Meth rabbits hopped up on sausages May 23, 2007

Alright so I have the job of being an office troll this summer down in the depths of the university where I don’t see the sunlight for days. This is why I have been so obviously silent on the blogfront. The simple root of the problem is that I work isolated in a little office with no coworkers and rarely any neighbours. The most excitement down here is when the door to the dean’s office opens and loud men in business suits walk out talking boisterously on their cell phones. The only human contact I have on a daily basis is with the woman who serves my coffee in the morning and the soci secretary who is here for half days. If I’m lucky, in the afternoon the girl whose office is next to me comes in and slams her door a couple of times, talks on her cell phone, and leaves in an hour. She has never said a word to me but I’m lonely enough to strike up a conversation about the weather (the weather, which constantly fascinates me as a topic for small talk because it’s always available but constantly annoying). By the end of the day, I feel as though I have lost the ability to communicate or even act in a social way, bleck, so how could I inflict that on blog readers? Well, I will anyway.

I’ve set the computer radio station to CBC Radio 3 and refuse to take more paid time to search for a station that is completely hip hop free – I swear that is the only problem with Canadian independent music, thank you Rascalz. And go figure, when I finally break down and get a membership so I can make my own playlist full of the Weakerthans and Malajube, they only play songs that would make anyone’s left eye twitch.

 A huge part of my job is to find information. Basically, I’m like a highly modified search engine that comes with bonus printing, stapling, and label making skills. I’ve been gleaning UK and Swedish websites for all information about their disability policies but I’ve noticed that when you’re surfing the internet with an academic purpose, even the most mundane things will obliterate your concentration. In my free time, I’ve gotten to the point where I can limit myself to watching a few elite youtube videos and skim over all the prolefeed. But here at work, well I’ll watch anything. I watched a video that was a guy standing with a black background doing sign language that explained an employment policy. No sound, just sign language, obviously good for someone who can understand it but I think I was just having a google burnout moment. If I had coworkers, my job would make me feel like someone inJPOD.

Anyways, I was thinking that I’m pretty good at what I do and with all the content on the internet, there must be people who get paid real money to do what I’m doing… You know, it’s probably the main job of librarians now that everything has become digitized, what do you think?

What else? I don’t want to digress into my weekly tai chi lessons at the community centre that are open to anyone and, aside from my boyfriend, most of the class is compiled of retirement aged individuals in blindingly white, new workout runners. Why you even need shoes when you’re going that slow is a question I ponder all class, it helps to clear my mind and make room for westernized zen. It’s quite enjoyable.

 I’ve been house sitting for the last three weeks. Getting up in the morning and coming home after work only to tend to the bowel movements of a senior citizen dog who seriously, honestly weezes. He also only eats his kibble if it has milk on it, like a bowl of cereal.

I can do a simplified version of this… very simplified:

Save a life, donate to Zorak (for a new computer) April 18, 2007

Why does the industrial section of Leth always smell like playdough? Playdough with extra salt, I mean, what the heck makes that smell? *shudder*

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Well, my server keeps crashing or my mac sounds like it’ll explode everytime I try to play Second Life so I have been unable to procrastinate my last two essays with that pastime (last time finals came around, I developed a neurotic obsession for Paper Mario on the N64, I think it’s simply the NEED for procrastination, I spent at least 20 mintues watching As the World Turns today…that’s pretty long for a soap opera, and Dr. Phil yesterday…). Therefore, as I drove home through the rain, in my mind formed a waking dream that will never come true… …. …..

If I lived in Second Life I would be one of those people who listens to techno on a regular basis. Not because it outshines indie emo but because it would go so much better with the anime-like world. And when techno comes out of a computer, it seems to make more sense. If I lived in SL, I would hit the jazz bar some evenings even though I hate jazz because they have the most awesome dance moves. If I actually lived in SL, I would remember how to access the dance moves and people wouldn’t laugh at me when I walk in a venue because I end up sitting on the middle of the dance floor instead of shaking my bootay.

If I lived in SL, I would learn how to make something people would want to buy. And because it’s SL, they would probably buy anything so I’d make juggling equipment because it’s just that fun. I would make wobbly, flubber-like objects that you can juggle and you don’t drop them because you program your avatar to juggle perfectly. So then I’d be rich. And I’d buy a log cabin and put it in the middle of a metropolis and only have beanbag chairs for furniture. I would drive one of those stand-up scooter things that make you look like one of the X-men.

