hegemony rules

About a week ago, I turned in a short response paper for my theory class about Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto. In it, I wrote the following:

In her critique of the ways that technology/scientism has marginalized certain groups and individuals, Haraway proposes that we can shift our relationship to technology and empower these communities to create their own meaning within these power structures. This reminded me of Stuart Hall’s belief that the “struggle over meaning” implicit in a cultural artifact occurs not only ideologically, but also in the mode of its representation. As he notes, “there was also a struggle over access to the very means of signification: the difference between those accredited witnesses…who had a privileged access…as contrasted with those who had to struggle to gain access…at all…[who] had to perform with the established terms of the problematic at play” (1991, 81). The discourse around a media object is controlled at a fundamental level by those who design it, and it thus "re-presents" the cultural baggage implicit in its creation.

The notion that those that create/control a particular technology can make certain choices that serve their own, often limited, understanding of the world is readily apparent in many of the common words used to describe computer processes. For example, the words “master” and “slave” are used to describe a relationship between two hard drives and computer operating systems. These terms are laden with racist implications, and certainly reflect the homogenous (and relatively white!) group of individuals responsible for creating these naming standards.

Today, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune that suggests that someone is finally taking notice of the offensiveness of these terms.

It's weird...so rarely am I ever this on top of things - even if I can't seem to find a synonym for "implicit."

Posted by Adrienne at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After this morning's rather rantish political posting (at least, rantish for me), I decided that I'd better lighten things up a bit with a description of what I did over the holiday weekend.

I spent Thanksgiving with my mom in Vancouver, BC. (People in Seattle always add the moniker "BC" after "Vancouver" so as not to suggest that they are talking about Vancouver, WA - although, why anyone would spend a significant time discussing Vancouver, WA, I have no idea.) Picture me eating noodles at Hon's Wun Tun House on Thanksgiving eve - a nice change of pace from the whole turkey/stuffing/mashed potatoes thing. Normally, I wouldn't eat in such a super-touristy restaurant but we were a) hungry, b) cold, and c) every place else we went was packed. So, Hon's it was, and it was good. (Side note: I just noticed that Hon's has apparently trademarked the word "Potsticker," at least, if their Web site is any indication. Can they actually do this?)

My mom and I successfully turned "International Buy Nothing Day" into "International Buy Everything Because the US Dollar Still Goes Further in Canada and They Have Way Better Clothing Than in Seattle Day(s)." Of course, I'm rather conflicted about the whole consumerism thing, but I still had a great time walking around with her, and marveling at the wonders of an actual metropolitan area that boasts skyscrapers, which seem to be in short supply here. The only down side of being in Vancouver (and there are very, very few bad things I can say about the city) is that they seem to have even more Starbucks than we do. On Robson Street there are actually two Starbucks kitty-corner (or cater-corner or catty-corner or catacorner) from one another - apparently so that all of the tourists don't have to cross the street to get their caffeine fix. (Oh, and unlike my venture to Toronto last month, I didn't run into any Tim Hortons.)

After spending a significant amount of time and $$ shopping, I caught a television show on one of the local stations with Chris Staples, a principal at Rethink Advertising. Staples was talking about the whole metrosexual phenomenon - or "movement" as he called it. He juxtaposed metrosexuals with "real guys" and said that the metrosexual has been relatively ignored by television advertisers. Instead, Staples suggested, they are catered to in magazines like Wallpaper and Surface.

I've been noticing that there's been a trend recently to conflate hipsters and metrosexuals. For example, witness Pitchfork Media's review of the Kill Bill soundtrack:

The life of a hipster is arduous and complex, teeming with expensive haircuts, the obligation to buy the CDs the webzines have arbitrarily deemed cool, and those frilled skirts that you have to keep tugging at in the frigid lines to get into Chelsea's Bungalow 8. I mean, goddamn, it's like thirty degrees out there. The Hipster Handbook helped a little, but not enough. The questions linger. Is it cooler to be metrosexual, or to pretend to be metrosexual while actually being homosexual? Is it cooler to be an actual hipster, an ironic hipster, or the oft-imitated "fool on the hill" hipster?

