Thanks to all of you who commented and emailed yesterday and this morning; sympathetic noises were much desired, and much appreciated. Yesterday’s post arose, obviously, out of a well of frustration, both with the core situation and with my painful inability to Let It Go. My hope was that blogging the frustration, even without any of the content, would provide a little bit of a release. And it has.

My goal for this week—aside from preparing and delivering the lecture I’m delivering to the faculty on Wednesday—is to really focus in on the letting-go process. To find a productive way to chill out. To seek a middle ground between being ineffective and making myself crazy. And to remember why it is I really do love this job, when I can keep my head clear.

First, however, a lecture to prepare! (And awesome butt-kicking boots to wear, which I promise I won’t use on anyone.) In fact, the lecture, entitled “Scholarly Publishing in the Age of the Internet,” is precisely the thing I need, to remind me of what it is I’m doing here, and why.

In any case, end whine. Thanks for listening.

The thing that has taken up the vast majority of my time this semester—and something on the order of 95% of my emotional energy—is something I absolutely, positively cannot write about.  Not even in allegorized form.  And it’s less of an exaggeration than I’d like to think to suggest that this unmentionable thing is killing me:  I’m developing an ulcer, I’ve only gotten a few decent nights’ sleep in the last few weeks, and my stupid floppy mitral valve has been producing intermittent chest pain.  All stress-induced, of course, and precisely the kind of thing that it usually helps to vent about.

But I can’t, not this time.  Instead, I cut my hair, bought good ass-kicking boots, and am counting the days until I can get the hell out of here.

This is not how I want to feel about my job.  And this is certainly not how I want to feel about my life.

(cross-posted from making MediaCommons)

No doubt like many of you, I spent much of my evening last night glued to my television set, flipping between CNN and the networks, trying to keep apprised of developments in the election as best I could.  I also kept my laptop nearby, in order to keep an eye my favorite political media blogs (such as Crooks and Liars), in order to get a sense not just of their reaction to the events, but of their reaction to the coverage of the events.

I’m a bit dazed by it all as yet, and what thoughts I have are obviously pretty unprocessed.  But I’m interested this morning in the impact that the internet has clearly had on the outcome of this election.  This is nothing terrifically new; the last few election cycles have all been affected by the presence of the blogosphere.  What’s new, for me, is the circulation and discussion of political ads via the network.  Ads that were once tied to local or regional television markets—unless something went very wrong, and they got picked up by the network news departments—have suddenly become visible across the country, via YouTube and other video-sharing systems.  Of the ten best political ads of this season (according to Salon’s Video Dog), most, like Michael J. Fox’s ad for Missouri senator-elect Claire McCaskill, which took top honors, came to the attention of a much wider audience through their wide online distribution and discussion.

One of the truisms of recent political life has held that “all politics are local”; I’ve got to wonder whether this will continue to be so in an age in which media products are so widely dispersed—and, even more, in an age in which those who consume such products are able to respond.

Senate races in Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania appear to have gone to the Democrats.  I am, however, not counting my chickens as yet.  I’m still waiting for the after-10-pm-PST-election-day surprise, which has bitten us in the ass too many times in the last decade…

As I mentioned during Flow, the guys at the Institute for the Future of the Book have helped my co-editor Avi Santo and I me create a planning site for MediaCommons. Some of what’s going on there is thinking out loud—Avi and I pondering the ways that MediaCommons will develop. Some of it’s putting into practice the things that we hope the network will do—“In Media Res,” for instance, an ongoing feature in which scholars do open media analysis in a timely fashion. And some of it is bald-faced pleas for help.

As I’ve said there this morning, those pleas for help, or requests for input, are not just rhetorical. We really need the folks we hope will participate in MediaCommons to feel a significant level of ownership over the site, to feel that it is serving their needs as well as it can, and, moreover, to help make the site into a thriving community and a powerful publishing organ in media studies.

If you haven’t yet, stop by there. Create an account. Comment on what’s there, and let us know what you’d like to see. And keep your eyes open for other ways to become a part of the site, coming soon.

[UPDATE, 10.37 am: My mistake: the account registration function has not yet been activated. Keep your eyes peeled for that.]

[UPDATE, 1.04 pm: Edited to remove mortifying grammatical flub. Evidence of guilt left behind as penance.]

the haircut
Originally uploaded by KF.

My hairdresser was so impressed with the enormous pile of hair surrounding me after my cut yesterday that I had to take a picture of it.  She decided to put the broom and the scoop in the picture for scale.  Unfortunately, what you can’t tell here is the depth of the pile; it had to be stuffed a bit to fit in the scoop.

Needless to say, I startled myself when I woke up this morning, but boy, is this going to be easier to deal with…

She’s at it again. I’ve just gotten an email message from tagged.com asking me to confirm my new account with them.  I didn’t sign up for any such account.  And it’s the same bloody email address this kid has been using, over and over again.

Do I:

1. Write to the abuse folks at tagged.com and ask them to do something about this?
2. Confirm the account, log in, and:
   
   1. Attempt to figure out who she is, in order to get her to cease and desist?
   2. Post all manner of unseemly stuff about her love for Laura Ashley dresses and the Anne of Green Gables novels?
3. Just delete and ignore?

I think my judgment may be off here, as I’m feeling quite wrath-of-webgod about it.  So your advice would be most appreciated.