April 7, 2009

GAY MARRIAGE PASSES IN VERMONT!

Okay, first things first -- GAY MARRIAGE IS NOW LEGAL IN THE STATE OF VERMONT!!!! Republican Governor Jim Douglas vetoed the bill as soon as it hit his desk (probably afraid of getting the gay cooties), and the Legislature overrode the veto. The Senate vote wasn't close, but the House needed 100 votes to override, and by the gods they got 100 votes. Exactly.

I'm a little overwhelmed right now... okay, a lot overwhelmed...

I was curious, so I went to the Legislature's web page to read the text of the bill. You can, here (it's a PDF).

The bill does all of the heavy lifting, setting out the changes to Vermont law and statute needed to make gay marriage legal here. A few things jumped out at me. I was surprised at how strongly it affected me to read:

§ 8. MARRIAGE DEFINITION
Marriage is the legally recognized union of one man and one woman two people. When used in this chapter or in any other statute, the word “marriage” shall mean a civil marriage. Terms relating to the marital relationship or familial relationships shall be construed consistently with this section for all purposes throughout the law, whether in the context of statute, administrative or court rule, policy, common law, or any other source of civil law.

And then I was surprised at my own reaction to this little bit of administrative clarification:

(2) The department shall prescribe forms that allow each party to a marriage to be designated “bride,” “groom,” or “spouse,” as he or she chooses

I usually try to say something pithy or interesting, but I'm just overwhelmed by the whole thing. I really didn't believe that the House had the votes to override the veto (and I'm pissed as fuck at South Burlington Representative Sonny Audette, who voted against the bill when it came up, then abstained from the veto override vote -- after telling the local paper that he would vote for the veto override), and I'm not sure what to feel or do right now. (Update: turns out Vermont required 2/3 of the members of the Chamber who bothered to show up to override a veto. So Audette's absence actually lowered the number of needed votes to 98. Crazy, huh?)

R and I have been together for over 13 years. We've been registered domestic partners in Washington, D.C., the city of San Francisco, the state of California, and the city of Pittsburgh. We've had a civil union since shortly after we arrived in Vermont. And we had a huge-ass ceremony/party to celebrate the C.U. and our 10-year anniversary on a lovely ship out in the middle of Lake Champlain.

But none of that was a wedding. None of it was marriage. Sorta.

When Hawaii was poised to become the first state to allow gay marriage back in the late 90s, we were planning to fly all the way out there to get hitched. Then the "good" people of Hawaii decided to amend their constitution to prevent us from dropping by.

But now marriage is here, in my state. No air travel required. No need to return to a jurisdiction that doesn't recognize what you just did. And... wow.

"This act shall take effect September 1, 2009."

File this one under Blog News , Queer Theories
Posted by Richard at 11:11 AM | Comments (2)

March 30, 2009

Multimodal & Multiliterate

A few items of multimodal, multiliterate interest. First, my laptops are having problems. Ugh. The Mac PowerBook G4 has decided that Firefox is no longer interested in playing embedded YouTube videos. Other videos (mostly) work. But YouTube? Nope. There's a URL-by-URL fix out there, but that doesn't help with embedded videos. And yes, I've tried all of the suggested fixes. No good. So, on the Mac I surf with Firefox and keep Opera open to do nothing but watch videos. How tedious.

And then the sound capabilities of my PC laptop started to go. First the speakers got scratchy, then they crapped out altogether. Now the earphone jack does nothing, either. Double-ugh. Of course, the PC laptop does have its zombie sound moments -- usually involving some irritating system sound or beep that comes out at ear-splitting decibels because I've forgotten to turn the previously uncooperative and utterly silent sound to off.

Second, this past weekend I was working on the PC laptop and I saw that a friend had shared this video on Facebook. When I tried to view it, of course, it played without sound.

Now, at first I thought this was intentional. Watch the video with your speakers off and see for yourself. But then I hijacked the Spouse's nice new desktop computer and we watched and listened to the video.

But I can't stop thinking about the experience of watching a music video signed at me with the sound off. I kinda like it. It really foregrounds and emphasizes the multimodality and multiliteracy of the translation from Brit-squeak into ASL. (And it doesn't hurt when the signer is awfully cute!)

Third, here's a video courtesy of Joe.My.God, of a cover of Katie Perry's song, "I Kissed a Girl." There have been lots of covers of this song, some better than others, and some pretty deeply problematic. But this cover is from out gay Israeli singer, Ivri Lider.

Interestingly, by keeping the lyrics exactly the same, Lider signals his queerness while singing about kissing a girl. I liked the way the dynamic plays here.

