All entries for May 2004

High Fidelity –Style–Top–Five–Greatest–Music–Tracks–List

Kay, i've decided to note my current Top Five list of tracks. This list changes periodically (as all good top five lists should). Included are tracks from across the genres and eras. Some are, in fact, cheesy but still fab…

5. Don't You Want Me – Human League
4. It Had to be You – Harry Connick, Jr.
3. Sweet Child of Mine – Guns 'N' Roses (for Abby Babby)
2. Fortunate Son – Credence Clearwater Revival

and in like a rocket at number one:

1. Come Away with Me – Norah Jones

Joanna Jameson : 28 May 2004 16:15 |  Tags: Music |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Terrifically funny. Well, if you aren't one with a monobrow…

Writing about web page http://www.monobrow.com/monobro/

Hmm….someone spent a lot of time on this site.

Week 30 is particularly good. It's the issue where Liam Gallagher's monobrow makes the front page.

But my all time fav is always Bert.

Joanna Jameson : 28 May 2004 11:32 |  Tags: Funny Web Sites |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

About Women, Macs and Microsoft….an answer

Writing about Why everyone should have a Mac from Secret Plans and Clever Tricks

I stand by all three assertions.

"[rolls eyes]" "wooly-minded" – Silly girl, what are you talking about?

"Slightly anti-feminist" refers more to the piece's effect as a whole rather than any of its "bits," even though this text clearly dismembers the female form and assigns its different "bits" as attributes of the machine (definitions of hardware and software aside). Face, "wide" mouth, heart, posture all combine to form the dirty little "act" that implicates both the writer and reader in a sort of cybernetic voyeurism. The female form is laid over both Microsoft and Apple which serve as examples of two impossible feminine archetypes, that of the whore and the angel. One is "cheap" and "painted" while the other is a "lover" who "wants you to be happy." Both are definitions of female subservience and servitude. The third feminine archetype of the monster is clearly represented by Linux as the "psycho ex." Why does this matter? It matters because all three are negative definitions of femininity against which all women are measured and assessed in a patriarchal society.
To answer your second larger question, yes, (in relation to this example and others like it) I am asserting that when someone anthropomorphises an object that they implicitly (or explicitly as here) reverse the relationship and objectify the person/people to whom the comparison is being made. It has long been observed that machines like computers, cars, boats, motorcycles etc. have been assigned feminine qualities and been likened to the female form in order to appeal to the male market's (hetero)sexual ego. The fact that machines are marketed in a way as to suggest that they are feminine and exist to give pleasure to and be "owned" or "bought" by men is not a new critical perspective.

An "elegant metaphor" this piece of text is not. Frankly, "anti-feminist" was a polite, understated description of a piece of text which embodies everything many women strive to eradicate from modern gender relations.

A good book to have a look at is The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader by Gill Kirkup et al., which has a few good cultural articles about Blade Runner (in my all-time-top-ten list of films ever made list) and the Alien series. Cracking book.

The next short lecture in feminist critical theory will be: TBA….

Boy, this whole "community dialogue" bit of blogging is fun :-)

Joanna Jameson : 28 May 2004 09:14 |  Tags: Critical Theory |  Comments (10) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

Abby Babby!

This was Abby Babby on "Day 2 in the Big World" Delayed pics…..stay tuned for all things Abby…. My apologies to all those who read Won't Shut Up About Your Baby magazine.

Joanna Jameson : 26 May 2004 22:20 |  Tags: All Things Abby |  Comments (10) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sweeeeet Graphics Card

Writing about web page http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_6800.html

We got one of these brought back for us from E3 (nah nah nah nah boo boo)....
It's fab but I'm now waiting for HalfLife 2 to see if it makes use of it. No other games even use the card to full capacity yet. Pixel shader model 3.0 with DirectX 9c is needed and coming. Download the latest movie of the Unreal tech engine to have a look at what the next generation of Unreal games is going to do with pixel shading technology. FarCry has a patch coming soon that may use it! hoorah!

