(Updated 2/15/09)
Well, here’s one for you. I just got the following message from a high school classmate on Facebook:
Hey Jill,
Hope all is well. I am starting a new job and they have asked my to try to clear up all of my internet references…once of which is on your site, the dancing sausages sidedish? Would you mind deleting the reference to me and updating the server info? I would really appreciate it. It is crazy how searchable one’s personal information has become in this day in age![…]
Take care and thanks,
Gia
The reference she’s referring to was in a comment posted by my friend Robert Durff. The original blog post was about a minor redesign I undertook on the site; the comment Robert posted was written in traditional Robert style — in other words, in a fit of complete, Monty-Python-esque absurdity:
The blog looks great on my humble orange iBook running OSX at 800×600 and Internet Explorer 5.2: large, flower-like rotating objects, pulsating vortexes of psychedelic color, and nonsensical text dominate the main column, while the right-hand column is plastered with doctored pictures of Gia [last name redacted]. I think it’s a serious aesthetic improvement over your last version. Continue Reading »
New posts up elsewhere today! The Media Show’s first full episode after the pilot is now up on YouTube. We riff on the American Girl juggernaut of dolls/clothes/movies/books etc. in a pretty grown-up way.
Also, I just got word that my second article published in an online journal is now up, though unfortunately it’s only visible to subscribers to E-Learning. grrr. But after 18 months I have the right to post it here, or over at Pocket Knowledge or Studyplace, so hopefully I’ll remember to do that then. This article consists of a good chunk of my master’s thesis, which was on class and gender differences in high schoolers’video gaming habits.
So not only has the Gumbaby blog started attracting its own clueless commenters (w00t! my fiendish plan is working), but I am no longer able to ignore an even more troubling bout of internet illiteracy: People have apparently started treating my gandrews email account at gmail as if it is their own. To date I have received:
- a request from Carole Wright to Garnett Andrews to put “Please pray that God will prepare me for….. Service, Cross-cultural sensitivity, Strength, Stamina, God to teach me, The team of workers, The students, Wayne to manage, Safety” on a prayer card with edelweiss on it;
- email from a Bertie Russell asking if Mr. Andrews wanted to buy particular “unmodernised” properties for development in London;
- a request to Giles Andrews that 78 Lewin Road have “External walls – 50mm celotex with 100mm internal block” so that it would be to spec for thermal performance;
- a reminder — breathlessly titled “Mr. Darcy Alert!” — that Pride and Prejudice is on tonight, apparently directed at someone at the University of Nevada, Reno; Continue Reading »
OK, I have really, truly lost it. Two moves back and forth across the country, I swore I would jettison every bit of baggage unnecessary to my life, particularly everything heavy; I cussed I swore I kicked things, I frightened poor dear Blair and Abby who helped with my storage. I have crap in Mom’s storage and mine and Aunt Patti’s basement and Dad’s and Grandma Dee’s garage and here in the apartment where I am housesitting and at work and in the basement doctoral lab and even now the puppet studio has my childhood Lite Brite, and probably a hundred other squirrel-holes I’ve totally forgotten (Catherine – your garage?!)
And yet here I am arse-up in dumpsters again, not just again but EVERY DAY, with a disturbing amount of brownish-red organic substance all over my clothes and up to my elbows, hauling away poundage. Sneaking into the library basement on the way to and coming back from work, emerging from a door that only I and this one Asian kid who’s always out for a smoke seem to know about.
I am having feelings I have not had since I maxed out my library card at the age of seven.
Continue Reading »
As I obliquely mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve started a new blog, over at gumbaby.com, which looks at the moment like it will become central to my dissertation.
The focus is on a phenomenon which has plagued me here at the DSWJ (and plagued Christine over at Sushiesque) for quite some time: people arriving at a blog, apparently failing to read the post, missing the point of the blog, and commenting anyway. My principal aim is to keep track of as many comment threads like these as I can (as well as guestbooks, forums, and possibly even emails, as commenters seem to make little distinction between all of these), so as to eventually analyze them. So if you see threads like these, please send them my way.
Continue Reading »
