my first.

Fotos Tormenta electrica en erupcion del volcan Chaiten

More photos of the electrical storm at the newly discovered Chilean volcano, here.

what is the word, please?

what is the word, in any language, for that set of thoughts to which you drift when time and occasion allow? these are not obsessive or otherwise unwanted thoughts, but rather, metaphorically, more like a comfortable chair and the sitting you do there. for me, this “thing” lately is the introduction i’ll provide to enrolled freshman on the first day of our fall seminar. for a friend, it might be the various rearrangements of furniture she could perform in the living room. for my mother, i suspect it is a set of thoughts about the great dishes she has, and will make. so, regardless of the content, what does one call this “thing”?

the kids are all-right

this morning, T sent me this article from the Christian Science monitor on Serbian turbo-folk.  It is a nice piece, and captures what I observed of the music myself–although author Itano mentioned it several times, it bears repeating: the turbo-folk scene is filled with women in high HIGH heels, short SHORT skirts, and big BIG lips.  the infusion of surgically enhanced women into former yugoslavia is unrivaled by every place but Hollywood and Las Vegas.

one of the things i’ve marvelled at, lately, is the ability of contemporary right-wing despotic governments to capitalize upon the power of pop music.  In the U.S., we tend to think of pop music (the big category that includes disco, rock, R&B, etc.–”pop” in the sense of “popular”) as indelibly anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian, and sometimes simply anti-authority.  But elsewhere in the world, this position is laughable.  The use of turbo-folk by the criminal Milosevic and now Serbian right-wing candidates is one example.  The use of rock music in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge is another.

It stands to reason, then, that the truism that pop music is an avenue for liberation–sexual, social, and cultural–is actually a mechanism (an ideology) that assists despots, ethnic cleansers, and mean, bad communists.  (obvs. as distinguished from the good communists!)  the objective, then, is to deconstruct, or (Ahem, Dartmouth students) analyze how this liberation ideology has been built, developed, and deployed, and to pay particular attention to its manifestation in authoritarian states.

Speaking. Of. Which.  I am still effing waiting on someone to point me to a good article/book on the topic of Cambodian rock and roll.  I’ve asked nicely, but I’m getting upset over here.  And if it doesn’t exist…if you come to the conclusion, as I have begun to, that this is a totally overlooked phenomena, then why, praytell, aren’t you asking me to NSFit with you and your fluent-in-Cambodian-colleague?

gal friday

this is camille.  she’s famous in france, but not so much here.  she’s wonderful.  let’s all go buy her album “le fil.”  it is on eyetunes.  you won’t regret it.

pro & con

i loathe tree pollen.

but i love newspaper blackout poems.

kids.

i told you already a little bit about the former Dartmouth lecturer who threatened to sue her students for creating a hostile working environment. for those of you who were wrapping up the semester, the basic idea is that this gal Venkatesan was teaching a Science and Society class at Dartmouth–it is unclear to me if this was an upper level course or a course in Freshman Composition. During a lecture on ecofeminism, one of the students held court, giving a “diatribe”, apparently to disagree with the claim that most scientific research has primarily benefited men/the patriarchy. For whatever reason, all involved viewed this as a watershed event–there was a round of applause from the students, and Venkatesan went to see a doctor in distress, canceled the class for a week, and then decided to sue her students via a lawsuit against the university. she felt the students’ behavior in this instance, and throughout the term was abusive.  this incident seems to have been the last straw.  i have to leave the story there…i’m not sure where the legal complaint stands. I do know Prof. Venkatesan has since moved to Northwestern.

Now…

i sort of love the idea of suing students because they refuse to learn. it is a truly insane idea. (i understand that’s not what Venkatesan thinks–it is what i think of what she thinks.)

i super love the idea that when students have different opinions on the course material–no matter how half-baked, aggressively uninformed, or disrespectfully conveyed–that we have legal cause to punish them. i always thought they were doing themselves enough harm to begin with. if they can’t successfully and respectfully disagree in class, what does that suggest is going to happen in the rest of their lives?

today…

this asshat over at WSJ chimes in, to indict postmodernism. to make his point (postmodernist interpretative work is so easy it is like a filling in a madlib) he cites his own essay from college where he deconstructed (the television show) Pimp My Ride. ROTFL. i should let the kid off the hook since his college essay reference indicates that he’s graduated in the last decade, is therefore a kid still, and therefore is still all ego-screaming, look-ma-i’m-in-the-paper stage of life, but he’s just begging for it: dude. this is a weak argument you make. ‘postmodernism is a corrupt paradigm because i cheesed my way through a college course?’ how about: sometimes you {wonderful, mature, interesting} students are so {wonderfully challenging and engaging} that your professors {read carefully every word you write, preventing any distractions, like television or alcohol from interfering} in order to {grade you slowly, carefully, and exactly}. thus you should always imagine that you {get the last laugh.}

p.s. bonus for rss and sloe: nin is giving away an album, for free.

boy is born, boy in-line skates, boy gets tenure.

This is a friend of a friend, announcing his successful tenure decision in a creative and joyous fashion.  There should be more of this, I think.  And more movies with dancing.

i love cherry limeaid

and i would like a man who names his helicopter “GoldenDollarSign.”

where my girls at?

This is a much needed discussion: where are the female producers for pop music? This guardian blog post offers some common explanations (and her notion of a counter-argument):

1. Chauvinism that expresses itself throughout the life course, but most sharply in youth when girls-who-would-become-superproducers are discouraged from cultivating their chops. (But there are women who are music geeks–Bjork is mentioned–so chauvinism can’t be that strong.)

2. Girls can’t handle the technology. (But producing has been dumbed down, so that’s less of an issue now.) [I'm not kidding--this is implied.]

3. Producing requires practice and dedication. (But girls “become athletes and cellists and ballerinas” so clearly it is possible for us to be determined and dedicated.)

4. Women respond to music emotionally and producing requires mens’ obsessiveness. (But the author alphabetizes her records and there are female birdwatchers…that’s obsessive.)

5. Producing involves massaging egos and “babysitting” musicians and most women won’t put up with this.

There are some useful bits in the comments–mostly folks calling attention both to female artists who produce their own music (Beyonce, Lil’ Kim), those who mostly produce their own but sometimes work for others (Missy Elliott, MIA), and some women who are very prolific but remain on the fringes of the industry. There is also some useful criticism of artists who proclaim a feminist agenda, but do not ensure their producers are women.

From my color commentary (which I toned down, truss me), you can tell that I don’t favor the argument above in its particulars. However, ms. empire usefully articulates many of the common (sexist) explanations for why there are no female producers of hit pop music. And, the question is worth asking.

Those of you whose expertise extends to gender and the professions: how would one design a study to determine the mechanisms that reproduce this gendered occupation? Would those methods change if I told you there are probably 5000 people in the industry (meaning: potential interview/survey respondents)? What if I said 500?

Any students looking for projects out there?…

UPDATE: Sad “girls in rock factoids” over at TLG aka the UT