Happy Belated Birthday, Hegel

So, yesterday was Georg Hegel's birthday (born 1770), and in tribute, I will blog theory (or rather, the meanderings of my brain which I'm going to pass off as theory).

So blogging. We were talking tonight in Queer Theory about Foucault, and the confessional imperative came up, as did the act of blogging. But is blogging truly confessional? Most blogs I see seem to be narrations--we seem more engaged in storytelling than in confessing. But isn't telling the stories of our lives a form of confessing? Are we all giving accounts of ourselves via the blogsphere? Or are we creating daily autobiographies, with all the implications of narrative reconstruction inherent in the autobiographical form? Why are we even compelled to blog in the first place?

I remember that in the late 80s and early 90s, before there were "blogs," people would post on discussion boards. Now, the interesting thing is that in some of the discussion board communities, not only were there threads about actual topics, but also fairly random, and fairly regular, posts that people would put up about their days--much like a blog entry. And rather then make comments, we would all just add to that particular thread.

And even though most of these bulletin board communities were fairly small, they were still public. All the boards would be listed, and anyone with a 2400 bps modem (like, oh my god! That's sooooooo 1989!) could access them.

So why do we blog? And what's at stake in our blogging? Although I'm sure there are blogs out there that are confessional, where the writers spill out all the spicy details of their lives (spicy? to whom?!), I see more blogs that seem to be "genuine" (back to this in a moment) people telling the stories of their days.

And in these stories there aren't really any secrets that are told, or any "trangressions" that are confessed to. No one seems to have been interpellated into a role that calls them to confess. No one seems to be giving accounts. Everyone seems to be "real" people--"genuine" people. On the Internet, of course, a person can be anyone. I could write a blog with any assumed identity of my choice, and no one would know any better.

But again, why is that different from "real" life? Because we can sustain the charade longer? When I meet someone for the first time, they have no idea who I "am." I can "pretend" to be really stupid, or outgoing, or funny. I can "pretend" that I am an office cube worker, or a truck driver, or a secret shopper.

But in "real" life, it's much harder to pretend to be a man, or to pretend to be Asian. And when we say that someone's identity online could be anyone, what we mean is that someone's gender and color online could be anything. Someone's age could be anything. It's interesting to see how heavily we establish identity with the body.

(Of course, in "real" life, people pass as___________ all the time. Successfully. Billy Tipton passed as a man for 60 years and had four wives--after Tipton's death in '89, an autopsy revealed that Tipton was female.)

What I'm saying, or trying to, is that "identity" doesn't seem to be an issue in most blogs. People don't "hide," it seems, unless they hide their name, or use a pseudonym, really. And in the audience of readers, there ARE people who know who that person "is." I don't think questions concering identity bring us back to why so many people feel the need to blog. And because I don't think identity is what's at stake, I don't think that blogs are necessarily confessions. After all, when we confess, aren't we compelled to confess something about ourselves, a trait, a behavior, that is a "PART" of us?

So if we don't blog under the confessional imperative, then why are we still writing? I would rather make the argument that we blog under an imperative that is primary to the confessional imperative, and that is the narrational imperative--that we are compelled to narrate, told to narrate, forced to narrate. And I would make the argument that this imperative to narrate stems from our immersion and birth in discourse, our entry into the Symbolic, the writing of language on our bodies. And I further would say that the imperative comes from language itself, the logos of language, where logos means both word and reason. The glue that holds together the signifier and signified creates the narrational imperative. We cannot make reason without words, we cannot make words without reason, and we cannot MAKE MEANING without logos, without signs. And we cannot make the signs mean without stringing them together. And we cannot make the world around us mean without stringing signs together.

And we cannot make meaning, or create anything, without also, and firstly, destroying the meaning or thing that was previously there.

And I had more I was going to say, but my brain just totally turned off. I will attempt to actually make the arguments I'm proposing to make in another post. But I am pretty certain that I'm about to stop making sense, assuming, of course, that I was making sense in the first place.

What do y'all think? Why do we blog?

Kitsch-en.

I am, it seems, decorating my kitchen. And although it's not TRULY kitsch, I have no doubt that I will, at some point, incorporate something pretty kitschy into my kitchen. After all, it's too good of a pun to go to waste. 

