There are certain things you shouldn't try to do when you are sleep deprived. Drive. Fly a plane. Train someone in the use of a bow and arrow. Rapidly slice tomatoes.
Or, you know ... try to trim your beard (click on the pictures for a higher resolution version).
The difference was much more evident when my beard was longer. Before I took the pictures, I trimmed it down to see if I could negate the effects of shaving closely straight through the middle of my beard.
It didn't really work so well ...
Needless to say, I ate my dinner using only a spoon.
Our daughter, Evalyn Grace Rhody, was born at 1:30 pm on Sunday, January 25.
Everyone is doing well. Lisa was a champ; Evalyn Grace, a blessing. She is, of course, the most beautiful child on the planet.
More details and pictures will be available in a few days at our family website:
www.therhodys.net
The December 2003 Atlantic has an excerpt of Douglas Brinkley's book, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War. Kerry gave Brinkley all of his journals, letters, and notes that he wrote during and after his tour in Vietnam, where he was a Swift boat commander. Brinkley also interviewed all but one of the still living soldiers who fought with Kerry.
I came across the article at Steven Johnson's blog, where a commenter challenged anothers' assessment that: "I really don't see Kerry doing anything. He's in the same secret society as Bush, and is aristocratic as they come."
Me? I'm completely undecided at this point - Edwards has a hopeful enthusiasm that can be both refreshing and irritating, Kerry has something that makes me look past the longest face in America, and Dean has a pretty good yeeehaw.
I have a suspicion that while Dean might be angry and loud, Kerry and/or Edwards might be angry and effective. And I'm not always so sure that someone who can play the Washington insider game is such a bad thing right now.
No, I'm not talking about the State of the Union address. For those who asked - yes, the rodent (rat, squirrel, chipmunk, whatever) is still nesting in our walls. It asked me to post the following roommate advertisement:
Seeking SR to share wall, loft between 1st and 2nd story apartments, possible relationship. I enjoy wall climbing, running laps on top of the metal air ducts, building nests out of insulation, and making scratching, biting, and chewing noises. Easy access to outside; warm nest near air vent inside. This isn't just any hole in the wall!
We're working on an extermina... er... eviction notice, hopefully effective today or tomorrow, depending on when the Condo Association gets their stuff together.
23¢ stories, an interesting flash piece where you select postcards and can either read others' brief stories or write your own. I like the play on the material nature of the postcard, which is a medium of brief expression, of compression. Wish you were here.
[via Invisible Shoebox (permalinks bloggered - see January 21, 2004), who got it from PLSJ.]
B has logged on.
Never give out your password or credit card number in an instant message conversation.
i hear it's c-c-c-cold out there.
i, i, captain.
pack it up in a shoebox and take it on the road, baby!
As described at Invisible Shoebox [bloggered permalink: Friday, January 16, 2004], A strange, but beautiful animation [flash]
Such is my mindset right now (we're 'in the window' - the baby's due date isn't for another 17 days, but this subset of the rhody clan is rarely on time).
Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature edited by Jan VAN LOOY and Jan BAETENS
[via GTA]
Other close readings: a great group of essays from Matt K.'s graduate class last semester is available at Rob Kendall’s Word Circuits site.
Also, a reminder: the Games Research Bibliography Database, with over 500 entries and an invitation for submissions.
[via GamesNetwork listserv]
Belated thanks for the review of Misc. by a member of Scott Rettburg's class. The link seems to be down right now, but I wanted to make a mental note, before I completely forgot. More once I can look at the review again.
Cheap@$$Gamer is a blog that posts good deals on games at various online and concrete retailers (and I changed the middle word not b/c I'm a prude, but because I like to avoid setting off flags at the office when checking Misc.).
Need to update our installation of MT to fix a few security issues, as well as implement some antispamming techniques (although some might not work well for Herders - more thoughts on why later). Here's a link to the description of the recent patch [thanks George], as well as what's coming in version 3.0.
Personal reminder to backup the database before the update. I also encourage any herders reading to occasionally back up their blogs through the MT interface. Our hosting providers provides backups and I do a database backup every once in a while, but redundancy's never struck me as a bad idea.
GrumpyGirl at Invisible Shoebox wonders about the claims that Sophia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation is racist (entry on Wednesday, January 14, 2004 - bloggered permalink). Though she didn’t think so at first, she came across an article by E. Koohan Paik that has her thinking twice.
