nah pop, no style

Okay, here’s the EXCITING BLOG PROJECT that I’ve been hinting at for weeks — okay, months — okay, over a year, to some of you.

Today’s the official launch of truespies.org, a new collaborative blogging project based out of Pittsburgh. It essentially consists of myself and a bunch of real-life and internet friends writing about things we’re interested in — music, food, physics, pedagogy, sports, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I’m excited about the content we’ve already got up — I think some of the other folks who just started posting within the past month or so already have more extensive content than I have from my past two years of blogging.

My new location for nah pop, no style is: http://truespies.org/andybot

I apologize to all of you who have had to move with me once already, when I went from blogspot to wordpress . . . I think for your sake I’ll “simulcast” and start feeding my new blog onto this one so you still get my content (if I can figure out how exactly to do that) but if you can update your links to the new site that would rule.

Go take a look and enjoy everyone’s writing!

For your reading pleasure, my short preview of Plotkin/Wyskida tonight, here. I know, it’s “grimm robe,” not “grim robe.” Editing happens. I’m glad it passed through proofing at all.

I’ve been wickedly behind on my RSS reader action. Scores and scores of unread blog posts, everywhere. I don’t know what to do about it, friend. If I could, I’d take a day off from work JUST to read blog posts. Not really.

This weekend, I’ll probably go see Jarboe Friday night, and Saturday night is filled with housewarming and birthday parties (shit, gifts, right). However, if you’re not going to those parties, you might consider going to Howler’s for Ludlow’s CD release thing, with The Dirty Faces and Burndowns. Maybe I’ll make it for the last five minutes of that or something.

Also, resolutions update: I packed my lunch two-and-a-half times this week (not bad), ate kale last night with dinner (still haven’t perfected the amount of Bragg’s to use to make it tasty but not mind-numbingly salty), and haven’t fixed my bike yet. I’ll get there.

I moved things around a little in the sidebar, deleted a couple dead links, etc.

Also, you’ll see in the “links” category a link to my Google Reader “shared” page — go there if you’re interested in what I’ve read lately, blogwise, that I thought was interesting but perhaps not enough so to make a whole post about. Recommended reading for the bored.

Let me know if anything looks stupid or counterintuitive in the sidebar now. Thanks.

I’ve recently made some changes to my blog reading habits that I feel inclined to inform you of, because maybe you’ll like to read the things I’m reading too. (You and I, reader-friend: little nodes in the Reputation Society.)

• I’ve nixed Balkinization from my RSS reader; the intense constitutional law-talk is a bit too much for me for the most part and, for better or worse, I get kind of bored with the daily updates on just why it would make sense to impeach the president and/or why the constitution is inadequate in that we can’t recall him or have a vote of no confidence on the subject.
• I’ve added Crooked Timber and Eszter Hargittai because they both are fun to read and tend to include occasional posts that apply to the research I’m doing right now on scholarly blogging.
• I’ve also added (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography, because it, uhhh, looks sweet.
• I guess it’s time to remove Berube as well, since he stopped posting a month ago.

Tonight I make soup — if it looks pretty, I’ll post pictures for you. You like looking at pictures of food I made. I should probably give you recipes now and then too. There’s been a much-bandied-about cookbook idea that may someday come to fruition, which will involve favorite recipes of the roommates and myself and a bunch of bands/folks who have stayed with us while on tour/traveling. It will be beautiful. I should work on this, and pressure the folks to work on it as well.

I disabled Snap previews on this thing — I guess they just added those on WP a week or so ago . . . I find them to be rather annoying, but if my miniscule readership poses a protest against my doing away with the feature, I’ll perhaps reconsider. You know you think they’re annoying too, though. The only thing more annoying is when your blog server adds a new feature they think is neat and they automatically enable it instead of asking if you want to enable it.

As part of our continuing series, 2006: The Year That Was, Compartmentalized and Quantified, I bring you two top five lists:

Top Five Blog Posts I Didn’t Write in 2006

• My thoughts on political philosophy and why, even though I don’t think exactly the same way as I did five years ago, I don’t disavow anarchy. This was promised at some point, I think it was earlier this year. It might have been last year.
• A review of Capote: I think what I’d like to do at this point is to re-watch this, and watch that newer joint that looks like basically the same movie, and re-read In Cold Blood, and compare and contrast ‘em.
• That damn book meme: there’s still a few days left in the year, maybe I’ll do it. Or do parts of it. Or whatever. Sorry other Andy.
• An essay on the Ben Folds Five trilogy, that being the three major full-length releases (S/T, Whatever and Ever Amen, and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner), with notes on the significance of each in my own life. Forthcoming, I think.
• A top ten list of blog posts that other people wrote in 2006. This year I resolve to bookmark good things that people write so that I can actually recap at some point.

