the skinny malinky

I’m blogging, but I’m on a bus! There’s this new busline called Boltbus that goes between NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, and D.C., and they have wireless and power plugs in the seats. Crazy! Though I have some idea this means I will get work done on this ride (on my way to Boston), when has internet access ever helped me get work done?  These days it just helps me obsessively download 30 Rock episodes. (Also, this bus is probably killing off whatever’s left of the bumblebee population, right?) But actually my post count has been down because I’ve actually been working on the welfare state/Foucault/neoliberal governance article from my diss. More on that later, I have to go see what Liz Lemon is up to.

…until the next National Librarian’s Day (April 16, 2009), but if you need a fix of your favorite Local Librarian before then, I’ve got a couple of options for you:
(1) Emily has a piece in Radical Catologing, a new collection on the politics and possibilities of library practices, with articles addressing “the implications behind what materials get cataloged, who catalogs them, and how.” The book seems like it would be a good syllabus-companion to Bowker and Star’s Sorting Things Out: Classifications and Its Consequences. (2) And if that’s not enough (it’s not), please visit Emily’s amazing new blog: WIAFLAW.

Just got home from the May Day rally at Union Square. A nice turn-out, some good signs.

Meanwhile, great post over at Scatterplot from yesterday, especially appropriate for today.

Apparently the fact that wealthy white gay people want to be just like other wealthy white people is news again. The Sunday Times magazine had a story on how young gay boys are nuts for nuptials, profiling a handful of white Boston gays in their 20s who have gotten legally wed. The interview subjects discuss such pressing issues as “BMW vs. Honda.” The retro-nostalgic portraits of white domesticity that accompany the article offer a perfect example of what Jasbir Puar has called “homonormativity” to describe the folding of white gayness into nationalism and the war on terror. As The Specials once sang, “If that’s a happy marriage, I’d prefer to be unhappy.”

Over at Details (ok, not the most sociological of sources, but at least as widely read as ASR) a story about a supposed gay male baby boom suggests that having babies is the logical outcome of “the growing prevalence of domestic partnerships, civil unions, and gay marriage.” And the rise of these relationship formations apparently results from the magic combo of “greater freedom and acceptance” and “AIDS.” As in get-hitched-to-avoid-getting-HIV. If the preferred prophylactic against HIV-panic is now legal marriage, what do I need to avoid the next round of gay male staph infection freak out? Will dinner and a movie suffice?

For more on marriage (and with thanks to Greg for sending links to the above), I recently posted a law review article Dean and I wrote about biopolitics, sodomy laws, and same-sex marriage on the Writing page, but you can download it here. For a sloppier, shorter version of some of the same arguments, here’s the text of a talk I gave on marriage fever a few years ago. But really, I found out everything there was to know about marriage and weddings from the The Princess Bride, so click and learn:

Aim high indeed! Linked to by The Soc Shrine! But I wonder what this means for the Life Course of this blog. How does exposure on the internets correlate to aspirations, plans, and attainments?

Over at cruciferous, Dean has posted and commented on a talk that addresses the “cognitive surplus” of blogging, suggesting that attention and energy cultivated by watching TV is now being channeled into the blogosphere. One thing the talk fails to address — how about all the blogging about watching TV? Although on second thought, maybe that just makes the point of the talk. TV’s all, “Let’s give them something to blog about.”

The Queens judge presiding over the Sean Bell case is announcing his verdict tomorrow. If you haven’t followed this, here’s a Google news search of articles on the case. Somewhat surprisingly, given all the important things going on with Britney Spears and Jennifer Aniston, local and national media have actually paid a fair amount of attention to the story. People’s Justice, a coalition of community-based organizations formed to support the Bell family, has called for a rally at the Queen’s DA offices tomorrow. Details and a list of endorsers are on their site.

I can’t stop fiddling around with this blog. I’m obsessively adding things, fixing things, testing things, changing things. I thought it would help with my diss work by getting me to write on things I’m reading/thinking along the way, but that assumes I have any time left for diss work after all the blogging is done. And now I’m blogging about blogging. I think one of my problems is that my posts are too long and wordy. So this will be a practice run for me — quick and dirty. I’m just gonna post it, right now… post it and leave it there. Leave it there and not check on it. Yea, that’s what I’m doing. Good-bye post, I’m letting you go into the world now. Fly free little bird of a post.

I’ve been enjoying this song by Andrew Bird called Tables and Chairs. It’s a nice corrective to the kind of ascetic-activist denial-of-fun to which I and some of my political co-conspirators can be prone. (Who said that thing about if I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution?) The song ends:

I know we’re going to meet some day
in the crumbled financial institutions of this land
There will be tables and chairs
there’ll be pony rides and dancing bears
there’ll even be a band
Cause listen, after the fall there’ll be no more countries
no currencies at all
We’re gonna live on our wits
gonna throw away survival kits
trade butterfly-knives for adderal
And that’s not all, ooh-ooh!
There will be snacks! There will!
There will be snacks!
There will be, there will be snacks!

The song reminded me of when I first got to college and learned about “The Revolution.” Hippies at my school were always talking about how things would be after the revolution, including how pot would be legal, and we wouldn’t have to wear shoes anymore (they were jumpstarting this pre-rev on campus). There was also talk of how after the revolution, food would be free. Regarding the latter I imagined myself going to eat at the Olive Garden in town, and at the end of my meal, after stuffing myself with breadstick and salad refills, I’d get to leave without paying the bill. Finally, truly free refills! The idea that after the revolution there would no longer be table service, much less Olive Gardens, did not occur to me. But then again, I also kept my shoes on.

You can listen to the song by clicking below, cause I embed things like that.

 

 Tables and Chairs - Andrew Bird: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

One of the best articles I’ve read recently is Deborah Cowen’s Fighting for Freedom: The End of Conscription in the United States and the Neoliberal Project of Citizenship. It’s a really tight, focused read on the relationship between the restructuring of welfare programs in the U.S. and the end of the draft/launch of an all-volunteer military. In addition to offering a great historical framing of citizenship and economics, it’s plenty relevant for the contemporary context of the soldier shortage in the occupation of Iraq. (Btw, counter-recruitment.org has great resources for counter-recruitment campaigns, and links to other such projects.)

After what I think most of us agreed was a lackluster start, Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica got so good this past week. Obviously, I am freaking the frak out. In case you still think you are too cool for a show set in outer space, watch this recap of Seasons 1 through 3 and discover what you are missing out on due to snobby ideas about “acceptable” “quality” TV. (Top Chef? Please.)