What’s cracken w/ Bracken.

You Make Me Touch Your hands For Stupid Reasons is an awesome, almost LolCatz Speak, breakup letter. Teh internets giveth again. Make sure to have your volume up so you can hear the dramatic reading of this letter. The word construct, “you make me touch your hands for stupid reasons,” would seem sort of bittersweet in an emo song or you know, better context. But schadenfreude does not even begin to explain the massive amount of humour I found in this. Please, click and enjoy.

  My Bloody Valentine is to play a small set of US dates.  I have already requested time off to go see them in Chicago.

  My Bloody Valentine is probably best known today for Kevin Shields’s work on the Lost In Translation soundtrack.  But, for me, MBV’s 1991 album, Loveless, is it.  It is my favourite album of all time.  MBV is my favourite band ever.  It is my opinion that without MBV, we would have no Sonic Youth, no Pavement, no Radiohead, etc., etc.  I put MBV as the second most important/influential band in Rock & Roll history, right behind Chuck Berry (without whom we wouldn’t have had the Beatles…).  This is like my birthday, christmas, chanukah and new year’s all rolled into one.  

  Not only are MBV touring for the first time since 1991, they are slated to release two albums.  One is to consist of unreleased material from the 1991 sessions that were to have made the follow up album to Loveless (then MBV broke up), the other is to be of new material. 

  On another note, Tom Waits is set to play the Brady June 25th.  I’m not such a big fan of his but apparently a lot of people are.  The cheap tix are $400.

  Oh dear internets, my embarrassment grows. This article informed me that the English only bill has passed the OK House. It is now going to the OK Senate. In this new draft, the bill’s authors added exemptions for Oklahoma’s American Indian languages, Brail and sign language.  I guess the hypocracy of disallowing Native American languages was to much even for them.  But this only serves to further expose the racist anti-hispanic/latino sentiments behind the bill. 

  America is one of a very few (the only as far as I know) developed countries who’s citizens do not have to interact with people who speak other languages regularly.  Even so, putting other languages on signage, what is so horrible about that?  Shouldn’t the government want people to read what it feels is important enough to say?  What, dear internets, besides a (scary) Nationalism could be the motivating factor behind this bill? 

    What I find humourous is this, think of the idea of ‘the ugly American’ and of American tourists in general.  When these people go oversees they benefit from English being on signage throughout.  Statistics have shown, for many decades, that Americans speak only one language.  Most other developed countries have citizens that speak two languages as a matter of course and three and up on the average.  English is on street signs, retail signage, mass transit systems, etc.  Now, I know that Enland is our favourite colony, but it isn’t even continental.  Why then should English be written on signage of countries that do not speak English?  What have they learned that Oklahoman’s do not know?  Could it be a ‘build it and they will come’ thing?  Like, if we make it easy to be a tourist here, maybe they’ll come.  Shouldn’t Oklahoma be interested in this as well?  It certainly stands a better chance of bringing in tourist dollars than a new convention center.  That convention center idea was old when I studied urban decay and revitalization in the late 90s.  Since nearly every metropolitan city in America had that idea 18 or so years ago, is Tulsa really going to pull in the tourist bucks?  Seems HIGHLY unlikely.  Will Oklahoma bring in tourist bucks if our signage is in their language?  Probably not, but it is far less expensive than a convention center or those dumb promotional commercials the state makes to show in other states. 

  I guess what I am left with is that there seem to be no reasons to pass an English only law in Oklahoma except for the racist anti-hispanic/latino ones.  But, if we are going to do the English only thing, shouldn’t get more specific?  Like, the Queen’s English only, or proper English only?  Shouldn’t we punish abusers of the language?  I mean, isn’t txt msg technically English? 

  I found a few awesome blogs while reading the Heeb interview with Christian Lander, creator of stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.

  Passive Aggressive Notes and Fake Steve Jobs are my favs.  They are now listed in my blogroll.