If I lived in SL, I would be smart enough to only take part in clean living. I would have learned from my first life that gambling and wild sex and all those other things are just going to come back to you in the form of a horrid virus like Micro-iphylus or Mac-herpes. Though you really can’t help it if you accidentally teleport into a crazy bunch of people dressed in cat suits doing something you never wanted to watch through your brown eyes that were purple yesterday and green before. If I lived in Second Life, I would be the snazziest, fittest person ever. I would smoke like a chimney and never die of lung cancer, eat McD’s everyday and never get diabetes, and heck I’d just fly around a lot.

But I don’t live in SL. My avatar looks brand new still because he glitches everytime I try to change his appearance. He took his shoes off and I can’t get them back on and I can’t recognize anyone because they all look like grey blobs since the images take eons to show up. And it makes Zorak (the avatar) sadder than he’s ever been. Right now he’s stuck in the floor planks of some nightclub I tried to go to before the computer starting messing everything up. And there he will stay, for the rest of my Second Life.

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Okay so the rain made me a little melodramatic… give me a break. You’re the one procrastinating and reading this… Oh wait, I’m the one procrastinating and writing this. Jeez.

Dude looks like a lady March 27, 2007

Or, more aptly, avatar looks like a lady, but I’ll get to that later.

Video games, just because I don’t know much about them doesn’t mean that they don’t fascinate me. As stated before, my time deficit has really stopped me from enjoying the multiple hours of multiple player fun that I could have been having while I was instead wasting my time on academic essays. But once I graduate, it’ll be a life of gaming for me…until my parents kick me out.

Of all the articles, the Jakobsson & Taylor on about EverQuest peaked my interest the most. As a die-hard RPG fan (can you says Paper Mario?!), I’ve always found the ability to fall in love with a game that has a plot but it wasn’t until my first encounter (think 1995) with online gaming that I realized a game’s very nature is changed when other unpredictable people are a vital part of your gaming success. Like the article discussed, the gaming becomes more like applying group-devised strategy to chat room interaction…only now it’s more than chat room interaction, you have a physical character on the screen of most of these (post text-based) games, also known as an avatar. Therefore, just as social capital and cultural capital are very useful resources in chat rooms, blogging and other interactive online activities, they have become imperative to successful online gaming. As this article highlights the importance of abiding by norms, building a good reputation, and building social networks, it becomes easy to see how real life skills are essential to successful multiplayer gaming.

Which brings me to the topic I’ve been dying to talk about, this falls under the relevant category of lived experience pertaining to video games. As we all know, video games can become popular by gaining hype and, like everything else that’s popular, it usually doesn’t matter whether the hype is good or bad, hence the way many of us played Doom when we were obviously too young to be killing horned goat demons. In the same way, I was told to stay away from Second Life; that it’s weird and the people who spend all their time on it are pathetic and need to get more fresh air, and people always scrunched up their faces when talking about it. Then one day, I decided to just do it anyway, I was looking for kicks and I wanted to see this grotesque spectacle with the many ‘losers’ who pay homage to it.

Typed in the website, created an avatar, downloaded the free software, studied for a midterm, and then double clicked on the icon. BAM. Suddenly, I am this character running around on the screen who can fly (how cool is that?!) and, even though it’s 1am, there are at least 10 other people in the same area as me (and 1 million in other areas). I can talk to them, I can learn the rules of the game through interactive training challenges, I’m given some spending money and I have the ability to change my appearance. Alright, so now it’s like, ‘fine stef, you discovered a game, good for you, get to the point” … WELL, here are the highlights condensed for your reading pleasure:
- you can look ANY way you want, this means instantly changing your body shape, size, hair, clothes, etc. It’s so different from real life (RL) where you need to jog every day for a month to just get rid of 5lbs
- I arbitrarily picked an avatar of the opposite sex, mainly because a lot of the females looked scary or skanky, and so it was very weird to go through a game where people treat your avatar as YOU and to be a man, which is not me. I really didn’t know how to respond when people said gendered things to me. I found myself pondering gender and power relations as a result of this.
- the vast amount of opportunity is almost overwhelming. If I were researching this game and the way it works, my juiciest bit of field notes to date would be about a conversation I had with someone online. I asked, so what can you do in Second Life (SL)? She responded, “You have two options, you can do in SL what you do in RL … or you can do in SL what you can’t do in RL.” I then made my avatar run away incase she was expecting me to pick the second option, if you know what I mean.

