20x10: Ten top-ten lists I didn't write

Top ten songs about dust

Ten words that look very different than they sound

Top ten foods with greatest healthiness-tastiness disparity

Ten fictional winter holidays

Top ten superheroes

Ten alternate Sarah-Palin's-kids' names

Ten celebrities who wasted our time and energy

Top ten people on earth who need to be punched

Ten things I would never eat for a million dollars

Ten websites everyone should visit

20x10: Top ten terrible movies including Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey or Keanu Reeves

The Proposal (Sandra Bullock)

Fool's Gold (Matthew McConaughey)

Sweet November (Keanu Reeves)

Failure to Launch (Matthew McConaughey)

A Walk in the Clouds (Keanu Reeves)

The Wedding Planner (Matthew McConaughey)

The Lake House (Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock)

Feeling Minnesota (Keanu Reeves)

All About Steve (Sandra Bullock)

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (Sandra Bullock)

20x10: Ten songs I loved to sing as a child

1. "Senor Don Gato"

2. "One Was Johnny" (from Chicken Soup with Rice)

3. "Fifty Nifty United States"

4. "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" (Joy to the World)

5. "Someone Saved My Life" by Elton John

6. "Wisdom" from Little Tree

7. "The Longest Time" by Billy Joel

8. Tiny Toons theme

9. Anamaniacs theme

10. "Innocent Man" by Billy Joel

20x10: Top ten ugliest cars, in order of ugliness

1. Honda Element

2. P.T. Cruiser

3. Hummer (the huge, non-military ones)

4. Scion xB

5. Ford Sports Trac

6. Pontiac Aztec

7. Chevy HHR

8. Ford Taurus

9. Toyota FJ Cruiser

10. "The Homer"

20x10: People who were in other things before they were in the things they're in now, what they used to be in, and what they're in now

Jane Krakowski as "Elaine" on Ally Mcbeal, now "Jenna" on 30 Rock

Lisa Edelstein as "Cindy McCaulliff" on Ally Mcbeal, now "Lisa Cuddy" on House

Johnny Galecki as "David" on Roseanne, now "Leonard" on Big Bang Theory

Joshua Jackson as "Pacey" on Dawson's Creek, now "Peter Bishop" on Fringe

Greg Grunberg as "Sean" on Felicity, "Eric Weiss" on Alias, a pilot on Lost, now "Matt Parkman" on Heroes

Kristen Bell as "Veronica" on Veronica Mars, as Elle on "Heroes," now narrator of Gossip Girl

Katherine Heigl as "Isabel" on Roswell, now "Izzie Stevens" on Grey's Anatomy

Adam West as "Batman" on Batman, now "Mayor Adam West" on Family Guy

Callum Blue as "Mason" on Dead Like Me, as "Bob" on Related, as "Anthony Knivert" on The Tudors, now "Zod" on Smallville

Adam Baldwin as "Jayne Cobb" on Firefly, as "Chad" on Daybreak, now "Agent Casey" on Chuck

20x10: The twelve days of Christmas presents I'd like to receive, minus 2

1. An "A" on all my semester's work

2. A backrub from Prince Certainpersonio

3. Time to watch several episodes of compelling TV with P.C.

4. The TV show "Six Feet Under"

5. For Matt & Kim to come out with a new album immediately

6. The TV show "Felicity"

7. The power of flight

8. A job offer from a think tank that will wait until I'm done with school, pay me enough to pay off my loans, and that will send me to China "for research"

9. A trip to Thailand, with no personal dental work to attend to

10. For the cast, crew and producers of "Daybreak" to come back to work on the show after a miraculous call from ABC -- but then to put the show straight on DVD. And send me a copy of the new season. For free.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

20x10: You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen...Ten alternate reindeer, in addition to Rudolph

Hrothgar

Binky

Razor

The Disemboweler

Ghost Rider

Blackface

Franklin Delano

Bone-grinder

Gryffindor

Buddha Yorkshire

20x10: Top ten threats to America

Terrorism

People not buying enough stuff

Killer bees

Kudzu

Swine flu

Danielle Steel

High School Musicals 1-3

A sense of irony

Y3K

Being so awesome we literally blow the minds of everyone in other countries, leaving us with no one to produce our cheap car parts, party favors or garlic (China)

20x10: Ten weapons P.C. will defend me against, in case of attack

Machete

Sai

Hammer

Throwing star

Razor-sharp wit

Sword

Double swords

Triple swords

Character assassination

Poison dart (1)

20x10: Ten "mathematical" phrases that have other meanings in American culture

2x4

8x10

24/7

7-11

10-4

411

911

9/11

86

420

20x10: Manual For How To Deal With Fame Rules

1. Don't care what people think.

2. Don’t contradict people when they say you were upset about something.

3. Don’t wear sweatpants. Ever. Also don’t wear track suits, unless you’re a black man.

4-5. Don't go on "Celebrity Jeopardy." Don't go on Saturday Night Live. But go ahead and be on SNL for “Celebrity Jeopardy.”

6. Only branch out into fashion, women’s shoes or perfume if you’re a female pop star – if you are a female pop star, only branch out in these ways rather than by becoming an “actress.”

7. The recent trend toward “green” living should be followed to the letter, or it won’t count.

8. Get a Jewish mother equivalent (JME) to keep you down to earth, but if you are ever discovered, say she is your dominatrix.

9. Don't try to explain yourself to ordinary people. Ever.

10. Don't kill anybody.

11*. Don't go to court.

*I'm allowing 10 places for rules; because 4 and 5 are combined, this leaves space for rule 11 at the end of the list. In other words, "this one goes to 11."

20x10: Top ten things P.C. has cooked for me, in order of tastiness

1. Garlic bread with real garlic and cheese on top

2. Chicken tortilla soup

3. Hanger steak salad

4. Gourmet grilled cheese

5. Breakfast burrito with hot eggs, bacon and cheese

6. Chicken pot pie

7. Steak with mashed potatoes

8. Butternut squash soup

9. Cheese bread with real garlic on top

10. Crab cake

20x10: Ten sodas I like, in order of liking (and I don't drink Coke because they're evil)

1. Dr Pepper

2. Fanta Fruit Twist (available only in UK)

3. Diet Dr Pepper

4. A+W Cream Soda

5. Wild Cherry Pepsi

6. Weight Watchers' Diet Black Cherry

7. Cheerwine (not available in New England)

8. IBC Cream Soda

9. A+W Root Beer (for floats)

10. Jones Cream Soda

20x10: Top ten events of my year

1. I met Prince Certainpersonio.

2. I got accepted to Brandeis and enrolled and moved.

3. My column ended in Local Paper, and I quit going to the office.

4. I wrote many papers on television and enjoyed it.

5. Friend Carl was inducted as Jr Roomie.

6. Friends Joe and Liz had their baby, Sophia.

7. Friend Sharon, P.C. and I took a trip to TN.

8. Friend Emily was sick, but got better.

9. I got a permanent overnight shift on Saturdays-Sundays at work.

10. Mistaking him for P.C. as he bent over looking into the fridge, I accidentally slapped friend Jeannette's new husband Chad on the butt at Roomie Reunion '09, and was mortified.

PSA: Brittany Murphy is dead.

And a million fervent pray-ers say in unison: "Dammit -- wrong Britney."

20x10: Things to cook with cilantro (fresh)

Sweet potato-black bean burritos with pineapple salsa

Asian coconut-cabbage with lemongrass soup

Tortilla soup

Black bean and corn salsa

Red onion raita

Egg salad sandwich

Carrot and potato fajitas

Mega-nachos

Tom Kar Gai*

Pad Thai*

*Note: I have never cooked these recipes myself and so do not endorse them; they are for convenience and entertainment purposes only.

20x10: Ten of the best episodes of TV, ever

30 Rock, s4: "Secret Santa"

Alias, s2: "The Telling"

Big Bang Theory, s2: "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, s5: "The Body"

Criminal Minds, s1: "Ride the Lightening"

House, s5: "Simple Explanation"

Six Feet Under, s5: "Everyone's Waiting"

Star Trek, TNG, s3: "Best of Both Worlds, part 1"

The Office, s2: "Casino Night"

West Wing, s2: "Noel"

PSA: Suicidal Manhatten woman has no taste

A woman supposed to be from Manhatten leapt off the Brooklyn Bridge today, according to the NYDailyNews, which reported this blurb:

Woman in PJs leaps from B'klyn Bridge - and lives!
A suicidal Manhattan woman, clad only in her pajamas, survived a 120-foot plunge.Read more

But what KIND of pajamas?? Armani? Hermes? Do they even make pajamas?? And which half of the bridge was she on -- was she still on the "Manhatten side" of the bridge? Or was she on the Brooklyn side, and possibly jumping because she would rather die by falling from a height rather than "die of embarrasment" after spending the night in (shudder) Brooklyn?

Perhaps I've been watching too much Gossip Girl.

20x10: Freudian priorities, in order of importance

1. The phallus

2. The phallus

3. The phallus

4. The phallus

5. The phallus

6. The phallus

7. The phallus

8. The phallus

9. What do women want?

10. The phallus

20x10: Ten "must watch" TV seasons

Alias, season 1

Battlestar Galactica, season 1

Battlestar Galactica, season 4

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6

Daybreak

Dexter, season 1

Six Feet Under, season 5

Sleeper Cell, season 1

The Office, season 3

Veronica Mars, season 1

PSA: 20x10

Well, three readers, it's come to that time of the year when I'm supposed to reflect on all I've done, blog-wise, and give you a recap of my best, favorite, and listable blog posts.

