Oh, the happies.

"You may assume that it is impossible to love a nonhuman semiotic ghost. But think twice, and you will also understand that it is our increasing commitment to high-tech media that enables us to find sexuality not only in humans but in nonhuman agents created from software. ....sound queer? But in the wake of Internet revolution, it is not ideology but high technology that has revolutionized the existing concept of sexuality, making it far more exotic."

- Takayuki Tatsumi, on a discussion of William Gibson's Idoru

I get to write a paper on a virtual doll-person. I get to write a paper on Idoru. I get to redefine kitsch, give the theoretical middle finger to Adorno, Greenberg, and McDonald, and then reread American imperialist culture through the lens of a cyberpunk novel. Oh, the intellectual happies.

Also - my school is #1 in the country for illegal music downloads, and while punishing the offenders has nevertheless refused to name names to the RIAA. It's like McCarthyism all over again, and my university is the last lil' socialist holdout. Love it.

And J, you can't be Brangelina's new baby. Your name would have to be Kumquat, or Didgeridoo, and you would have to come from an underprivileged, war-torn country. Which is fine. I'd miss you if you weren't around.

- b -