Hey everybody, just wanted to say goodbye with one last blog. All the smiles, the comments, the YouTube videos, I'll never forget them. In closing, I wanted to ask you all, why did you pick your blog name?

"He's a ghost, and he writes to us," or "How I picked my blog name"

For me, "ghostwriter" was inspired by my roommate's and my love for early 90s board games. Sitting on the shelf near my computer along with "The Babysitters Club Game" and "Tamagotchi: The Game" (yes, "Tamagotchi" exists as a board game), is the "Ghostwriter Mystery Game". For those of you who don't know, "Ghostwriter" was an awesome PBS show in the early - mid 90s. This will explain everything. Anyway, I really liked this name because you get the 90s TV show reference and the reference to questions about authorship posed by the actual practice of ghostwriting.

In honor of the awesome new video game I got yesterday ("X-men Legends II," yes!!) I thought I'd see what new games are coming out now (esp. since my game is already a year old. But I don't care because it's fun!). I came across two interesting ones that have religious themes. The first was "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," which is based on the "Left Behind" book series. From what I gather, it's premise is kind of similar to my X-men game. But instead of finding new mutants to join your fight against Apocalypse and his evil clone army, you're out recruiting and converting people in your fight against the Anti-Christ and non-believers. Critics of the game have described it as "a violent video game in which born-again Christians aim to convert or kill those who don't adhere to their extreme ideology." That's from this article on cnn.com. One of the groups against the game is petitioning to have it removed from the shelfs at (where else) Walmart. In response the the critiques, the CEO of Left Behind Games, Inc. says that "The reality is that our game perpetuates prayer and worship and that there is no killing in the name of God". He then goes on to contradict this, saying that "There is killing of course, it is a video game. But the basis of the game is spiritual welfare". Ummm okay. I think I'll stick to X-men. Everyone can agree that Apocalypse is a bad guy, especially when paired with evil clones.

Apparently, the old Ben Franklin quote that “nothing is certain but death and taxes” will become applicable in a new way. That’s right folks, governments are beginning to think about taxing virtual assets that people acquire in virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft. I came across this article on cnet.com, which talks about the State of Play/Terra Nova symposium, a yearly conference that is held to discuss the social and economic implications of virtual worlds. According to one of the economist quoted in the article, "given growth rates of 10 to 15 percent a month, the question is when, not if, Congress and IRS start paying attention to these issues." The article goes on to talk about estate taxes, and a report that’s been commissioned for next year by the Joint Economic Committee, which will probably really get the ball rolling on all of this. The article definitely gives the sense that taxing virtual assets is inevitable (I mean, that’s basically the article’s title) and is something we shouldn’t be surprised to see in the future. It’s really interesting to see the wide scope of virtual worlds, how they have economies and other aspects that we typically attribute only to the real world. It will also be interesting to see how institutions in the real world will have to learn to interact will virtual worlds, and how we might reconcile the real and the hyperreal.

I was reading some random articles when I came across an interesting one which combines technology and Kim Jong-Il, psycho dictator extraordinaire. Apparently, in order to get Kim’s attention/annoy him, the U.S. government is imposing trade sanctions on Kim’s favorite luxury items. These items include, Rolex watches, plasma TVs, certain cars and motorcycles and, of course, iPods. Since the rest of North Korea can’t really afford these things, the sanctions are really targeted directly at Kim. This is the first time the U.S. has imposed sanctions specifically just to annoy a particular leader. Aside from pissing Kim off, they also hope it will curtail his giving of expensive gifts to his supporters, which is one of his tools of control.

Maybe I'm behind the times but I had no idea that Adobe Acrobat will read files out loud for you. I was reading "Free Culture" tonight and I wanted to highlight certain passages so I was just looking around the program's toolbar to see if there was any way for me to do that. When I was looking under the "View" tab, I came across an option for "Read Out Loud". So, of course, I had it read the page I was on. It came out in a computerized voice but it still sounded pretty good, I didn't have any trouble understanding it.

If this is old news for you, then man, you've been holding out on me. I had no idea that the program even had that option, I think it's really cool, and its making my reading a lot more fun now that I have my computerized friend reading along with me.

So I was on afropunk.com doing research for my thesis (I have now written 4 pages of the thing! Yes!!) when I came across this crazy story. Apparently, there’s been a lot of speculation about racial profiling taking place in CVS drugstore chains. The rumor is that in some CVS stores Black hair products are fitted with anti-theft devices while all other hair care products (regardless of price) are not. So, I did a little internet search to try and find out if this rumor is true. According to snopes.com, a website devoted to determining the validity of urban legends and the ABC Channel 5 Eyewitness News Team (lol, such a long name), it is.

It seems that over the past few months, we’ve seen a string of celebrities and public figures being (pretty much) dragged out the closet by the media. From Lance Bass, to Neil Patrick Harris, to various members of the Republican party, it seems that people are being outed left and right (pun intended). Although the speculation comes out (god, I can’t stop with the puns) from different sources (i.e. Bill Maher’s comments on CNN), much of it seems to be fueled by internet gossip (i.e. Neil Patrick Harris being outed on Perez Hilton’s blog).

I find the whole thing to be really fascinating, and I also find that I have mixed feelings about it, and was left with more questions than answers. Although I will admit to deriving a sense of glee when homophobic Republicans are outed as gay themselves (and in turn as hypocrites), I also think that coming out is a very personal decision and shouldn’t be forced on someone. But then again, there is a need for more gay visibility in the public eye, but at what cost? It seems that with internet gossip, no aspect of a public figure’s private life is off limits. Is a total lack of privacy now hand in hand with celebrity in our culture? Should these people be forced out of the closet? As public figures, do they owe it to the queer community to be out? Also, why are all of the recently outed people males?

Like my previous blog, this one was also sparked by my Digital Art class (yay for class overlap!). We had a visiting artist last week who did a lecture about his work, which includes elements from LARPs (Live Action Roleplaying, like we talked about with “First Person”). Although this presentation was astoundingly boring, he did talk about how LARPs are evolving beyond the fantasy/sci-fi genre. He briefly touched on Colonial Williamsburg, which intrigued me because it seemed like a very problematic premise, like living out a colonial fantasy. I went to their website to find out more, and it turns out it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Just when you thought you’d read enough about YouTube, here comes my latest blog entry! (I really hope no one has posted about this yet. I went back through the blog to double check, but if I missed something and this has been done already, sorry. But you should watch these videos again because they’re cool.)

Anyway, in my Digital Art class we’ve been working with sound, basically cutting up sounds that we’ve found or made and mixing them into something new. On Thursday, the prof showed us a couple of YouTube videos by this Norwegian guy name Lasse Gjertsen, who does a similar thing but with sound and video (oooh). The two we watched were Amateur and Hyperactive.

Today in my Sociology of Popular Music class we began our unit on reggae and dancehall music by watching several video clips, including the documentary “Roots Rock Reggae” (1977). The video features performances, interviews of artists, and artists in the studio. However, unlike many documentaries, the name of the person speaking or performing is not captioned at all. Afterwards, one of the first questions asked was who were the musicians in the video. Though the professor knew a lot of the names, there were still a few left unknown. This, of course, led us to a discussion of authorship, particularly how notions of authorship may vary outside of a Western or U.S. context. In the U.S., because we’re a very capitalist society, notions of authorship tend to be linked to ownership and copyrights (which I’m sure we’ll get more into with “Free Culture”). These ideas are particularly relevant to music today, with the way that new technologies are changing the way we consume it.