So I just got back from the most entertaining conversation at dinner. Well, it was necessarily entertaining, but it really was thought-provoking and involved three members of our Seminar and one Philosophy major. It started when I referred to the person who will be living next door to me next semester as a "rando", short for "random person" since it was not by our design that he will be living there. This word was not my own invention, but it is one of my favorites and thus I use it as much as humanly possible. We then collectively realized that this is a trend in our contemporary culture - shortening words from their original forms, as in "poss" for "possibly"; "whatevs" for "whatever"; "sitch" for "situation"; "probs" for "probably"; and I have no idea how to even begin spelling the modification for "usual" but I'm pretty sure you know what it sounds like.

In keeping with drawing my inspiration from the Internet, I have finally discovered why blogging is important:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16157182/

Speaking of great things to share from YouTube (as I'm sure someone just was...that's all we talk about), my friend Larissa just showed me this great stop-motion film that her friend from Occidental made. He took the sound from the move SAW, and redid the images with stuffed animals. It's pretty much the coolest thing of today. He was also on an episode of the short-lived MTV dating show "Wanna Come In?" and he was in fact invited in. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwdErvQ552o

Let me know what you think.

So I've been trying to learn how to juggle recently, and I figured I would use that as a springboard for writing a blog entry, since I am definitely behind in my blogging. And my juggling. I really suck still. But that's what practice is for, right? Anyway. I wanted to share a clip that I love, and didn't think I'd have much to talk about, until I found a second clip. Please excuse my ineptitude with our blogging system, and my inability to post actual links, but please just copy and paste the urls to take a look at what I'm talking about in each case.

Sometime last semester I saw this awesome video that many of you may have been already privy to, us having our ear to the ground of the Internet buzz and all:

I thought y'all would find this interesting. Ghostwriter are both taking (were both taking :) ) Sociology of Popular Music and our final project was probably more applicable to this particular Senior Seminar class, since we tackled the issue of authorship.

Along with a Pitzer student who's a singer, the three of us decided to perform three different versions of the same song - Jose Gonzalez's "Crosses". I don't know if you all are familiar with the song, but it's a pretty good slow acoustic number. Really folky. So Ghostwriter did a slow, keyboard-based soulful ballad. I did an uptempo, punk-ish version on my acoustic guitar, and the Pitzer student, who is Latin-American, sang it poppier and included a verse in Spanish. We were looking at how the song's meanings and style were altered in the mind of the audience when singers with different ethnic backgrounds sang it in a style more closely associated with their ethnicity. It was a great song to choose for that project also because Gonzalez is Swedish, born of Argentinian parents, playing a style that isn't really associated with either of those countries - at least in "Crosses".

Speaking of perusing Facebook, I don't know if any of you have come across this before, but there is an entire fake community created by Harvey Mudd kids of people from Guttlesohn Falls, Wisconsin. It's difficult to describe, but all the pictures are like old daguerrotypes from the 1800s and they've got ridiculous names like Thatcher Worthington Guttlesohn. They've created groups like the Guttlesohn Falls Rotary and the Guttlesohn Falls Hunting Club. It's an entire false reality that they've been able to realize through the virtual social networking tool that is Facebook. I definitely recommend that everyone go check this out, because they have been so diligent and thorough about it. I've thought about joining their community, since there are dozens of them, but for some reason it feels really wrong to try that. It seems like a well-defined space, but I know that anytime I want to I could join it and no one would know/be able to stop me. It's a really cool idea, and if any of you are involved, mad props to you.

I love the fact that my thesis is about mashups, but it means that I often get sidetracked when I'm doing thesis research. On Friday night, for example, I was up until three in the morning downloading tracks from PartyBen.com. This is the genius behind the American Edit remix of the Green Day American Idiot album. I don't know if you all have heard of this, because I just read about it, but this time last it had Warner Brothers getting a cease and desist order against the guy. It's kind of cool, and I found a mySpace page that has decided to post many of the songs...available for download of course.

I just have a couple of things I've noticed in the reading that I want to expand upon briefly. First, is Siva's description of Diogenes, the Greek dude who he calls the first cynic, and says masturbated in the marketplace. He describes this man saying, "He engaged powerful people in playful debate, often exposing their hypocrisy" (25). Who does this sound like in our contemporary society? Why, none other than Sacha Baron Cohen. Through his many characters, including Ali G and Borat, he seems to be carrying on this cynical tradition (by Siva's definition). Every subsequent sentence describing the guy then sounds like it could be describing Ali G, and come on, if you heard that any celebrity had masturbated in the marketplace these days, wouldn't mind immediately jump to Baron Cohen. Hell, he sort of did it in the Borat movie. I just thought this was an interesting parallel.

Okay, so I'm not really sure what point I'm going to make with this, but I feel that there is one, so I'm just going to type pretty much as fast as I can and see what comes out (other than typos). And if any of you can think of a good point to add to this, then please be my guests.

Anyway, I was up in Petaluma, north of San Francisco over the Thanksgiving break, spending some time with my aunt. She's a screenwriter/story consultant, who just got out of a couple-year-long gig with a public access television station up there. She's trying to start up projects and whatnot and has decided that mySpace is the way to do it. Her being of my parents' generation, she is not as familiar with recent technological advances, and enlisted me as her mySpace tutor for an afternoon.

I found another interesting news story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6160414.stm

It's about Universal Music Group suing MySpace for encouraging copyright infringement. Wtf? Why would they waste their time with this? It seems to me like MySpace's case is pretty airtight, as they've done less to encourage law-breaking than almost any musically-oriented site since prior to Napster's inception. In fact, MySpace is nothing but good for music - the industry, the musicians, the art form. This is a terrible PR move and an unwinnable case. Seriously, if anyone can see why a record company would continue the litigation against this particular site, let me know.