I also liked the musical styling Lider brings. He ditches the popiness and frivolity, preferring a more heartfelt, confused affect. The setting was also awesome. I especially liked watching that last couple of guys, and then understanding the sleaziness of the video's ending. Bringing all of these elements together in the music video transforms the Perry song into something else entirely. It's no longer... frivolous.

Finally, check out Alison Bechdel's review of Jane Vandenburgh's A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir in this weekend's New York Times Book Review. Bechdel is an artist and cartoonist, and so composes the review in a milieu that makes sense to her. Highly recommended.

File this one under Literacy , Media
Posted by Richard at 1:43 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2009

Beautiful Writing

In our hustle-and-bustle world, it's hard to stop and enjoy the not-so-simple pleasures. Heck, it's hard enough to stop and enjoy the simple and mindless ones. So it's not surprising to me that as a culture and as individuals we rarely pause to enjoy the craft and artistry of a well-turned phrase, sentence, or passage.

Well, no more, I say! Today you have permission to pause for just a few seconds to read, ponder, and drink deeply of the following well-wrought prose snippets.

My most persistent impression as a farm boy was of the earth. There was a closeness, almost an immersion, in the sand, loam, and red clay that seemed natural, and constant. The soil caressed my bare feet, and the dust was always boiling up from the dirt road that passed fifty feet from our front door, so that inside our clapboard house the red clay particles, ranging in size from face powder to grits, were ever present, particularly in the summertime, when the wooden doors were kept open and the screens just stopped the trash and some of the less adventurous flies.

That was from Jimmy Carter's 2001 memoir, An Hour Before Daylight, and while some of the more grammatically traditional among us might disapprove of Carter's reliance on the humble comma, I find that choice keeps the words moving at a slow, even, unending pace. I feel immersed in his images, and even though I loathe the South in summertime, I'm soothed by the music in the passage.

This next passage shows that powerful writing pops up in even the least likely of places, and in response to the seemingly least likely of events. Writing at the Boing Boing Gadgets blog Joel Johnson puts together a very brief post on leaked concept art detailing the NERF weapons to be created for an upcoming Nintendo Wii game:

The post, titled "These NERF cannons can not be" concludes:

They'll never be real, but we can still dream about a NERF bazooka that shoots a single, giant round into the faces of small children.

One of the wonderful things about language is that, even in our media- and message-saturated world, there still exists the possibility of being surprised by words. Kudos, Joel!

File this one under Composition
Posted by Richard at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2009

Create Your Own Lol-Novel

Sometimes when looking at LOLCats and LOLDogs, I get the feeling that there's more to the story than the single image contains. So, as an experiment in interactive LOL-storytelling, here are three (I think) particularly evocative LOL-images. Rearrange them as you will, and tell a story with them. See what you can come up with.

And don't forget to have fun!

File this one under Narrative
Posted by Richard at 2:37 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2009

It's Singing Saturday! (Super Late Edition)

I like cool stuff. That should come as no surprise. And so when BoingBoing points me to a dual-Tesla-coil synthesizer playing the Dr. Who theme, I'm ready to be excited.

If: A -- Tesla coils = Giant Lightning Generators = Very Cool
and B -- Dr. Who theme = Very Cool
then A + B = Super awesome!

From the BoingBoing writeup:

ArcAttack employs a unique DJ set up of their own creation (an HVDJ set up) to generate an 'electrifying' audio visual performance. The HVDJ pumps music through a PA System while two specially designed DRSSTC's (Dual-Resonant Solid State Tesla Coils) act as separate synchronized instruments.

These high tech machines produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers. The music consists of original highly dance-able electronic compositions that sometimes incorporates themes or dub of popular songs.

Watch for yourself:

Um... okay, but I still don't see how the Tesla coils are actually making the music. To the untrained, non-Tesla-centric observer, it seems like a synthesizer (the piano keyboard kind) playing the Dr. Who theme with lightning bolts as background ambiance. But what the heck. It's pretty cool at least to watch.

And next up on our Singing Sunday is another... well, watch for yourself:

Joe.My.God reminds us that "Sir Ivan" is "actually zillionaire Long Island banker-cum-philanthropist Ivan Wilzig, who is well-known around these parts for his 12,000 square foot medieval castle in Water Mill." Not being a Gothamite, I'm not sure where that is. However, I found this interesting:

Wilzig has ditched Wall Street for a music career to promote his Peaceman anti-war charity. Some of you might remember him as a contestant on Sci-Fi Channel's Who Wants To Be A Superhero?, where he competed, naturally, as Peaceman. This clip has already generated 800K+ views on YouTube.

