Super Bon!

Boxing Day: what the hell is it?

Since this time last year, I’ve had a really difficult time answering this question. And since Christmas is over, the guests are gone, and now my parents want to know too, I naturally jumped up and did a websearch for the definition of Boxing Day, only to discover that nobody else really knows what the hell it is either. Here’s my favo(u)rite part of the Wikipedia definition:

In Canada, Boxing Day is also observed as a public holiday, and is a day when stores sell their excess Christmas inventory at significantly reduced prices. Boxing Day has become so important for retailers that they often extend it into a “Boxing Week”. This occurs similarly in Australia and New Zealand.

Ergo, Boxing Day is the holiday with no external referent. Boxing Day is the day you celebrate Boxing Day. It’s as simple as that.

Thank you and good night.

Well, the parents arrive later this evening. I was hoping to pontificate on a wide range of matters, but that may now have to wait through a bit of a dry spell over the next week or so. I am totally going to try and get guest entries out of my parents, but no promises. In the meantime, here are the short shots:

–new text has appeared:

“Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space,” in “Sound in Art and Culture,” a special issue of Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain #9 (Fall 2005): 6-15.

This is the first print iteration of my work on the use of Muzak to chase people away from public spaces — really, the closest thing I’ll ever have to a sequel to that Mall of America article from 1997. Another iteration will appear in an edited book called Ubiquitous Musics but that may be awhile. I’ve been presenting on it for years, so it’s about time. It was simultaenously published in Dutch, but I didn’t get that copy, alas.

–Surprise: George Bush is evil. Like they’d even know which phone to tap for that all-important Al-Quaeda phone call.

–WebCT Vista: in what world do web designers actually think popups are a good idea for courseware? Usability, people. Usability.

–The other day, we were forced by a police detour into a lovely little neighborhood south and east of here, which led us to drive around some more and explore a bit. We found some pockets of stand-alone houses near metro stops. We have a fantasy of buying a stand-alone house (like they have in the midwest, where we’re from), though there’s also the fantasy of buying something in the Plateau or another hip neighborhood. Can’t have both. . . . On the way back, we did a quick tour of the Olympic Village apartments, mostly out of curiosity, since i can’t imagine us moving except to buy. Looks like it’s largely a retirement community, or at least the majority of the population living there is older. Which is no wonder, since it’s basically a self-enclosed city. A 5 1/2 with 1300 sqaure foot balcony is $1800-$2100 a month. Ouch.

–Harvey’s: the best, but also saltiest, of the fast-food veggieburger world.

—King Kong. It’s so weird that the movie’s now a bit of a nostalgia flick. The original was all about being ultra-modern. Now it’s about recreating a past moment as vividly as possible. Weird. But I guess I can add it to my list of movies where I enjoyed the mise-en-scene in particular.

This site comes courtesy of slashdot.

I often tell my students that the best way to understand early radio is to think of it as ham radio. Which gets a lot of blank looks because nobody knows what that is anymore.

—

There’s so much more to tell — about other things. More soon.

The view out our back. Peaking out from under the snow is our grill, and believe me, the cats make think they want to go outside, but if we opened the door, it would be another matter.

The first real snow of the season arrived, and like everywhere else, it’s a doozie. We spent a good 20 minutes or so digging out our car yesterday, which we’re now unwilling to move for fear of losing the parking spot. The snow is still quite pretty since it’s not covered in crap yet, and everyone is pleased with how quiet the city’s become.

But check back in March.

Stephen Harper’s “Accountability” ad (click “Accountability” in the right hand column of the conservative site) looks like it was made during 9th grade Video Arts class. The conservative site also looks a bit amateurish.

That is all. Good night.

So yes, it’s true that there have been four consecutive nights of parties and event to attend due to the end of the semester, even though it hasn’t quite ended for many people. That was exhausting. Like many of the students, my days have been spent writing. In my case, it was a short essay (12 pages) on “Lost Recordings” for an upcoming exhibition and book in town. It always feels good to send something off, even if the essay would have no doubt benefitted from some additional revision and rethinking. So in that sense, I guess my condition hasn’t changed all that much from the seminar paper days.

Still, it felt incredibly fresh to actually write something of substance after a term of learning to “administrate.” Okay, there was the podcasting stuff in September, but then there was a long dry spell.

The repetition seminar, if I haven’t mentioned it already, came off fabulously and the papers are quite varied and interesting. Even though the course is called “Seminar on Repetition Seminar on Repetition” I don’t actually plan to ever teach it again. I’ll do a full evaluation of fall in light of my deliriously optimistic post last August later in the week. It’s actually going to be a photo essay. For now, it’s time to catch up with Monday Night Football on TiVo and marvel at the fact that for the first time in my life, and I mean my whole life, there is a Christmas tree in my domicile. It actually smells wonderful.

Barbie USB Drive, courtesy my friend Alice Crawford.