Books Acquired Recently/update

Books Acquired Recently (in the order I got them)

Robert Herrick. The Works of Robert Herrick. amazon.com

National SCRABBLE Association Official Tournament and Club Word List. wordgear.com

Joe Edley and John Williams, Jr. Everything SCRABBLE. Borders

As the last two titles indicate, I've been spending lots of time playing Scrabulous on facebook. The semester ends next week, and then I will begin writing more frequently again.

Update/Books Acquired Recently

Well, it's been half a month since I last wrote. Part of this delay has been because I've been spending oodles of time on facebook, but mostly my lack of blogging activity is due to an increase in end-of-semester schoolwork. I will begin writing more frequently again once the school year ends after the first week of May.

In the interim, the most exciting thing that has happened is that I got an OED! I'm using it to write a paper on the high number (189) of first usages in Robert Herrick's poetry.

Books Acquired Recently

Frank O'Hara. Selected Poems. amazon.com

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. amazon.com

facebook, I give you the best minutes of my life

I haven't been blogging much lately, mostly because I am spending most of my leisure computer time on facebook. I wrote recently about how Scrabulous is a major obsession, but, since the Major League Baseball season started last week, updating my Mets cheers and brawling via facebook's fan application is also taking a lot of my time. I reached "Regular" status in less than a week, which I think is quite respectable, especially considering that the majority of Mets fans on facebook are still at the "Bat Boy" or "Rookie" level. The administrators of the application need to update the jerseys, though, since John Maine is the "Rookie" level jersey, and Carlos Delgado is the "Regular" level jersey. Aside from the fact that Maine is no longer a rookie, I'm sure many Mets fans would place Maine ahead of Delgado in terms of their importance for the Mets' success this season. Also, Pedro Martinez is the "Ace" level jersey, and, with no disrespect meant to Pedro, Johan Santana clearly belongs in that category now.

Addendum to the facebook update

I forgot to mention two things about Scrabulous in my last post:

1. I started out getting TERRIBLE tiles; in my first game I kept getting vowels, and in my second game consonants. I felt like the computer hated me. But now things are evening out a bit.

2. Every time I check my games and I don't have any moves to make, I start another game with someone. I'm currently playing eight games even though I've only been playing for three days. Most of my partners need to check their games more often, only a few are as dedicated as me (and weirdly, two of the most dedicated have names beginning with "K").

I am happy that Scrabulous uses the Tournament Word List (TWL) rather than just the Official SCRABBLE Players' Dictionary (OSPD). The TWL is better because it contains all of the legal words, including words that are deemed "objectionable," i.e., nearly every word related to sex, whereas the OSPD is a censored list because it tries to be "family-friendly." I am glad that the Scrabulous creators realize that to go along with the OSPD's censorship would be antithetical to the spirit of the game, which is to explore and enjoy the English language in all its beauty.

facebook update

I have become a facebook addict. I check it even more than I check my e-mail now - three or more times a day. Yesterday my friend Kara convinced me to add the Scrabulous application, so now there is even more reason for me to check my account because I have to make my SCRABBLE moves.

It's also been interesting to see who I've become friends with. Here is the breakdown so far:

4 childhood friends
4 high school friends
4 college friends/profs
4 graduate school friends
8 New York friends (from the two years I spent in Manhattan between college and grad school)
2 spouses of friends

I have at least semi-regular (once or more every fortnight) facebook interactions with about half of them.

Kunzru's "Raj, Bohemian" and thoughts on lifestyle and the self

There is an excellent story in this week's New Yorker (10 March 2008), "Raj, Bohemian" by Hari Kunzru, about an urban hipster who realizes that his "taste had been central to my identity" (114). As a result, he has no self other than the objects he acquires and the carefully considered acts (where to eat, what parties to go to, how to dress, etc.) he executes, which unwittingly become performance art pieces rather than natural maneuvers. So he is only living synthetically. He laments that "what I thought had been an expression of my innermost humanity was nothing but a cloud of life-style signals, available to anyone at the click of a mouse" (114).