Now, for those readers of or above a certain age, this song invariably reminds one of the classic Muppet Show segment (MS Season 2: 1977-1978) which is very very sad. The final line is still incredibly poignant.

I guess my big problem with "Sir Ivan" is that it's all well and good to "be" PeaceMan, and to use your flashing palm lasers to do good. But this isn't a real solution to the problems raised in the video. How should we really deal with missiles and government brutality and conformism and intolerance? Without those fabulous flashy hands or glowy drumsticks, what's one to do? What are we all to do? Sir Ivan offers no help here. But the cover has a nice beat and you can dance to it. So I guess it's all good here at Singing Saturdays.

I guess.

File this one under Singing Saturday
Posted by Richard at 5:54 PM | Comments (2)

February 17, 2009

Change is Scary

So, the times they are a changing. All television is going to be digital. The Kindle will now read your books to you. What's next?

Now, wait a minute, I hear you saying, as your Kindle finishes reading that last paragraph to you. I'm not sure my televisual box-device is ready for the Great Digital Arrival. Here's a handy video guide to help you out:

Reminded me of this Norwegian video one of the grad students posted to the 21st Century Literacy blog:

File this one under Media
Posted by Richard at 3:41 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2009

WAR! What's It Good For? Multomodality!!

This week in the 21st Century Literacy seminar we started discussing a tremendous book, Sven Lindqvist's A History of Bombing:

We're reading it because of the way Lindqvist presents his history -- the book is written in 399 short passages arranged chronologically. He groups the sections into 22 different "chapter-like" facets of the history of bombing, but each of these 22 stories moves forward and backward in time. This requires the reader to jump forward and backward in the book, making the transitions in time also feel spatial. You really feel the movement forward and backward. It's quite cool. And, it's also very, very intense. Lindqvist doesn't pull any punches as he sets out bombing from its invention in the 8th century to the present day, focusing on the mechanics, effects, and implications of bombing. This is some scary stuff.

And not to be irreverent, but Lindqvist's book has had me thinking about form and content, about what we use war for. And this is what keeps coming to mind:

If you're not fluent in New Wave German, here are the lyrics to the English version of the song, but don't peek at them right away. In the seminar we watched the video in German and discussed what it sounded like Nena must be talking about. The grad students (except for one), bless their young hearts, couldn't retell the story. My New Wave heart was sad. But we discussed the context of the song -- 1980s Cold War reality, as well as the musical styles of the time. Then we read the lyrics together and discussed them, too. I like the lyrics site I linked to above -- I've never read the German and English side-by-side before. What do you think? Given the problem with "loose nukes" we have with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the proliferation of nuclear countries, is this more or less likely to happen now?

Here's a song that didn't seem to get as much radio play in the US as it was getting in the UK when we were there last summer: The Last Shadow Puppets' "The Age of the Understatement":

What I find fascinating about this video, of course, is the way the video director uses the Russian military and Cold War imagery. If you just listen to the song, it feels more like a Western film, much like Muse's "Knights of Cydonia".

I'm also reminded of this classic song from Kate Bush, "Experiment 4":

This song isn't about the visuals at all, but rather the story retold by the lyrics. One of the grad students identified House's Hugh Laurie in video, and I noticed that the female scientist is Dawn French. Star-studded (if you're interested in British comedy shows)! Also, while this may have been sci-fi for Kate Bush when she recorded the song, but, of course, we have these sorts of sonic weapons now. And we use them on Americans (And this is really scary.)

And lastly, a song by The Skids covered by U2 and Greenday that uses the military (especially the air capabilities of the military) in a different, but still heart-wrenching way. "The Saints Are Coming":

The lyrics for this one are here, though the visuals are far more arresting, I think.

Note: I think this version of the video is a little more powerful, but embedding is disabled.

Also note, I was surprised after we watched this video the first time that not everyone knew that the central idea in this video -- the military recalled from Iraq to aid in the recovery efforts in New Orleans -- never happened. As I discussed with the grads, and as I've mentioned on this blog before, this video messes me up. As I tried to explain, the confluence of affective devices (the propulsive music, the shots of the physical and human devastation, the awesomeness of the military presence, the amount of help it was possible the military could have given, the thought that our massive military could use its might for unqualified good, and of course the devastating crash back to reality because this was "As Not Seen On TV" because it never happened) provoke an almost overwhelming response from me.

So, in this new era of "Hope" or "Change" or something, what do you think of the ways we use the military and military imagery in our culture? And what have I missed?

File this one under Media , Visuality
Posted by Richard at 5:10 PM | Comments (1)