Most of us have heard from some Great Aunt “Ohhhhhhhhhh Thanksgiving, it is so ‘precious’, it is the ‘least’ commerical of our holidays….” Well that is true so long you ignore the day after Thanksgiving: America’s Busiest Shopping Day. You don’t need to commericalize a holiday that marks the beginning of the uber-commerical holidays…. In this light, Thanksgiving is the day of gluttony where folks stuff themselves silly, packing in the calories needed to fend of the crowds the next day during the day of consumer gluttony. (In other words, today it was a *bad idea to go food shopping at the same strip mall where Best Buy is located… and actually, though you might not be able to tell, I actually really like Thanskgiving..)

This was the first day in a long time I have felt like myself in part because I was finally freed from an heightened focus on myself. As I already mentioned, I spent most of last week sick and a better part of this week off-center especially after I found out that I was much sicker than I first thought. Now that I feel better, last night and today were the first days in a long time when I was able to fully enjoy the presence, company, conversation and laughter of others because I was no longer entrapped by a gnawing pain and discomfort that turned too much of my attention away from others and onto myself.

One of the peculiar things about illness and pain is that it induces an accentuated focus on ones self, creating a very peculiar, specific experience of autonomy that in no way frees you but momentarily disables you. No matter as much as I would like to transfer my pain outside of my self, I cannot (and would never want to) transfer my pain to another person. It is me and I and me and I alone that suffers the full bloodedness of pain; I feel stuck in me, which is the last place I want to be. At times like those pain seems as one of the least fungible of experiences.

But even while pain makes me feel trapped in my own self, I also know and experiene otherwise. I am always amazed during those times, if I let my pain and vulnerability known to others, at the kindness I receive, a thoughtfulness that warmly pierces through the isolation of illness that results from this strange accentuated focus on self. Without the kind response of others, the pain of suffering would switch from being awful (but bearable) to intolerable. For to be denied the love, warmth, and response of others during times of pain is to be treated as an isolated self, which, is the last way one (or at least I) ever want to be treated. While kidness and warmth may not cure the sting of pain, in so far as it denies the sense of automous isolation that comes with suffering, it always heals.

I woke up groggy and tired afer a late night of dinner and karaoke to celebrate my b-day and I woke to tough-to-swallow-news. I won’t go into the horrific details but I lost a lot of data on my computer, luckily more than 90% (the most important stuff) was backed up and most of the lost stuff is in print form. Actually the only information I lost lost were quotes I planned to use in my dissertation chapters that do exist but only in “raw form” (ie in interviews and fieldnotes). Now I need to go back and pull them out. Sigh. I guess it never harms you to read through all these email lists and field notes again. It can only help.

The good news though is that my article in Anthropology Quarterly which I thought would never see the light of day (that is, it would collect dust in libraries) is now reprinted on the web atLinux Insider and was also mentioned in a really good (and long) article in GrokLaw. Given the AQ piece in the Social Thought and Commentary section, this is only fitting and I am glad to hear the editor allowed them to reprint the article.

Now I need to get my bearings, keep working on my dissertation and read the Groklaw article and remember to make a back up of my stuff at least weekly….

Life has been slipping through my fingers, a little too busy since my trip back from Seattle to really do anything totally right. And it seems like my mail has been slipping too. 2 pieces of mail have been sent back to the sender even though the address was correct (I have head that Chicago mail is notoriously bad) and then a number of gmail emails that were not spam got filed into my spam folder and I only discovered that today.

Maybe in a few (Days, Weeks or Months), things will be back in order.

I am excited that Vitanuova is finally on a blog with an RSS feed. I love his stuff for he mixes critique with brilliant analysis yet he still manages to include little odd pieces about his personal life, like the fact that he is still “plays” Dance Dance Revolution…

Though back for four days, I am still swimming in a clogged universe of errands and administrative nightmares made worse by jet lag. I had very little of “the lag” in Paris but I guess a new city, friends, and conference can override your screwed up circadian rhythm while an endlessly long “to-do” list has no such positive effect except exhaust me so mcuh that I am in bed by 9 pm. I guess that is what I get for leaving home for nearly one month when there were clearly things to be done. I could go off for a long time about these quagmires but I refrain for it is a serious bore but I will offer one piece of advice: when and if you give away a large possession, like a car, do keep a paper trail of all exchanges. 2 years after giving, YES, giving my car to my ‘good’ Christian neighbors, I found out they never sent in the title to the CA DMV, and thus after disposing of the car on the side of the road, the paper trail leads to me, with a big fat $2600 bill along with it. Uggh, in one instant, I have ruined my credit for a 1978 Celica that I paid $750 for. To get this fixed, I will first have to appeal to these ex-neighbors on some lofty bed of Christain ethics before moving to the “American way”, that is, the threat of lawsuit (which might be a bluff unless I find some cheap lawyer) and ultimately move to paying it off over months.