Unfortunately, thanks to my schoolwork and lack of Internet access, there aren't many recent posts to reflect on.

So instead of the recap posts, I'll give you something a bit different and sometimes new to ring in 2010 with: Twenty top-ten lists. They'll be labeled 20x10, and they'll be starting immediately.

Feel free to make suggestions for categories in the comments -- things you'd like to know about me or the world or anything, in list form -- and I'll do my absolute best to accommodate.

Work: "Offline: the Facebook Afterlife of Two Young Men" (22 pg)

Jay C., a 26-year-old from Connecticut, died in the early hours of May 18, 2009, in a car accident in which he was the only victim, while driving home from a party. A few months later, Chris D., a 27-year-old also from Connecticut, died on August 9, 2009, of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Both were young men who no one expected to die; both were mourned widely by family and friends; and both were active in maintaining Facebook profiles just before their deaths.

The funerals of young people such as Chris and Jay can be heartbreaking, comforting, confusing and awkward. But increasingly, funerals and cemeteries are not the only places to find ways for people – especially younger people familiar with digital technology and norms – to mourn and commemorate the dead. A variety of online variants on funeral or wake “guest books” and memorial sites provide ways to pay respects to the family of the deceased or to the deceased himself. Facebook, however, is not a memorial website. It was designed to be a social networking site for students, and now (as of December 4, 2009) has 350 million members worldwide, according to “An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg.” Along the way, some of its members have died, and recently the question of what happens to a Facebook participant’s profile when he or she has passed on has been ironically revived, thanks to a spate of “friend suggestions” to Facebook users that included friends who had died. In October 2009, Facebook restated its previous policy of allowing family members and close friends to “memorialize” the profile pages of the deceased, which would keep the deceased person’s picture from showing up in a “suggestion” to “reconnect,” or in the “friend suggestion” feature. Memorialization does not change the essential nature of the profile page, however; memorialized pages are not segregated from non-memorialized ones, and lack of information – exclusion of the status bar and status updates and personal information the deceased posted before death – is the only designation that could digitally distinguish the living from the dead. Since memorialization is a voluntary process, and one that has received mixed reviews, there is no way to know how many (former) Facebook members are dead.

This puts Facebook profiles, particularly profiles of the deceased that have not been memorialized, in a liminal space that more traditional memorials do not occupy. The division between the living and the dead that exists, clearly delineated through ritual and burial in real life, does not exist in the same way on websites such as Facebook. This lack of differentiation occurs not only because profiles may not be designated “memorial,” nor solely because there is no such site as a “Facebook cemetery,” but also in part because Facebook does not occupy physical space; insofar as it accommodates the body – and therefore, the corpse – it only allows for images rather than presence; insofar as it depicts the deceased, they are alive and well and can be seen interacting with living people, trading messages and smiling in photographs; insofar as it shows death and its effects on a community, those depictions are controlled entirely by friends and family and manifest as an abrupt absence of activity rather than an absence of presence. The issues brought to the fore by the use of digital media to commemorate the dead require serious study, of which this paper can only be the start. But a case-study investigation of the Facebook pages of Jay C. and Chris D., neither of which is memorialized, sheds light on some possibilities for further theoretical and field study, and on how Facebook profiles may function and where they may fit in American commemoration processes in the “digital age.”


I. Digital Age Memory

The digital age offers perfect remembrance. According to Viktor Mayer-Schonberger in his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, one of the main results, if not goals, of the rise of digital technology and the Internet is a perfect collective memory. While human memory has been used to communicate epic poems and oral history for generations, it has never been completely “accurate” in the sense of verbatim repetition, or of transmitting raw data – facts free of all analysis or interpretation – and much of the course of communication technology improvement has been dedicated to moving beyond the “procedural memory” (18) of human ancestors to the captured, static memory represented by writing, and subsequently more advanced technologies such as digital audio and video, which unprecedentedly reproduce the exact original without the interference of “noise” to interrupt or corrupt the sound or images over time (58).

The difference between the human brain’s capacity for remembering information and a digital archive of the same information is more than a difference in degree – digital capturing equipment (e.g., camcorders, cameras, or recording devices) can record and display an enormous amount of information at high resolutions – it is also a difference in kind. Where the human brain typically filters information as it receives the signals it encounters through short term memory, letting some things “slide,” digital recording devices do not filter; a digital camera records an image of each item in its field with the same resolution as each other item, attaching relative significance to none and “remembering” them all. The recall process for human memory is also prone to valuation: Harvard professor Daniel Schacter believes that the human brain “constantly reconfigures [one’s] memory – what [people] remember [is] based at least in part on…present preferences and needs. For Schacter, [human] memory is a living evolving construct” (Mayer-Schonberger 20). But digital recall is perfect, non-reconstructive, and increasingly, with the widespread use of powerful search engines such as Google, recalling even information never stored in one’s personal computer or brain from the digital archive has become almost instant, commonplace and easy (72).

But beyond the fact that digital technology has exponentially improved humanity’s capacity for accurately storing and recalling facts, images and communications, is the widespread acceptance and use of this capacity. People today speak of memory in “digital age” terms: as a matter of accurate and instant recall, rather than as a way to draw on experiences, mythology and history to formulate a vision of the self and of society. The drive to remember perfectly, having reached its current apotheosis in the use of digital form, seems to be provoked by the same impulses it always has been provoked by – as Mayer-Schonberger states, “for millennia, humans have tried to improve their capacity to remember, to increase the amount of information they can store and successfully recall” (22) in order to perform tasks better and make informed decisions – and yet is expressed scientifically, through use of technology, in a form only available to the post-Enlightenment world.

The cultural and linguistic developments surrounding the technological achievement of digital memory give this technology and its use the tang of scientific, factual description, which is foremost and fundamental; the overlay of human myth-making, self-expression and identification, and social “networking” – a technological term in itself – occasionally seems rudimentary or undeveloped in relation to the technical prowess already necessarily in play on the Internet. Thus, close attention should be paid to the use and application of human memory in an environment that neither requires it (as perfect digital recall is available) nor necessarily encourages it. Digital commemoration of the dead offers a prime opportunity for looking into the reasons humans may make use of their own imperfect memories – and for discovering what humans have always wished they could remember about the dead.


II. Remembering

In practical terms, remembering assists with decision-making (Mayer-Schonberger 22), communication, building ties between family members, friends and groups, and creating a sense of meaning (or lack of meaning) in an individual’s life. Remembering a deceased loved one or leader, however, has a different kind of significance. As with any ritualized communal activity, there are certain acceptable ways to remember the dead. In America, in the antebellum North, the history of commemorating the dead grew from several strains of Protestant thought, and from the developing culture of urban centers as well as the spiritualist and Transcendentalist leanings of thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In his book The Sacred Remains, Gary Laderman discusses the transition from medieval deathbed scenes, at which even passers-by were expected to show up and receive wisdom from the dying, who often expired in their own beds at home and surrounded by loved ones, to the American practices of death and funerary ritual – increasingly bodiless and sterilized – before and after the Civil War. Even before the formation of funeral homes and a “business” of death, Americans had been both fascinated and repulsed by the corpse, which occupied a liminal place between death and life, and its degradation (78). The Protestant church and other spiritual advisors justified the corpse’s degradation by focusing on the spirit’s separation from the body: advisors claimed the spirit had departed as “the dead literally shed their skin, and the body” (60). The individual was absent from the body, and as such, focus on the body and its decay waned in funerary ritual, and particularly when discussing the deceased. Remembering the corpse, then, was less and less the focus of ritual.

The doctrine of the separation of the physical body and spirit may have comforted grieving families, but it did not fully satisfy. Family members still often wanted to view the body, as they would have done in traditional wakes and funeral ceremonies – sometimes even after these ceremonies had been completed (Remains 76). To this end, survivors might have portraits of photographs made of the dead, which “situated images of the dead in a safe, nonthreatening environment” (78). The hope was that seeing the beloved in peaceful repose would be cathartic for the living, despite that the living were supposed to believe the beloved’s spirit had departed (or perhaps to confirm this belief), and many survivors did report feelings of relief. When they happened upon the body in decay, however, survivors tended to react with horror, morbid curiosity, or both. These feelings replaced the supposed catharsis of viewing the unblemished body, and in part to relieve the effects and re-envision the experience of viewing the body as cathartic, as Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf point out in Celebrations of Death in a chapter on contemporary American mortuary ritual, the nascent funeral industry emphasized embalming as a solution, one which continues to be used almost universally today (194).

If remembering an individual as he or she “was in life” was a social goal of embalming and of the death masks, death portraits and posthumous photos taken of the dead in the antebellum American North, and if “the image of the deceased became a mnemonic device” (Remains 78) to help viewers remember the dead loved one, in some ways, digital archives take the impulse to remember to its most extreme fulfillment. The absence of the corpse in a digital archive may be comforting, as the goals of catharsis through viewing the body as though living, and of remembering the individual as he was “in life,” can be more fully realized in an undecaying environment. In fact, if the complete elimination of the corpse in funerary ritual has seemed almost a goal since the spiritualism and embalming made the dead body an afterthought – though an alarming one – the digital archive achieves this. There is no dead body in the digital archive.