Top Five Lyrics I Continued to Intentionally Sing Incorrectly in 2006

• “In the corner of my eye/ I saw you and Brutus, you were very high” — From “Black Cow,” by Steely Dan. Actual line: “I saw you at Rudy’s.”
• “A winter’s day/ In a deep and dark December/ I am the walrus” — From “I am a Rock,” by Simon & Garfunkel. Actual line: “I am alone.” (Promise, the way they articulate it, it works.)
• “You’re where you should be all the time/ And when you’re not you’re with/ Some underworld spy or the wife of a postman” — From “You’re So Vain,” by Carly Simon. Actual line: “Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend.”
• “Tom, get your plan right on time/ I know you’re part of the Wolf Eyes” — From “Only Living Boy in New York,” by Simon & Garfunkel. Actual line: “I know your part’ll go fine.”
• “Don’t be a lollipop! Bullshit!” — From a song, the title of which currently escapes me, by Sleep Little One Sleep, my roommate’s band. Actual line: “You tell me a lot about bullshit.”

We interrupt this productive workday to bring you the following information:

1. Today’s City Paper is a keeper. It features: a cover story on Michael Bérubé, in which Potter — not once, but twice — refers to Bérubé’s beard as “Mephistophelian;” a page of four photoshopped “Brangelina at Fallingwater” images created by denizens of the infamous Message Board; and a snippet from this very blog, in the “Yinz Blog ‘n@” section, or whatever it’s called. Lucky for me, the output of mine that others apparently think is most valuable is the stuff I write about walking out of my way to the liquor store and getting drunk on egg nog while watching Christmas specials alone. I’ll get you yet, Potter Marty. (PS — welcome to all three people who actually read City Paper, and read that particular feature, and think it would be worthwhile to look at my blog after reading that stellar excerpt. I do have a self-published book available; place orders via e-mail.)
2. More importantly, that Romanian web radio station that offers the 500 top albums of the 20th century streaming now also has a list of the 1001 Albums You Totally Need to Listen to Before You Kick The Goddam Bucket, or something. I am currently listening to “Sunshine Superman.”
3. Hopperlady’s year-end best-of post made me laugh in a snort-y sort of way.

I bought Christmas cards today. Know what that means? That’s right — I’m officially an old person. There were only 12 in the package, though, and they were kinda pricey, so you’ll probably only end up with one if you’re family or a friend who I don’t see much who I know is into Christmas (or some approximation thereof). I might temper their message by signing them “Agnostically yours” or something.

Right now, for one reason or another, this “Dog Campaign for Real Beauty” spoof ad is making me laugh a lot. The original is here — watch it first if you haven’t seen it before. This campaign is rich with stuff to analyze — I think it’s what I’ll write my term paper about. Speaking of which, the semester is almost up, and next semester I’ll be doing the following:

• Visual Literacy, a lit department class that seems promising and is mostly online. This is kinda my jam, but I think that it won’t be overly easy and boring for me. I’ll keep you up to date.
• Independent study: my goal is to read and write on the topic of blogging in scholarship, with particular attention to the political economy of scholarly publishing. If you know of any reading that might be pertinent that you’re not sure I’ve read, do send it along as a suggestion. I appreciate it.

There are things coming up that interfere with this being finals week looming: Steelers tomorrow evening (I can watch and do homework at the same time, though, promise), holiday specials and Centipede/Parts & Labor at Gooski’s Friday night, The Ex at Garfield Artworks Saturday night. Why does this stuff not happen during the weeks when I don’t give a fig about schoolwork? Alas. I’ll make it all work. Don’t fret, reader.

1. Google Reader is making my life way easier — I got pretty behind on my blog-reading recently because I’m especially busy with work and schoolwork and even using Sage is kind of unwieldy. Things just got much wieldier.

2. The new issue of Reconstruction is all about blogging. I haven’t read it all yet, but danah boyd’s article about defining blogging is good, and important for any of us interested in studying this stuff. There appears to be an article that deals a lot with the exact stuff I want to study next semester in my independent study course, as well. Uh oh. (I don’t think it’s precisely the same, though.)

3. Has anyone else noticed that June is getting rather out of hand in this latest development in “Rex Morgan, M.D.”? She’s bound to get served when Niki’s working mom gets home from a tough day at the meth lab. Especially if her pathetic loser drug addict boyfriend is in tow. And regardless of all the circumstances, who takes a kid into his own apartment and tells him to clean up, besides his parent/guardian? You’re overstepping your boundaries, m’lady, and I don’t feel for you if you incur someone else’s wrath for it.

So a while ago I made some threat that involved regaling you with some sort of theory about Youtube videos being embedded in blogs, and the fact that it BUGS THE HELL OUT OF ME even though I still love the people who do it because I am very much not a player hater.