The article claims: "The inaccessibility of Japan functions as an extension of the alienation and loneliness Bob and Charlotte feel in their personal lives, thus laying the perfect conditions for romance to germinate" - which is, I think, exactly the opposite of how I would read the film. Part of the point, it seems to me, is that despite the language barrier, despite some very different cultural norms, Bob and Charlotte are able to feel less "alienated" in an "alien" environment. Their isolation is soothed by, rather than extended by, immersion in a foreign culture, even if it is awkward and difficult.
The paragraph quoted above ends: "Take away the cartooniness of the Japanese and the humor falls flat, the main characters' intense yearning is neutralized and the plot evaporates."
Sure, there are caricatures in the film, but these are not limited to the Asian characters. When I first blogged about LiT, I talked about Kelly - the one dimensional movie actress who represents one extreme of the ‘obnoxious American.’ A stereotype? Yes. An incorrect one? Hardly. All countries have their fair share of flat, snobbish, boorish, ignorant, or ridiculous folk - is it more or less disingenuous to pretend otherwise? And, I would argue, the American characters, especially Bob, don’t exactly come across as model citizens or, given Bill Murray’s acting, any less clownish than many of their Japanese counterparts. Overall, the only characters with a great deal of complexity are the two protagonists; that the remaining characters, from any culture, have little substance beyond their ‘snapshot’ utility is less surprising to me and is more an indication of focused filmmaking that racist (intentional or not) exclusion.
I’m not sure I agree with the article writer’s claims that LiT simply perpetuates arrogant Western attitudes in a foreign culture. To claim that the humor found in the difficulty in language between cultures is a criticism of the Japanese characters is a bit of a stretch - the comedy of Bob’s interactions with Japanese characters is juxtaposed to that same inability to communicate with his own wife. The embarrassment of culture isn’t an excuse in his family situations, so instead of a comedy of situation (the complexity of traveling in an unfamiliar place), you get a tragedy of circumstance. The tragedy of the American family isn’t a new theme for Sophia Coppola, whose film adaptation of The Virgin Suicides offered a dark vision of 1970s suburban life.
All that being said, the scene that many seem to highlight as racist - where a prostitute is sent to Bob’s room and chases him around asking him to "lip my stocking" - struck me as the most uncomfortable in the film. Yet the awkwardness in communication from other scenes allow for more positive results: quiet reflection, (dis)harmonic cultural exchange (I’m thinking of the karaoke scene), and perhaps more importantly, a patient, repeated effort to listen until some measure of understanding occurs (something that just doesn’t happen in either of the main characters’ marriage). While Paik's article seems to miss the nuances present throughout the film (and tends towards the reactionary as it progresses), the question of race, place, and translation is, ultimately, an interesting conundrum in film in a globalized age - at what point does representation of race become racism? Given LiT's dependence on Tokyo, at what point is it a discussion of place, alongside or in lieu of race? Like GrumpyGirl, I think this merits further thought and at least another viewing of the film, which I only saw once in the theatre.
The new issue of Information, Communication & Society [abstracts available; fulltext limited to subscribers] is game-centered, with the following articles.
Mapping the Bit Girl: Lara Croft and new media fandom by Bob Rehak
Boundary Spaces by T. L. Taylor, Beth E. Kolko
The Video Game Lightning Rod by Dmitri Williams
Aside: I was on a panel with Dmitri at the latest AoIR conference, where he spoke of his research on social relationships - online and off - in MMORPGs. He continues to bring some much needed perspective on the current status of research related to games' effects on behavior, both in his dissertation as well as on the Games Research Network listserv. His dissertation, which I will not claim to have read yet, is available for download at his online CV
Geography of the Digital Hearth by Bernadette Flynn
The Sims: Real Life as Genre by Diane Nutt, Diane Railton
From Pong to Planet Quake: Post-Industrial Transitions from Leisure to Work by Hector Postigo
Playstation and the Power of Unexpected Consequences by Alberto Alvisi, Alessandro Narduzzo, Marco Zamarian
As George, Chuck, and I were discussing developing George's idea for sharing teaching resources, Chuck passed along this handy link: a Guide to Literary and Critical Theory.
In the overall conversation, we were brainstorming methods for developing on online resource/blog/wiki/something that would allow not only a listing of resources already online, but a place for teachers of English (loosely defined to include film and even game studies) to exchange, critique, and collaborate on course materials, which might range from books to include in a class, to possible assignments, and so on.
If you're interested in participating or have some ideas to share, you should go check out George's post and leave a comment.
We started "Birth Class" last night, where we learned that for women to have a successful birth, their husbands should give them daily massages.