But there is much in the digital archive that could be considered of the “spirit” of the deceased: writings, photographs, videos and comments by Chris D. and Jay C. can be found on their Facebook profile pages. These are elements of their lives that might have significance for the Facebook “friends[1]” who visit their pages; they might serve as “mnemonic devices” (Remains 78), and in some cases might substitute for other methods of remembering the young men, such as collective story-telling or attending a real-life[2] funeral. But though Facebook is a site designed to “remember” and archive whatever individuals put on their pages, it is not designed to “commemorate”; it only results in an information gain (or assists in recall) for viewers rather than providing a ritualized platform for the reimagining of the deceased person’s life and death. Because the digital archive does not selectively “remember” only what is considered enduring and important in an individual’s life, non-memorialized Facebook profile pages include all the quotidian detail with which they were initially invested: status updates, groups joined, application use (e.g., “Bejeweled” game scores, “IQ test” results, “Farmville” use), comments and comments on comments, conversations that took place on the “wall,” profile pictures and other digital photo albums, active links to off-site news, videos or blogs, etc. The trivialities that might otherwise have been forgotten by those in contact with the deceased (pre-death) can be easily recalled through a glance at the profile page. Favorite books and movies, who the deceased was “in a relationship” with, and other more significant pieces of information, which might have a talismanic quality associated with them – reading the favorite novel of the deceased may make one feel closer to that individual, for instance – are recorded alongside a possibly daily account of how he felt and where he had gone to lunch. The digital archive gives the sense of a comprehensive account of the individual’s life; this is the gain viewers experience when attempting to remember a loved one “as he was in life.”

And left on its own without amendment, the digital archive gives no account of the individual’s death. Because of the impossibility of the body’s presence in digital space, the necessarily physical death of the body manifests as a sudden cessation of online activity rather than the sudden presence of a corpse that must be dealt with. It is possible in the digital context to not realize that someone has died: Sarah B., a “friend” of Chris D., posted a note on Chris’s Facebook wall on October 3, 2009, almost two months after he had died, wishing him a happy birthday, and again on October 23, asking “hey how r things going” (Chris D. profile, Facebook.com). Tracing the digital trail of Sarah’s realization, one can find that she commented two days later on an “online guest book” set up as a memorial site for Chris that she had just been told by a friend that Chris had passed. Sarah B. required external information to learn that Chris had died, in large part because Facebook is not a site set up to “cope” with death[3].

Despite its being nontraditional – or perhaps because of it – Facebook participants may use the Facebook profiles of deceased loved ones in several different ways. Some of the proposed uses studied here, such as the forensic tracing of an individual’s last days, thoughts and identity prior to death, are speculative, as no trace evidence of such use of the site exists; Facebook participants are not privy to the comings and goings of other “friends” if those “friends” do not choose to leave a communication indicating their presence. Still, at least three (potential) uses bear mention here, and future in-depth exploration beyond the scope of this investigation: participants may use Facebook profiles as funerary substitutes or addendums; as a forensic file of “evidence” that can be used to unlock mysteries surrounding death or the identity of the loved one; or as a way to perform a communication directly with the dead – not necessarily with the intention of interacting with the deceased directly, but perhaps interacting indirectly with other “friends.”

Funerary Substitute or Addendum

Sarah B. likely did not return to Facebook to give her condolences to Chris’s wife and family because she was embarrassed and ashamed of her faux pas. But several of Chris’s “friends,” who obviously had heard either through external means or by reading the “status update” posted by Chris’s widow Whitney after his death, did use Chris’s Facebook page to express their condolences. Whitney’s update, which read “Chris D. Was [sic] my beloved husband and sould [sic] mate. He will rest in peace and watch over us all. We will get through this together. Oct. 3, 1981 to Aug 9, 2009” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com), received seven comment responses from six separate “friends,” all of whom expressed their condolences to Whitney. While some focused mainly on consoling Whitney and offering condolences to the family of the deceased, they also invariably included comments about Chris – “Chris was a wonderful person”; “he was such a good person”; “he was a great person” – memories – “we had some great an unforgettable times”; “I have fond memories of our time shared” – and statements of missing – “he will be greatly missed by many”; “I will miss him greatly”; “he will be missed dearly” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com). Jay C. did not have a proxy to post a notice of his death on his page, but even without prompting, several of his “friends” posted condolences, memories, and sentiments of missing: “my condolences to the C. family”; “I will never forget the Miller Lite Can flower holder you made me for my bday last summer. You will be missed” (Jay C. profile page, Facebook.com). These responses, highly ritualized in form and content, would have been just as appropriate at a wake, if not more so, as they were on Facebook.

In this case, Facebook condolences may have taken the place of funeral or wake attendance, though most of the “friends” who posted comments were close enough geographically to have attended. If the usual combination of eulogy (he was a good person), expression of sorrow and expectation for its continuance (missing), and statement of empathy and support for the family suffices for a description of what wake attendees are expected to say to the family standing in a receiving line, Facebook condolences are identical to those expressed in person. There are, however, a few missing elements, not least of which is once again the body: as Huntington and Metcalf point out, wake attendees are under an “obligation not only to view the corpse, but also to say the correct things about it” (200). Facebook viewers not only have no obligation to discuss the appearance of the body, they have no opportunity to view it, and any reference to a corpse would be outrageously inappropriate, as it would reintroduce the body and the possibility of its decay to the memorial milieu – and after at least a century of attempting to extract it. In addition, those commenting on Facebook can express condolences at their leisure and in privacy, without having to confront the likely emotional family survivors of the deceased, to compose themselves, or to change their schedules to accommodate a funeral or wake hours, eliminating much of the inconvenience of offering support and paying respects.

The fact that even Facebook commenters understand and use the format of address to family members of the deceased indicates that, as Huntington and Metcalf cite, funerary ritual in America is widely uniform. The shockingly homogenous format of funerals includes “rapid removal of the corpse to a funeral parlor, embalming, institutionalized ‘viewing,’ and disposal by burial” (187). Of these elements, Facebook viewers are only required to ignore the existence of a real-life corpse – “removing” it to the funeral parlor, effectively – and to “view” what is left, which is profile information that indicates the existence of a spirit that has now departed. Facebook makes a poor substitute for a full funeral, in other words, and it is possible to interpret the use of Facebook by non-funeral-attendees as resulting from laziness, guilt, fear of death, shame, or disconnection from the individual who has died. But while all these psychological reasons for non-attendance may hold true, they cannot fully answer why individuals in American society are allowed to stay away from funerals, why such substitutes as online guest books and the like are offered, and especially why people choose to make use of them. There must be something underlying the ideology of death and funerary ritual in America that allows for these alternatives.

Huntington and Metcalf attempt to explore the question of how such uniformity in ritual form could coexist with such an “indeterminate ideology” (187), as writings on American deathways tend to fall into two inadequate categories: the exposé of capitalist exploitation by the death industry, and the psychological analysis of how Americans feel about death and the dead. Unfortunately, neither lens shows the full picture of an American ideology of death; even analysis of the funeral ritual itself cannot provide a whole picture. As the anthropologists state, the “main elements of the ritual sequence are only the most obvious social facts governing the funeral, only the tip of the iceberg. American deathways comprise an extensive complex of social facts of associated collective representations” (198). American mortuary ritual and the “social facts” of death are in serious need of prolonged, in-depth study, as are the effects of digital technology on not only the social etiquette and expectations related to interacting with the family of a recently deceased individual – but the use of Facebook in particular may also have its own explanation and driving ideology, in addition to the “social facts” implicated in those studies.

As a non-traditional site for commemoration, Facebook may represent a “taking back” of commemorative activity from the funeral industry, which has handled many of the necessary tasks after death that previously fell to loved ones and religious groups, and added some of its own “necessary” tasks (such as embalming the corpse and presenting it in peaceful repose in an expensive, bed-like coffin) since the Civil War (Remains 164). Though Americans retain few rituals, it seems a common complaint that ritual is “stifling” and does not allow for true creativity or emotional expression; it is possible that in avoiding more official, “proper” websites that mimic the environment of the funeral home – its sedate colors, display of flowers, use of somber and euphemistic language expressed at low volume to the appropriate recipients (i.e., “I’m so sorry for your loss” should be said to family members only) – “friends” who write their condolences on Facebook are creating their own liminal space in which to acknowledge the death. They may not wish to rely on prepackaged funerary rites and may instead wish to express themselves “genuinely.” Of course this is contradicted by the consistent use of wake-appropriate language in expressing condolences to the families of Chris D. and Jay C., but it may bear further study.

Facebook also creates a semi-public space in which to express sorrow, missing, and other emotions associated with the death of the “friend,” one in which each viewer can expect that all others who view the site will also view the comments left; thus, the site does create the possibility of a commemorative community, and one which may endure beyond the time allotted to funerary rituals. Jay C.’s page shows evidence of this use, with one commenter, Brenda M., posting on the wall, and two other commenters, Susan M. and Krista C. (Jay’s sister), responding to Brenda’s comment; other “wall posts” also received comments. Many other viewers indicated they “liked” comments made as well. The continuing use of Chris D.’s page by Whitney to update “friends” on her status, and in general the continuing use of both pages for “wall posts” of comments, links, and well-wishing by the “friends” of the deceased, also create the sense of an enduring online community that not only commemorates, but interacts and evolves.