  The internets also gave me a wikipedia article about teh and that word, along with pwn, keep me laughing pretty regular.

  This wikipedia article on lol cats is awesome.  I particularly like this phrase, “Im in ur noun, verb-ing ur related noun.”

  Remember that time, dear internets, I told you about Wisconsin residents being all xenophobic and how I was all proud and stuff that it was not Oklahoma (Native America) that went wacky?  Boy is my face red.  I’m going to feel this in the morning.

  I discovered that my beloved state, Oklahoma (Native America), has attempted, at least once before now as well, to legislate English as the one and only official state language.  If I take a second, and that is as much time as is needed, I can see the ignorance, the irony and be embarassed by such an attempt.  If I take a second, again that is all that is needed, I can guess which political party is responsible for authoring, petitioning for and championing this bill.  It isn’t the Greens or the Libertarians.  The person(s) responisble for this bill belong to the same party as Sally Kern, the nogoodnik. 

  This article, or plea, has some detail about the proceedings where this bill was voted on, http://www.ahalenia.com/iws/alert.html.  Very tellingly, an American Indian (Native American) was present and not allowed to speak, in fact no one (private citizen) was allowed to speak. 

  This attempt is ludacris.  Oklahoma (Native America) is home to several American Indian (Native Americans) tribes.  Tribes the federal govenment forced here, with violence.  Oklahoma (Native America) is home to a large German population, a Jewish population and a sizable Itallian population.  But I think it is safe to assume the real population this legislation is targeted at is the same population that was recently ostracized/expelled -> hispanics/latinos/chicanos. 

  The following is all personal testimony and heresay but, I’ve never heard anyone complain about computer terminals or signage being in German or Cherokee (Native Americans).  I guess it really bothers some people when they look at a sign and have to read it in English then they are forced to see that below that is a Spanish translation or that some storefront signage is in Spanish.  Why does it bother these people so?  I am unable to anwer this.  While I hesitate to throw the following word around, granted I used to use it frequently in my formative years, I feel this legislation borders on fascist.  It is definitly elitist.  Barring the free, open and equal access to public knowledge/speech from a specific group or groups of the public has no legitimate defense, at least in a republic.

Here is the bill that came before committee in Jan ‘08 http://webserver1.lsb.state.ok.us/2007-08HB/HB1423_int.rtf

” “ in Feb ‘03 http://www2.lsb.state.ok.us/2003-04HB/HB1020_cs.rtf

‘02 article that makes reference to ’97 bill http://www.lsb.state.ok.us/HOUSE/news6048.htm

  PS, thanks are due to Timmy for telling me about the trouble down at the ol’ ravine.

  Sally Kern types in Wisconsin get angry, even threaten violence, after Pledge of Allegiance recited in a Spansih class in, guess what language, wait for it… wait for it… 

  If you guessed Farsi you were wrong.

 http://www.progressive.org/mag_mc042108b

   How could anyone think that reciting the Pledge in a Spanish class in the Spanish language is disrepecting the troops?  The people in this story are disrespecting me with their ignorance.   At least this story is coming out of another state and not Oklahoma.  But look for Inhofe, Coburn and Sullivan to comment on this case. 

  America has no official national language.  America does have several ammendmants, the first of which guarantees free speech. 

  America doesn’t have a native, white, English speeking population.  America does have many free, legal citizens who speak Spanish, either as a first or second language.

After attending the presentation that Dr. Martens organized, I feel an invigoration. The presentation was at the OLA conference on Wednesday from 8:45-9:45 and was titled, “OSS OnRamp: 5 Innovative Projects by LIS Students Utilizing Open Source Software.” The presenters made using the software seem so easy. Plus, the idea of being able to customize my own software by writing/editing the code sort of jibes nicely with my solipsism.

