Blog ethics

I've just deleted my most current blog post, where I scanned and made anonymous a very absurd and awful paper a student turned in to me. I blocked out his name and made no reference to the course. In the paper, he references how "hip" he is, four times, and that he's "neato". The joke is that for his grand sense of self, the paper had absolutely no academic content or value, other than being ridiculous. After tonight's blogging/new media and ethics discussion in my History of Media, Art and Text course, I ran home with such an immense sense of guilt and terror. Though all efforts were made to keep the student's identity unavailable, I think the potential for trouble was imminent. I kept thinking, as I practically ran through campus, I'm fucked. I'm fucked for finding something funny and posting it in this wasteland. The fact that I covered his identity isn't enough to cover my ass because really, I compromised my integrity as a professor. Lesson learned. More than a lesson, a hands-on, tangible, worldly, first time ever brush with the underbelly of the internet. You can get the gist of the idiocy in the paper without me posting a scanned image of it; the above paraphrase seems to suffice. What I'm afraid of, sincerely afraid of, is that what I post on my PhD mandated blog will one come back with a vengeance and keep me from landing a job, grants, respect. I bitch all the time about media ethics, low standards, inaccuracy, and here I go and do exactly what I've found to be distasteful. No sense in beating myself up over it, damage averted for now. But my filter is up and that does make me a little sad. Now I have to censor myself in this forum, which I didn't want to think was possible. Alas, repercussions are so "in". And so traceable! It would probably be better if I posted drunken photos. I'll leave that to myspace.

Tetanus

Someone please! Bring me a rusty nail to step on!

I need to feel good, someway, about the VCU/State of Virginia sanctioned tetanus shot I had to get yesterday. I didn't sleep at all last night, because every time my left arm even bumped the pillow I would yelp in pain. Toss and turn, OUCH, toss and turn, FUCK! I awoke this morning groggy and feeling like I had been hit by a truck. Looked that way too. Christian had to do up my bra because I couldn't reach around to my back. It was excruciatingly painful to even put on a shirt. Four motrin later I started to feel better, at about 4 pm today after my GTA work required me to run my ass off on production day. I still can't fully lift my arm and there's a giant lump in it that is totally solid. Solid like a rock. Solid Gold.

And they drew THREE vials of blood to test me for a MMR vaccine. Brutality, I tell you.

Again, a board with rusty nails would be really great for mental health right about now. Or just a Rusty Nail with Dewars will do.

Goodbye Slumpy

The house at 284 Eliot in Brush Park, Detroit, was a very special old house with a unique history and horrible crumbling structure. I photographed this place for years, and when the front facade crumbled, a group of us went to salvage some of the heavy terra cotta pieces. We were confronted by the cops at the end of mission accomplised, and H almost blew our cover. But I digress...

Amidst all the years of shooting I watched this poor mansion go from bad to devasting to downright dangerous. Last summer, on an all-nighter, G, M, D and I spelunked it. I'm surprised it didn't fall down on us, but it was a thrilling adventure to get inside. The pic on my website is from about 5 years ago, just after the initial facade crumbled and they installed steel stripping. There was hope of rehabilitation. This project, like so many others, was abandoned, while the neighborhood around her was re-built and gentrified.

Well, Ol' Slumpy's gone now, demolished, her memory and architectural splendor squandered by a city that sells the jewels for the price of the polish. In her memory, here's the video of the last of her facade crumbling and some fantastic pics of the demolition by Detroit Funk.

Richmond ROCKS! Don't stop Believin'!!!!

After an awesome, drunken, totally really really ridiculously good-looking weekend with Matt and Marianne where we spent a good portion of time discovering Richmond and a lot of the places I haven't been yet, Christian finally came home after a two-week work hiatus in MI. With much guilt, but little apprehension, I took Saturday completely off from studies and he and I spent a bit of the afternoon exploring what I call the Granite Planet...this part of the James River Park that is miles of huge granite boulders that you can hike all over and make your way across to get to the James River and Belle Isle. Yes, Richmond has a Belle Isle, and I'll tell you what, it ain't ghetto. Once we made it to the river, after climbing an abandoned dam and finding all kinds of cool trails, we found an area of the river where people were picnicing, swimming, and swimming with their DOGS! Now I can't wait to take Wilson to the river. I've never seen him swim, but I know since his heritage is part Newfoundland that he will love the mossy river water. Not worried about him stinking like mossy river, he already reeks.

