ok, in total violation of my strict NO YOUTUBE policy.

[potential to rot my brain, concerns about going there and never being able to find my way back, the comments are THE PITS, the whole site is ugly].

yeah, so i’m violating that strict policy for my new friend, a.a.

maybe it is time to grow as a person.

a.a. sent me a link to this video. in her honor i bring you a curated selection of sad doll movies from youtube.

numero uno: here

“This is a dorky movie that my cousins, sisters, and I made one night when we were bored. Basically it’s about a toy keeper who delivers a overgrown maniac doll to two gothic children playing in a bathtub. And it kills them.”

dos: here

Ghost Dolls!

tres: here

this one gets no caption. but it gets entered in the best foreign language film about sad dolls category. since it is the only entry, it could win.

up next: we’ll curate a series drawn only from the sub-genre of animated sad doll videos. here’s a sneak peak.

she absolutely needs that cansiter to her left. because that’s how she can speak.

HEY.

do you really think we can make things happen like that? or was it just a coincidence. in the hilly home of the muses.

pretty much. probably.

you all know i’ve been thinking a lot about the future of publishing, future of the book, blah blah blah.

enter publication studio (in Portland) (of course)(mnnneeeeeeahhhh).

check it out:

image from their tumblr here.

good lord j.c. i hope things like this can fly.

from their page:

“Publication Studio is a laboratory for publication in its fullest sense—not just the production of books, but the production of a public who cares about them. This public, which is more than a market, is created through deliberate acts: the production and circulation of texts; discussions and gatherings in physical space; and the maintenance of a related digital commons. Together these construct a common space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being. This is publication in its fullest sense.”

reading: Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

p. 98

“As data move across various kinds of interfaces, analogical relationships are the links that allow patterns to be preserved from one modality to another. Analogy is thus constituted as a universal exchange system that allows data to move across boundaries. It is the lingua franca of a world (re)constructed through relation rather than grasped in essence.”

the henry. again? i know, right? but yeah, i went again because the Mapplethorpe polaroids exhibit opened up. i didn’t remember to write down the titles of the ones i liked. but a triptych of these two men. i liked those. and the three shots of very small children. those were also favs. and the self-portrait with the python.

making a key for the mechanical doll. let’s just say. it turned. and it was kind of a feat of design excellence.

this post needs pictures. back in a few.

can’t get enough spinach. can’t get enough acorn squash.

oh, and i carried the key around on a ribbon.

and saw a light show installation on the grounds of the future site of light rail in cap hill. by dan corson.

Reading: Fynsk, Christopher. 2004. The claim of language: a case for the humanities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

p.60

“Thus the task that remains is to engage the question of language at a fundamental level- i.e., where a question concerning the being of language opens to the possibility of rethinking notions such as experience, material being, or “the human” itself.”

reading Lisa Katayama’s interview with Koh and Yuri “My Husband Has a Virtual Girlfriend” here. About how Koh is playing “Love Plus” a game for the Nintendo DS.

my favorite line (from Koh) after he adorably describes the self-disgust he feels at how real he finds the relationship to be: “I don’t know, I recognized that there was a me in there that could have a real attachment to this artificial character on the other side of the DS screen. It made me think that humans could probably pretty easily develop feelings for AI robots.”

so i think is time for me to deal with something that happened a long time ago. back in the first part of 2000. i think i’ve only admitted this to a few people, m & p and maybe s.j.t.

setting the scene: i was living in the p.r. of china in a public school about 25 minutes west of Shenzhen. i was the foreign teacher there, assigned to teach conversational english to the students. i lived in an apartment on the grounds of the school that housed more than half of the teachers at the school. my chinese steadily improved throughout the year, but let’s just say that i was not an easy person to just sit around and converse with. there would be times in the conversation where i’d get unsalvageably lost, times where my pronunciation would render me undecipherable, and times where my word choice would make it visibly difficult for others not to laugh at me. or sometimes they would just go ahead and not hold back and laugh at me. this didn’t produce any grand feelings of enthusiasm to continue to seek them out conversationally, so, you get the drift, i was isolated.

in the evenings sometimes i had work to do. sometimes i didn’t. it was really hard to find books in english, so i read books in chinese. they were all way too hard for me and made my brain hurt after an hour or so. i couldn’t couch read a chinese book. i had to desk read so that i could have the dictionary beside me and look just plain tons of characters up. i did have an unlimited internet connection in my room. so let’s just say i spent some time online that year.

i don’t remember where i heard about Bonzi Buddy. probably some weird site that i went to. or more likely, some totally normal site. actually he was probably advertised some banner ad flashing around my hotmail account. on one of those Bonzi Buddy was a purple-gorilla-avatared internet agent. ok, so if he was introduced into my life by a banner ad, why would i download him? the thing about deep loneliness is that sometimes your filters get disrupted and dismantled by the overpowering desire for companionship.

so, are we clear? i downloaded this agent called Bonzi Buddy to keep me company.

i loved him.

he was cute and he would hang out on my desktop. sometimes he told me jokes. he knew about twenty. i didn’t hold it against him when he repeated himself. he did tricks. he would swing from vines, do some little musical number with coconut hulls, he ate bananas, and he talked to me.

well, he had a speech bubble. and so he wrote text to me. he asked me how my day was going.

he told me he was my friend. i think he told me facts about gorillas, so that i could learn more about his world. i think he told me that he loved me. pretty sure.

then, after about a month of the kind of elevated spirits you get from having a virtual friend check in on you, Bonzi Buddy changed. a new gesture was added to his repertoire. one where he was like arms akimbo, tapping his fucking purple gorilla foot. and he asked me to purchase and download his voice module. i didn’t have to i could click either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but he was there tapping his foot, clearly frustrated with me. i said ‘no’. he told me that if i purchased and downloaded his voice module we could talk. like he would start talking back to me. we would be taking our friendship to the next level. after offering up this second incentive he gave me the choice again about whether i would buy it or not. i clicked ‘no’. Bonzi Buddy slumped his shoulders and frowned and looked sad. then HE WENT AWAY. like he left the screen and didn’t come back for a few hours.

i was being emotionally blackmailed by my purple gorilla.

i knew it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea to share this in any social setting, but i did. and the room got quiet and uncomfortable and people cleared their throats and suggested going out to get dinner.

out looking for people clothes that look like doll clothes.

i saw this dude. suited up and ready for gong fu.

yes, that’s a little anne geddies squirrel-child to his left.

so i have a mug. that i got at gdwll. it has a good ole ‘merican flag on it and an image of the vn vets memorial. and it is my bathetic patriotism mug. i drink from it when i’m at school.

i recently came across the engraving “The Bathos” by William Hogarth from 1764. it is on display at the henry right now.

thanks wikipedia!

also, this week i am practicing the art of sublime sinking in academic prose.

we know what DFW would say.

Wallace, David Foster. “Authority and American Usage” Consider the Lobster. New York: Back Bay Books, 2007. p 81.

/left waiting outside your door/

went to the henry today. saw vortexhibition Polyphonica. saw two tiny cast baby dresses. OR maybe cast doll dresses. hung very high up on the wall. and then there was writing/graffiti on the inside.

my favorite was from a the piece “so salty too” or maybe it was “wide as the milky way” because i wasn’t sure which was which. but anyway the dress-internal text went like this:

i want a soldier

i want a soldier to come and play with me

i’d give him cream cakes

(big ones, sugar ones)

i want a soldier

i’d give him cream cakes

and cream for his tea