Last year I had a blast in Brazil attending Debconf4 but this year I am unable to attend Debconf5 in Hel which is a shame. But they do have a a webcam up so it is *just* like being there, making me feel SO much better that I am in Chicago, formating my dissertation, instead of being in Finland..

turtle

brilliant

biella will finish her dissertation (I think) and with only some minimal damage to her psyche, the broadcast flag is struck down (for now), and sarge is frozen (f*cking finally and congrats Debian )!

So since I recently revealed my love for less than stellar movies, it should come to NO surprise that I love E.T. Like many children of the 1980s, it had a profound impact on my under-developed psyche, representing a high-grade form of formative trauma that balanced out what was a more or less life or privilege otherwise marked by a much lower grade of constant trauma borne from a higher than statistically normal number of flying dishes, the direct outcome of a less than loving marriage.

So in 2001 when the movie was released, I of course had to go see it in big screen. I was pretty sure that despite my love of trash, the movie would bore me, its thrill, extending only out to a 10 year old girls/boys psychology. I mean I knew I would dig the hardware hacking scene but I was fruitfully surprised by the critical complexity of the film.

While at dinner on Thursday with a bunch of anthro friends, we somehow got on the topic of Speilberg movies and most of them, very sadly, loved the Indiana Jones trilogy but did not share my adoration of E.T. (who I love more now that I know my mom thinks of herself as E.T. due to her really wrinkled skin). There was one friend who, however, did not only share my fondness for the brown stodgy creature from the very far-reaches of outer space but LOVES HIM EVEN MORE than me. The news was surely exciting to me and my immediate reaction was a typical 1970s expression of deep inner joy: FAR OUT.

But as it turned out, there was more excitment than I could ever imagine. She revealed that there was a Bollywood, yes Bollywood movie loosely based on E.T, Koi Mil Gaya (and of course the first thing to pop to my IP-obssessed mind was is that even legal and damn where can I rent that?)

But even better is that my friend, which is one of the geekier things I have seen produced by her, has written a fairly in-depth commentary comparing these two wistful movies cocentrating on the social and political implactions within the narrative which ultimately is the journey of boyhood into manhood.

So if you love (or possibly hate) E.T. as much as I do, Gen’s analysis is pretty stellar:

“It is for this reason that Koi Mil Gaya is far more violent than ET and also far more hopeful. In a more human and social world, confrontation is inevitable but victory is possible. Although both stories tell a child

I am knee-high immersed in the waters of phenomenology, the study of being-in-the world. I have reached that point in the dissertation when I finally get to the nitty gritty details of a hackers life, looking at the ways in which the practical action of hacking (social and technical) comes to bear in their ethical conceptions of freedom. I am well beyond the half-way mark which is exciting but still feels fakely odd to me as if everything I have written needs to be entirely revamped, ground up.

I have always had a soft spot for phenomenology, perhaps because it questions abstractions and because it implicitly affirms the anthropological method which is learning through experience of the world. It is a philosophy that has always struck me as more graspable than most, a comforting affirmation that what we experience and how we act upon the world, structures our perceptions and modalities of being yet it is still precisely action by which new layers of perceptive sediments are built:

“To be born is both to be born of the world and to be born in the world. The world is already constituted, but also never completely constituted; in the first place we are acted upon, in the second we are open to an infinite number of possibilities. But this analysis is still abstract, for we exist in both ways at once. There is, therefore, never determinism and never absolute choixe, I am never a thing and never bare consciousness…” (Merleau-Ponty 1962:453)

Lately I have been thinking of blogging as an peculiar set of experiences, wondering why I like writing blogs and reading them. The reasons are many but I like having a glimpse into the experiences of others in a way that would perhaps not emerge through other media or means. For me, I use my blog a little like an annotated photo album, well except minus most of the pictures It is somewhat of an abbreviated tracking of my life but I write on about a peculiar set of things and reasons: that which impusively catch my fancy, things I can’t shut my mouth about (though no one else is probably interested), a place of ironic and at times cynical escape from the rationality of our lives and my work, and the desire to give a little more form to what is otherwise floating to the far corners of mybrain…

If nothing else, by reading blogs we get a glimpse of the ways in which people move through the web, which is a mutliplex of chaos with streams, reams, and beams of content. It historically tracks our movements and moreover, how we think of them which is what I usually find most interesting.

For those who are far away from me, I like to drop in to witness thier thoughts. I know it is no replacement for the ‘real thing’ or whatever, but given the extreme distances friends and families find themselves in, a blog can be a nice technology to attenuate the distance. I love reading comments from friends though I am terrible at responding for reasons that are not clear to me. It amazes me how much easier it is to reconnect with those far from me if I read their blog or if they hang out on irc. In fact even though my bloglines is filling up, I wish more of my friends of mine would blog but I find this technology still circumscribed among a certain group of technology minded folks.