Tonight we ate at a wonderful restaurant called Comfort, which is only 4 blocks from our house. I had a kobe steak with sides of mac n cheese and squash cassorole. Amazing.

I can't believe how nice it is here...and I love VCU so far. A totally energized, positive environment. Shit gets done here. Good shit. The MATX program is incredible. I have never experienced such a calm, collected and inspiring work environment - and I have never been treated so well personally and professionally. VCU bought four empty buildings on Broad St., right behind my house, which are being renovated to be the studios exclusively for us MATX art folk. And since Richmond has it's First Fridays Art Walk every month, on Friday, me and a few of my new MATX friends decorated/installed the windows of our new buildings with our art - one of my films and some objects to go along with it, Guido's animation, Belinda's print work, Katie's glass, Jenn's sculpture, etc... I'm only here a month and I already have a film showing/art space and a few really cool friends in the program. That's fucking outrageous!

Who's next on the visiting trail? DANA!!!!! Yay! Or maybe, you?

Briar Rose

What a BITCH.

No not really. Briar Rose was one of the easiest and most exciting papers I've ever written. Couple reasons: the hypertext version of the story was amazingly fun to read. It bounced all over the fucking place! It never ended! It never actually ENDS. And then there's the fact that I can pretty much pick apart the end of the "traditional bourgeois novel" and scream out loud - hey, not every fucking spoiled college kid or their grandma own a motherfucking computer or have time or the inclination to sit in front of a machine to read a text. Books are our friends, still. Old, archaic, but useful friends. Narrative, as we traditionally know it, is NOT DEAD YET. So that was fun. Of course, I did not use the term "motherfucking computer" in my paper. I'll save that for the hypertext version...coming your way....soon. Motherfuckers.

I definitely recommend the experience of reading Briar Rose and know this, my paper will be on my website soon enough (just have to figure out how that pesky dreamweaver operates). Why is it that I can easily learn a video editing software, figure out depth of field charts by sight, conjure up a million useless tidbits of information, but I cannot for the life of me, figure out dreamweaver?

Working for Tuition

First week of classes has commenced I've also fulfilled my first of work as a GTA for the School of Mass Communications. First, I'm working as an assistant for the undergraduate-produced news show called VCU InSight. Here, I fulfill two roles. I help the students who serve as anchors and reporters shoot and edit their stories. Next week, I'll help update the website for the show. Second, I assist the new studio professor in helping the technical crew get it together - shoot in the studio, run the switcher (which is apparently dead), hook up audio, etc. Then I help edit the final package of the shows, for which I have my own private office and edit suite. Sounds a bit too perfect, or easy, when considering where I came from and the environment that we students and professors were forced to work in. The other part of my job entails teaching a Mass Comm 101 breakout session. I have 25+ students who also go to a 400 person lecture session and then meet with me once a week to go over the course and discuss issues of from their textbook and course. It's a class that meets for 50 minutes. Now I'm used to teaching courses that last FOUR HOURS. This is a breeze!

Except there's this pesky thing called homework, and I'm stuck in four academic courses...so when people use terms like "buttload" and "ass-kicking" they are, of course, referring to the amount of reading I have to do.

My awesome website (work in progress)

Not only are we sort of "required" to have a blog for the program, we are definitely required to build our own, however minimal, functioning website to post and promote our scholarly/artistic portfolios. I've never done this before and Dreamweaver makes my brain hurt a bit - the way that math makes my brain hurt. But I'm a big girl and I will survive!

Here's mine: tell me what you think! Of course, it isn't quite finished.
http://ramsites.net/~treverk/