Just Because

I begin with this trailer because YES. It serves as an absurdist vision for the notion that this work I'm doing is relevant, important, interesting. It is, mind you, but the notion of it is absurd in ways I recognize in light of life and death, dreams of the good life, all the aspirational hopes of seeking (or avoiding) love and partnerships. Generally, absurd is how I've been feeling, and some of this, yes, involves the recent (and ongoing) job market season. But so absurd.

By now, I have gushed a bit about having a contract for my book. Finally! You can read a bit more about it, here. I love the title's most recent iteration for how it accurately reflects the ethnographically derived meanings the book shares. Cruel Auteurism: Affective Digital Mediations Toward Film-Composition. It's a mouthful, and I could honestly drop the post-colon stuff. I may do that and will plan to initiate that conversation with my editor very soon.

I have many conference presentations upcoming, so in addition to completing the book (it's 3/4 drafted), I'll be working on a talk about new citation practices for the Modern Language Association's (MLA) sponsored panel at the 2016 Conference on College Composition and Communication. My title? "How Do I Cite the Stephen Hawking Hologram?" Can't wait.

I have had the great fortune of seeing 2 proposals for the competitive 2016 Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) conference. I will be exploring a.) Selfies as feminist reclamation of image-power *and* more!, and b.) Shaming in social media as a function of commonly held myths about "luck" (think positive!). I worry the shaming of those who articulate -- in the fullest sense of the term -- within social media their various struggles, from the mundane to the collectively political. I worry that many teaching rhetoric teach that we should be "above" what many see as "whining" and instead pretty much stick to constantly shaping "the brand."

I've been busy with many other life pursuits. I had talks with colleagues about revising that long languishing screenplay (and have taken real steps toward reanimating that project), and I have a friend helping design a web presence for my alt-ac cinematic pursuits. 

More on all this very soon. In the meantime, can't wait for House of Cards, can't look at anything at all involving the actual political events of the moment (debates, weird media tricks to support this or that candidate), and so on. Yeah no. I'm in for indie films (The Lobster (!) ... Rams (sublime) ... Swiss Army Man ("the farting corpse movie")), and popular culture (House of Cards, Game of Thrones, ...).

I end with 2 final clips. First is a an interview featuring "the" Daniels, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert about their whimsical first feature, Swiss Army Man ("the farting corpse movie,"), this year's Sundance Film Festival delightful surprise. Just because.