By using Facebook rather than a more traditional “guest book” online, viewers can allow for a more wide-ranging discussion of the deceased, and they locate the commemoration in the context of the person’s life – right alongside the evidence of performance of daily living activities as they are recorded on Facebook. On one hand, the use of Facebook avoids confrontation with many of the physical facts of death; on the other hand, it effectively places the confrontation with mortality in the context of the deceased person’s online “home,” a place where the identity of the deceased is intimately connected to the contents of the environment – unlike in a hospital or funeral home, where most deaths and funeral rituals take place (Huntington 187). It is possible to interpret the placement of commemoration in the context of direct evidence of life in several ways: as a denial of death, since the corpse and other physical markers of death are absent from Facebook; as an acceptance of the quotidian nature of death, as the knowledge of the page owner’s death is brought alongside the evidence of daily life; as an ambivalent reaction that includes some acceptance of the passing of the deceased and a corresponding desire to be “closer” to that person, and some denial of death as viewers attempt to act out that desire. It seems most likely that the combination of access to information about and images of the deceased, and apparent and collective acceptance of the individual’s death, are predicated on one another. Survivors can more readily accept the death in part because they still have access to significant parts of his history and person. In that way, perhaps Facebook offers a more comforting and cathartic environment for mourners than other, more “traditional” websites, or funeral rituals.

Forensic Facebooking

Some Facebook participants have explicitly stated that they visit the profile pages of their deceased loved ones to be comforted. Several Facebook participants commented in protest to the October 2009 memo stating Facebook’s memorialization policy, including Keith Taylor, who wrote that he was sure “many widows/widowers viewed the Facebook pages of their loved ones as a unique and special way to maintain a more intimate window into the lives of their loved ones” (Kelly, Facebook.com). Keith was upset that the “window” into his wife’s life had been closed to him after her page had been memorialized. Even more incensed, Michelle Curtis Norris shouted at Facebook decision makers: “WHY DO YOU TAKE THESE THINGS FROM ALREADY GRIEVING PEOPLE?” And Jennifer Marie Grimes Karn got personal, saying “I think you suck for doing this. You’ve stolen from me one of the very few little things I had left of my husband…Thanks for making something so difficult even worse.” Jacquie Lee summed up the protest: “A person’s FB profile is the story of their lives. You’re not preserving the deceased’s ‘privacy,’ you’re actually taking away their personality!!” (Kelly, Facebook.com)
Chris D.’s widow, Whitney, also seems to feel that Facebook is a way for friends to continue to receive “updates” about Chris’s life as it was and the aftermath of his death. A few days after his death, Whitney posted a new “status update” on Chris’s profile page which matched comments she had posted on her own wall, after changing his profile picture: “this photo was from our wonderful honeymoon…We had a blast swimming with the dolphins, and who can resist that smile?!?” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com) On Chris’s birthday, she posted an update as a “wall post” from her own Facebook account, saying she was “doing well thanks to the love and support of so many…I also had a great day with many good friends in celebration of Chris’ [sic] birthday. I’ve never eaten pancakes with so much syrup! Here’s to you Chris!” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com) Whitney added new information to Chris’s Facebook profile, assuming others may want to learn more about what Chris had been like in life – the honeymoon picture of Chris in the water next to a dolphin – and about how she was doing since his death. Possibly in response to Whitney’s photos, one of Chris’s “friends” posted photos of Chris from 1997 on her Facebook profile page and tagged Chris, so that others who may want to see a “new” image could do so. “Friends” of Jay also hastened to add images they had of Jay to their profiles and his profile page wall, including photos taken just hours before his fatal accident. One “friend,” John S., created a new photo album in his account that included “all the photos [he has] of Jay, some uploaded before, some not. Now just in one place” (Jay C. profile page, Facebook.com).

To those who had never seen the photos posted by Whitney and by Chris’s other “friend” or by Jay’s “friends,” this represented new information that was only available after death – the equivalent of hearing a new story at a funeral reception or in discussion with someone else remembering the deceased. But with Facebook, the possibilities for gaining this information are limited only by the amount of information generated before the individual’s death, and in the digital age, that may be practically limitless. Perhaps more importantly, the ability to access and analyze this information becomes widespread with Facebook, extending beyond the typical circle of family members who may have sorted through the deceased person’s physical possessions and learned more about the deceased in the process. Thus, beyond the possibility of “getting to know” the deceased “better” through using the information contained in a Facebook profile page, and likely coincident with the widespread access to the deceased person’s Facebook profile – such that at least some “friends” will not likely be actively mourning for an extended time – is the possibility of using the site to “get to know” something about death, and indulging morbid curiosity, or more interestingly, interrogating the process and possibility of death.

It is possible that even those less concerned with the individual’s death have a stake in whether they have access to information about what the deceased was doing just before death, how the person was feeling, or whether there was any evidence that death was impending. A dead body cannot be interrogated as to why it has died[4], or what its meaning is, and so it remains a mystery. A digital archive of the person’s life, however, can be examined closely and made to “talk.” Though this may result in just as much mystery as interrogating the body, the mere fact of the presence of evidence may compel “friends” to sort through it as though building a forensic case for how and why the individual died. Survivors have always asked “why” death happens; because it retains so much information in such detail, the digital archive encourages the use of an all-seeing, even scientific eye and the accumulation of evidence to attempt the answer. This coincides with some of the other themes in current American portrayals of death and potential death, particularly the feeling that it can and should be prevented, diagnosed, or “solved.”

If such searches for “clues” about death are occurring on Facebook, they would connect attitudes toward the dead in real life with the prevailing attitudes portrayed on medical and forensic drama television shows such as CSI or House, in which solving the case of how a victim died or a medical mystery (resulting in continuing life) rely on collecting “all” available information, with a focus on “facts,” attention to detail, and use of deductive reasoning and laboratory science. These television shows highlight a theme prominent since the medicalization of death – since at least the 1970s, “the majority of deaths now occur in hospitals, where the fiction of possible recovery is often maintained until a person is near the point of death” (Huntington 195) – that “solving” death is possible and can prevent future deaths, either because the murderer is now behind bars or because the illness has been cured. The wish for a cure for death, of course, is long-standing. But the thought that one can ward it off through use of science, logical thinking, or access to information particularly about causality, and especially using digital technology, is fairly recent.

The possibility that “friends” have used Chris D. and Jay C.’s profiles forensically may seem far-fetched, and it is largely speculative. “Friends” of Chris and Jay may have used their pages to learn more about the young men they had known in life, scrutinizing even interactions they had ignored when the men were still alive, but if they did, there is no record of that kind of surveillance and imaginative reconstruction of either man’s last days on their Facebook profiles. Facebook does not automatically record and display the paths that viewers take through the pages they view, only the “wall posts” that viewers decide to write – and no viewer has admitted to the private, perhaps “morbid” act of seeking out truths about death on either man’s wall. As such, the kind of reconstructive forensic activity that could be happening on Facebook profiles of the deceased would need to be proven through research that would likely include interviews and tracking tools that could report on viewers’ behavior in navigating profiles of the deceased. Considering that viewers obviously do make use of each young man’s profile page wall – to speak directly to the dead – and the fact that the walls are used to disseminate new information about each man as though such information is valuable, it is likely that such research would bear fruit.

Communicating with the Dead

What can be known about how viewers interact with Chris and Jay’s Facebook profiles is contained in the “wall posts” both received after their respective deaths. Overwhelmingly, the majority of communications left on each man’s Facebook wall are addressed directly to the deceased. Most wish the dead man well, and most of the posts center around two specific times: the date of death, and his birthday. Though neither of these pages could be considered “representative” of the unknown number of profile pages still active of those who are deceased, as case studies, they are valuable and include common themes and possible interpretations, which might point the way for more thorough field study.

“Friends” of Chris responded directly to Whitney with condolences, as “comments” on her status update, just after she had posted the notice of Chris’s death on his Facebook page, but the two “wall posts” that followed were written by different people, and directly addressed to Chris. Both include a message to “rest in peace,” and an expression of missing. Whitney’s post of their honeymoon pictures followed, after which one “friend,” Kimberly T., responded once again with condolences to Whitney – “my thoughts and prayers are with you” – but then, in the same “wall post,” she switched to addressing her comment directly to Chris, separating it from the message to the family by using capital letters: “RIP CHRIS YOU WILL BE MISSED LOVE YA” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com). The equivalent of online shouting, the use of capital letters highlights this message over the previous “thoughts and prayers,” designating it the most important portion, and perhaps gives the impression that “shouting” will allow Chris to “hear” the message better, though other “friends” did not “shout” their messages. Two more “wall posts” address themselves directly to Chris around the time of his death, and then six weeks later, on Chris’s birthday, three more messages to Chris wish him a happy birthday and remind him that he is still missed. One “friend” even told Chris what his plans were: “we are off to Denny’s for some Pancakes in found [sic] memory of you” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com). With only the exception of Sarah B., who did not realize Chris had died (and apparently did not read the other messages on the wall, or else thought it was an elaborate hoax), every single “wall post” was addressed directly to Chris himself. Even Whitney, when updating others on how she was doing around Chris’s birthday in a “wall post” on Chris’s profile page, ended with “here’s to you Chris!!” (Chris D. profile page, Facebook.com). In contrast, Chris’s official “online guest book” with the Bailey Funeral Home only contained one message written directly to him; all the others were directed to his family of origin or to his widow.

Jay C.’s Facebook profile page did not have a proxy notice of his death, and it may be for that reason that Jay’s “friends” address themselves only directly to Jay rather than to his family[5]. Though the first “wall post” after his death begins with the neutral “my condolences to the C. family,” probably addressed to the family or to others who may read the post, it continues “you will be missed Jay” (Jay C. profile page, Facebook.com), and almost every single message that follows as a “wall post” on Jay’s wall speaks directly to him. Jay’s sister, Krista C., thanked some of the people who attended the wake, but no other “friend” responded directly to her, and this is the only exception to the rule of writing directly to the deceased. Jay has only ten more Facebook “friends” than Chris (103 vs. 93), and yet his profile page includes 47 “wall posts” with messages to Jay, and several photo albums containing pictures of him; Chris only received 9 “wall posts” specifically addressed to him. While the number of different “friends” who posted messages on Jay’s wall was far greater than the number who posted on Chris’s, some of Jay’s “friends” also came back multiple times – to date, for instance, Jordan S. has posted 9 messages, and though 5 are images, video or links, they often include a message to Jay, and the most recent post of November 1 says, simply, “Love” (Jay C. profile page, Facebook.com), with no other agenda.

