Ok, so I’ve been offline for a few days, suffering through a bit of a cold. Awaiting for me on my return to the internet were 63! spam comments, held in my WordPress moderation cue. While the spam situation has been bad, this is off the chart. A long while ago, Mike Zucca suggested a few steps to prevent them — I think its time to actually make them happen.
Oh well, happy Fourth of July all.
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter ‘em that Gods gonna cut ya down! – “God’s Gonna Cut Down,” Johnny Cash
In the midst of research for a side project, I discovered that not only is there a new posthumous Johnny Cash album about to drop (American V for those keeping track), but it’s got a MySpace page. Considering MySpace’s origin as a music site, this shouldn’t be too surprising. Still, it’s taking some time to reconcile itself in my mind.
The page is worth visiting, as it contains two of the singles from the new album — the afore quoted God’s Gonna Cut Down and Cash’s final composition The 309. Both have a stark, stripped down quality that was sorely missed from the overproduced American IV.
The album, American V: A Hundred Highways, hits stores on the 4th of July and I can’t wait.
Also, any musicphiles reading this blog should check out The Hype Machine — it’s an aggregate blog which draws content from a number of music blogs. Best of all, it takes advantage of Flash technology to stream some of the most diverse and interesting MP3 content I’ve seen in a bit.
Sorry friends and readers, I still have to wait on lots of news. Hopefully by weeks end things will be set and I can start posting about it.
In the mean time, I’m diving very deep into mash-ups — media were multiple "tracks" (typically audio, but also video) are juxtaposed against each other. Take for example DJ Mei Lwun’s Sweet Home Country Grammar — Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet home Alabama meets Nelly’s Country Grammar. This also ties into a lot of the content that’s popping up on YouTube and on MySpace. In particular I’m thinking about this in terms of new forms of "literacy" and "writing," as well as their roles as emblems of identity. More to come on all of that.
Update (6/16)
I just found out that the Exchange link was broken. The current exchange site is: http://www.newcloud.com/exchange
I just found out that Anthro grad students at Chicago have started their own online publication called Exchange. I gave it a quick look over and it seems pretty interesting — I guess I should note that interesting all depends on whether or not you are interested in anthropology to begin with.
As far as my claim of understanding Peircian Semiotics, perhaps that was a little premature. I finally seem to "get" the notion/relation of object, sign (and the corresponding ground relationship betwixt the two), interpretant, and the vectors of determination and representation. I also now have a better handle on why it fits so well with linguistics (as well as how it works differently than Saussurian Semiotics). The only problem is all of that is currently in my head and I still a ways away from being able to explain it coherently. One step closer at least.
Today, at approximately 3.20pm est, I finally understood Peircian semiotics — something that has been vexing me for the better part of a year and a half. Then Dre found out that her job was renewed for another year.
We celebrated these milestones with pho and a Hitchcock movie. Life is good.