The point is this: millions (5 million+ on SL alone) of people are playing these types of games for huge amounts of time. Why would someone forsake their RL in order to spend hours in SL? Perhaps because of the opportunities the game gives. Not only are social capital and cultural capital a huge part of this game, like in EverQuest, but you are given more ways to gain them. More than just purchasing things, you can sell them, you can write programs to make your own objects and advertise them, you can gain capital by manipulating your appearance in a split second, and you can get to know millions of other people. Perhaps the rapid expansion of the popularity of these games is connected to the idea that they allow you to gain more capital in easier and more fun ways than you can in real life. Therefore, those who are disenchanted with their first lives find an environment where they easily excel.

But don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job, my computer keeps crashing every time I play for more than an hour.
If you don’t want to risk going to the website and getting hooked, here’s a pretty good clip I found about the game:

Porn, eh? March 23, 2007

First, just imagine what sort of pictures Tiffany might have had in her powerpoint if she had been studying penis enlargements instead of breast enlargements. Heh.

Now to porn, that’s sort of one of those subjects we get trained not to touch with a ten foot poll. I remember sometime in my 2nd year I was being taught about socialization by the soci department and about bio/neurological processes by the psych people. This arose in many occasions where I wanted to pit the two against each other and see who would come out triumphant (not very original when you think about the whole nature vs. nurture debate hey?). So, I learned that men physiologically get more turned on by visual images than women do, but I also know that women are socialized to satisfy their sexual needs in different ways (if at all) and that women’s accessibility to porn is a lot less than men’s (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Playgirl mag at a gas station but there’s always Playboy, and let’s face it, Cosmo is not the same as Maxim, at least not yet). So, after coming to these realizations, I don’t know what I really wanted to do to test the two ideas, perhaps put women in a situation where porn is readily accessible and see if they enjoy it! lol but then, you still cannot do away with all the subordinating qualities of porn toward women or control for the socialization of your research subjects. Either way, I let the idea go, but with all the arousal studies being done in psych these days, don’t be surprised if something like this pops up. Or in soci because if you plug “pornography” into Sociological Abstracts, you get 900+ journal articles.

*shrug* well so much for letting my mom read my blog.

Anyways, here is something completely unexpected, at least by me, that combines this past week’s topic with next week’s topic, video games. Here are… I guess World of Warcraft characters singing the song “Internet is for Porn” … umm parental discretion is advised, the lyrics might be a bit PG13 but all in all it’s funny enough.

heh.

Fricken busy March 11, 2007

Arrgh! I hate it, I think of all these awesome blog topics and then I have no time to write because I have to do other homework. Though I’m getting excited about my reality TV paper and our group project, the subject just fascinates me but I guess you’ll hafta wait till the presentation to see why.

Oh well. Alright, so I really enjoyed the last class, even though the thought of subjecting a my music to the vulnerability of judgment from an audience freaked the crap out of me. From Paul’s warning e-mail it sounded like people were going to be allowed to really rip the music apart, or maybe I just contrived that in my little emo brain, but in reality it was quite civil. And many of the students really do listen to music that is ‘art’. Even if I didn’t like a certain song (i.e. country jams), after the person explained why they liked it I could still see that there was a genuine-ness and inner truth to many of the songs.
For the record, I was going to play “Jackie, Dressed in Cobras” by the New Pornographers because I’ve been playing their CD Twin Cinema for weeks in my car… Um, they’re happy…so that’s a step for me. But I also like them because they sound like Boney M meets the 2000s. And if that’s not good enough for you, their song “Use It” is The Hour’s theme song.

