feast and famine

[kaigou]

I've been wondering whether I should compile the various posts (and unposted drafts) that I've done on fandom, and try looking at them as a collection of chapters about fandom and fanfiction. I think the current count is that I've been quoted now in (or at least asked for permission to be quoted in) five different grad-level dissertations.

Or maybe it's just that I may never be able to truly equate "published on the net" with "published, like, for reals". Wouldn't quoting me count as quoting from an unpublished work? How the hell do you cite someone's blog post?

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I really need to dig out my craigslist acct info and get rid of some of this stuff... so I can replace it with new stuff. Like, say, butcher-block countertops. The ones that have been out of stock for the past two months, for crying out loud. I could use different ones instead of continuing to wait, but then I'd have to deconstruct the countertop bases to make room for the extra 3/16" I'd need. Much easier to just wait for the countertops to come back into stock. Someday. Damn it.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates' series on the Civil War continues to fascinate me, interrogate my own education and long-held unquestioned cultural assumptions, and make me ponder what I learned as a child and what I just sort of absorbed even if no one ever said it. His most recent post, "The Civil War Isn't Tragic", has had me thinking today about how the war, overall, was presented in my childhood (formal, not family) education. I think the message in grade school was that it was tragic because so many people died, and so many families split north/south... but by high school and then into adult (informal) education, the tone shifted. It became more that the Civil War was tragic... because of the stupidity of people who kept it going and/or insisted on fighting in the first place.

That it was not averted by a peaceful resolution of outlawing slavery when there was the political chance on the board (as Britain did, in the 1830s) is the real tragedy, and that it dragged on for so long and cost so many lives is equally horrible. But the outcome? Not tragic at all. The aftermath and the scars? Tragic, mostly for (similar to the origins) being so badly handled, and so on.

But in the end: no, not tragic. Just stupid and horrible. And I think Coates has a significant point about the fact that we don't have a holiday to celebrate the re-unification of the Union. Why don't we?

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Okay, rain would be great. Rain that consists of only 1/4" worth of water doesn't even make the ground damp. It just kind of made everything glisten for a few minutes, before it evaporated again. This is more than a little unnerving, to know we're coming up on heat-lightning season and we're in the worst drought in fifty years.

ETA: Rain! ... and the whole "20% chance of thunderstorms" was really "a few minutes of dark sky, followed by a single drop of rain." ONE DROP. One big honking drop landing smack in the middle of my A/C repair invoice.

ONE SINGLE LOUSY FRICKING DROP OF RAIN != thunderstorm, people.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*straight faced* Well, in MLA format, that would be: Lastname, Firstname. "Post title". Site or Blog Name. Revision Date if Applicable. Sponsoring Institution if Available, Date Created. Date Accessed. (url)

It does count as published material but it does not count as juried or reviewed publication, and is therefore currently a significant step down from, say, a peer reviewed journal. Unless it's used as primary research material (on, say, how X category of fans reacts to Y issue), in which case only the usual caveats about sociological primary research material applies.

[kaigou]

Frankly, I'd think anything coming out of my head would be a significant step down from a lot of things.

[taithe]

*stares* I'm curious what their disciplines/dissertation topics were. I used some of your sources and points for an undergrad presentation but it was very informal considering how other students used youtube, friends, and even comic strips for their sources. Using a blog as a reference for something like a dissertation is weird.

It'd be nice if you could have our rain. The weather would be perfect if it could stay consistently sunny...

[kaigou]

I haven't got a clue, of anyone who's asked. I suppose I could've said, "what will you be using it for?" on the grounds that it might be that I'm being quoted as an example of how some fans can go on and on and on, or some other sociological bad example.

I WILL TAKE ALL OF YOUR RAIN AND THEN SOME. PLEASE.

[peoppenheimer]

“… we don't have a holiday to celebrate the re-unification of the Union. Why don't we?” That's a good question!

[chibidrunksanzo]

We should start a movement. I'm being at least somewhat serious here, and the "somewhat" instead of "completely" is only because I tend to be terribly distractable.

[peoppenheimer]

Icon love!

Starting a movement for a new holiday is very low on my list of ways I want to invest myself in promoting the public weal. If you are seriously thinking of starting one, I'll be happy to discuss that with you, though.

I was endorsing the question, not as merely rhetorical, but as an entry point into an investigation that might provide some insight into the plight of the United States of America today. I would be grateful for any thoughts you might have about why there is no holiday celebrating the preservation of the union.

[chibidrunksanzo]

It's pretty low on my list as well, but it's at least a good idea.

I don't know much about this particular subject, but my initial thoughts about why there's no holiday is because the south is still a little touchy about the subject. In many schools it's referred to not as the Civil War, but as the War of Northern Aggression.

[mediumrawr]

Britain abolished slavery when slavery lost cost-effectiveness in the global slave trade. As a result of the Revolution, which isolated the cotton-producing colonies from Britain legally (though not really in any economic sense), and as a result of diversification of sugar production (from cane, produced in plantations, to beets, manufactured on the continent), Britain didn't rely on slavery - their own practice of slavery, anyway - anymore.

Without implying that the Civil War was fought over anything other than slavery, the trigger was the moment when the North united in political opposition to the South and won. Once it was clear that the North could elect a President who received not a single vote (and very nearly did, since Lincoln wasn't on the ballot in most southern states), the Southern power-holders could only choose between eventual capitulation on the issue of slavery, which would mean forfeiting their livelihoods, and outright resistance to the government.

The idea that anything could have been done on the part of anyone else to prevent the power-brokers from choosing the latter is belied by the fifty years prior, in which everything from threats to compromise to placation to concession was tried, without success. The idea that one could expect the southern power-holders to act in a way so totally divergent from their own interests - ones which would end the comfortable lives they and their families had grown accustomed to - seems... well, without merit. Maybe they should have, but even the Founders who regarded slavery as a great evil, as their descendants did not, chose not to manumit their slaves even on their deaths for fear of ruining their families.

That is to say, I think that a political solution was always impossible.

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Why don't we have a holiday to celebrate re-union? Because it was (and remains) legally and politically difficult to suggest that the union was ever actually divided. Officially, there was a rebellion led by the political leaders of the southern states, but there was no secession of the states, because the states can't secede. If they could secede, the war would be the Union's fault.