Dear Google Stalker
Hello, dear stalker.
I didn't really try to hide my identity from you, but... good luck!
Honestly I think this is the creepiest assignment I've ever been assigned--keep a blog that no one will read except one random stranger who will be doing their best to unearth everything about you. I don't know about you, but that's not really what blog culture has been about for me... I've had stalkers before, actual ones, and this whole thing is just scary to me. So, have fun, but I would appreciate if you didn't use your powers for evil--ie., don't turn up on my doorstep or come round my job without introducing yourself or anything. But, you know, do the assignment.
I am a big SF geek, I'm heavily into feminism, queer rights, anti-racism, analyses of media and media fans, vids, copyright, farming, cooking, reading, watching silly shows and tearing them apart, etc. I'm involved in a lot of different things, from working a Community-Supported-Agriculture work trade in the summer and fall to being on the concom of a local feminist science fiction convention. Obviously I also go to school--I'm a special student in the graduate section of LIS201, and I'm trying to get into SLIS to become a librarian in the future. So that's mostly what I wrote about here.
Also, just because you're stalking me doesn't mean you can't leave me comments and introduce yourself, if you're so inclined, or if you totally agree or disagree with any of my posts or want clarification or just want to say hello.
And with that, I'll leave you with my favorite vid of the moment,
Buffy vs. Edward
Thanks!
Patrick Stewart on Domestic Violence
Patrick Stewart on domestic violence. Incredibly affecting and personal, yet still political--I appreciate when discussions of domestic violence blend the personal and the systemic.
The Guild
The lecture on Second Life and gaming and avatars reminded me of Felicia Day (of Buffy and Dr. Horrible fame) and the Guild's music video "Do you Want to Date My Avatar?" Oh Felicia, you are hilarious and awesome.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
It's the Transgender Day of Remembrance today.
Locals, if you are looking for a way to honor the day, there's an event tonight at 6pm--Trans Monologues, held at A Room of One's Own--and evening of theater, poetry, music and all other kinds of expression, followed by a vigil. It's free and sure to be good.
In honor of the day will take this opportunity to plug a book I really enjoy-- Like Son by Felicia Luna Lemus. The protagonist is a trans man living in NYC, and it's a story about his tempestuous and occasionally luminescent relationship with his girlfriend, his obsession with the mystery of his grandmother who had a scandalous queer affair in hedonistic upper class Mexican society of the 20s, idealized through a photograph, and a story about the joys and dangers of nostalgia. I consider it significant because it is a novel that goes beyond the narrative of transition, exploring a man's life as refracted through his present and his history. It's a beautiful book, and I think it deserves more attention.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
I just finished reading this book for the second time. I didn't mean to read it again--it had been a few months and I was finally going to get around to writing a post about it, and I started flipping through the book and reading random pages, and before I knew it I had been completely sucked in again. I gave in and started it over from the beginning, because the world and the characters are so fascinating.
I've put off writing about this book because it is one of my favorites I've read this year, and it's not even out yet. It is so good I'm intimidated just writing about it, in case I don't do it justice. It has many of my favorite tropes: country girl in the city, lost heirs, intricate politics, queer epic love, a past and future that stretch beyond the timeline of the book but influence its events. A really awesome set of gods and goddesses who are uncanny--that is, not simply humans with extra powers, but actually fundamentally alien, though they seem all too human at times. Difficult metaphysics, high stakes, (almost) nobody is purely good or purely evil. Stunning visual descriptions. Plot twists so intense and so frequent it's like riding a giddy whirlwind to read. One of the best parts is that Yeine is a protagonist whose voice isn't just that of an American transplanted to a fantasy land, but whose thought patterns and metaphors unapologetically reflect her heritage, a culture which we only see a few glimpses of outright but which is rich and layers and affects her decisions and perspectives throughout the book. It's got sharp, often violent action that lends urgency to every moment we see.