In other news, I too am starting to match faces in the class with the blogs that I read. However, I’m finding it quite difficult to bridge the gap between blogality and reality and actually talk to these people face to face. I mean, what do you really say? Therefore, I propose that for our last class we should all get nametags that we write our blog names on and then we can mix and mingle and know who we’ve been talking to all semester. Now, I know this sounds dorky (heeey, we could bring food too, nothing goes better with mingling than snacks!) but think of all the background knowledge and interaction you have with these people that you may never have spoken to in ‘real’ life. I mean, I have friends whom I talk to on a daily basis and I read their blogs; when I see them we can usually pick up a conversation right where the blog left off. One friend posted about being ill all weekend so when I saw her in the office on monday I didn’t waste time asking, ‘how was your weekend?’, instead I was able to go straight to, “Are you feeling better?” I think this added background knowledge that we are all putting into cyberspace about ourselves is an advantage in the realm of communication. It’s something pretty new and unique and I think people could use it to connect with each other.

Yup, that’s my rambling. Stay tuned….
YES, I have realized that people read shorter blog posts. So am I done posting? HECK NO. But I’ll just post the next topic in a short, concise and appealing post after this. heh, I’m so sneaky…

Sensationalism February 14, 2007

NOTE: This post is pertaining to what we discussed a couple of classes ago and has been sitting in my “drafts” file because I ran out of time to finish it. If you’re looking for something more relevant to this week, keep going to the next post. Thanks!

Alright, well I’ve been meaning to get around to this all week but…you know how it goes. Here’s my post about that “To Catch a Predator” episode I heard about.
Just some background: Having grown up in Lethbridge, I am very familiar with the radio stations. I am also a very light sleeper and cannot think of anything more painful to start my day with than the BLEEP BLEEEP BLEEP of an alarm clock. So I set it to the radio and first I was waking up to Celine Dion all the time (courtesy of the River) then Nickelback (Rock 106) and Shakira (the Bee) and I did not even try stomaching the country station. So I have set the dial to CBC as one last, desparate attempt. This has had a strange byproduct. The morning show on CBC is The Current where they usually talk about very relevant, interesting issues. So now, instead of waking up and hitting snooze as fast as I can, I wake up and end up listing to the radio for 15+ minutes until I can drag myself out of bed. Sometimes this backfires; once I was in a deep sleep and woke up to a report on that serial killer guy in BC, no matter how fast I got to the snooze button, the next ten minute of my sleep was pretty gory! ugh. So yes, the day I heard this report on Dateline, my alarm had just gone off…
So the version I heard was that “To Catch a Predator” was tracking this guy who was the head of police in some city in the states. However, they only had records of inappropriate conversations that had been happen with someone using the computer in his house. So, since the show hadn’t really made any progress, they decided to actually come to this guy’s house and confront him there (let it be noted that at this point he had not physically done anything and all they had were records of his internet activity). When he wouldn’t come to the door, they called a SWAT team who broke into his house and just as they did, he shot himself.
There are two hypotheses: One is that he was really guilty of horrible things and could not stand being caught so he ended it. The other, proposed by his sister and other people who personally knew him, was that he was such an upstanding citizen he could not stand to have his good name tarnished like this.
Either way, two points were brought up on the radio show. One was that a show like this that makes such a spectacle violates the premise that somone is innocent until proven guilty. And the other was that, even if these people are guilty, such a sensationalized way of catching them really leaves no room for the possibility of rehabilitation.
Here is a news version of the story.
Here is a more involved and interesting article on the whole case and different factors.

Google: “intelligence” February 4, 2007

So really, WHY IS IT that when I’m on an important website, such as the government of Alberta, or the government of Canada, or the University of Lethbridge pages, if I search for something really easy it just brings up my search item as a keyword in articles that may have been posted to that page?! Forbid it could actually give me the link, which I know exists, to the actual page on that subject. For example, if I go on the Government of Canada website and search Environment Canada (meaning the department, silly) I only get articles such as “Quebec, New Brunswick and Environment Canada Wildlife Officers put a stop to”. However, if I go to google.ca and plunk in Environment Canada, I come up with the the frequently used Environment Canada weather office AND, *gasp* craziness, the actual Environment Canada department website. ooooooh. Applause. So why would stupid ‘official’ websites even bother putting in search engines anyways? And everyone talks about how google is so widespread, well I wonder why.
Apparently that is a “Funny Friends Google Trout” … just because.