It is possible to interpret the impulse to communicate with the deceased as a denial of death, in line with the embalming – or in the case of Facebook, absence – of the corpse, the use of euphemistic language to describe death and the dead, and with the feeling that one can “get to know” the deceased posthumously. But if denial of death was the ultimate aim of directly addressing the dead, “friends” writing on Facebook walls would not write commemorative comments; they would simply continue conversations that had been in progress, or start new ones, as though Jay or Chris could respond. It is clear when viewing Sarah B.’s “wall post” comments, which inflict embarrassment even on the reader, that responding to the dead person as though he was still alive is inappropriate, and that the goals of those writing “RIP” and “we’ll miss you” are different. All other “friends” obviously realize they are addressing themselves to a dead man, and yet they still make the effort.

Some or most of the “friends” posting good wishes and reporting feelings of missing to Jay and Chris may believe that, in line with the spiritualist teachings widespread in America since before the Civil War, the young men’s spirits have been separated from their bodies but still exist. They may thus believe they are communicating directly with the dead by posting messages on their Facebook profile pages. Several messages refer to the young men “watching over” loved ones; Jay is placed squarely in heaven, which American culture depicts as located in the sky. He is “up there,” in the company of “angels,” is asked to “give kisses to” deceased family members of one “friend,” and is given advice on what to do in heaven, particularly on his birthday: “hope your haveing [sic] a huge bash up there, show them how its [sic] done”; “show ‘em how it’s done up there bc I know you probably already have”; “have MJ sing you a tune” (Jay C. profile page, Facebook.com). Several “friends” refer to a heavenly reunion to come at the end of their lives. In keeping with Protestant norms since before the Civil War, there is no mention of hell, and no attempt to take moral instruction from Jay’s death[6].

In fact, the wholly positive tone of the messages offers another explanation for the effort being put into writing directly to Jay and Chris. As with the theory of the Fox Indians’ games proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss in The Savage Mind, in which the team of the “dead” would always be allowed to beat the team of the “living,” Facebook “friends” of Chris and Jay may be, perhaps unconsciously, attempting to segregate the dead, and making sure they stay dead by pointing out the advantages of the afterlife. The “wall posts” invariably send comforting words to the deceased, while also reiterating the distance between the dead and the living. Jay is “up there,” which is culturally inscribed as the superior position, while the living are relatively “down here,” or lower. The posts also reassure Chris and Jay that they are not forgotten, even telling Chris an event – pancakes at Denny’s – is being held in his honor. The “friends” of the young men likely do derive pleasure from seeing the evidence of the lives of Jay or Chris, and perhaps gain some insight by searching their profiles and feeling they can communicate through “wall posts” – but each time they visit the profile pages, they are also forcefully reminded of the separation between themselves and the deceased. The psychology behind such actions, and such “wall posts,” is complex, difficult to unpack, and may be individual. But read in light of the Fox Indians’ statement that for the dead, “the living must make them understand they have lost nothing by dying…In return they are expected to compensate the living for the reality of death which they recall to them and for the sorrow their demise causes them by guaranteeing them long life, clothes and something to eat” (Levi-Strauss 31), the “wall posts” fixating on the activities available to Chris and Jay, the wish that they “rest in peace,” and the desire to have the young men “watching over” their “friends” all make sense.

The Facebook profile page in particular is in need of this distancing between the living and dead for all the reasons that make it a good place to explore and review the life of the person who has died: it is not a memorial website. The only way for others visiting Chris and Jay’s profile pages to know that they have died is for someone else – someone living – to write it down on their walls. Unlike a dead body, which is instantly recognizable (Rest xv), a Facebook page gives all the appearance of life, and this is why it must be marked when its owner has died. This is liminal space, in which the person is both alive and dead, and the obligation of survivors is to usher the deceased through to death. Thus, even (or especially) as “friends” experience the evidence of life, they must acknowledge death in some way.

Though Facebook “friends” use a language common to funerary services and traditional-looking “guest books” in wishing their deceased loved ones well, the fact that they address themselves directly to the deceased makes Facebook different. The obligation to usher the dead into the afterlife, perhaps the attempt to alleviate the uncanny nature of the dead appearing to be alive, a desire to be among the evidence of life, and a social responsibility to inform others of a death, all work together to create the “wall posts” and ad hoc community arising in the aftermath of Chris and Jay’s deaths. And this may be the final purpose and meaning of the “wall posts” that speak to the young men that “friends” remember: though they rarely comment directly to each other, “friends” commemorating Chris and Jay do communicate with each other – about their feelings, memories and what they miss most – indirectly. It is likely that this communication greatly comforts and consoles the survivors.


III. Forgetting

Remembering, and especially commemorating a dead loved one, has historically been one way to keep the world order as it should be – the dead, dead and the living, alive – and to honor the deceased. Digital memory now allows for more “remembering” than ever, with everyday details, thoughts and actions captured perfectly and available for perfect recall. But as many and varied as the advantages of perfect digital memory are, there are also hazards to not being able to forget. As Mayer-Schonberger points out throughout his book, remembering used to be “expensive” (39), requiring effort, either in rehearsing the memory or in keeping meticulous records of information’s location. Now forgetting digital information is more “expensive” than remembering, as storage is cheap and offers benefits; deleting information from the digital record is time-consuming, as the default is to remember, and in some cases – as when an individual’s information is held by a third party, such as an online shopping website, or when it is archived by Google, aggregator sites or other digital archives – impossible, and out of the individual’s control. This is problematic for traditional commemorative practices, which are based in some part on the effort of remembrance. There is no honor in “commemorating” the dead by expending no effort whatsoever.

There may also be less honor in “remembering” every single thing the deceased ever said. Over time, people would normally forget the causes of arguments, the minutiae of everyday life, and remember the significant ideas and episodic memories associated with someone who has died. In fact, the apparent purpose of much of the story-telling at wakes, funerals, and receptions, is to focus survivors’ minds on these aspects, to contextualize remaining minutiae in the larger, largely benevolent picture of the dead formed by valorization and eulogy at funerals. It is likely that this dichotomy between the individual as the digital record shows him to be, and the individual as he is supposed to be “remembered” by his loved ones, is part of the reason for Facebook’s “memorialization” policy, which essentially only forces deletion of certain parts of the profile page. But deleting some categories of information – status updates, videos – though it may eliminate some sense of the uncanny from the page, does not necessarily do the trick; the inability to forget is a larger-scale problem than it initially seems to be. As Mayer-Schonberger argues, “as long as digital memory is significantly incomplete, it is not only not better than what [people] have today – human forgetting – but likely worse, in that the filtering process of what information gets stored and what gets discarded is not based on [the] mind’s inner workings, or pure randomness, but rather biased by what…technological tools are able to remember” (166). Whatever is remembered by the digital archive will be immediate, not distancing or able to provide mourners with “perspective.” Remembering is essential in commemorating a dead loved one; but “equally important is [people’s] ability to forget, to unburden [them]selves from the shackles of [their] past, and to live in the present” (196), to separate the dead from the living and to focus on the good and admirable qualities of the deceased.

Forgetting quotidian details gives the deceased a “timeless” quality that is meant to allow for eventual acceptance of the death, and perhaps most importantly, for the “moving on” of the living. It allows for the smoothing-over not only of any unattractive qualities the deceased may have had, but also of errors such as Sarah B.’s: not only would it have been obvious if Sarah had seen Chris in real life, that he had died, but had Sarah said something in real life to a family member or friend, she would have been treated kindly (Huntington 199), and the mistake could have been forgotten. Instead, her mistake is displayed, probably permanently, on Chris’s wall. She will not be allowed to “forget” her faux pas. Similarly, and though not one of his “wall posts” mentioned it, photos of Jay C. drinking at a party the night before his death will remind viewers that he had been drinking heavily just before the car crash that killed him. Without access to Jay’s Facebook account, survivors will be permanently confronted by them.

It is likely that the increasing awareness of just how much information, and at what level of detail, is gathered by digital media, will change digital culture. In the absence of laws banning “cookies,” aggregators, archiving and other information-gathering, and in a “network culture” (Castells 238) that encourages and rewards self-communication, the responsibility for self-expression lies more or less with the individual. In order to be remembered “properly,” people may have to self-censor. As Mayer-Schonberger writes,

“if one does not know how one’s utterances will be used and by whom, one must assume the worst, namely that any criticism will end up where it will cause the most damage. In a talk with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Google CEO Eric Schmidt called this ‘living with a historical record’ and cautioned that people will have to become ‘much more careful how they talk, how they interact, what they offer of themselves’ to others.” (107)

Performing in digital culture, in other words, is like performing on a medieval deathbed – being expected to remain calm and collected in the face of one’s death, and able to dispense advice to the still-living – but for one’s entire life. People may need to steward their own legacies throughout their lives, not only in what they say and do in public, but how they interact with intimate friends or in casual settings such as Facebook, or even in email.But, looking ahead to a future inevitably filled with digital information, perhaps this offers a new possibility for commemoration: the deletion of digital information that dishonors or “brings back” the dead. The traditional process of reviewing memories of the deceased in order to come to terms with his death may take on a technological twist; perhaps memorializing Facebook pages is only the beginning of the information purge that will become the new commemoration. The living will begin to spend what energy used to be reserved for remembering the dead, to make sure they are remembered “the right way.” This would also relieve living individuals of responsibility for policing their own lives, self-censoring in order to create the lasting impression they would like to leave behind, as they would know that those who loved them would care for their digital “selves” as family members had once cared for the body of the deceased. The new necessary funerary “technology,” the new embalming, may be digital: it is possible that in the future, loved ones will honor the deceased by “forgetting” them.