The writing is tight and often luminescent--there are a few phrases and passages that made me gasp in appreciation of the craft. It's difficult to pull this kind of book off well--to leave enough hints about the many mysteries that are unfolding without revealing the twists too soon. Conversely, you don't want to give too little information, or the reader will check out. I felt like each twist was doled out at just the right time, and I continued to be surprised and delighted as each new piece of the story revealed hidden emotional or political depths. The plot is beautifully constructed through taut, lean prose. The first person narration is engaging and the character's voice is capable of sustaining it throughout, with tension between the story-as-told and the speaker's moments of mad self-doubt. It's riveting storytelling.
It's a truly remarkable book, and I eagerly await the sequel. We get a couple of pages of it as a teaser at the end of the ARC, and just from that it's obvious that the series will address the few issues I had with this first installment--namely, that it focuses primarily on the concerns of the rich and powerful, despite its protagonist of 'barbaric' roots.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys original, character-driven fantasy that doesn't pull its punches. It comes out in February--you can pre-order yours through your local independent bookstore! If you're not sure where yours is, have a look on Indiebound.
Rip! A Remix Manifesto
The other night I had friends over to watch Rip! A Remix Manifesto, which I'd gotten from Netflix.
I was unimpressed. There were some arguments I appreciated, a few points I hadn't seen yet, but on the whole it wasn't a very comprehensive piece.
I am, of course, on board with the central premise of the film--that copyright laws are restrictive and are damaging to free expression and serving to quash creativity, not foster and promote it. I don't think it's ideal to do away with copyright altogether, but I do think the laws as they stand are excessive, and there should be more protections for fair use and transformative work, and some attention to the right of the public to engage with collective culture and entertainment in an active way.
My biggest problem with the movie was how limited it was in scope, especially with regard to race and gender. It seemed to assume from the outset that we-the-viewer already agree with him (which, as it happens, I mostly do), I don't see it doing much to sway someone who didn't already agree (think Michael Moore). It also focused way too much on one (white) performer, Girltalk (I hate that name on a straight boy) who was a pal of the filmmaker's. It was a documentary that focused primarily on remixing music (with nod to film remix basically inasmuch as it applied to the making of this documentary itself, and almost nothing about print remix). He didn't talk about modern hip hop or rap at all, and the only mentions of musical communities of people of color were the old blues guys (Muddy Waters etc.) and modern Brazil. There were almost no women in the movie--there was the copyright office lady who was basically set up to be laughed down, and there was Girltalk's girlfriend whose only comments in the film were about when Girltalk doesn't wear pants. We also saw one woman later on in the film who'd been sued for downloading music, so at least her story was relevant even if it was all about her as a victim of the system, rather than an active participant in remix culture. Because obviously women and people of color aren't creative enough to be included in this movie as artists. /sarcasm
It just wasn't a very nuanced argument, and ignored issues of race and gender--and we all know how I feel about that.
I'm also reading Siva Vaidhyanathan's Copyrights and Copywrongs, and I think I'm going to use that as my book for this class, and remix Rip! to a) bring attention to the people of color and women who ARE artists worthy of celebration (the book does mention several hip hop and rap artists that I'll mix in), and b) bring in the more sophisticated arguments Vaidhyanathan is making. So, that will be my class vid.
iPod Vids!
I finally sat down this morning and figured out how to get vids onto my iPod touch! \o/
I'm writing it here because it took me a while to figure out. I looked at several google hits, most of which said "use Handbrake" or "buy my product", but weren't very specific. I've used Handbrake before and like it, so I wasted some time fussing with the controls a bit and had some limited success with converting my vids to an iPod-friendly format.
I finally realized that Handbrake has a preset feature, because I don't catch on to obvious things, since I believe it to be Much Harder than it actually is. It isn't hard at all! Anyhow, perhaps you are new to this stuff, too, and might appreciate being spared the google searches and frustrating dithering that I did this morning before I got it.
