On raising Dissertation
I’m raising a child right now. Her name is Dissertation. She keeps me up all night. I dream about her. I worry about her. I think about her while walking the streets of New York City. She’s got me. I’m on her schedule. I have headaches during the day, and when I rub my shoulders, it sounds like I’m popping bubble wrap paper. The more I pay attention to Dissertation the more I learn about my life story. It’s weird. She expects me to guide her, to make her something that the world will appreciate, and that scares the shit out of me. But she’s my responsibility. I can’t let her down because I love her. The times when I think I’ve got it all figured out, she tells me to rethink my assumptions. And I’m pretty sure that since giving birth to this life of words, I’ve gained at least 10 pounds. Thank god for Malbec and Idris Elba.
Yes, boo. You right.
Why vine is a perfect medium for comedy
Two words: Jump cut
In film, the jump cut, or abrupt transition from one frame to the next, functions like a quick, confusing, and incongruous utterance. The viewer is required to fill in the missing rationale or logic, although she doesn't realize it. In humor theory, incongruity theory describes "laughter in response to a perception of incongruity." The jump cut evokes humor, as seen on Vine, the popular short video mobile app with a growing number of aspiring and established comedians.
Because Vine is a short 6-second video platform that allows the user to manipulate time and space by pausing and dragging a scroll bar on a mobile screen, it's the perfect medium to evoke humor through incongruous--or (also conceptualized as) bizarre, queer, inappropriate, odd, discordant, contrasting, "ridiculous" imagery.
The jump cut transition, along with the cutaway is oftentimes a meta comedic device also found in the popular animated sitcom Family Guy.
So there you have it: The medium, in this case, Vine, is the message, humor.
https://vine.co/v/hL9nHAZrt5W
An interventionist and an ethnographer walk into a bar
This isn't a joke, it really happened last night.
An interventionist and an ethnographer walk into the bar, the interventionist says, "I could not do ethnography! All they do is sit there and observe. They just listen. They can't say or do anything! I can't do that. I have to be like, 'No! You are wrong!'
Wide-eyed and close-lipped, the ethnographer responds, "Hmmm. Interesting. Tell me more."
Aging in the Age of the Selfie #TheSelfieProject
Looking at the lines on my face
through the iPhone lens
Drawn deeper, longer.
The curls on my head
lie heavy, grey.
Taking up the screen.
They move on their own now.
The camera's filter can't seem to catch a
glimpse of daddy's and mommy's face
in mine.
I am my own woman now.
My eyes appear
calm and dark.
They smile on their own.
I remember what Audre Lorde wrote in 'Change of Season'
She asks:
"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming somebody else on my way to myself?"
She continues,
"I have paid dearly in time for love I hoarded
unseen
summer goes into my words
and comes out reason."
I am trying to capture a sense of time in this selfie.
Still
unsure
where to locate change
on a digital
and aging face.
#TheSelfieProject