In high school I was in AP Computer Science. We learned how to program in Pascal, a now mostly defunct language. But I remember really enjoying the work. This was either my junior or sophmore year, well after I had quit playing D&D, but most of the people in the class with me were active players of, not only D&D but, Magic The Gathering. The whole thing just went against who I was in high school. The computer dorks wore highwater polyester pants that showed of their white socks, had greasy hair and pizza faces. Plus, I was also too busy taking photos and working in the darkroom, writing one act plays and reading the books on the senior reading lists so I could make fun of the idiots in my grade who hadn’t read The Brothers Karamazov. That is to say, I was too busy being a different kind of dork, the pretentious art/book dork.

But now I’m ready to join up with the polyester panted empire. I’m too old for zits (please gods) and I don’t think I own any white socks. Plus, some of my friends and I are actively trying to make a D&D cadre. The open source movement is right up my alley, politically. I can’t think of a good reason not to re-up my hit points and roll the 20 sided die for charisma and charm, etc. Go OSS!

  Recently, while writing a paper for an LIS class on research methodologies I ran into a bit of a wall.  The instructions were to pick a population and propose some methods I would make use of in studying this group.  I chose to use a survey, of the paper questionnaire type, the brief interview and the intensive interview.  The paper stipulated that we must defend our choices, attempt to predict what ethical issues might arise due to these as well as predict what other kinds of problems might arise due to our choices.  We were also to list EVERY other method and explain why we did not use these methods.

  Here is the wall -> 5 pages MAX. 

  I was up to 9 pages while just defending and accounting for problems that might arise with the paper survey.  I still had two more methods to defend and a profusion of methods to defend my choice not to use. 

  The survey has a lot of built in problems that, if not accounted for, could ruin the data accumulated.  This is taught in intro soc, psych and anthro class I’ve taken.  You have leading questions, “Isn’t it easier to X than Y?” & double barrel questions, “Using a computer & my own skill set is enough for me to find the item I’m looking for.”  You also have the threatening question area, a set of questions that deals with things that are illegal, conter-normative or personal.  I felt, and still feel, that these issues needed to be addressed to properly justify and defend my survey. 

  The above points do not even cover the benefits of survey v other methods.  Surveys are a less costly way to accumulate data, you get more respondents than with other types.  Each of these requires an explaination as well.  I am tired of my incessant whining but, seriously, a five page paper?  Am I not in grad school?  Didn’t I just read about 200 pages in the units this paper is covering?  Isn’t that a ratio of 20:1?  Isn’t that a lot of condensing (condensation)?

  In the words of Loverboy, “turn me loose.”

In an online chat with my 5053 class I felt the need to keep referring to material outside of the LIS field to back up my points. The reference that lost everybody was when I referenced Ellul and his perennial favourite, The Technological Society. The book is a little hard to get through and Ellul is wrong in some places but, I still like it- a lot. It sort of predicts the Googlization of Everything, the factors that would arise to cause a need for open source, creative commons, copy left, etc. Mind you, he wrote this in 1967.
All that is just a long winded segue or rational behind me bemoaning the fact that there is no cross-discipline course(s) offered in the LIS program here at OU. Every academic, I hope, has heard, maybe even danced to, cross-discipline’s greatest hits; social psychology, (socio)cultural anthropology, sociolinguistics even theosophy (just for fun). Many of the early models of information we studied borrowed heavily from communications models and theory. That there is no cross-disciplinary tradition feels counterintuitive. Perhaps I will opt for an independent study as I get closer to the end of this program and there I will study across disciplines. Then I can stop whining, probably.

  Sorry, dear internets, that it has been such a long time since adding to your vast stores of useless info.  It is becasue of those vast stores that I haven’t contributed.  I’ve been reading much of it as of late, which left me little time to write.  Plus school and work(s).  But thanks none the less dear internets for providing me with so much useful (for spanning time at work, when bored at home, while waiting for my school group to post the ‘new’ draft of a current project, etc.) useless information.  I know this doesn’t technically count as adding to your stores but, I felt you were owed some praise. 

  Mr. and/or M(rs/s/z). Internets, thanks for showing me this-

Christian Bale stars in Terminator 4!