To get vids on your iPod using Handbrake:
1) download Handbrake if you don't have it (it is open source and free)
2) install the program
3)open Handbrake
4) click "toggle presets" in the top right corner of Handbrake, and under the "Apple" heading, choose the type of iPod you have. (if you have a non-Apple mp3 player I think you can use 'universal', though I am not certain)
5) click "Source" at the top, open the file you wish to convert, and then hit "play". It will start encoding and save the converted file to your desktop.
6) If you want several films converted, put them in the queue (do step 5 but hit "add to queue" instead of "play").
7) make a playlist in iTunes (or whatever program you use), and drop the converted files in. Make sure you tell you iPod to sync to that folder.
8) I also had to change the preset to "sync all movies", because mine defaulted to only putting the 10 most recently added videos on my iPod.
I am an utter novice about most of this stuff, so I didn't play with any of the other business on Handbrake, I just let its preset go ahead for me.
The Anthropology of Vidding
Yesterday in lecture we watched an hour-long filmed presentation called "an anthropological introduction to YouTube" by Michael Wesch of Kansas State University. Wesch played a small portion of "Us"and discussed it in terms of copyright and remix culture, then segued into a Lawrence Lessig monologue about how we're turning our children into pirates.
In a lot of respects his claims about the transformative nature of YouTube are a little overblown, or at least idealistic, and he definitely focuses more on the positive aspects of the site than the negative or problematic. As my professor pointed out in discussion today, nowhere does Wesch mention that YouTube was bought by Google two years after the site appeared. There's no analysis of the economics of the site or how ads function, much less the automated and difficult to counter copyright policing that happens, or the way YouTube content is now regularly appropriated as a vehicle for direct marketing, like the handy links that allow you to Buy This Song from iTunes or Amazon. Which is okay--one introductory, anthropological film doesn't have to address everything, but I would have liked some acknowledgment of the profit structures in place here. Another aspect of YouTube culture that he touched upon but didn't elaborate was the interconnectedness of what he calls the "mediascape". I tend not to watch a YouTube video unless I see it linked from someone whose blog or journal I follow, or on facebook, or if someone emails me a link.
It was an interesting piece--I was definitely engaged by it throughout, and I think I learned a little bit about the culture of YouTube that I didn't know before. I wouldn't say I loved it, but it definitely gave me a lot to think about with regard to online community and how technologies and use are shaping the cultures of those communities. On a purely personal note, I was thrilled at the Numa Numa video--I remember it making the rounds back in early 2005 and I swear I sat and watched that video a hundred times that week. I also had an almost visceral gut-punch when lim's "Us" came on, late in the presentation, because holy shit, this was class and here was "Us" on the screen! I have watched this vid countless times, spent a great deal of time discussing it with friends, and have even gone through it frame by frame in an attempt to identify each image. The rest of this post comes from a synthesis of a great deal of those discussions, and was helped by friends in a variety of corners of fandom who chose to help me explicate my love of vids in general and this one in particular.
I'd like to focus on "Us" in particular, because while I think Wesch's engagement with the vid is entirely valid and it does work well as a statement against copyright and in support of fair use and remixing, there's more that can and should be said about it as a comment on its specific context, a community which is marginalized and overwhelmingly female. When Wesch says that "these are clips from movies", he neglects that these are clips from beloved fannish media, shows and movies. The images are obscured so much that it's almost impossible to identify them unless you are a member of this community and recognize how they have been collectively invested with incredible emotional weight by fans who love the characters, who have written and read thousands of pages of fanfiction about them, who have painted and drawn them, who have recorded podfic about them, or who have worked and reworked source images into vids.