PSA: Why Cultural Production is an awesome program:

Footnote from friend and colleague Nicole's paper on "Twihards and Fangbangers":

"Cooties are non-medical, mythical germs believed to be spread by touch originating from a member of the opposite sex. Usually only contagious amongst pre-pubescent school kids."

Local Trivia: Holiday Schedule

Well, allz, here's what P.C. and I are going to be doing during these holidays:

12.18: Both work

12.19: P.C. works day, I watch Gossip Girl then work overnight (6 p.m. - 4 p.m.)

12.20: P.C. works day, I work overnight until 4 p.m.
We go to my grandparents' after respective works for "extended family" party
We go to the airport to pick up Spencer

12.21: P.C. works day, I watch Gossip Girl and hang out with fam

12.22: P.C. works day, I watch Alias and hang out with fam

12.23: Free day; anything could happen

12.24: P.C. works day, goes to family church service, stays at family's; I work overnight (10 p.m. - 9 a.m.)

12.25: I leave work and hang out with fam; I leave fam and go to P.C.'s "extended family" party in p.m.

12.26: I watch Alias, hang out with fam, then work overnight (6 p.m. - 10 a.m.), P.C. leaves work and goes to hang out with family friend

12.27: I work overnight until 10 a.m., P.C. works; J's arrive at 6:30 p.m.

12.28: P.C. works, I watch Alias and return Spencer to airport

12.29: P.C. and I take the train to Manhatten and stay with friend Carl

12.30: P.C. and (Carl and) I do various NYC things, and then we return to CT

12.31: P.C. works, and I watch Alias

1.1.10: Nooooobody knoooooows.

PSA: Secret Gardens

This op-ed in the NYTimes refers, toward the end, to "pop-up pocket parks" in NYC -- as in, there should be more parks in NYC that take advantage of the housing bubble-burst and take over abandoned lobbies, possibly with Zen gardens, as public space.

I love it. If this were really happening, and pay attention here because you know how I feel about NYC, I might reconsider my opinion of the Big Apple.

Heck, if this were happening here, I might reconsider my opinion of PLAINVILLE.

Go, secret gardens, go!

PSA: TV (mostly) on DVD watched by P.C. and me (2009)

30 Rock, seasons 1-2

Big Bang Theory, seasons 1-2

BSG, seasons 3-4

Chuck, season 1

Dexter, seasons 1-3

Extras, series 1-2

Firefly, series

Flight of the Conchords, season 1/disc 1

Heroes, seasons 1-2

Scrubs, seasons 1-6

SYD, seasons 5-6

The Office, seasons 1-6.0

Local Trivia: CT Teen Driver Awareness (but not of proper punctuation usage) Week, pt. 3

"Teens; Don't Drive and Text!!!"

(Why do adults think three exclamation points is "youthful"? Another lamentable semicolon error to top off a message that, ironically [or is it??? (See what I did there?)], draws attention from the road in order to be read in full, as the message actually flashes between this and "CT Teen Driver Safety Week" -- meaning you have to look at it for about ten seconds to read the whole thing. On the highway. Texting might be safer. It certainly couldn't do any MORE damage to punctuation use.)

Local Trivia: CT Teen Driver Awareness (but not of proper punctuation usage) Week, pt. 2

"Teens; don't text

A life!!"

(This is the exact spacing on the three-line sign. We should probably assume it's missing a line, but what could it be? Prize for the best guess. I also hate an improper use of my favorite punctuation: the semicolon. [See what I did there? I know how to use a colon correctly, too.])

Local Trivia: CT Teen Driver Awareness (but not of proper punctuation usage) Week, pt. 1

"Teens Hang Up and Drive!!!"

(Not sure why this sign exists. Extolling the virtues of teen driving -- since as we can see here, they all hang up and drive -- doesn't seem like the main goal of teen driver safety week.)

PSA: DONE.

My last final paper is now in for grading. It wasn't that great -- but my "death online" paper was pretty good, I think. At least P.C. liked it.

And now, as I promised myself, I'm going to watch as much TV as I want.

Local Trivia: Connecticut six states happier than New Jersey

According to Livescience.com, Connecticut is the 19th happiest state, while NJ ranks 25.

Of course, Massachusetts is 8...possibly because they're not so concerned about beating New Jersey at everything.

PSA: We're angry as hell, and we're probably going to take it some more!

According to an article by Livescience.com, certain people are likelier to be angry than others, including those with kids at home, the uneducated, and adults under 30:

"For one, people under 30 experienced anger of all forms or intensities more frequently than did older adults. "

The study does not say whether the anger we twentysomethings experience is related to the grunge music movement in the early and mid 90s, or to the fact that so many of our lead singers died early and never got past the initial "here we are now, entertain us" phase into the "thank you India/with arms wide open" phase of the later 90s.

PSA: Why Adam Baldwin is the best Baldwin, despite non-related Baldwin Alec being awesome on 30 Rock, but proving that he also may be cursed:

Chuck

Daybreak

Firefly

PSA: Nothing in the Verse could stop them.

Now, around Thanksgiving, I find myself thinking of television shows, and the good ones that left us all too early. I'm not going to recreate the "Family Guy" bit and name all the good shows Fox has cancelled, but here are my votes for those pesky holiday presents for people you like but don't know that well -- but don't give them to people you'd rather not know, because either they'll hate the shows and give them bad word of mouth, or they'll like the shows and you'll be forced to talk to them for at least as long as it takes a normal person to watch a whole season of TV: I'd estimate 3-4 weeks. (I've simply converted my usual rate from "days" to "weeks" here.)

Perhaps we can all take a lesson from "Firefly," which, while it didn't trump the new world order of Murdoch Co., at least got a movie thanks to fan agitation.

So here they are (the detective-y ones), in alphabetical order:

"Chuck": It's coming back in January instead of March (which was a stupid plan to begin with), and the long-awaited second season will finally be out on DVD on Jan. 5. In the meantime, the first season can be found often on sale at Target, or used online. (New online as well, but more expensive.)

"Daybreak": I bought it on spec for $5 at Target. The entire series is only 13 episodes -- it never got an "in" with the notoriously picky, "it's not LOST!" Lostheads, and only 6 episodes showed -- but the "Groundhog Day" meets "The Fugitive" premise is fun and ultimately compelling despite the compression of plot in the last two or three episodes of the series. As a bonus, there are 15 commentaries on those 13 episodes; the first 2 have 2 commentaries each.

"Veronica Mars": You don't need me to tell you to watch this show, mainly because I've already told you repeatedly to watch it. Now it's so cheap you can't even begin to argue. Seasons 1-2 are indispensable; Season 3 is optional, but you'll want to watch it anyway.

Local Trivia: Black Friday, aka AMERICA Day

At 7:30 a.m., when we'd gathered up our wits and whatnot about us and come together for the celebration of the true American holiday -- Black Friday -- I said to P.C., "we're basically heroes -- going out shopping on Black Friday. It should be called 'America Day.'"

He laughed, but it was him who yelled out "America!" as we walked toward the Target, and did a fist pump into the air. No one turned around to see what he was yelling about, supporting my point that it's self-evident.

The cashier, who had to be at work at 4:45 a.m. for the early opening, did not agree that we were heroes. But we know better.

Anyone who spent money on Friday was a patriot.

PSA: Happy Thanksgiving!

I know, it's late.

But shouldn't we always be thankful, etc. etc.?

Hope it was good.

Local Trivia: Elaine's story

Just recently, Earl Norem's grandson Mike found my blog post on Elaine, the painting I got from an estate sale in Cheshire, CT last year. Below is his comment and my reply:

mike: hi, I'm Earls Grandson..i saw this picture and then i saw your comment, so i just got home from school, and i showed him, this is his painting. He said he did this painting for an art director, it's of the art directors daughter.

My grand father brought it to him, and the man didnt like it, so my grandfather said he never got paid for it, but the man kept it.....my grandfather is curious did you pay for the picture? if so, how much?


Alicia: Mike -- I hope you subscribed to these comments, because I can't find you by clicking on your name (to see your "blogger profile").

Anyway, how cool that you found this and are commenting! I've been meaning to contact your grandfather for awhile now, and I'm excited to hear some of the back story for the painting. Unlike the art director (who I think might have been cheating your grandfather -- I'm not sure how someone could argue with this portrait), I really like it, and as I wrote, it's been hanging in my living room for about a year now.

I got the picture from an estate sale that was happening in Cheshire, CT. I assume the art director (or his daughter, maybe) had either died or was selling his house and belongings. It was early, and there wasn't anyone around, so I didn't speak with anyone at the house. But the estate sale had just started (9 a.m.), and three other people were milling around in the garage, so I stepped in for a minute -- but then was creeped out by the idea of wandering around someone's home potentially without their knowledge, so I left.

As I went back to my car, I found a small pile of stuff marked "free." That's where the painting was. I figured it was free because there's a small hole in the upper right corner of the canvas -- probably an inch or inch and a half or so. (I can't remember if you can see this in the picture.)

