I’ve noticed in my stats over the last couple of days that I’ve been getting some hits off some genuinely vile googlings, things I’m not going to reproduce here. The hits have been on pages that contain no such content, and no content that could even be mistaken for the string searched for. I just examined the source code for one of my pages, trying to figure out what was going on, and discovered that someone had managed to embed a bit of code in my site’s footer, code which resolved into a bunch of links to some really Vile Shit.

The good news is that the code for some reason made the links and their associated text invisible, so they didn’t actually appear on any of my pages; the bad news is, of course, that someone was able to do this at all. So I guess it’s time for me to upgrade my WP install again — and to send out the message here: if you’re getting hits off inexplicable search strings, check your source code…

Recovering today after a quite wonderful MLA. I got to meet several people that I’d been hoping to introduce myself to for a while, I got to catch up with some old friends, and I got to attend and participate in a number of fantastic panels. Conferences always make me eager to be back in front of my computer, though, processing the ideas that have come up and putting together my own thoughts. So I’m off to do some of that processing now; I’ll hope to have exciting new stuff to share here soon.

1. Man, do I have some greasy fingers.

2. I have to take my gloves off to answer the phone? In the snow?

3. What do you mean there’s no iChat client?

The last few days have been a blur of travel and family, all of which I survived, though not without some bumps along the way. I’m happily ensconced in my hotel room in Chicago now, though, awaiting what promises to be the most action-packed MLA I’ve experienced.*

If you’re around and want to say hi, you can likely find me at many of the various panels thoughtfully put together by the Association for Computers and the Humanities**, including of course my own. I’ll hope to see some of you there.

—–

*Not counting MLAs at which I’ve conducted interviews, I guess, but those are hard for me to characterize as action-packed, really, as sitting in a hotel room talking for hours on end hardly strikes me as action.

**[Updated, 12.27.07, 9.34 am: I must have been more tired than I thought I was last night. The panels themselves have been put together by various entities, only one of which is ACH; the list of panels was collated by ACH. Sheesh.]

I received a very nice and fairly apologetic note today, informing me that I was not elected to the Delegate Assembly of the MLA.

This is one of those cases when saying “it’s an honor just to have been nominated” really, really applies. Though I’m not entirely sure that the “just” is in the right place.

The real beauty part of having teeny tiny little classes, as I’ve always suspected but never really gotten to experience, is that grading goes fast. One can zip through everything in a day or two, and get on with the important business of one’s life. Like, say, finishing that paper you have to give in nine days that still isn’t quite done. Or, perhaps, packing for the holiday trip that suddenly begins tomorrow for which you are entirely unprepared. Or even remembering what it feels like to write a blog entry about nothing in particular.

Let the break begin! I hope yours is as good as mine is promising to be.

With one exception, every single Christmas card I have received so far this year has been produced by Shutterfly.

So a pal of mine has just drawn my attention to an interesting article in the L.A. Times from about ten days or so ago on responses to the Kindle. The article attempts to look fairly neutrally at the object itself, what it gets right and what it gets wrong, as well as at the responses to the object.

The most interesting parts of the article, for my purposes, are the anti-Kindle screeds on the part of those who would defend the print-on-paper codex from all apparent technological threats. And the absolute best part of that is the response by Jonathan Franzen.

You’d think Franzen would have learned to keep his mouth shut (and email unsent) around reporters.

As Aunt B. has already pointed out, he manages to make an utter fool of himself by insisting that the only way to truly experience Shakespeare is to read it in print, as was originally intended. But my favorite line of Franzen’s is this one:

“Am I fetishizing ink and paper? Sure, and I’m fetishizing truth and integrity too.”

Because pixels are some sneaky lying little bastards.

Sigh,
KF

I’ve just found out that The Anxiety of Obsolescence has been named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2007 by CHOICE, the publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Now that is a nice note to end the semester on.

… since R. took off for the holidays:

1. Some percentage of my not-blogging is directly attributable to his presence here in Claremont. Which is to say not that he’s interfering with the writing process, but that some percentage (that same percentage) of my blogging was fueled by a general need for communication. And with him in the house, there’s always somebody to talk to. Hence, a much lowered need to talk to the internet.

2. I develop very bad habits when he’s away — or re-develop, as the case may be. I indulge all of my worst impulses, just out of a need to make myself feel better. Also because I can. Not that he’d fuss at me if he were here, but I’d feel like he ought to fuss at me, and so wouldn’t indulge in the same way if he were around.

These two things together might seem to suggest some sense in which blogging is a bad habit, which I don’t at all believe. But it is a habit that I associate with my living-alone-dom, rather than my life with him. And so if I’m going to re-cultivate that habit, without re-cultivating the actual bad habits (of which the less said the better, I think), I need to figure out — for the umpteenth time — some new mode or means of writing here, that can keep me going.