozen north for the next week.

But I remember that I’ve never really declared any sort of vacation. I don’t take vacations. I tend to work all the time (mental work, anyway). Writing for a different sort of audience construct is always helpful for breaking down those blocks that happen when you are project oriented. But lately, some really ridiculous comments got me down. Then, I started thinking about the massive number of random people digging through my dirty laundry in my archives. I thought about how things have changed (sort of like the thread that Jonathon picked up on) since I started. But the fact is I hate to lose touch with the tenuous sense of community I feel here. I’d feel utterly isolated, in fact. There are so many connections that I’ve made, though distant, that help keep me rooted to this scanty plot of ground. Blogging is a tricky form of writing. It keeps you on your toes. I like the practice of it.

So I’ve decided not to fret about it. Updates will be less frequent, to be sure, but I’m continuing on. I’m going to try to update from the road—a first for me. Rather than staring at my mossy cell, I’ll be rubbing elbows with smart people hoping something rubs off.

MacFear

I need a notebook computer. In the continuing effort to avoid writing my thesis, I started researching them yesterday. I don’t know anything about Apples, but I’ve been telling myself for a long time that I need to become familiar with them. Lots of people seem to like them. My only experience with them was pure and utter frustration. I used one at a Kinko’s copy center once. I couldn’t even manage to scan a photograph on it. It kept sending the file somewhere into never-never land, and unable to locate anything familiar in terms of file directory structures, I was just as lost as my scanned file.

I tend to think of computers the way I think of toasters or microwave ovens. Brand loyalty seems to be utterly ridiculous. The main question is can it do what you want to do, and do you have to argue with it to get it done. I’m used to regular file structures, having started on machines with command-line interfaces. I hate cute. Macs have always seemed cute. But having owned a Compaq notebook in the past, there were lots of things I didn’t like. Mostly, I dislike the fragility of the little boxes. I’m a klutz.

The 12” Powerbooks sure are sexy. Not cutesy. Not nearly so dork-like as other Macs. They look pretty sturdy. They are closer to my price range than most of the PC competition. But the tales of overheating scare me. I don’t use much except mainstream Adobe and Microsoft applications, so software isn’t a big problem—except buying it twice, because I’m not retiring my desktop. Educational discounts help a lot with that.

But still I’m frightened. I want to use the tool, not spend forever getting acclimated to a foreign environment. The claims of how “easy” it is scare me. I’m okay with complicated. I can deal with that. But “easy” is downright frightening. However, it is hard to argue with the value that these boxes seem to represent. Besides, I’ve got to get over my MacFear sometime.

Rhetory

I’ll be off next week, touring some campuses. I’m becoming more self-conscious about my narratives here, and more nervous about joining a new tribe. Jill remarked regarding narrativity and blogs, that now that she’s got her Ph.D. that she is wondering about what sort of narrative construct she might use. It made me think—did I ever have a narrative construct for my writing here?

I don’t think so. I’ve just been blogging thoughts as they occurred to me. I’ve compiled papers out of things written here, saved reactions to books I’ve read, reacted to some of the discourse in this arena, and generally just putzed around. There are groups of narratives which step forward and back in the field, and overall I think that the discipline of writing so consistently has really helped me in my efforts to express myself clearly. But I find myself really not wanting to blog about grad school in general, or the topics in my field. I think it’s because I’m allergic to all the posturing.

Everyone seems to want to prove how smart they are, especially when they’re not that smart. Most of the big noises I hear about “electronic discourse” are from people who don’t write every day on the web, or even occasionally, except when they are preparing for a conference presentation. I’m tired of watching people talk about software that they have only tangentially used as an excuse to theorize about it. Writing doesn’t really seem to matter to them as much as an excuse to score cool points because they are hip to the latest trend. Users and theorists are almost always at a distance, even though the discipline of rhetoric proclaims itself as a matter of praxis.

I can’t help but feel that what I write here is really so much juvenilia. Sometimes it’s outright wrong, and other times it leads to dark alleys. Exposing yourself in public has many hazards, not the least of which is that people might think you are stupid. It takes courage to dare to be stupid. Perhaps that’s what seems so lacking in the academics I read online sometimes. Fear of being stupid drives people to shut up. Better to have your mouth closed and be thought ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt. This is a border I cross all the time. Now it feels like I shouldn’t. I don’t like that feeling.

