Who in their Write Mind . . .

This is likely an instance of retroactively justifying something that I initially did out of desperation, foolishness, or because of a minor stroke, but . . . the reason I've spent the last six years pursuing a PhD is that I want a life that allows me to write.  As much of an assault on the ego as being on the job market is - as much as I feel threatened by the grim prospect of ending up with a 4/4 teaching load, or some other situation where writing isn't officially part of my job - even these grim scenarios include a quarter of each year spent with no competing responsibilities, in which I can work on the passel of essays on obscure topics knocking around in my head.

After I graduated from college, I made some brief, abortive attempts to become a freelancer for magazines.  I wasn't successful, and part of that was because

ATL RMX: The Weird Get Real

I never totally got why Adult Swim was so involved in putting together great hip hop compilations - but it's apparently somewhere in their mandate.  This new ATL RMX album has me, as the kids say, open, because it totally hits the sweet spot between gully and weird, with such beautiful train wrecks as Gucci Mane remixed by Health and Young Jeezy treated by El-P.  It's smart dumb, and it knocks - even the Health track is headnoddable.  Best of all, it's a free download.

Snow Day!

School is cancelled today in Iowa.  I can't deny feeling a great thrill.  I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately, and work on revising my final two chapters has slowed massively.  Today and tomorrow are revision days!

Second Albums and First Loves: On Infidelity in Stereo

I was driving home today when, god bless ‘em, one of those lovely kids at KRUI jammed Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”  It’s great to know that it’s still hooking ‘em all these years later, because the track meant a lot to me.  I think I first heard it when I was 15, or maybe even younger.  Friendless loser that I was, I spent a lot of Friday nights home, staying up after my parents went to bed, and occasionally catching a late show on CBS which would occasionally play “alternative” music.  One of these times I caught a video for “Fade Into You,” nothing but fuzzed out black and white footage, shakily shot from weird angles, equally blurry, burned-but-beautiful sounds, stuff I’d never heard before, really landmark for me.  I jammed So Tonight That I Might See for years after that.  (You can see the video here - it’s extremely weird for me to watch it now, all these years later, resonances of a person I barely remember being).

But when I picked up their followup, Among My Swan, I was massively indifferent.

NCA 09: Putting the "Munitions" in Communication Studies

I just pulled into my place after about three days in Chicago for the 2009 convention of the National Communication Association (NCA). For those not familiar with how academic conferences work, the main attraction is panel presentations by scholars in the field, a great opportunity to present your ideas, catch ideas from others, and dialogue about them. There are also other elements including a trade show of new books and a job fair where schools looking for new faculty are available to talk with those seeking work. NCA is a huge organization, representing an incredibly diverse group of scholars, some of whom have essentially no theoretical or methodological common ground. As such the convention seems unable to satisfy all of the people all of the time (in general, the organization is pretty riven with controversy). But this year’s convention was a really good experience for me, even though (because?) I wasn’t presenting any work of my own, and despite an extremely controversial decision about early registration that cut hundreds of panelists and isn’t worth going into detail about here.

Two high-profile panels turned out to be winners, one featuring Robert McChesney, a well-known critic of media consolidation, and the other Lauren Berlant, essentially a feminist philosopher of identity. What I admired about both scholars . . .

Solange Knowles, "Stillness is the Move"

You read that right. This shit is pretty amazing.

Links are going up and down pretty fast, but here's one for now.

Let's warm this thing up again.

It's time to get rolling again. I haven't posted here in far too long, but I'm committing to getting back on track. This is late, but in a gesture at content, the centipede in a bottle over there is in reference to my participation in the Naked Lunch @ 50 celebration in Iowa City last week. It was a mess of fun, though we were all sad that our honored local noise-collage weirdos LWA weren't able to play due to illness.