Many of the clips lim uses come from particularly large slash fandoms, like Star Trek, Due South, and Stargate: Atlantis, in which (mostly female) fans tell each other stories about the inferred gay relationships between the series' leads. It can be read as a commentary about what women are watching, what they can and can't see in mainstream media, and what their role as an viewer might be. If you look for images of women in the vid, you'll find that there are few, but the ones we see are revealing. The actual women we see in the vid are examining, analyzing, seeing, gazing, their thoughts unknown. Also present in the vid are caricatures of women as perceived by men and male-oriented media--garish, stereotypically feminine, hypersexual, and commercialized. Fandom, including slash media fandom, is a thriving, engaged, energetic remix culture, and that is the culture lim's vid celebrates. It is as much about the fandom as about the source, and it is for the fandom and for the art of remix that the vidder throws in her lot with the "pirates" in this piece. Kristina Busse's curator's note about the vid points out the way "Us" also interrogates the outsider's interest in fandom. Alexis Lothian, whose article in the latest issue of Cinema Journal examines "Us" and piracy, writes engagingly of her reaction to seeing this vid in a gallery exhibition in Riverside.
I want to make a brief note about vid culture, here--lim's vid is among the most famous, but vidding culture stretches back decades to the 70s (and even before) with the advent of the VCR, when women would tape episodes of Star Trek and painstakingly record vids of their favorite shows onto VHS tapes, which would be circulated privately among friends. The advent of digital video editing technologies allowed for much easier, higher quality remix vids with more sophisticated effects and cutting, and innovators in the vidding community continue to push the boundaries, learn, and collaborate on new technologies in the pursuit of their art. This culture predates widespread access to the internet and certainly predates YouTube by a number of years, yet it is often overlooked. For more information on the history of fannish vidding, I urge you to check out Francesca Coppa's article in Transformative Works and Cultures, Women, Star Trek, and early fannish vidding.
YouTube actually has a somewhat poor reputation among many vidders (though this is by no means universal). Content created within a particular context and using images in dialogue with particular community standards and expectations can go viral on YouTube, where it is stripped of that context and laid open for abuse from anonymous commenters. This famously happened with Killa's Star Trek Kirk/Spock vid, "Closer", set to the Nine Inch Nails song, which is a constructed reality vid that uses clips from the source to tell an alternative story--in this case, remixing the episode "Amok Time", in which Spock must return to Vulcan to consummate "pon farr", the biological need to mate, to ask the question, "what if they hadn't made it to Vulcan?" Within a fannish context, which accepts the premise of a Kirk/Spock relationship and takes it seriously, this vid is a disturbing commentary on implications of canon and becomes a visual essay examining and problematizing violence and rape. On YouTube, lacking that context, commenters considered it funny and bizarre. The vidder loses any control she might have had over the distribution of her work, which she may have only intended for a particular community. Henry Jenkins discusses this issue at length in his post "How to watch a fanvid". For another vid that celebrates female fannish engagement with Star Trek as a franchise, see jmtorres, nigaeli et al.'s The Long Spear, which begins with a meditative reflection on the new Star Trek reboot and becomes a meditation on fannish history, vidding history (many of the clips pay homage to early vids), female viewership, and the attachments between a source and its fans as well as the attachments fans form with one another.
YouTube is also unfavored by fannish vidders due to their somewhat extreme enforcement of copyright, which leaves little space for consideration that works might be valid fair use. Vidders are vulnerable to having their content pulled, or worse, can find themselves under threat of prosecution for copyright infringement. While fair use should protect remixed video, many sites are unwilling to risk culpability or legal expenses, and may not wish to anger advertisers with remixed content, and vids are pulled without warning or recourse for the vidder. This recently happened on a large scale when imeem, a site widely used by vidders for hosting and streaming their vids, suddenly pulled all of the vids off the site a few months ago, with something like 2 days' warning, leaving thousands of broken links around the internet and vidders at a loss as to where they should turn. Copyright infringement was not the justification for this--profit was. Imeem made no bones about how user-generated content (UGC) is not profitable. There was also no mechanism to download the work or save the conversations and feedback attached to the vids hosted on imeem. Currently, blip.tv and bam are in use, though many vidders have expressed that neither is satisfactory, and many are working to create embed functionality in their own websites as an alternative. That alternative, unfortunately, removes the very attraction of YouTube--the promise of a central, social space to share your creations.
