PSQ: Do you visit museums?

If so, why?

And more importantly, if not, why not?

Is it because they're boring? Elitist? Can't be seen on TV? You have better things to do with your time? You'd rather do something active, like laser tag or Frisbee golf? Because they have no sense of humor? Because what's the point of museums, anyway?

(These are all reasons I've come up with, myself, and I lived in D.C. for two years -- so imagine how many more I must have. The point is, no reasons are stupid. [Okay, most reasons aren't stupid. {I haven't played laser tag in years, and never played "Frolf."}])

PSA: What I wish they'd told me when I moved (on) to Boston (Legal)

There are only three good seasons.

You may sometimes ask yourself why you stay, and occasionally your only answer will be "James Spader."

People may seem to be there long-term, seem to be permanent fixtures in your life, but they disappear without warning, and sometimes without subsequent explanation, often between seasons.

There are more transvestite and transgender people out there than you thought.

Politics are fun, but they're not enough.

PSA: "Pop" goes the...wait, is it a boy or girl?

According to this very interesting article, there's a couple in Sweden who are raising their child without specific gender identification. They dress "Pop" in clothes belonging (supposedly) to both sexes, and they refer to "Pop" (not the child's real name) with Pop's name rather than gender-specific pronouns.

Perhaps more interesting than the practice, which to my mind is certainly not more disturbing than the way some ultra-conservative parents raise their children (to hate homosexual people, for one, and occasionally to hate themselves for BEING homosexual), are the comments on the article. As a recent queer theorist (at least I'm taking a "queer studies" class), I'm particularly interested in the input from "Bisonex," the male-identified intersex person who was raised "incorrectly" as a girl.

One wonders when reading queer theory how many people out there really ARE intersex -- not that the number of people affected is a valid question when you're dealing with human rights, but that it commands its own theorizing of "sex" and "gender," and a retheorizing of heteronormativity as a result of intersex people's existence and rights to remain intersex (rather than having gender assigned). So it's interesting to hear from someone who fits into that category and by doing so, destroys (or calls into question) all the rest of them.

Let me know what you think of Pop, Pop's parents' choice, and the comments that follow. I'll be interested to hear it.

New Modern Deity: Carteron

Carteron is the deity of previous era's horses and buggies, now god over shopping carts, go carts and bumper cars.

Carteron is particularly concerned with the regulation of shopping cart use. While Carteron may act as the patron deity of the homeless, allowing them to guard their valuables in shopping carts, he has no patience for those who misuse carts within their department or grocery stores. Misuse includes allowing carts to drift into the paths of others or into large displays of items, especially when distracted by chatting with others met incidentally at the market, leaving carts out in the middle of the parking lot, and shoving carts together in inappropriate ways without fixing them.

Rowdy children, who tend to fall under the jurisdiction of the deity Kindermal, may be encouraged by Carteron (thanks in part to the long-standing feud between Carteron and Kindermal) to misuse carts, including in ways associated with the legitimate use of go carts and bumper cars. Thus, children often escape punishment for misuse -- in fact, they may be used by Carteron as agents of punishment for adults who should know better.

Divine retribution for shopping cart misuse may include giving the misuser a cart with wobbly or squeaky wheels on the next shopping trip, allowing a cart to crash into either one's own vehicle on a subsequent trip, or into the vehicle of a high-priced attorney with a Lexus and a tendency to sue individuals "for the principle of the thing," or the subsequent inability to extricate two carts from each other, or from the cart corral, on the next trip.

Libations and sacrifices may be made to Carteron in the form of shopping cart wheel grease and courtesy in not blocking aisles and returning carts to proper places at the end of a shopping trip. As Carteron also functions as god of bumper cars and go carts -- and is thus something of a mischief-maker -- prayers for retribution involving getting hit by another cart are often efficacious.

PSA: My comment on SB article "How Obama is Bankrupting America"

Here's the article.

Here's my response:

A couple of points:

1. The stimulus, whether it’s working or not (and many pundits agree that it’s done good over the last year), and the need for it, is the result of deregulation that took place quietly under Pres. W. Bush’s administration.

2. Using the word “czar” to describe Pres. Obama’s advisors doesn’t make him sound more like a Russian; it makes your article sound more biased.

3. Just because Congress doesn’t want the coverage that they may or may not be voting for doesn’t mean it’s not still better than the NO health coverage that something like 20% of Americans rely on. (Incidentally, assisting with the health of anyone makes everyone healthier, as those who failed to vaccinate their children (leading to outbreaks of measles and the like) have learned the hard way. If everyone was healthy, there would be no one to catch swine flu from and all our health care costs would go down.)