Joanna Jameson : 24 May 2004 15:06 |  Tags: Games PC |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Week in Nova Scotia

Writing about web page http://www.novascotia.com/

Well, I'm back at work this morning in body if not in mind. My mind is still at home in Nova Scotia. The weather was gorgeous and sunny and one day even got up to 28 degrees! Terrific barbeque weather…

For anyone who has not been (and I'm assuming that would include most people on this campus) Nova Scotia is a TERRIFIC place to take a holiday. There are loads of beaches, fishing villages, national parks, cottages by the shore and colonial historial sites (both British AND French). Maritime and Scottish cultures pervade the province and so there are lots of great festivals and fresh seafood.

I've heard a lot of British people call Quebec or Ontario the East Coast of Canada because it's wrongly marketed that way here. The East coast of Canada actually consists of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island (P.E.I. – home of Anne of Green Gables for all you literary types) and Newfoundland. I highly recommend booking your next holiday to Nova Scotia but then, I am a bit biased…. Check out the site I've listed.

Joanna Jameson : 24 May 2004 09:03 |  Tags: Canadiana |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Clive Barker's Imajica

This novel DEFINITELY makes my High Fidelity-style-all-time-greatest-top-five-list of novels. When this novel was recommended to me by my husband, I thought, "you must be joking....like I'm going to read something by the author of Hellraiser?" After much nagging and having to actually buy me the book, he was pleased when I sat down and began to read (a daunting task when the sucker is like 3 inches thick!)

Although Barker is a British author known for his horror writing, this is NOT a horror novel, it's the last remaining fantasy EPIC that hasn't been made into a film. Both far reaching and mind blowing (forgive the tacky phrase), it's Lord of the Rings meets The Matrix meets Star Wars. No kidding. Read it. It's like nothing I've ever read before and I couldn't put it down. I'm planning on rereading it in the very near future and lots of others who have read it have done so multiple times. It's one of those narratives that just won't leave your mind after you've finished reading it, tending to hang around the corners of your thoughts begging to be mulled over in moments of silence (ya ok, way OTT but true). It's about a man named Gentle who discovers his forgotten identity. He is the one prophesized to join Earth with the outher four Dominions of the Imajica. He is the Reconciler. The tale starts off with an assassin in a dark, gypsy caravan park in a seedy area of London and ends up with…..well I can't tell ya…read it!

Incidentally, for those of you interested in critical theory, this novel is one of only a handful of examples of feminist texts written by men….

Joanna Jameson : 10 May 2004 17:00 |  Tags: Cult Classics Lit |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Day After Tomorrow Already Happened

Is it me or does anyone else think that the new film The Day After Tomorrow (which depicts horrible consequences of strange weather phenomena caused by global warming) is a late addition to the spate of bad weather films like Volcano, Dante's _Peak, _Sudden _Impact, _The Perfect Storm and Twister that were popular in the nineties? One begins to wonder what natural disasters or extreme meteorological events are left to dramatise....How far will they take this genre? They've made (pretty weak) films of volcano eruptions, tornados, meteorites, tidal waves, earthquakes and storms.....What will be the next one to come to a cinema near you? Fog? Hailstorm?

Joanna Jameson : 10 May 2004 14:03 |  Tags: Film |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Why Everyone Should Read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Possibly the most important text ever written about totalitarianism. More accessible than a lecture in politics and much more interesting than a Discovery Channel documentary on government and the individual. Every well read, well educated person should have a well thumbed copy of this novel in his or her library.

Orwell's text is not just about populations being watched by Big Brother. It's a catalogue of how populations are controlled in much more subtle ways, such as perscribed language and dictionaries, sexual norms and "official" accounts of history. Considering Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 before the television revolution got underway, this novel, with its two-way telescreens, its Britanic-American governmental alliance and its enforced permanent-present is a prophetic and spooky statement on current affairs.

Joanna Jameson : 10 May 2004 11:42 |  Tags: Cult Classics Lit |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem