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.

I don't know if this really deals with authorship but it does deal with media studies. I live in a suite with some friends and one of them got a wireless router thing. Tonight there were four of us in someone's room, and we all had our laptops and were connected to the wireless and began chatting on aol. For some reason it was infinitely more satisfying to be chatting online with people when they're in the room with you, than having an actual conversation or talking on AIM when you're not together. I would type something and look up at the person i just typed to. Or we would have a speaking conversation and would be typing to each other at the same time.