This conclusion struck me because 1. the speaker realizes that he has no humanity left, he is just a pawn (chess metaphor!) in the capitalist system, but more importantly 2. it made me question the role of "the click[s] of a mouse" in my life and whether they fulfill some sort of genuine self-defining role (which I view positively; this positive view of one's essential self as somehow pure and good and something to be preserved and fostered may be problematic, but for my purposes here I will accept this view as a given), or whether they are merely "life-style signals" (which is a negative in this model). Let's examine three internet activities I frequently engage in to try and answer this question.

1. amazon.com - My frequent amazoning is an essential part of my book-buying addiction. So the question is, is this addiction an integral part of myself, or is it just a "life-style signal"? While the search for knowledge, which I still prefer to gain from books rather than via electronic means, is certainly an essential part of who I am, I love emitting the persona of a well-read intellectual. I would like to think that I can actually claim this description of myself, but I have to admit that aside from engaging in activities (e.g., getting my doctorate) that help me fit in to this description, I like to also have my chock-full, sagging, meticulously organized bookshelves visible to everyone to help enforce this claim. Books are valuable to me as decor, not just as sources of knowledge. This is why I never use libraries except for professional research, preferring to buy my books rather than rent them. So I have to say that my online book-buying is more of a "life-style signal" than a necessary expression of myself.

2. blogging - I think my reasons for blogging are fairly honorable - I do it to improve my writing, I'm not worried about whether or not I have a big (or any) audience (note my willingness to write often about sports, which nearly all of my friends disdain), and I do it to become a better writing teacher, since to be a good teacher you must also be a frequent practitioner in your field. So even though it may be fashionable to have a web presence, it is fair to say that I don't blog just to be hip or current.

3. facebook - While my initial ardor for facebook has cooled a bit in the past few days - I no longer feel a compulsion to check it every five minutes - I am still very much enthralled with it. I have to say that it was peer pressure which finally caused me to set up an account, not my own volition. So even though I genuinely enjoy facebook now, I can't escape that being a member is solidly in the "life-style signal" category.

Ergo, the majority of my internet activity is not motivated by an interest in self-definition and -improvement, but by attempts to appear cool. I will not deal with the question of what should be done about this state of affairs here, but it is interesting to note that the protagonist of Kunzru's story goes back to a "life-style signal" driven existence at the story's end because he cannot figure out how to escape this paradigm.

Facebook and the question of religion

I've been thinking over the past few days about what I should put in the "religion" field of my facebook profile, if anything. When I signed up, my initial impulse was to put "fuck religion," but I decided against that since I still have a few friends who are religious. Then I thought about "organized religion=terrorist philosophy," which I am currently leaning towards, but which again may offend some friends who I would like to keep. So I am not sure. I suppose that just leaving it blank would suffice, but there's a part of me that dislikes this option because it isn't interesting enough. So any suggestions would be appreciated.

More thoughts on facebook

I am completely in love with facebook so far. I am now at the point where I feel angry at my friends who aren't on it. Come on people, get with the program! This may not be an especially helpful attitude. We'll see whether this enamored state will last, or whether I am simply in a honeymoon phase. Stay tuned ...

Creating a digital self

Well, I finally broke down and joined facebook last night. I feel very ambivalent about this - on the one hand, I want to cling to my love of all things analog (especially books, which it is obvious that no one under the age of 25 reads anymore if my students are any indication, they wouldn't recognize a book if I smacked them in the head with it), but on the other hand, I realize I should probably get further education in the digital realm if I want to be marketable - C.R.E.A.M. So I went ahead and joined. (This blog is also a part of this new digitizing campaign.)

So far it is really cool to see the kind of connections I've been able to make - I could very easily get addicted, it has been a huge time-suck already. But I'm also feeling cyber-shy now, like these connections are too much intimacy with too many people all at once, even though because it's electronic intimacy it's not really intimacy at all. Lo, I am like a sheep without a shepherd in the world of facebook. Whither shall I go?