That threat was made a week or a little more ago. The conversation it sprung from, which also involved Brian ¹, occurred just a bit less than a month ago. The idea is finally coming to fruition now. Welcome to my mind, and to my “work” ethic.

The thing about blogs is, and you can argue with me on this one if you’d like because I know that there are valid arguments to be had here, I generally feel as if MOST READERS conceptualize them as text-based publications, descendents of things like zines, diaries, perhaps newspaper columns, maybe letters. Thus, when we access the blogs we read regularly, we’re prepared to use our print literacy to decode what we’re about to see. We’re expecting words, perhaps an image or two (hopefully of kittens), and probably some hyperlinks to deal with. Same goes for if we were opening up a zine, or turning to a newspaper column of someone we’ve gotten to know through regular reading.

While, yes, one beautiful thing about the web as a tool for disseminating information is that it’s always potentially a multimedia experience (and is therefore incredibly versatile), I feel like most of us at this point aren’t ready (and may never be ready?) for a medium that employs different literacies essentially at random².

A related example is the embedding of music files into personal Myspace pages. The automatic play of songs on bands’ pages is annoying enough — it essentially dictates that if a user is browsing the web and s/he MAY come upon a band Myspace page s/he better not bother listening to music on her computer during that browsing experience, lest s/he come upon a page that’s going to blare another song on top of whatever’s already playing in Winamp or WMP or whatever.

Band pages are usually recognizable as such before the user navigates to them, though, so s/he can prepare by pausing Winamp when s/he knows s/he’s about to open a page that will almost definitely include sound. Music isn’t an integral part of personal Myspace pages as a rule, though, thus making it impossible to determine from page to page while surfing through profiles if one will play music or not. The rule then necessarily becomes: turn off YOUR music, in preparation for the possibility of having SOMEONE ELSE’S music foisted upon you. The surfer is forced to change HER environment in order to satisfy the whims of whoever is on the other end of that Myspace profile.

Back to embedded Youtubes, and, to be fair, Quicktime movies³ and whatever else falls into that category. While the case is slightly different with these as opposed to with embedded music files (most importantly in that these generally don’t play automatically), there are important similarities. When a blog that’s, say 90 percent text-based employs video files embedded into it occasionally, it forces on the reader a different sensory experience than s/he bargained for when coming to the blog.

If a blogger calls attention to a video file elsewhere on the web by describing it and providing a link, I generally find that I’m much more satisfied with the choice presented (based on that text description, from someone I ostensibly trust to some extent, do I or don’t I want to click on this link and watch this video?) If the video object is directly in front of me as part of the blog, I’m first forced to wait for it to load, then faced with the question of what the hell this object in front of me is, since it’s usually difficult to tell based on the first frame that’s facing me and/or the short or nonexistent description the blogger gave me (why should the blogger bother describing what’s already there, existing in the same window that the reader is already looking at?)

Television and movie audiences don’t want to have to read when they tune in, save for supplementary text on the screen or the occasional narrative bridge that comes up to tie things together. If they did, they’d be reading a book. Newspaper readers would be downright stymied if they had to watch films as part of their reading experience. Someone sitting down to look at a picture album wouldn’t want music to pop out of the album as part of the experience unless they were specifically expecting it. Or, for a less hypothetical example: no one REALLY likes those damn birthday cards that play songs when you open them up.

The major appeal of the embedded video or audio file in an otherwise print/visual text object seems to me to be similar to the appeal of those damn birthday cards: it’s neat, so people do it. The thing about the card is, another part of the appeal is that it’s surprising and kind of annoying, in a funny sort of way. I doubt most bloggers want their blogs to be surprising and kind of annoying, in a funny sort of way. Solution: stop that stuff! Just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean that you SHOULD.

As always, I welcome arguments wholeheartedly.

1. Tell him to update his godforsaken blog already.

2. I mean “at random” in the sense that one usually doesn’t know when first accessing a webpage if that page will require reading, or viewing, or listening, or some other sort of sensory digestion. More “traditional” media essentially always come with some set of assumptions about what sort of literacy is necessary in order to digest the content/message.

3. I noted this morning that going to a site with an embedded Quicktime movie crashed my browser last night while I was in the middle of a blog entry. This is another issue with these items being embedded that’s bothersome — most of us aren’t expecting when clicking on a blog, or even the index page of a website, to be faced with some sort of object that maybe our computer or browser can’t handle, or that will, er, clog the tubes of our internet for a time. What I really want to note here, though, is that as of this evening — not 24 hours after that experience — WordPress seems to have enabled an autosave feature in the post editor so that I don’t need to worry about constantly saving or risking a similar disaster of content loss. Hooray!