Anyway, I liked it, and I liked the idea that it had a history I didn't know about, so I picked it up.

I'm shocked to hear that your grandfather was never paid for it, especially since it was kept for thirty years -- if the people whose house I got it from were the same art director or his family -- and I'm interested to hear anything else you or your grandfather care to tell me about the painting, art, (not) getting paid for art, or anything, really.

I'll also post your comment and mine as a regular post on my blog in case you aren't subscribed to these comments and happen to come back and check CU. If you're willing to chat about it, leave your email address, or IM chat name, or facebook info or whatever you feel comfortable with, and I'll get in touch. Then I'll erase your info from my comments so they're not available to the whole world.

Nice to hear from you, Mike! I hope to hear from you again.

New word: Spamographics

n. the information indicated to be true about an individual by the spam mail found in their email box; may or may not be related at all to "demographics," official (i.e., census) or unofficial (i.e., Facebook profile)

PSA: 50,000 miles -- 100 times the number of miles The Proclaimers would have traveled to get to me

Today, Betty hits our 50K-iversary, at 123,842 miles. After less than three years together, we've traveled all over together -- and despite her recent transmission flush, air filter change and drive axle replacement, she's still my favorite car.

Good going, Betty. I hope we get 50,000 more.

Leaves us alone.

[My girl and I, raking the leaves at Pizza Hut as the wind blew them into the next yard over.]

My girl: [frustrated] Ooh! Gah! The wind!

Me: Well, there they go! Off to become someone else's problem!

My girl: [laughs] Alicia. You're bad.

Me: No, that's how leaves work! Once they're over there, they are those people's problem.

[Later]

Me: Oh, there they go! Somebody else's problem now!

In unison: Bye! Bye!

Manager, pulling up in his car: If you're not making much progress in here, you can go inside and make boxes.

My girl: Yeah! Okay!

Me: [Laughing] Okay.

Confessions XLII

Last night, taking off my shirt before getting in the shower, I broke my glasses in thirds -- lens-and-arm, lens-and-arm, and nosepiece-and-two-little-pieces-of-glass.

I collapsed into a heap on my kitchen floor and cried for a minute about it, even though I have two other pairs of glasses.

When I was in fifth grade, I was so mad I pounded my bed with my fists, and hit my glasses, which I'd set down in front of me, snapping their plastic frame in half; I cried harder then because I felt so intensely guilty. Now, that incident seems to prove what accidents always seem to prove to me, which is that we have befuddlingly, alarmingly little control over our lives -- even our own actions. This scares me, but is also comforting at times, because it means everything isn't always my fault.

PSA: Marsha's haunted website

Not sure if you've heard of this (or seen it) before, but check out "The Fall of the Site of Marsha" in its three incarnations -- at first, as Marsha, mid-90's homepage keeper, invites "Throne Angels" to come communicate with the rest of us through her homepage...and then later, as they arrive and wreak havoc on her homepage and eventually her life.

Go into some of the linked pages, particularly the Throne Angel Bulletin Board and the Private Door, and you'll see some of the behind-the-scenes circumstances under which this apparent haunting took place.

Of course, it's satire, like all reality TV -- but it's also very funny, like all satire.

PSA: Spambots read my other blog

I got a comment today that said, simply and self-evidently, "miley cyrus nude miley cyrus nude miley cyrus nude."

Perhaps when the spambots band together to form the first true AI, they'll recommision me as a writer.

I might have to learn html in that case...or whatever the Cylons speak.

Local Trivia: Oh, the irony! Or, no, the opposite of that.

Observed in Oakville, CT:

A secondhand store called "Everything Goes" -- with a giant "closed" sign in the window.

Local Trivia, Waltham: Unsanitary napkin (horror)

Well, the maxipad that had been just down the block on Charles St. for the last two months, being slowly (very slowly...creepily slowly) degraded by natural elements (people would avoid stepping on it, of course, and so rain and dirt would accumulate and dissipate), down to the least natural portions (a piece of plastic), is finally gone.

After awhile, it lost the sense of bioterror that it had held originally, but as it just refused to disappear, and no one cleaned it up, it gained a new kind of horror -- like a zombie that won't be killed, it had lost any sense of humanness and gained a pseudo-life of its own.

Nobody misses it, of course, but I think most of us still step around the area where it used to be.

Local Trivia: But "j" is just as rare as "z"...

Observed on a sign made with one of those spell-by-letter kits, outside a pizza place:

"Pops pijja now open."

PSA: That's how I was raised...

I get to work with this guy in an independent study next term.

Awesome.

PSA: Guide to Guys

What I think is most interesting about this article is not so much that the website was quoted in the NYTimes, and not so much the advice in it, but the fact that there is no corresponding "Guide to Gals" for men to read.

It's almost as if the authors are subtly hinting that one of the gender differences they're proposing is that women will want to read an article about what men are thinking, but that men wouldn't care to read its equivalent. And perhaps it's the most valid one. (That might sound sarcastic, but it's not.)

Guys? Any thoughts? (Don't get too "emotionally overloaded" attempting to answer, please.)

PSA: Bigot defends marriage

From the AP: Keith Barwell, justice of the peace, refuses to perform the marriage ceremony of an interracial couple. Here are the excuses he gives:

"Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

'I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way,' Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. 'I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.'

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said."

He says he's concerned for the children that might come from an interracial marriage, and that they won't be accepted by either black or white communities.

Here are some better possible excuses for this guy, just off the top of my head:

Maybe Bardwell has never followed up on any of the same-race marriages he's performed, and so doesn't know that about half of ALL marriages end in divorce.

Maybe he doesn't know that people are still physically able to have children even when they're not married.

Maybe he's never, ever thought that it might be attitudes like his that cause children born of interracial couples to have more trouble than other kids.

Maybe it's never occurred to him that his attitudes are exactly the sort that might unduly strain the relationship of an interracial couple, possibly causing eventual break-up.

As far as how he comports himself and speaks in public, maybe he's never been told that using the term "piles and piles" for his black friends implies that he's somehow put them all in a giant heap in his backyard, and that this is bad.

Maybe he doesn't know that not believing "in mixing races that way" is almost the textbook definition of "racist."

Maybe he should check up on how many of those couples he lets use his bathroom after they let him marry them are actually puking their guts out in there.

I'm betting it's not a question of whether he'd ever marry a (same-race) same-sex couple -- though one would almost expect this guy to decide to only marry homosexuals, citing the fact that he doesn't believe "in mixing sexes that way."

That might actually make some sense.

Local Trivia: Quarter life crisis

Well, I'm out of quarters. Betty's ashtray stood me in good stead for awhile, but thanks to multiple toll charges (the Hamilton Fish's $1.00 and $1.75 to get P.C. through the Mass Pike), her supply has run out.

Still, I've been getting awesome things from the Pizza Hut quarter machine lately. Since the re-up that brought us "monkey standing on its head" and "monkey sitting" as well as more of the classic "lounging monkey," I haven't gotten up to the monkey strata of quarter machine treasures -- but I have found some other gems.

For example:

Smiley-face head guy holding basketball at hip

Alien doing karate: high side kick

Alien doing karate: holding bo

Game with two tiny rings and two tiny nubs on which to catch them

Tiny manga-inspired blue penguin


I hope your quarter machine luck has been just as good.

PSA: Some cow band names

Cream

Cud Copy

Def Heiffer'd

Greenhay

Miami Moosic Machine

Moodonna

Mootallica

New Udder

PSA: RR09

Roomie Reunion 2009 is this weekend -- so sorry, fan, but I'll be AWOL.

Unless you give me leave, in which case I'll just be A.

PSA: Obama Peace Prize

Well, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize...mainly because he saved America from the violence of the rest of the world's so-far-mainly-theoretical hatred of us.

That's what he should say to Americans who ask what he's actually accomplished in office so far.

PSA: Inappropriate Glee

The name of the glee club in the new TV show Glee is "New Directions."

Say it to yourself out loud a few times. (But not in public.)

I'm just sayin'.

Local Trivia: Found in the Pizza Hut parking lot, Friday 10/2, and consumed by one man

2 40's of malt liquor (1 half full)
1 bottle of brandy (empty)
1 green beer bottle (shattered)
1 brown beer bottle (empty)

PSA: Great moments of fatherly acceptance in the scripted media

Ordinary People, whole movie

Billy Elliot, when his father realizes dance is Billy's future

Glee, "Preggers" (Season 1 Episode 4), when his father cheers for him after making the game-winning field goal, and then later when he comes out to said father, who says "I've know since you were three...I love you just the same" with the conviction of a man who watches Deadliest Catch.

PSA: Pests and the City

Looking at the singularly universal "sign of mice" left on the corner of my couch yesterday, I couldn't help but wonder: Were mice made for the sole purpose of turning food into poop?

I mean, it seems like every single place a mouse goes, it leaves poop -- like the instant they stop moving, they're bound to leave something behind. Why is this? Why don't mice have times in between bowel movements? Do they not have bowels? Maybe it's just a straight chute in there.

Maybe poop is the equivalent of mouse graffiti, like an "I was here" statement. But it doesn't seem to be marking territory, unless mice have a need to claim every territory they've ever set foot on.

Thoughts are welcome, but I understand if it's too gross to contemplate long.

PSA: "Slap Bet"

Yes. A.

I'd post the paper here, but I'm worried about plagiarism.

But I'd be happy to entertain any thoughts on how to thwart it (plagiarism) if you're interested in reading it (the paper).

