STOP S.O.P.A.

BitchBuzz: Exploding on the Internet

So, yeah -- it's a bit late. The column I usually send in on Wednesday to appear on Thursday was there, unsent, Thursday late. I would say I can't believe I did that, but it's all too believable with the hectic way things are. I take it as a reminder to slow down and pay attention. Never a bad idea.

Rebecca Black, Fame, & Exploding in Public

By K.A. Laity

"Fame is a bee. / It has a song / It has a sting / Ah, too, it has a wing." - Emily Dickinson

There have been a couple of instructive internet memes this past week: Rebecca Black and The Greek Seaman. The former is a 13-year-old with well-to-do parents who paid for a professionally recorded music video, the latter a novice writer who attacked a reviewer who did not like her book. The two are seemingly unrelated but for the internet sensation they became, but if we dig a little further we will find some unsettling parallels.

You may count yourself lucky if you didn't get a friend on Facebook linking to "The Worst Music Video Ever" and asking for you to watch it and agree. First, it's not the worst ever (there is so much competition, but a rough internet agreement seems to have settled on Armi &Danni's "I Wanna Love you Tender"). Further, it's surely not any more (or less) annoying that Justin Bieber or a host of other teen sensations. I quizzed my students on why they thought Black was so much worse than any other but they simply shrugged and put it down to fatigue with Autotuned pop music. A valid point, but I think that's a tipping point we reached some time ago...

Read the rest at BBHQ.

BitchBuzz: The Internet Will Kill You

Crash bang wallop: it's that kind of day. I thought I had already resigned myself to the fact that February will just be a dead run, but then I have to take another breath and realise I still need to run faster. That first week in March I will dissolve into a week of pure pleasure and indolence, so don't worry about me. Besides, I'm doing all kinds of exciting things. Among them: This Sunday I will be at Amber Polo's Wordshaping blog talking about why I write fantasy. Monday I will have a piece up at the Spectator Arts blog about Fall fans. I just volunteered to read Ogden Nash poems between the pieces of Saint-Saëns' "Le carnaval des animaux"on April 8th. Lunch out today and Rasputina in concert tonight! Did I mention Rome in just a couple of weeks? :-D Of course, it's Thursday and time for my column. My title was inspired by the National Midnight Star headline. Love that SCTV!

The Internet Will Kill You

By K.A. Laity

 

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation celebrates its 21st birthday, we have to accept the facts that our little baby the internet (AKA "the internets" or "a system of tubes") is all grown up and walking now – why, in fact it's a junior in college.

You'd think that all the stress and trouble of its feral childhood could be put behind us now. After all, your grandmother is on Facebook and your dad tweets for the local council and your mom has reached the alchemist level on Worlds of Warcraft by employing a fleet of poorly paid Chinese students who mine virtual gold in their spare time.

And yet we are no closer to normalcy. In a world where Justin Bieber is possible, anything can go wrong. We even have the experts throwing up their hands in despair or shamefacedly stubbing their toes in the dirt and muttered, "I just don’t know." The Tools for Change conference this week latched onto literate member of the Twitterati, Margaret Atwood, to talk about her experiences as an author in the digital age. 

Read the rest and share the link! http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/the-internet-will-kill-you.html#ixzz1EENneEu8

BitchBuzz: The Worth of Women's Words

My latest column for BitchBuzz was inspired by a random confluence of things -- or, if you don't believe in coincidence, a surprising (to me) confluence of wyrd. Love the image from the Gagosian exhibit on J.G. Ballard's Crash, Douglas Gordon's Self-Portrait of You and Me (Jayne Mansfield) from 2007:

Somehow a weird collision of events sparked a realisation for me - or really it was a reaffirmation, I suppose.

When you add together the narrow escape from tragedy dramatised in Lone Sherfing's An Education, the inescapable tragedy that was the University of Alabama in Huntsville shooting and the head-scratching success story of mixmaster/plagiarist Helene Hegemann - "There’s no such thing as originality anyway, there’s only authenticity" - with the news that social media supposedly means big opportunities for women, you get an equation with a solution so convoluted that Schrödinger's cat just hid in the litter box.

The internet -- and not coincidentally, social media -- are supposed to take away the stigma of gender assumptions by allowing us to relate immediately without that bow in the hair or tie around the neck.

Read the rest at BBHQ as always -- help spread the word by sharing it on Facebook or Twitter or with links on your own blog.

If you're in Albany, the last showing of An Education is today: I recommend you go see it. Yeah, sure -- it will depress you, but you'll have a greater appreciation for the power of education particularly if you are a woman. Not that it doesn't slam the bland world of standardised education, too. When Emma Thompson's headmistress tells Jenny that there are alternatives for her future, "It doesn't have to be teaching. There's always the Civil Service," you do share her dumbfounded outrage.

I have a potentially unpleasant meeting this afternoon. Wish me luck. I will either come away with less work to do or with a renewed level of support. So win-win once I get there, I think. Still trying to catch up from being sick; much to do before spring break which is coming up in a week (for me).

In Anticipation of Women's Month

Last year's celebration of women during Women's History Month went so well, I'd like to invite participants to be guest bloggers for this March. All you need to do is pick a day and send me (in advance, please) a blog post. Please feel free to link to your own work or sites that are important to you. This is a chance to celebrate fabulous women, so set aside those culturally ingrained notions of humility and carpe bloggem (feel free to correct my Latin, Crisipinus). You don't have to talk about yourself. As long as your post celebrates women and/or women's history, I will be cheered. I already have a few people on the calendar, because I mentioned this on Twitter, so choose your day soon even if you don't know what you're going to write yet (but do try to have your post ready at least two weeks before the live date).

If you've thought about maybe blogging, here's chance to dip your toe in the water safely. If you blog regularly (no, doesn't have to be a personal site, Cranky) build your network further and share here.

