yeah!

so. clap your hands say yeah is my favorite new band.

listen, ici.

Institutional Practice of Mystery!

This is from one of the texts I've been given to read for my training to be a "writing and learning mentor" at my school this year. I'm curious what some fellow academaticians think about it. Let the theoretical discussion and wiseassery begin!

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In related work, both Ivanic and Lillis examine the "language" of disciplines and suggest that the discourse of writing is often "hidden" yet taken as being "given". That is, it is assumed that any students entering higher education ought to understand what is meant by words such as "argue", "critical analysis", "be explicit" and more broadly what they are expected to do in, for example, an essay. In reality, it would seem that even students who are quite successful writers struggle to understand what sort of writing is being requested of them. Lillis refers to this as the "institutional practice of mystery" arguing that academics who have been "socialized" into essayist literacy are familiar with it but that students--particularly those from "non-traditional" backgrounds--are often very unsure about conventions and how to go about developing an academic voice. I would go further still and suggest that even "professional" writers who move between disciplines or who become students again can find writing conventions mysterious and difficult to embrace or own.
Lea and Street (2000) who did much of their work with tutors, arrived at a similar position from the perspective of academics. In their study, lecturers described the characteristics of good essay writing by relying on descriptive terms which are often still unclear to students:

"I need my students to have an introduction which sets the scene and a main body which covers a number of issues highlighted in the introduction and introduces economic theory, application and analysis. Students need to be critical, to evaluate, to try and reach some sort of synthesis and then to simply summarize and conclude. You need a good solid introduction leading into your main body, and each part of your main body will be crafted and it will link with the next. It will have a professional feel about it and will not describe but will critically analyse, and then it will lead into a summary and conclusion." (Lea and Street 2000)

When pressed, the lecturer was unable to elucidate further on terms such as "critically analyse" and "synthesis". Another lecturer struggled even to describe the features or process of strong academic writing: "I know a good essay when I see it but I cannot describe how to write it". (Lea and Street, 2000) This work suggests that even once we are alert to certain contexts, there still exists a metalanguage associated with writing which can be impenetrable, yet is often taken for granted and treated as if it were transparent.
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Uh-oh.

Do you think this messes up my chances of publication?

From Tuesday's Fond du Lac Reporter:
Local residents who attended Monday night’s informational meeting about sex offenders said knowledge is the best way for them to protect their children and community from offenders.

Jennifer Stadler said she attended the meeting to simply get more information on how to better protect her daughter, who attends Chegwin Elementary School.

Stadler lives on Marquette Street with her three daughters, only a block from convicted sex offender Philip Roth. Roth’s purchase of a home within a few blocks of two schools and a park spurred a number of community residents into action.

Neighborhood members collected the signatures of residents who wanted him removed from the neighborhood. The petition was on site to be signed and will be presented today to members of the Wisconsin state Senate.

hurricanes/horses

so i did the kitchen wall:
and i started to do the bathroom wall in the same theme. unfortunately, that happened when i was drunk and a little out of my mind last friday nite, so things didn't go ideally. but it's salvagable. and i've discovered that i can replicate the tiger of the original photo onto my own wall using a projector and then penciling the enlarged image directly onto the surface.

so other than being obsessed with painting my apartment, i have managed to see 'grizzly man'. there were aspects of the movie that could have been annoying, like the bear dude's blabbering, or herzog making what i guess where supposed to be profound metaphorical judgments, but the very beary footage itself was really neat. in a way it was sort of the opposite of 'march of the penguins' in which the morgan freeman narration about the penguin reproductive cycle is informative but sometimes gratingly borderline pedantic. this time we got elliptical insights into the bears and the bear man tim through little gestures by his surviving friends during awkward interviews in the herzog footage, and little visual ommissions in the bear man's own footage. no structuring narrative, but sometimes maybe to the point of fault. does the beauty lie in the picture itself (of the penguin diving, the bear running) - worth a thousand words ?- or in knowing the context of the picture (the momma pengies need to store fish to barf up for their babies, why are the bears galloping so?)??

anyway. it's really awesome how michael brown was so well-trained for his job. sometimes everything is just crazy.

grimy new york

back on american shores, after braving chaos at jfk as everyone and their mother was returning from the dominican republic and clogging the immigration *queue*, i am missing brit-speak. and, am listening to this *brilliant* lady sovereign track and noticing how new york is more grimy and gritty than the london of grime's origin, at least in the nasty, ratty, sweaty, smelly, trashy summer.

other things. 'hollaback girl' is like the best song ever, *innit*? does someone care to explain to me the vice magazine empire, as in why do they own that pub in london, and why does everyone love it all? dave, did you know that the crazy-looking girl in the sweatshirt and braces sitting next to me at the weird dinner has "fuck off" tattooed on her neck in bold letters? i saw the image at the top of this post on a wall in paris and am trying to paint this on my kitchen wall- although the tigers were originally the main attraction, they seem a bit technically, uh, advanced, so am working on the background for now. my air-conditioning is broken. etc.