Anyways, keep paper trails of it *all. *

Now that I am thousands of miles away from Paris, here are some initial and sporadic impressions of the city. Yes, yes, the architecture, gardens, food are supposed to be (and pretty much are) stunning, golden, brilliant, manicured and such. What they say is pretty much true, Paris is insanely nice. It must cost a pretty penny to upkeep the city for the gazillion tourists that frequent her streets. Clearly, Parisians have such a stong awareness of the visual uniqueness of the city, they push the structural and social ecology of the city into that direction of striking beauty.

The city performs like no other city I have seen. Paris is in a nutshell is a city of great surplus; its main goods of surplus being drama, perfomance, and beauty, so much so even the doogies know how to perform for interested parties with full drama in front of a Parisian cafe:

Its a city that compels you to keep walking and gawking even if your legs are burning and your eyes are stinging from fatigue. You keep going because you know that around the corner you will be assualted by something astonishing. Its charm and beauty spans the extravangantly ornate to the simplistically quaint, flowers of all colors mediating the various forms that beauty can take:

After a week in Paris, culminating today in a walk of epic proportions across half the city with my sister, I would love some home-delivered super-novacaine for my legs (codeine coated tylenol would be fine too). My feet feel like 1000 of the worlds most vicious fire ants chomped on my feet make them swell but also causing massive leg stiffening. But aside from the lack of all sensation but pain and stiffness in my legs, this has been quite an enjoyable trip. I am afraid that I have so much to say, it is as if a bundle of stuff has burst from a bag, scattering all the contents on the floor, so that I can’t usefully say much now.

But before I retire early so that I can take one last dash in Paris tomorrow, here is some provocative news from the SF Indymedia collective. In short, they are changing directions:

August 29, 2004
As this is being written, thousands of people are pouring into New York City to demonstrate at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Four years ago, encouraged by WTO/Seattle demonstrations, organizers mobilized impressive protests at the previous national party conventions, and the Independent Media Network was just getting started. On the west coast, people determined to have a San Francisco Indymedia raced back from the Democratic Convention protest in Los Angeles for a whirlwind month of IMC-building. In the four years since, San Francisco Indymedia has grown as a hub of independent media and information/technology dissemination during tumultuous, historic times in our own city and around the world.

This year, San Francisco IMC has had a unique opportunity to reflect on successes and mistakes of our local Indymedia organizing. Examining our own work experiences with Indymedia, we’ve attempted to understand how we think about Indymedia and where we think it could go. Finally, we’ve emerged with a solid vision about our IMC’s future (and we hope to expand these discussions on a network-wide level)…. This reality conflicts with Indymedia’s broader potential

So lately I have not been much in the blogging mood. I think from time to time, the name blog annoys me so deeply, I just want to throw the whole bloga-thingie down the toilet. But sooner or later I get a little inspired and look past the dorkiest of names and write a new entry.

And though here I am writing, I can’t say that I am inspired by much these days. Not the way that I want to really lead life but then again, it is silly to think life is like how all the beer companies portray it in their ads: cool, refreshing, exciting, and with a great taste.

Anyway, there have been some new happenings in my life lately. I started a new blog: Psychiatry News to help me keep track of the articles and news relevant to my next project on Mind Freedomish stuff. I have to write a small entry “What is Psychiatry News” in part to explain the images I have on the blog. But I will do that, when, inspired. I also hope to comment more on that blog than my FOSS blog which is pure links. You know a research tool.

Otherwise, I am wrapping up an article, with El Golub, and frankly I can’t wait till we finish. The topic, a whole new way of thinking about hacker ethics, I have been thinking about for a year straight. This piece is a culmination of much of my work and thoughts and I just want it *out* of my life. And after Sunday and some marathon editing, maybe with some rooster to celebrate, I hope it will be gone.