Jane Quiet: Fashion Icon?

Ah, the randomness of the internet! This post on Polyvore showed up on my Google search for Jane Quiet. No idea who this user is or what prompted them to choose Jane, but it's kind of cool (especially the raven ring!), though Jane would never wear those shoes. You can't chase demons in those heels.

Jane Quiet : Occult Investigator by mangoweb featuring Yves Saint Laurent

Items in this set:
M. MARANI M17006 BLACK WOOL -, 255 GBP
Underwear - Boyshorts - New - Gift Guide - Cooler Than You - Elle..., $35
Tribute Suede Pumps, 485 GBP
Crocodile Scarf, Yves Saint Laurent, 450 GBP
Clay-Pot - PYRRHA- Truth Pendant, $125

BitchBuzz: Hoax News

My latest BitchBuzz column manages to slip in a Fast Show reference before turning to its topic of the lack of critical reading skills by seemingly everyone on the 'net. Part of the phenomenon comes from the universal lack of time and also the ease of forwarding what looks like an interesting/amusing/incendiary headline without actually reading what it says -- or from whom it comes:

Isn't the internet brilliant?

You can talk to friends around the world instantaneously. You can send files to your editor with the click of a button. You can watch videos of shows you can't be arsed to watch in real time—or at least the highlights because there's far too much filler in most programs (doubly or trebly so if we're talking about awards shows).

But it's not all frivolity.

Twittering during news events has become the norm: the first high profile was perhaps the Mumbai hotel hostage situation, but all too many emergencies and natural disasters have proved the usefulness and immediacy of Twitter coverage whether it's wildfires in Australia or election protests in Iran.

Other outlets, too, have been used to keep those in power slightly more honest, e.g. this week's embarrassing moment when intrepid investigative reporter comedian Jon Stewart demonstrated the faked footage in Sean Hannity's use of old footage of supposed protests against health-care. We're on to you, people in the public eye, and we're not idiots. We're here for the little guy!

As always, read the rest at BB HQ and forward the link -- LOL, if you agree with it and after you have read it!

Death on the Internet

Dietmar Trommeshauser was the first person that I knew only from the internet who died.

We make a lot of noise about virtual communities being every bit as real as fleshly ones, but it's very easy to offer help and support with a quick email message or even a Paypal donation to a worthy cause. You don't have to get off your ass for it, but you get to feel good. Often people disappear from your virtual world and you have no idea why.

When Dietmar died, though, he was part of our community. Our community is the Horror in Film and Literature discussion list, a venerable institution by 'net standards, having been around since 1987 (hands up if you remember the gopher days). I'm a relative newbie compared to some, having joined up in 1994. Membership fluctuates, of course, but there's a core of people who have stuck together through thick and thin (or in our case major blow-ups over Stephen King and Men Women and Chainsaws).

You can cruise the archives to see Dietmar's posts and our posts upon learning of his death. Not so much shock -- he was a quadriplegic with many health problems -- but dismay that we had no tangible way to grieve except in our words sent pinging out across the globe into the ether.

It seems somewhat appropriate that Dietmar still exits as a ghost in the wires. He was a writer who patiently tapped out his stories with a mouth stick (every time someone tells me they "don't have time to write" I want to tell them about Dietmar). His stories, his poems and remembrances of him are still out there almost eleven years after his death. For a long time, his family kept his own website up.

I don't think anyone predicted that death would be one of the things the internet did well. We're already used to the instantaneous transmissions of celebrity deaths hurled around the world via email and Twitter as Natasha Richardson's was recently. But the lingering aspects of shuffling off the mortal coil also seep into the wires and give a semi-permanence to our transitory lives -- at least as long as the server stays up.

You can consult the Death Clock or explore the last taboo. Grieving families are encouraged to "create a FREE internet memorial for your Loved One" or become part of the trademarked Internet Memorial Register. In the wake of tragedies, it's now habit to go on line and create virtual memorials every bit as compelling as those roadside memorials. There's something about public grief that seems very necessary in American culture at present (well, for many anyway).

But the glory of the web also serves well a more intimate acquaintance with death. Terrific sites record American's uneasy history with death in all its manifestations, so well exposed in books like Mitford's The American Way of Death and Waugh's The Loved One. While the uphill road to accepting death as the natural bookend of life may never be scaled, we can at least find the process fascinating.

One good site that welcomes the curious is A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for folks who work at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Having been lucky enough to get the behind the scenes tour from pal, Mike Rhode, I can sing the praises of this site with enthusiasm, because I got to see the room of pickled punks, viewed photographs taken during the Civil War and even had my picture snapped holding the skull of one of the unfortunate—and rat gnawed—victims. Their blog and companion Flickr site approach death with professionalism and an historical curiosity that even the most squeamish will find fascinating.

I also recommend highly Morbid Anatomy, whose tag line "Surveying the Interstices of Art and Medicine, Death and Culture" tells you everything you need to know. They find beauty in the human form even in the stillness of death and have a wide selection of links to some of the must-see museums around the globe including the Mütter. You could make a world tour of death.

Wouldn't it be funny if the internet is the only after-life we can look forward to enjoying?


Image via Vault of Evil

[N.B. This was originally a column for BitchBuzz that the editor found too far outside the editorial purview]

BitchBuzz: When (Obsessive) Online Tribes Go Bad

My latest piece for BitchBuzz manages to fit in a little information about the Middle Ages (correctives to common misconceptions) as well as some well-earned hand-wringing about the easy tendency toward flame wars on-line. It's irritating to realise that so many of these virtual brawls could be avoided by the use of good reading skills -- and better writing skills. Willingness to take offense, intended or not, seems to be at an all-time high lately. Give the benefit of the doubt.