Thank you News-vertisers January 29, 2007

Alright, so I’ve used that ‘infotainment’ conversation to death but I wanted to mention one simple thing tonight. I have been watching the news for the last two days and hearing about the Conservative Party’s attack ads against the Liberals. With each broadcast, they the news program also shows one of the commercials… Like this:

And so I wonder if the news programs, which are supposed to be unbiased, understand that they are basically getting these ads more viewers since people like me who hardly watch any television generally watch the news (especially since it is the only thing on my 4 channels during dinner time). Soon after this segment was a typical 10-minute filler about hockey fans, this was not in the ’sports’ section but rather a great, breaking story about fans’ dedication to the NHL… hrm, Flames make money, yes?

Well, I am not quite so dumb as to not realize that I have just put up the Conservative ad and thus, while talking about it, somewhat advertising for them. That is not my intention, I think I might as well give you all a sample since I am not a news company and it is not my duty to try and produce unbiased news. In fact, it is my opinion that attack ads are not the Canadian way; all they indicate is the fear held by the party that is producing them. I believe they are low blows and probably any politician (any person) could be caught with his/her pants down sometime and be humiliated by having that put on television. I also posted that video because, wow, in searching for an attack ad sample I found this one posted by a user that claims to be the Conservative Party of Canada, added 4 days ago. So there, I guess that is your newsflash, Canadian political parties now spreading through Youtube (if I am late to discover this and it is old news, sorry!).

In other news, Dr. Todd on the Miracle Channel believes God cares so much about my financial situation that if I give $100 to Dr. Todd, I will be superbly blessed for the next 100+ days. Dude. I guess if I am watching this, I really may want to think about getting satellite out here in the country. Heh, actually it is pretty fun that I never know what I will find on this channel. Meh, it could happen or it could not, I am not trying to make fun of anyone, just be aware.
That’s Dr. Todd, boy is he hardcore, this is from his webpage:
“Imagine being saved, healed of ADHD, and preaching your first message at the age of ten, that’s exactly what happened to Dr. Todd Coontz. He started preaching on a consistent basis at the age of fifteen and attended Bible College just after turning nineteen. One year later he began full time evangelistic ministry.”
And here’s a link to a report that associates Dr. Todd with a different church guy that has been accused of shady financial dealings (note – you do need to look a bit to find his name in the article).

People, Places and Things January 28, 2007

Okay, now back to my standard, insightful blogging. A couple of things to remark on today…

I read “The Significance of Online Communities” by Karen Evans (the links to the other two readings do not seem to be working for me, does anyone else have this problem?) and found it somewhat interesting even though the end result of the article seemed to be sometimes online communities are like this and this, sometimes they are not. Even so, it did get me thinking about my past experience with online communities and, since Paul has encouraged us to write about our lived experience with the media, I will discuss a bit of it.
As a preteen I had a lot more time to spend surfing the internet, which is important because we did have a 56K modem back then. My first online community experience was on a local bulletin board service (BBS) where the only thing to do, in DOS-like prompts, was play an RPG called L.O.R.D. (Legend of the Red Dragon) I was maybe 10, told most people I was 14, and did pretty well at the game. A couple years later, when the hormones started raging, I remember it was the ‘in’ thing for my friends to see how many guys in the chat room they could tease with the idea of cybersex and then just log off. Pretty immature, I know, but teens will be teens.
These were interesting stints in chatrooms, which taught me a bit about the malleability of personal identity on the internet (sort of making me less vulnerable and more wise to tricks other people might decide to play over the internet, I think – it was better than having been sheltered) and added to my sex education. However, my experience with online communities was never (and has never been since) so essential as when I went through a 4-year fundamentalist Christian stage latter in my teens. I had sort of jumped into Pentecostal-ism/Protestant-ism and was finding it difficult to learn much. At church, the sermons did not start from the beginning (presumably because churchgoers already know the basics) and small talk with people afterwards was awkward, no one wanted to talk about religion itself in their spare time. It seemed like now that I was in the church, the rest of my progress or knowledge was optional. My close friends were still living in the secular world so I found it difficult talking to them too.
So I went online, where no one knew I was a fresh convert and only in grade nine. Despite the periodic occurrence of someone entering the chat room to say “F*** you Xtians” (it seems no matter where you are in cyberspace, there is always someone willing to say “F*** you” about anything), it was pretty much a good outlet to ask the questions I needed to ask. In this way, it was the kind of ’safe place’ discussed in the article and I felt that the conversation was enhanced by people making the conscious decision (’self-selecting’ as talked about by Evans) to discuss religious matters instead of maybe all the other reasons that drag people to church on a Sunday.
The only thing I wish I would have been more aware of back then is the fallibility of authorities, real and online. However, the information I obtained from chatting never hurt me, it could always be compared and contrasted with what I was told outside of cyberspace. I believe that most people who are careful about identity and able to filter information will not have very adverse experiences in chat rooms.