Regardless of the author's complete disregard for the fact that The Hipster Handbook is, in and of itself, an ironic discussion of the hipster "lifestyle," I think there's something interesting going on here. Is the metrosexual just a more affluent, materialistic, and stylish version of the hipster? Does the metrosexual fall underneath the vast "hipster" umbrella? Can you be an ironic metrosexual - that is, you act like a "real guy" (e.g., you read, shudder, Maxim and/or FHM and actually enjoy the most recent Bud Light commercials) but you're really a metrosexual underneath it all?

These are the things I think about late at night.

Posted by Adrienne at 04:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Earlier this year, I made a pledge to volunteer for whichever Democrat wins the party's nomination, not because I have any great love for the Democrats, but because I can't stand to see GWB win another term. He's already plunged the country into the insanity of war, increased our national debt and undermined just about every environmental and social program that have been created in the last twenty years (check out The Daily Outrage). I don't really care who gets the nomination - although, I'm leaning towards Dean - just that they organize a good, viable campaign that could actually challenge Bush and his cronies.

Unfortunately, an article in today's Washington Post suggests that for some unfathomable reason, many other individuals do not feel the way that I do. Apparently, Bush's campaign has been incredibly successful in garnering grassroots support from diehard GOP fans.

Bush's campaign Web site already has signed up 6 million supporters, 10 times the number that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has, and the Bush operation is in the middle of an unprecedented drive to register 3 million new Republican voters...."I've never seen grass roots like this," said a veteran GOP operative in one of the battleground states.

Yes, yes, I know...you can write me off as another liberal who reads Moveon.org's action alerts and The Nation. Just repeat after me, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

Posted by Adrienne at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whoohoo! Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's decorating guru Thom Filicia is replacing Kirstie Alley as Pier 1's spokesperson. In other QE news, the show's soundtrack will be released on February 10, 2004. The CD will feature Basement Jaxx, Elton John, the Chemical Brothers, and, "former indie rocker but now corporate sellout who's one step away from being an older Avril Lavigne" Liz Phair.

Posted by Adrienne at 09:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Once again, The Onion brilliantly captures the narcissistic inanity of personal homepages and blogs.

"The purpose of barryploegel.com shall be twofold: First, it shall enable anyone to access all the information they desire about me at the touch of a button. Second, upon my death, the site shall serve as a monument to all that I was. Future historians need not wonder who this enigmatic 'Barry Ploegel' fellow was....As goes my life, so shall go my site. All of my many triumphs and tragedies will be inscribed in the dark-blue, Helvetica-fonted characters that leap off the site's black background. Like the many characters from mythology who can be summoned simply by shouting their names, I will be similarly accessible by entering my name in the browser window."

That reminds me...I'd better post that Angel fan fiction I've been working on.

Posted by Adrienne at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to a recent study published in the Journal of Zoology, black bears are feasting on the detritus of human activity - namely, garbage. Bears are becoming fatter and more sedate because they're eating all the crap that we throw away, which often includes the remnants of our habitual fast food consumption.

Researchers found that black bears now fall into two groups: city bears, which hang out in town, and country bears, which forage in the wilderness like "normal" bears should. The city bears are causing quite a ruckus - one report cited in the NY Times mentions a woman who found a bear sleeping outside her bedroom door after ingesting a huge meal from her kitchen.

All of this talk of country bears and city bears reminds me of two things: Aesop's classic children's tale The City Mouse and the Country Mouse and the wretched "Country Bear Jamboree" at Disney World, which perpetuates every ridiculous stereotype about bears (or people) from the south.

I love it when science imitates art.

Posted by Adrienne at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am growing weary of Mike Myers and his comic schtick that always seems to involve a rather tiresome impersonation of a fat and/or drunken Scotsman (please note the second Austin Powers movie and So I Married an Axe Murderer). I am losing patience with cheesy movies that solely rely on CGI to entertain thousands of young individuals whose minds are still forming. I am further disturbed by Hollywood's continual efforts to produce massed-produced drivel, motivated only by ever increasing box office receipts and horrible movie tie-ins with fast food restaurants.