And for those who have recently emerged out of the obscure fog of my past, finding me through my blog (ie ted), and said you would write me an email –> if you are still reading this –> please do!

I have been using a gmail account for school related emails and since GMAIL knows I am a dissertation writer (being that gmail is a full on snoop doggy dog), I get funny ads about dissertation writing services.

Now I know there are the “term paper” services, but a whole dissertation?

I would, I have to admit, love to meet some of these ghost dissertation writers because who in the right mind would ever want to write some one elses dissertation for a living? Or do they just do some serious cutting and pasting? I mean, it is hard enough to write your own, why take this up as a side job? But then again, there might be some people out there who are really GOOD at writing dissertation. I mean we all have our special gifts in life? And I bet they charge a pretty penny.

Anyway, the site is also pretty amusing, with testimonials like:

Top bananas. What can I say? — J.D. / LSE

Greg and the rest of the team offer you the chance to remember your student years for the good moments. — J.J. / Aberdeen Uni

to ‘very well’ thought out justifications:

Ok. What is it that you do then?

We take care of things. If you don’t want or feel that you cannot write an assignment or dissertation, we can do it for you. For a price, of course.

Eeeek! Isn’t that a bit…?

Yes, it is. A bit. But students have been doing it in since the Dark Ages and they are still doing it now. And if you’re going to do it, you would really want the best you can get, right? Well, we’ve been doing it since when we were at uni and we are very good at it, so you don’t need to worry about the quality of our work. Your university or college may not like it, but you are not going to tell them, are you? Your secret is safe with us. We’ve been keeping secrets for other students around the country (and some abroad) and we never told anyone. Not even our partners.

If I had money to burn I would give them on the many topics I would love to write about and see what they are capable of producing. And it is also good to know that if I don’t get a job, I can always work for them but I guess you are not considered unless you actually wrote your dissertation, but really who is to tell

Happy Chinese New Year! To celebrate, I avoided the mind numbing cold as much as possible and ate Happy Lamb at Lao Sze Chuan. Then I came home to find out that I had spelled Mr. Randel, the president of the University of Chicago, as Mr Randall, on the SOSHI Petition.

Unfortunately, that is so like me which is why I so liked watching Spellbound the other night. Funny movie about a life I could have never traversed. Iteresting portrayal of class and ethnicty in the American landscape through a already bizarre youth competition.

I just got back from watching Ravi and Anoushka placidly rock out on their sitars at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Sitting down playing that large hunky instrument of wood and many strings did not look at that comfortable for them but the music soared. Most of the pieces started off slow and a bit disjointed (at least for my flaccid western ear) but then everything collapsed together in an haromic frenzy. It was beautiful.

I often think that writing should be that way. Start off slow and a little lost but somewhat enticing till then you get sucked in, unable to escape as the words, sentences, and meaning become alive so allive that you can’t take so you read, read till the end, nearly without breathing. And then are satisfied, satisfied that you not only read something but experienced a piece of beauty that enraptured, fully and totally. I have fantasies about writing anthropology like that but that is exactly NOT to do (or so I am told). The style should be all clear from the start, and you should hold a steady, rhythmic pace, never really jolting the reader but just holding her steady from clear point to clear point. That is the form of writing I am not so good at but am trying… Maybe I can at least have one chapter of harmonic frenzy… I will just suggest that my advisors listen to Ravi and Anoushka while they read it. Then it will make sense and be a totally engulfing aesthetic experience…

Tomorrow I leave Puerto Rico after a summer that will be unforgetable. Being with my mom who has been sick has been much harder than I ever thought it was going to be. It is hard on the soul to see someone you care about so much suffer and then it is just hard to care for someone. Today, the weather matched my mood about leaving. The ocean was fierce and wavy because of hurricane Fabian which is not going to hit here but still stirs up the waters around our shores. The waters were really fierce, thrustring everwhere, while large eddies of waters formed where sunbathers usually lie. Despite the fierceness, there was also a cool calm mist along the shore and even inland because of the sea spray. The normal tradewinds were noticeably absent too. I feel a lot like those waves and the mist. A lot of turmoil about leaving but also a sort of softer, kinder sadness and resignation about the whole affair. I will be back soon and hopefully those around her will help her out.

Despite what my mom is going through, she still has an amazing ability to delve deep into humor. One day a couple of weeks ago she told us about how “The Mafia Runs Away From ME,” noting all the times in her life that “mafiosos” would steer clear of her… She was being totally honest and found her phrase: “The Mafia Runs Away From Me” as a sort of humorous refrain. So, some friends in celebration of this most catchy phrase, printed a shirt in honor of my mom!