But my kitchen is very small. I have a sink, with counterspace on either side. One side is taken up by my microwave, the other side used to be take up by my dish drainer. However, since I must now cook, the dish drainer is now actually IN my sink, so that I now have a small rectangle on which to do cooking things. I have a stove, and some cabinets (plus a whole row I have issues reaching, even with a step-stool--shut up you laughing people!! =P ). And I have a refridgerator and a window sill.

For those of you who saw the kitchen in my apt. on Franklin Street, this one is admittedly bigger, by say, a foot. There is no cool back door onto the roof, however. And even though this kitchen is bigger, and the cabinets do not tilt scarily towards me, I kinda miss the old one. Something about the light. 

Anyway, since I have never been much of a cook, I have had to go buy several cooking implements, and am rapidly running out of space in my little kitchen with the cabinets I can't quite make full use of. So the other day, when I was waiting for Blizzard to pick up the phone (yes, you will get that story), I picked up a hammer and nailed a number of kitchen utensils to the wall. That has turned out to be one of my better ideas. 

 

What particularly pleases me is the hanging of the cookie cutters, which makes the entire collection of utensils magical (I think it does, anyway), and that makes cooking more fun!

But hanging up all that stuff has cleaned out a drawer, which now holds my pasta press (okay, yes, I can't cook, but I can make pasta. I have no idea what that is). The former home of the pasta press now holds a bunch of pans. And this is getting more detailed than you really need, suffice to say that my kitchen is rearranged and fabulous.

 

Look at all the food creation stuffs I have!

 

More utensils! And knives! That are pastel colours!

 

Sweet potatoes!! Clementines!! Notice my lunch bag on the top? Pretty! Also, that bottle on the top is my really expensive vanilla, and it was worth every penny. My lavender cookies rule!

Shelve above my sink. I could probably use this space for something else, but I like my teapots and dried flowers, dammit!

So, I mentioned that I was on the phone with Blizzard, and that would be because I decided, in a moment where I was clearly crazed, to temporarily renew my World of Warcraft subscription. There are many reasons for this. I actually have free time (and it's so weird!) And gaming is fun (unless the people around you game for 36 hours straight and refuse to work so that you end up paying all the bills and they promise to pay you back but never do. Oh, wait, I'm not bitter.). And I've never seen it on my Mac. AND I craved it really bad after receiving an email that recieved the word "w00t" (you know who you are, with your l337 h4x0r skillz. ha ha Do you even read my blog? I'm curious.), which occured around the same time my students had a huge discussion about WoW, and when Jenny and I started IMing each other ridiculous things about being l337. 

I won't be able to play for much longer, what with the semester starting, and my attempt to take three work intensive classes while teaching two sections of 1102. But playing again a little bit IS really fun.

And damn does WoW look pretty on my Mac. 

Drink More Water

According to this book, drinking water is all you really need to be healthy: 

However, when I met up with Will and Christy in Tennessee, we did not follow the advice of this book, which was on Will's folks' table; rather, we drank this:

Which proclaimed itself to be a "carnival of citrus." As Will put it, "It's more like a block party." 

We also drank wine. And we played poker. Oh, did we play poker.

 

Look at that loot!

 

I have no idea what I was trying to do with this photograph. And it's entirely possible that taking pictures of your poker hands may, in fact, be the opposite of mantaining a poker face. 

 

Christy says "Mwah ha ha!! My riches! I have so many riches!"

 

Clearly, I have no riches. 

Yay Christy and Will!! =)

Seriously, y'all, those peeps rule, and we had a superfun time! I miss 'em already!

Incidentally, Will's folks' also provide reading material in their guest bedroom:

Indeed.

After chillin' in Knoxville, I drove down to Spring City, TN to hang with my dad and step-family. That was ALSO superfun, and I got to meet lots o' folks, and watch Mennonites play volleyball. Here is where they were staying:

Not in the lake, more like in a cabin thingy near it. Spring City is very very little. There's one street, pretty much, with a stop light at either end. And it's strange that is a little town on a really big lake, most of the stores do not have suntan lotion. 

And when I got home, I knit, and continued learning to cook. And although I have been tempted to take pictures of my spectacular dinners, I haven't. So here are pictures of knitting. But be on the lookout for pictures of my new and improved kitchen!!