This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks.

And man, did I need that.

The lecture that I’m set to give tomorrow, which I’m doing some heavy-duty work on this morning, is part of a series of lectures, classes, and screenings collectively titled “The New Documentary Impulse.” Much of this series, as you might expect, has to do with recent work in politically focused documentary film and video, but there are a number of lectures exploring other manifestations of the documentary impulse as well.

As you might guess, I’m focusing on the blog, and particularly the ways that the blog—particularly, though not exclusively, the personal blog—contructs a diachronic narrative archive of the self, a sort of first-person database documentary, in which the “character” of the self is constructed gradually, over time.

This talk is aimed at a pretty generalist, non-blogging audience, and so might not be terrifically revolutionary in its materials or its implications, but there are a couple of claims that I’m making that I think are worth pondering at greater length, in a deeper fashion.  I’m not going to attempt to expand on that treatment much right now, but I do want at least to rehearse the claims here before unloading them in the lecture.

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And also because the wisdom contained therein is pretty damned good:  Fontana Labs’s advice for new grad students.  Even if it does contain the word “fellatio.”

Worse yet, even if it does use the word “fellatio” as a noun, with the definite article.  As in “a fellatio.”

Something about that really weirds me out.  But go read it anyway.

Navigated classes with only a modicum of humiliation.

Have completed another revision of proposal; one more draft to go before seeking committee comment.

Have begun drafting lecture; will complete tomorrow.

Review of manuscript temporarily stalled out, but will complete later this week.

Remembering to breathe, wherever possible.

Two classes to teach today, both of them unprepared.

Review of copy-edited manuscript due tomorrow, only about half-completed.

Lecture to give on Thursday, as yet basically unwritten.

Major proposal deadline (firm) next Monday; proposal drafted but still in need of revision.

Second major proposal deadline (somewhat mushier) in the next couple of weeks, as yet unimagined much less drafted.

Panic level, high and escalating.

One day, you write something about a guy’s first book, and the next day, you get an email message from that guy thanking you for your comments and offering help with a critical issue you’re currently facing.

One day, you express a desire for a new feature in a very cool web tool, and later that very same day, the author of the tool pops by to discuss the feature’s possibilities.

One day, you go to a conference where you get to hang out with an exceptionally cool woman whose blog you’ve been reading, and she takes you to meet another fabulously cool blogger who shows you around the town, and then you can watch over the next two years as that blogger meets another blogger at a conference on blogging, as they fall in love, plan their wedding, and are finally married by, you guessed it, a blogger-priest they met at that very same conference.

The ways of the internet are strange and wonderful, and some days it’s just exciting to get to be here.  So says AKMA:

The next time somebody tells you that technology will destroy our civilization because nobody actually talks to other people any more, remind them about this evening. Although Joey and Wendy didn’t exactly meet online, the Internet played a vital role, several vital roles, in bringing this holy occasion about. I became acquainted with Joey online; Wendy was working at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the three of us converged on the same place at the same moment as part of a conference on blogging. If – as we are taught – marriages are determined in heaven before we are born, then God has been clearly been an early adopter of cutting-edge social software, for which we all have much reason to give thanks over and above the expected celebration of a marriage.

Hey, could I persuade somebody to build this application for me?  What I want is something that combines the functionality of something like Library Thing with the functionality of a bibliographic software package like EndNote—a web-based application that would let me keep track of the books and articles that I use in my work, that would allow for note-taking (and perhaps even both independent and collaborative note-taking, so it might combine a personal-database type function with a more wiki-like function), and that would export in various formats that would allow for the insertion of proper citations in a range of styles in the standard word processing packages.

Or does something like this already exist?  Could it just be done with a wiki?  If there’s a better way, and it’s not out there yet, I beg you:  Go build this and make yourself a small fortune.  All I ask is that you name it after me.

blimp
Originally uploaded by KF.

So BT yesterday mentioned a weird blimp-congregation in the skies over Manhattan, and perhaps it’s only that reading this that sensitized me to the appearance of blimps.  In any case, yesterday, I drove down to Laguna Beach for lunch, and on my way into the OC, spotted a blimp circling above something or other.  At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but several hours later, as I was preparing to leave, the blimp appeared again.  Or I think it appeared again; it could well have been another blimp entirely.  This one, in any event, was wackily psychedelic.  My little camera, alas, was no match for the intensity of the sun and the distance of the blimp, but if you look at the big version on flickr, you’ll get a sense of what we saw.

So what’s the deal with the blimps?  Was this some kind of ingenious distract-them-from-above campaign, encouraging us to ignore what was going on below?  And what was going on below, anyway?

A few days ago, I came within a couple of inches of hitting a pedestrian.

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Migraineur.  One who has migraines.

Every time I hear this word, my brain jumps to connoisseur and flaneur, and it just pisses me off.  As though having migraines was some kind of lifestyle choice.  As though their victims compare notes about their finer qualities.  As though there were some masochistic pleasure to be had in the delectation of the experience of the migraine.

Also, it just sounds dumb.