Speaking of writing, I wrote an article on Indymedia and Free Software that came out this week. It is a sort of “rah-rah” feel good activist piece. Yes, you know the type of writing us academics are not supposed to dip in (or at least till you have “made it” and only then In the Nation). But screw it, it is sometimes nice to put the trenchanct critique aside and be positive for a change. The aritcle, I warn you, is long, I think approaching 10,000 words. It is not super academic though it is not super lay-speak either. Well, actually, I have been told that it is too jargony, cleary written, mediocre and brilliant. Clearly bi-polar reviews, so really, you be the judge of it.

On the non-academic front, I have changed my daily habits. I go to bed early and wake up early. I would love to go to sleep at 9 and wake up at 5 but I am managing sleep between 10-11 and wake up around 6-7. It is nice and peaceful in the morning. Only me and the mouse that we can’t get rid of (though he is sequestered…)

In an entirely unexpected turn of events, I stopped drinking coffe. Yes, just out of the blue. Strange as strange can be. I just got disgusted by the black aphrodite and switched to tea… I imagine this won’t last too long but it is sort of nice for now.

Well, that was a weird round-up of my life blog entry… Maybe when the inspiration returns, I will come up with more innovative flair.

A storm has blown threw Chicago. Stifling heat has been converted to cool air while thick drops of water hit with a satisfying thump against the lifeless pavement of urban city streets. The rain brings a collective relief to the streets and her inhabitant though everyone knows this treat is short lived. The heat so characteristic of Chicago summers is only bound to visit us soon again.

I have been back for over just two days and I am only now clearing the thick piles of everything (clothes, books, bills, receits, emails. odds and ends, to-do items) that were waiting for me upon my return. Since I was so busy right up till the moment I left, I have not really taken care much of anything outside of pure necessity for weeks and thus moving and flattening the pile has not been easy nor all that entertaining.

In another day or two I hope the can finish with this process of purging and maybe then these enteries might pick up pace into something more interesting than this!

It is that time of year where I feel the greatest ambivalence. I walk the streets drawn by the budding white flowers, sitting so frail at the ends of branches while spring winds and rains threaten its beautifully liminal existence. I am excited for it is the end of winter, yet peeved at the indecisiveness of the weather. A prefectly agreeable day of sun and mild winds is followed by piercing winds threatning to bring an end to those wonderfully rich nuggests of colors starting to emerge, seemingly from nowhere.

But this period has always been matched with a lot of personal anxiety. Part of it, as silly as it may sound is taxes, the enigmatic and arcane bureaucratic form causing me great distress especially after messing up on taxes years ago which led to a hefty re-payment plan (with interest of course) years later. Also, it is the time of year in which I start to ponder, as a grad student, about my financial future and this I feel very very very ambivalently. On the one hand I am nothing but grateful for the supoprt I have received, and the same time I have the leisure to think about what are really at some level, frivolous affaris. I feel no reason to complain. On the other hand for example, I am not really allowed to legally work for more than 6 hrs a week on my current fellowship so when I run out of funds, I am basically left bone dry. This is an arcane way of managing financial affairs, one of course that I find perturbing– since I don’t know of many jobs that pay around 800 a week for my skill set (you know to cover all the expenses I need to cover), I will either have to take out a loan, find a big wad of cash in the dumpster, or come up with an all together new and really creative solution to this financial problem.

In the end, things usually work themselves out and often for the best but when you are in the thick of it all, it never quite seems that way.

The question of finances reminds me that I recently read a very well written article by
Karl Fogel on the reform of copyright (but do get your free copies while you can).

I like how he offers suggestions about how we might pay producers of content even if and when the content is made very accessible to wider publics. His analysis is passionate yet balanced, incisive yet lacking righetousness, and just written plain well (no wonder he is comissioned to write books). He offers passages like the following which sum up in plain force the nature of the industry, the stakes of the current system, and the contradictions of it all:

The combination of a still-sympathetic public and deep pockets has unfortunately allowed the copyright industry to exercise dangerous influence at the legislative level. The result is a disturbing trend: mutually reinforcing physical and legal barriers that, while ostensibly designed to combat illegal copying, have the inevitable effect of interfering with all copying. Digital copy-protection schemes are increasingly enforced by your computer’s hardware itself, rather than by malleable and replaceable programs. And the same companies that own content often also manufacture the hardware that makes distribution possible. Have you bought a computer from Sony? What about a CD from Sony’s music division? That’s the same company, and its left hand knows what its right hand is doing. With government cooperation, this combination becomes even more powerful. In the United States we now have a law