PSQ: "Slap Bet"

I'm writing a paper on the "Slap Bet" episode of How I Met Your Mother and am trying to form (and prove) a thesis that refers to all kinds of power as fundamentally the same -- social capital, economic capital, phallic power -- in order to show why Barney ends up on the losing end of the slap bet contest (for the next several seasons), and why we think that's funny.

Any theorists anyone knows about who have used Marxist, feminist and psychoanalytic critiques all at the same time?

Or should I just stick to one type of "power"?

I feel a bit like Mr. Casaubon writing his Key to All Mythologies, but with an 8-page limit.

Dreams (and teeth)

I dreamed last night that several pieces of my teeth had fallen out again, including a whole molar. I can never prevent it in my dream, and it's always the result of clenching my jaw too hard.

The funny thing is, I was psyching myself up before I went to bed last night, telling myself I could never lose my teeth in real life because I'd never let my jaw stay clenched that long. I'd pry it open with my hands, or get to an ER where they could inject me with muscle relaxer or something.

Now I wonder if the truth is that I actually clench my jaw when I'm sleeping, and if I am, whether I'm doing it hard enough to actually crack my teeth.

I was probably thinking about this because a coworker went to the ER yesterday with an infection in her jaw and had to have four teeth pulled.

I really need to get to the dentist.

Accusations XIII

The Ugly Truth

Post Grad

All About Steve

9/19/09 (in numbers)

Number of pages of Adorno and Horkheimer's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" read today, so far: 14

Households immediately adjacent to apartment holding tag sales today: 3

Number of hours spent reading pages of "Dialectic of Enlightenment": 2

Number of episodes of Big Bang Theory watched this weekend: 12

Number of pages of "Dialectic of Enlightenment" assigned for homework: 47

Approximate number of adults yelling back and forth throughout day between tag sale locations: 8

Minimum number of entire books assigned to be read for next week: 3

Minimum number of additional books needed for research paper due Sept. 30: 5

Number of episodes of Mad Men watched this weekend: 3

Number of papers due this week: 1

Number of pages for that paper: 5

Number of emails sent to professors inquiring about paper requirements: 2

Number of emails replied to by professors: 1

Number of those email replies relevant to paper due this week: 0

Number of fishsticks eaten for lunch: 5

Books completed for sake of research paper due Sept. 30: 1

Loads of laundry done and dried on clothesline: 2

Number of papers due next week: 2

Number of emails written tonight: 9

Age of youngest brother: 19

Calls made by me to say "happy birthday" to youngest brother: 1

Approximate ounces of coconut cake eaten by me: 5

Hours before driving back to Waltham: 20.5

Average number of hours it takes to drive between Connecticut and Waltham: 1.75

Approximate number of minutes of seeing P.C. today: 25

Estimated number of minutes of seeing P.C. tomorrow: 120

Minutes until bed-time: 28

Percent confidence in getting through even one more page of "Dialectic of Enlightenment" before bed-time: 12

PSA: Memorializing Sept. 11

[As promised, here's something I wrote for class:]

I guess I feel the main problem with memorializing Sept. 11 is a narrative one: We're still in the middle of the story, for one thing. And it's shaping up to be the type of story that doesn't lend itself to grand narrative, for another.

If we (and I think we tend to) think of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as isolated, non-contextualized events, it should be easy to create a memorial. We could valorize the firefighters and other rescue workers who helped dig through the rubble of the towers, "remember" the individuals (Americans) who died in the towers and in the planes, and mythologize the individuals (enemies) who attacked "our way of life," "freedom," "democracy," or our most deeply held ideals (also mythologized).

It's interesting to me and instructive, I think, that we refer to the attacks as "September 11th." To me, this habit points to an (almost imperialist, or at least narcissistic) American co-opting of an entire calendar day, which appears every year, as a personal/national traumatic anniversary -- which makes it too wide a name, really, for the discrete occasion of the attacks in 2001 -- and at the same time, a flagrant decontextualizing of the attacks, without reference to any of the events that came before (or after), as though it was a one-day event without antecedent or precedent -- making "September 11th" a too-narrow term for what happened then.

So if we want to memorialize "September 11th," we may be able to do it. We may be able to create a physical space that does what calling it "September 11th" does, which is to cut us off from doubts about the purpose or history of the attacks (and possible critiques of, for instance, our foreign policy), and to formalize our personal/national grief so that we'll "never forget." (September 11 rolls around every year, after all -- it's hard to forget that.)

But I think even a memorial that manages to sing the praises of our heroes and vaguely condemn our vile enemies would call up too much doubt and too many questions in our current national environment. Anyone with any secret questions about what the terrorists were trying to accomplish, anyone with doubts about the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq (which were connected rhetorically to Sept. 11th as though the attacks were a talisman that could justify any subsequent action), even anyone whose loved one died in the attacks, who has an alternate memory that contradicts the official "history" of 9/11, would find themselves dealing with those questions in contrast to the memorial in front of them.

Cutting out the context wouldn't necessarily help, yet, in other words, because we're living in the middle of the context.

But it's not possible to memorialize something we're living through, in part because of its complexity, and in part because it's still happening and can't yet be remembered.

I hope that ultimately, the Vietnam Memorial will be instructive for 9/11 memorial builders -- something mysterious, to which viewers bring their own meaning, and which allows for multiple interpretations and a complexity of thought (in viewers) made possible by the simplicity of form (in memorial content). I think this is why the personal grief shown in the countless items left at the wall by family members of the deceased is able to exist in the memorial space; I've never seen a bunch of flowers left at other war memorials (and I lived in DC for two years).

I hope that family members will be able to share similar moments in front of parapets surrounding 1-acre man-made waterfall basins (over the roar of the water).

Unfortunately, I suspect that the 9/11 memorial will read more like the WWII memorial put in between the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument: ostentatious, easy to decipher, and out of place.

Accusation XII

To the woman driving the black Avalon with MA plates, who drove up behind me in the left-hand lane so fast I didn't even see her coming in the rear-view mirror -- and I check it obsessively -- then flashed her brights at me when I didn't move over (into the car I was passing at 70 mph), then swung into the right-most lane and pulled back in front of the car I was passing and then in front of me, so that my front bumper was three feet from her back one, then slowed down to 65:

1. If you're able to slow down to 65 once you're in front of me, just to "teach a lesson," you didn't need to be going 80 to begin with.

2. You might feel entitled to drive like a jerk, but that doesn't make you the highway equivalent of a kindergarten teacher. It's not your job to "teach [me] a lesson."

3. Your lesson failed because it was stupid. I didn't learn how annoying it is to have someone driving "slowly" right in front of me because a) I didn't choose to drive up on your bumper; you chose to drive on (both of) mine and b) I was going 70, not the exaggeratedly "slow" 65 you decided to go when you "punished" me by driving dangerously.

Eventually, that kind of self-righteous, stupid punishment is going to get you in a car accident.

So here's the one possible silver lining to your "teaching" method: If when you get in that accident, you're going 55 to "teach [whoever] a lesson," instead of the 85 you wish you were going, you might actually survive.

PSA: Happiness is catching.

I'm happy, readers! It's a beautiful, sunny Sunday with just the right number and amount of cumulus clouds in the sky, I'm the new owner of a DVD collection of season 5 of The Office, I have great friends and an awesome boyfriend, it's verging on my favorite season, and I've been assigned massive amounts of reading for homework over the next few weeks. I can't wait to see what will happen in the next episode of season 2 of Dexter, or what I'll write my upcoming 2 papers on, and I've already paid my credit card bill for this month.

Now go about your days 9% happier.

Think about this: If your name is "Dick Armey," you've got two career options:

1. Gigolo and exotic dancer at a gay bar

2. Majority leader of Republican Congress

PSA: Obama health plan opponents don't even understand Batman.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for protesting. Go ahead and swarm the Capitol if you want -- we're a democracy, and the grass on the mall isn't a luxurious, healthy green anyway, so there's not much to ruin -- but if you do, just please, please, have some good arguments.

I don't even necessarily support Obama's health care plans, but at least I don't accuse them of being (Hitlerian) fascist, socialist and anarchist all at the same time.

According to the AP, "[Some] signs — reflecting the growing intensity of the health care debate — depicted President Barack Obama with the signature mustache of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Many referred to Obama as a socialist or communist, and another imposed his face on that of the villainous Joker from "Batman."

I've seen the photo of this sign with Obama's face made to look like Heath Ledger's from The Dark Knight; underneath the image appears to be written the single word "socialism."

Now that's just stupid. Everyone knows the Joker wasn't socialist. He was a malignant anarchist, intending to create and encourage chaos and entropy (of governmental order) wherever he went, which is the opposite of socialist.

This means that the creators of that sign not only don't understand socialism, or anarchism: They don't even understand BATMAN.

I'm a cultural studies student, so maybe I have an advantage over the masses, but I'd like to think it's well within range of average American human intelligence to understand the Batman movies. Then again, maybe it's not a problem with interpreting the movie; maybe the difference is that I know better than to think anything at all "bad" can be legitimately referred to as "socialism."

Or maybe it's because I'm a pinko commie that I've taken a second to think about the Joker's politics; maybe when people do things like that, the terrorists win.

Whatever the disconnect here, it's enough to make me not even want to know what these people think would be a better plan. I know better than to engage in dialogue with promiscuous Joker-image users, just like I know better than to make a sign like that when I'm headed off to protest.

Other, presumably more sedate protesters, dressed up in colonial garb to protest, but I also know better than to dress up like I'm fresh off the Mayflower and expect to be taken seriously. Here's a PSA, Sturbridge Village wannabes: The Pilgrims didn't need health care, socialized or otherwise, because they hadn't discovered germs yet.