I won’t allow myself to become another Stepford academic. One thing that I grow increasingly sensitive to is the rhetoric of advocacy, of the constant insistence that the hegemony is always bad, and that resistance is good. It is the act of resistance that reaffirms the dominance of the dominant. They all play the same tune, as they march to the academic flavor of the week, and become what they behold.

I’m interested in how writing and images work. “So, you’re focused on cultural rhetoric then” one of them said. “No,” I answered. “Most of the people on our campus are split between cultural rhetorics and digital rhetoric.” I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot. I can’t for the life of me see how such a split is possible.

I suppose I could chalk this up to my fear of joining any club that would have me as a member. It seems kind of mean-spirited, but I don’t really mean it that way. I just think that excessive “community” stifles innovation. So many people just parrot back the flavor of the day, rather than really discussing or considering it.

Sofa

I sing the Sofa. I, who lately sang
Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe
The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand,
Escaped with pain from that advent’rous flight,
Now seek repose upon a humbler theme:
The theme though humble, yet august and proud
The occasion— for the Fair commands the song.

from The Task by William Cowper

I am the heaven
I am the water
I am the dirt beneath your rollers
I am your secret smut & lost metal money
Down your cracks
I am your cracks & crannies
I am the clouds
I am embroidered
I am the author of all tucks & damask piping
I am the chrome dinette
I am the chrome dinette
I am the eggs of all persuasion
I am all days & nights
I am all days & nights
I am here
And you are my sofa

Frank Zappa, Sofa #2

Sometimes, I just don’t know how to respond to comments. Occasionally I get really sweet emails based on past entries that turn up from random googling. Sometimes, you reach into the sofa and pull out a slug. It’s hard to figure. I know that my writing was forced to change when my site traffic turned to a predominantly random crowd, sucked here by the strangest queries. I wouldn’t mind so much, if they didn’t leave insults quite as frequently. My spirit of fairness makes me want to leave them in place, unmolested most of the time. Often, having comments open on old entries brings new insights rather than insults. It is a bizarre trade-off.

I used to think of this place as a footstool. Maybe it’s more of a sofa.

The more I think about it, the more I think that at their best, blogs are gay.

Whom call we gay? That honour has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name.
The innocent are gay–the lark is gay,
That dries his feathers saturate with dew
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams
Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest.
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
Himself a songster, is as gay as he.
But save me from the gaiety of those
Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed;
And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property stripped off by cruel chance;
From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,
The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.

from The Task by William Cowper

What?

It’s been a very strange few days. Sometime Sunday night, my ear decided to become enraged at me with an infection. My head has felt like a basketball since then. I lost hearing pretty much completely in one ear. Everyone kept urging me to go to the doctor. But I have no insurance, little money, and I’ve always had a very robust constitution. I decided to try to weather the storm.

My girlfriend is pretty much deaf already. She has no hearing in one ear, and wears a hearing aid in the other. Of course she’s so brilliant and multi-talented that no one notices much. However, with the fluid-filled resonance chambers tuned up in my head, I found it painful to speak at a normal volume. I’ve been, shall we say, reserved volume-wise. This causes a problem. She can’t understand me half the time now. Of course, not being used to hearing loss, I can’t hear her either. There’s been a lot of wandering around the house going What?.

Thankfully, tonight the pressure in my head seems to be subsiding. While my hearing in that ear still isn’t quite right, it is much better. My eardrum didn’t explode. And the experience has taught me quite a bit.

Now I know what it’s like to have to consciously focus and give a great deal of attention to what is said. If you listen carefully, even when impaired, you can be completely functional. But it takes a lot of effort and concentration, and it is exhausting. It’s a good thing there wasn’t anything really crucial going on, because I was ill-prepared before this to give things that kind of attention. My mind is always drifting off, thinking of other things. But if you can’t hear well, you can’t do that. Conversation becomes all you do, instead of just a part of a larger communicative process. It becomes very difficult to multi-task. Everything must be focused on simply communicating, if you are going to be good at it.

I admire my girlfriend a little more every day.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. So, in keeping with the recent trend in nonsensical personal posts . . .

The snow was slight, falling in big clumps. It was gone the next day. I suspect that this won’t be the case in any of the places I’m considering moving. Thesis work continues in spite of a strange infection. I’ve crossed the 10,000 word mark, and now I’m in suspense about how the damn thing will turn out.

I had a short fragment from the thesis regarding some photographs by John Vachon I was going to post, but I don’t feel up to it tonight. Maybe tomorrow. For now, the less than artful snow-picture will have to do.