4. Using phrasing like “questions have been raised” about global warming and saying that “someone hacked into the files” of a research institute makes it sound like your source is a chain-letter email. The scientific community is agreed on this, as they are on evolution – and take that as you will if you’re not a (theistic) evolutionist. But EVEN IF global warming were not linked to carbon emissions, CARBON EMISSIONS are linked to carbon emissions. In other words, Pres. Obama and environmentalists are trying to find ways to lower pollution levels around the world, which improves the planet for everyone and falls right in line with the command to steward the earth.

5. The war in Iraq is still happening, and it was never stopped when Pres. W. Bush was in office. Just because he hung a “Mission Accomplished” banner doesn’t mean that a single soldier was withdrawn from combat. At this point, though I may not agree with further prosecution of war, if we left Afghanistan and Iraq, they would be in worse international and domestic positions than they were before we declared war on them, and more global instability means more chance of trouble for everyone. We’ve made their problems our problems, and now fixing them is at least in part our responsibility. One would hope that some of the infrastructure and governmental issues in those countries would be on their way to resolution by June of next year. The billions spent on that are not more than was spent during the Pres. W. Bush administration, and they should go towards repairing our part of the mess.

6. The questions of national debt and personal debt are different. And yet, Americans DO spend more than they earn, and they ARE in a great deal of personal debt. Thanks to changed bankruptcy laws under Pres. W. Bush, most American will not be able to discharge their debt through declaring bankruptcy.

7. There’s no evidence that putting America into vast debt – a policy which began perforce thanks to policies that long predate Pres. Obama’s election and inauguration – would turn America communist. In fact, the best historical example of a people plunged into hideous debt who clamored for regime change is pre-Hitlerian Germany. In that case, you should be accusing Pres. Obama of being fascist, not socialist.

But he doesn’t sound or act like much like a fascist – and with Pres. W. Bush’s administration spying on the American people through illegal wire-tapping and checking up on what books they check out of the library, Pres. Obama doesn’t sound comparatively much like “Big Brother,” either – so maybe we should be looking out for a demagogue who promises to get us OUT of debt to “transform” our society into the nightmare you feel it’s becoming. Maybe we should be on the lookout for someone whose rhetoric sounds like Hitler’s.

8. You suggest that we “stand” together and do something, but it’s unclear what you’re recommending be done. Elect Republicans in the next election? (Even though it’s the deregulation of the “too big to fail” banks that Republicans supported that has left us in this mess? Even though in deregulating these banks, Republicans have had as much to do with the failure of small businesses as Democrats possibly could?) Or would you support a third party? Or are you simply suggesting we pray for the second coming before we have to worry about it?

I’m interested to hear how you’d solve these issues...really. I'd like to see positive suggestions for these problems wherever I see critique of them. Maybe we could all collectively come up with something creative enough to work that way.

PSA: My response to "Make a Man Out of You" editorial from Swinging Bridge

Here's the article.

Here's my response:

Zachary,

While I appreciate your willingness to take on a topic that I think needs a lot of serious looking-into -- what it means to be a "man" in today's society -- and while I'm glad you're living up to the standards you've set for yourself in your (and your brothers') relationships, I'm disappointed to see that this article revolves almost exclusively around what men should not be doing with the women they date.

In other words, you've let the issue be determined by exactly those who are pressing us to get what we can (you're referring to sex, in particular, and virtually exclusively) rather than to suggest other things that "make" a man. There aren't even any really concrete suggestions on how men are supposed to "honor" the women they're with.

What I'd like to see, beyond this, is a constructive discussion of what it means to be human, and how humans may define themselves as men (or women). So much of the rhetoric of masculinity has been used, I believe incorrectly, to justify war and national policies based on the use of force or the loss of freedoms (see the Patriot Act) that I think there's a lot of potential material out there for this kind of discussion. What does it really mean to "be a man"? Is it a set of actions? How does being a man relate to having a male body -- are they always correlated? Or are there extra requirements for "manliness"?

I'd also like to see a closer look into how "honor" relates to women, and particularly to their status as virgins or not-virgins. How are these terms used, and how and why are they relevant today? How do they relate to past eras when women could be bought and sold, or rejected on the basis of non-virginity? How do they relate to questions (in the past) of determining paternity in a patrilineal society? In what ways do we need to redefine "honor" for women, to release the concept of "honor" from the historical trappings of property ownership, etc.?