There was some other useful information there too. Like, if you want to write a science fiction novel where men are able to give birth, not only do you have to provide them with a uterus, but you would also either have to have them give birth by C-section or provide them with a new pelvis.
All of which suggests to me that certain science fictions should remain ... fictions.
We also learned that 10cm is really much smaller than it should be.
Not really, but a few months in review, since I've hardly posted much in recent days, as evidenced by the fact that my blog is slowly lifting up its skirt and showing its underclothes.
Thanksgiving. Yes, that far back. As a gift to my brother, my wife, and I, who all have birthdays in December, my parents took us to New York for Thanksgiving. My dad has worked for years in the Army, and so he was able to procure lodgings for us at Ft. Monmouth, a beautiful base south of the city in Jersey. A quick hour on the train and we were in the middle of the city. Thanksgiving day found us at Macy's watching the parade float by. While we were several rows deep, we still had a decent view of the balloons as they came through, although they turned at the corner, so we really had a great view of their butts. I took several pictures of the balloons' hinderparts, which I hope to post soon as a series entitled "An Ass-tastic Parade." There were several other fun shots, such as how the shadow of Pikachu against the building hinted at a Godzilla-style invasion, or the back of my brother's head, which I briefly mistook for the Charlie Brown balloon (he actually got on his tip-toes as my father was taking a digital picture of "Chuck" ... when my father looked at the screen, Chuck was blocked out by my very bald brother's dome).
Afterwards, we walked to Grand Central Station where we dined at Metrazur for Thanksgiving dinner. The food and service both were wonderful, topped only by the family conversation. For the rest of the week, we wandered the city, managing to catch the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show (complete with 3-D introduction) and 42nd Street. Despite my general dislike of musicals, 42nd Street was a fun show - maybe it was the meta-quality of it all (it's a musical about putting on a musical).
We also visited stores, where I enjoyed browsing the frenzied shoppers as much as the merchandise itself. The Toys R Us in Times Square is of jaw-dropping size, but FAO Swartz had the stuffed animals that now inhabit our forthcoming child's crib.
Which leads us to another of the past few months' central activities. Baby preparation. L is in the final weeks of pregnancy (due Feb. 1st) and we have been busy trying to get everything in order for the arrival. Putting together the nursery, doctor's visits (mostly L's domain, but I tried to go to as many as possible without using up too much leave time), and most recently, a baby shower thrown by some wonderful friends and family. L and I spent most of Sunday night putting together strollers and "bouncy seats." One of the cool things about having a child is that I get to play with all sorts of educational toys. My mother gave us a sunny face in the shape of a flower (honestly, I find the face a little scary - the eyes seem to follow you Mona Lisa style). When you touch the toy, it plays one of four tunes. The cool thing, however, is that once it picks one tune, it will play it in increasingly sophisticated ways the next few times you touch the toy. So the first round will play with only one instrument, the second with a quartet, and the third with a full orchestra. No longer the wooden blocks of our childhood.
Overall, we're very blessed. This child will not go unloved ... and, if the two sets of grandparents have anything to say about it, unspoiled.
Christmas fit in the middle of all of this, which we spent mostly with L's family, exchanging gifts, enjoying conversation, and eating lots and LOTS of great food. For Christmas Eve, L made a 15 lb. turkey Scarborough Fair style (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme), complete with a sweet potato casserole, and stuffing. The next day, we had ham and presents at the in-laws.
A bonus perk: lots of gaming stuff for gifts, like the PS2 Eyetoy, a Gameboy, and the PC version of Knights of the Old Republic. You know, for when the baby is asleep (experienced parents: insert laugh track here).
New Year's was relatively quiet. We visited dave and nat's rockin' party, the results of which are obvious here, before moving on to our neighbors Ryan and Ann (with their twin newborns and their friend from Austin, Sue) for some chocolate fondue and conversation: "What was the best book you read in 2003?" (Paul Auster's Book of Illusions). "Worst book?" (Delillo's Cosmopolis, with Egger's You Shall Know Our Velocity... a close second).
A few of many blessings:
A wonderful, smart, and beautiful wife.
Our soon-to-be-born son or daughter.
Our family.
Our friends, both offline and on, close and distant.
Government work.
Health.
Hand-sliced meat.
Things I hope for:
Welcome a healthy child.
Continued happiness and health for my family and friends.
More and more work on the dissertation, towards a completed degree.
That should catch me up. If you made it this far, then I applaud you. After all of this, I realize I probably should've just followed Dave's lead, as usual.