As evidence, I offer you, gentle reader, the "comedy" blockbuster of the burgeoning holiday movie season...The Cat in the Hat.

1. It stars Mike Myers, mugging and grinning like an idiot (and I sorta like Mike Myers).
   
2. It relies on lots of "wacky" special effects that are sure to make the youngsters clamor for more.
   
3. It has inspired a whole new line of toys and Christmas ornaments at Burger King.
   
4. And, as an added bonus: It features a simply awful, awful song by Smash Mouth (which, by the way, is such an atrocious band that I can't simply bear to link to their site) that you can hear played over and over and over again on the aforementioned fast food restaurant's Web site.

But the most egregious offense has to be the media coverage of the movie. It topped the US box office this past weekend, and numerous stories appeared in most major newspapers here. Unfortunately, the titles for all of these articles rely on the requisite cutesy reference to cats. A totally non-scientific, non-random sampling is follows:

• "Cat in the Hat" Proves Box Office Lion - San Francisco Chronicle
  
• "Cat in the Hat" Purrs at US Box Office - Reuters, UK
  
• "Cat" Claws to $40.1M Box Office Win - CNN
  
• Cat Leaps Out of the Hat in US - Calcutta Telegraph
  
• Cat Scratches Its Way to the Top - Film Stew

And the winner in the "World's Worst Mixed Metaphor Involving Current Affairs and Fantastical Children's Books" category is...

Mike Myers Hijacks Cat and Ruins It - Syracuse Post Standard

(This list is courtesy of Google News, however, I really must question your sanity if you are interested in the other 83 articles to which they link.)

Posted by Adrienne at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently, 13 year-old Bethany Hamilton is "in demand" after being attacked by a shark on the north shore of Hawaii. She's being courted by all of the biggies -Leno, Letterman, 20/20, etc. to tell her story.

Fine. I appreciate that losing a limb is a terrible blow. However, the fact that the press is promoting her as a "hero" is depressing. Yes, she was hurt. Yes, she survived. Yes, it's awful. But is it really heroic to be bitten by a shark? Perhaps I'm being cold, but it seems to me that there are plenty of other teenagers out there who are more deserving of this sort of attention. When Today show host Matt Lauer tells you that you're "the most sought after teenager in the world," and you have a manager who says things like, "What I'm trying to do is make this 15 minutes of fame into Brand Bethany Hamilton," you have officially become a product, and your suffering ceases to be deserving of my sympathy. You have become a public figure who risks being ridiculed when the inevitable backlash happens. In my mind, this is the real tragedy.

Of course, there's already talk of a book.

Posted by Adrienne at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

I was wandering around the tiny Capitol Hill QFC yesterday afternoon, and I saw an advertisement for colored goldfish. Blecch. I thought it was pretty strange when they further anthropomorphized the creatures by adding a smile, but now I have to eat blue, green, and red fish? Is this some sort of sick homage to the Dr. Seuss classic One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish?

(And yes, I realize that I am probably not the target market for these funky snack crackers. Still, it's hard not to wonder which exec at Pepperidge Farm green-lighted them.)

Posted by Adrienne at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, so, I'm still working on the site design, obviously. Right now, it's a mish-mash of all of the default MT settings, with no real attention to...well...anything. I'll around to working on the design in a few weeks (probably over the quarter break), but for now, it's all about the whitespace, baby!

So, I suppose I should probably make some grandiose first posting about the purpose of this blog, but since that's rather unclear even to me, I'm a little hesitant to commit to something that will likely change in the coming weeks and months. I do intend on posting all of the wacky goodness that I find online, which you may or may not find interesting. There will also be the requisite "academic" postings, as well as a bunch of random musings that will probably have very little to do with anything of import.

Rock on.

Posted by Adrienne at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)