There are valid concerns about the future on internet and especially the protection of user-generated content. Public Knowledge has an interesting post about what the video-driven future of the internet might look like, one which questions the dismissive attitude so many people have toward UGC. There's also the Organization for Transformative Works, which is a fan-run organization which advocates on behalf of fans and the legitimacy of transformative works, has provisions for legal support should it be necessary to defend a fan who chooses to protest on the terms of fair use. The OTW also owns its servers and is looking into eventually creating a site to host fanvids where creators do not have to fear being TOS'ed off their sites.
Butternut Squash Galette
Last night I made a butternut squash galette, because I was so won over by a friend's descriptions of her success with the smitten kitchen recipe. I often cruise several recipes for a given meal and then combine my favorite aspects of each and adapting ingredients based on what I have on hand, which is why I'm not the world's best baker but I can be an eager and adventurous cook (this is compounded by the fact that I notoriously do not measure things). So, I found this attractive recipe on the food network website, and went to town.
It turned out delicious, and I'll definitely make it again sometime. Here's my cobbled-together version of the recipe, in case you're interested. I basically used the Smitten Kitchen crust and the Food Network filling, with some adjustments to each (with a hat tip to Megan's Grandma's Pie Crust which inspired me to add lard).
For the pastry:
5/8 stick of cold butter (reserve the other 3/8 for filling)
3 tablespoons of lard (or just use a whole stick fo butter and omit the lard)
1 1/4 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c sour cream
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 c ice water
Cut together the butter, lard, salt, and flour (I used a fork, but if you have a fancy pastry blender go ahead and use that) until it's combined--texture will be pebbly. In another bowl, mix the lemon juice, sour cream, and cold water. add wet ingredients to the butter/flour mixture just until combined (do not overwork pastry dough or it becomes tough). Roll up in wax paper and stick in the fridge for an hour.
For the filling:
One small butternut squash (or a portion of a larger one)
One cooking apple
One leek
One small onion (I used red onion b/c I had it, but other recipes have called for yellow)
3 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
three leaves fresh sage
3 sprigs fresh thyme or winter savory (I had the latter on hand)
a pinch of dried basil (optional)
one chive, minced
cayenne pepper to taste (I used a fresh jalapeno b/c I had it, but in retrospect would use cayenne)
pepper to taste
salt
1/4 c fontina cheese, grated (I saw recipes with other cheese, like blue and goat. I liked fontina)
Do NOT peel the apple or the squash. Cut the apple in quarters, core it, then slice each quarter in 3rds. Put apple in a bowl and toss with lemon juice and brown sugar.
Take the squash, cut lengthwise, remove seeds and stringy/pulpy bits. Slice it into thin crescents similar in width to the apple slices.
Cut the onion into half-moon slices, too.
Slice the leek into thin discs, beginning at the white part and going up into the light green part--stop if it seems to get tough. If your leek is small, use two of them.
In a bowl, combine the melted butter with the sage, thyme, basil, chive, hot pepper or cayenne, pepper, and salt.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Take the pastry out of the refrigerator after an hour. Turn onto a floured surface and roll until you have a rough circle about 12 inches in diameter. Transfer dough to an ungreased baking sheet.
Arrange the squash, apple, onion, and leeks in the center of the pastry, leaving a few inches' margin along the edge. I did a layer of squash, then apple, then onion, but you can arrange them more casually if you prefer. Pour buttery herb mixture evenly over the top, then sprinkle half of the cheese over that.
Pull the edges of the pastry up and pleat them so they stay. Most of the center will be exposed.
Bake at 400 degrees for about 55 minutes, then sprinkle remaining cheese over. Bake five minutes more, then remove from oven and let cool on a cooling rack. Serve hot, warm, or room temperature.