2005-03-17 - 8:03 p.m.
What I'm listening to: It Takes Two by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock.
I haven't seen anyone post the Darwin Awards for 2004 yet. Here's the link:
http://www.horsman.co.nz/story.do?id=34
I rather enjoy the fact that numbers 5-7 involve bodily functions somehow. I also find it funny how all the winners are male, and the characters on JackAss are all male....coincidence, I think not.
Our topic this week in pro-seminar is gender. I've wanted to read Judith Butler for a while, and finally got the chance. I think I'll go out and buy the book, and I also wish that I had more time to engage with this reading. With the conference paper, and trying to wrap things up here before I leave for the UK, I don't really have the time to thoroughly engage with coursework as much as I'd like to. I realize now that I shot myself in the foot by going to a conference in first year MA. I should have waiting until next year.
I wonder if there's a thesis in the Darwin Awards-as news narrative, ritual community, etc. I also wonder if I can do a paper on one of my favourite shows, Elimidate-courtship rituals and the mapping the narrative of the city.
I also wonder if I can do a thesis on PortaPotties as symbols of communication technologies. Limited capacity bandwith, ideas of displacement, because they are always in exile, and always in a liminal state of being as they really have no home, no network to claim as their own network architecture like commodes that one would ordinarily find in a home or office. Come to think of it, the PortaPotty is a lot like a portable music device with limited storage capacity.
But, these units are also individually identified as well part of a community. They are stored individually, but you never know which potty you will end up next to at the next liminal public space of compartementalized, but at the same time communnal acts of defecation.
But, they are tied together by a network by their own identity as 'porta', as well as physically connected through chains and locks when set up in various public spheres.
Now that we've talked about the technology, we can propose a uses and gratifications model to this communication technology. There is the ritualisitic act of waiting in line, but also the search before for this centrally located space of communal organization, and usually gender neutral I might add.
Enough shit for today. Now on to the 4th draft of my conference paper.