So yeah, I hope my above anecdote was on topic as far as lived experience goes.
The other thing I wanted to comment on was… In the video we watched on Wednesday, there was a scene with teens dancing and when they realize that the camera is on them, they start dancing as if for the camera people. The narrator said something like, it was as though they were selling back to us what we had sold to them, and he went on to talk about the feedback loop of media. Even before this class, I often found instances where I could ask myself, is it television that imitates real life or do we, in real life, sometimes imitate television. I bet you know what I am talking about, the instances where family-time makes it seem like you are on a sitcom or if something intense happens it is like being on one of those night-time dramas. However, isn’t TV supposed to be made after us, so that people can identify with it, isn’t that the appeal of reality TV (and the narcissism talked about in the lecture)? Or does TV (and the rest of the media) sometimes influence our reactions to life and direct us how to act? I guess the answer is both, however it is a little unnerving.

Bloggity, Blog, Blog January 26, 2007

Things that rock my world:
- hookahs with orange juice in the base instead of water and orange shisha (not for marijuana, just so you know)
- Apple’s mighty mouse. I mean, come on, just because it always thinks you are right clicking does not mean that the scroll ball and squishy side buttoms are not awesome. Anyways, it beats the finger pad thing that is on my laptop. (not for marijuana, just so you know)

There, now that I have gotten those two tidbits of mindlessness out of the way, I will proceed with trying to make a post. Just wanted an easy way for people to know this one for sure is not going to be marked Soci 3390. However, rest assured, it was going to be. I was going to write a kickass post after I read a reading for the week because, frankly, I think I am just wasting time if I do not know anything and expect people to reply to my junk for marks (or to feed my ego). So I read Ch 6 The Web (dun dun dunn) since Paul said the text chapters were of highest priority. Now, here is where we cut the textbook some slack, please consider:
- it is a sociology textbook. Soc texts have a long history of suckiness and constant outdated-ness
- it is trying to be simple, this is why I need a whole bullet paragraph to tell me what “external links” are
- sure it is the fourth edition, but that usually means updating a few pictures and changing the page numbers so the company gets money from all the kids that cannot use the Used ones. Therefore, yes, it is expected the text would explain how graphics really suck on a 56K modem but even my hippie parents have high speed now
- the authors are wimps, and they have to be to please everyone. I am glad Paul is going to teach a class on porn because the book reeeally backed out of that subject
- it is trying to be Canadian, whatever that may be
Alright, so you get it hey? My main beef is that in order to look at how the internet is a component of mass communication and how it affects us, I do not need to know the innerworkings of the gear itself (such as what bandwidth or a fibre optic cable are). So, with hope and an itchy brain, I will move on to the other readings, it is such a very good thing that they have been provided. **Please note though, this is not a knock to the choice of textbook because, having experienced many worse soci texts than this, I bet there really is not much else out there. So cudos to Paul for giving us alternatives too.
Yes, even though that is my opinion, you can classify it as sucking up and give me a wedgie after class.
Well … You know what I am going to do, I am going to post this and then write a better entry. Until then, here is my story about this video. I was online last night doing my WebCT assignment for a class where we all have to reply to a question on the discussion board, much like blogging but with less options. So this week we are talking about drug companies and how they make so much money. We have over 60 people in the class and many of them had posted already so I could not think of anything new to say and was on youtube looking for vids of drug commercials and found this. In my lack of sleep state, I almost posted it but considering it is a fairly serious class it would not have been in good taste. Rather I can inflict it on all of you:

Muh hah hah hah, happy friday everyone.