I don't really do the whole RPG thing, it's never really appealed to me, but there's a gamer contingent among my friends and I have it on good authority that studies have shown that in games which offer a broad variety of species, genders, appearances, etc to their players women and minorities tend to experiment broadly with in-game identities and their gender and race/ethnicity are not generally good predictors of their character's identity/appearance while white males and especially straight white males, with great statistical significance, tended toward the character/identity that was the closest approximation of white human male.

Everyone seems to be talking about House of Leaves right now, and a lot of you have really interesting things to say, but the book messes with my head too much for me to have anything intelligent to say about it, so for the moment I will discuss something else entirely...

I have Net Flix and lately I haven't had time for movies, I mean since when do I actually have over an hour of concurrent free time that isn't sleep? So instead I've been getting lots of TV shows from them. The problem is I've burned through most of the Simpsons and all of the Futurama that they have, plus a couple of crazy anime series (Serial Experiments Lain fucked with my head in a way similar to House of Leaves), so I'm beginning to look more at live action TV series. I tried Sex and the City, can't stand it. Desperate Housewives was even worse. I hate cop/law dramas, so that counts a lot out, and unlike most people I know I hate both Seinfeld and Friends. I've been told I should try Monk and House MD, I've seen a few episodes randomly and they seem promising. But that's beside the point. Anyway, last night was one of my biggest strikeouts yet. I took Net Flix and a couple of my friends up on their suggestion that I try Weeds, thinking, "oh this will be fun, light-hearted, maybe even a little counter cultural”. I made it through the first episode, put it back in its mailer and sent it back, the worst run of any series yet. I mean no offense to anyone who likes Weeds or any of the other of the aforementioned TV shows. Many people that I like and respect like at least one, if not more of them, I'm just really picky about TV. But I mean really!

I want to preface this by saying that I think that our country's stance on the matter of illegal substances is terribly misguided, I think that DARE does a lot more damage than good, and that the FDA and DEA are clearly more interested in regulating private citizen's personal morality on the basis of a highly conservative, fundamentalist Christian-oriented, and over-all misinformed perception of the dissemination, use, and effects of most so-called "narcotics" and controlled substances than in the protection of the citizenry. The FDA is a powerhouse of hegemonic regulation of "controlled substances", not only does it directly control what substances can and can not be legally sold and how and in what quantities, etc. but it also controls what sort of research can be done on controlled substances. You can't research their effects without obtaining the substance and you can not legally and ethically obtain it for a viable research experiment without going through the FDA, which categorically refuses to give clearance or supplies to any proposed research with the intent or potential to disprove the governmental and departmental stance on controlled substances. They not only control the substances but the knowledge that can be generated in regards to them.

*pant pant* My desultory diatribe on drug regulation in this country now out of the way, on to the matter of Cocaine: Energy Drink....

Both authors brought up the issue of language as a stumbling block in the participation of non-mainstream groups in the mainstream of intelligentsia. As someone who's grown up surrounded by academics (I'd say a good 1/3 of my family, extended and otherwise, are professors), this is not something that I ever realized was a problem, as academic-speak comes almost more naturally to me than that Spanish I took for four or five years.

As someone who would probably be considered a member of both oppressed groups that we are considering this week (as a woman, and as a "racial minority"), I have to wonder what the solution to the problem of the dominant academic language being sourced from a different "culture" would look like. As Bell Hooks discusses it, it makes perfect sense--black youth choose not (or perhaps cannot) to participate as heavily in what might be considered "high culture" or "academic" cultural pursuits simply because these activities, as we perceive them in the wider Western culture, simply have no bearing on their cultural experience... they are not framed in a "language" or set of conceptual building blocks which they can consider their own, and therefore a language they feel they cannot adequately express themselves in.

I have to say there is one thing I didn't particularly like about the readings for this week. This "thing" is that these articles open up whole other cans of worms than what we, as a class focusing specifically on authorship, are able to deal with.

There are so many side issues dealing with, for example, what exactly is feminism? why does it exist? what about the continuing issues of racism as a hegemonic imbalance of power, as Bell Hooks deals with? I find it problematic that (despite the fact that I, as someone who personally finds these issues relevant and therefore has some background in these things) we're given these readings and left to just take at the author's word that these issues are real, and exist exactly as they are described.