On the other hand, I remember what it was like to be in the Messiah "bubble," where so much revolves around the opposite sex, how to interact with them and what a good result would be for those interactions (i.e. an engagement ring by spring senior year). I can understand how your article speaks more to that audience than to the world at large. I still hope you'll consider looking into the question of what "masculinity" is, and write a new article about being "a man" -- one that problematizes some of the assumptions that pervade both secular and Christian-college society.

(And on a personal note, I'm hoping you don't quote "Wild At Heart" as part of that...but that's just personal.)

I look forward to reading it.

Local Trivia, Waltham: A(wo)menities

In the women's bathroom in Brown, Brandeis University:

Two hooks inside the stall (for purse and coat)

Two sinks

Full paper towel dispenser

Full soap dispenser

Air freshener sprayer

Incense sticks and burner stand

Giant mirror that can be approached but is also full-length

Small stand for placing objects on, or changing diapers, outside the stall, with three drawers

Small stand for placing objects on, in the stall, with three drawers; in top drawer, a piece of paper that says "I wonder how many people look in here. Initial if you looked," and a pen. Nine sets of initials appear on the paper (including mine).

PSA: Movies in which the main characters really should have known better by then

Gremlins 2

Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves

Home Alone 2

PSA: My response to Gay at Messiah article comments

Here's the article site.

Ajay -- what evidence do you have that Republicans, or right-wing movements, have been protectors of "Judeo-Christian influence" in American society? Does free-market capitalism sound like the effective communism in the early church? Or does it sound more like the money-lenders and sellers in the marketplace that are condemned not only by the OT, but by Jesus himself (who never uttered a word on homosexuality)?

I think that if you check your American history, you'll find the rise of the religious right, of which I assume you're a part, is only recent, and is not without its biblical issues. Republicans are not God's chosen party. Then or now.

Dmm, in the epistles, Paul "gives in" to the idea that people might need to get married, even though he says it's better to remain unmarried -- he, not God -- because they may be weak. In those times, marriage was much more a practical matter, and much more likely to happen by the time a person was college-age; our times are much different. We probably DO have more unmarried people than they had in Paul's area in Paul's time, because we have more choice than we used to. People are basing marriages on very different factors than they used to, including romantic feelings of love. I'm not saying this necessarily changes the stance on extramarital sex, but it should be considered.

At the same time, your argument is more compelling than the arguments of people who say "you can't have sex outside of marriage! And gay people can't get married!" and then use that same argument to support their position against gay marriage. It's a silly, solipsistic way of thinking. If we'd LET gay people get married, they could have sex in the bounds of marriage as straight people are supposed to. If we're not going to let them, well, then what are they supposed to do? At least your answer -- remain permanently celibate -- makes some measure of sense. But it lacks any measure of the practicality of Paul's, and his advice on marriage was meant for a much different time in a different social situation.

I don't think the issue of the sexual slippery slope is a valid one, either. Homosexuality is not the same as pedaresty, which is not the same as bestiality, anymore than heterosexuality is either of those. That's why we have different words for those things. I understand that from a strict evangelical viewpoint, tainting yourself with any "sin" automatically leads to more and more, and more terrible, "sin," but I'd like to have more than a Wikipedia citation as proof that homosexuality and bestiality are somhow linked. (And then, that they are more linked than heterosexuality and bestiality. I doubt this is the case.)

As for Christians changing society, I'm not sure Jesus came to change society. Jesus seemed to focus on individuals, not policies, programs or Caesars. Yes, this leads to a change in society, and yes, Jesus threw over the tables of the money-lenders in the temples, but Jesus also told us to pay our taxes. And Jesus did not tell the Samaritan woman at the well "well, it's a good thing you're not gay, because then I couldn't forgive you." I'm sure he would have mentioned something if he'd meant that.

Love covers over a multitude of sins. I know I won't change minds, and I'm not trying to (Ajay), but as slave-masters used to use Scripture to justify keeping people as slaves (and believe they were right), and as I know we all agree we're imperfect people with a bit too much pride, I hope to persuade you, if you come to a crossroads decision, to err on the side of love. It's the only thing that never fails.

Accusations XIV

People who have 8 flower-girls at their weddings

People who pay the babysitter $5/hour

People who curse out your boyfriend because they wanted to play professional-style, full-rules Texas Hold 'Em and he expected just a good time hanging out with friends

PSA: Give us your sick, huddled masses -- we'll make them sick the AMERICAN way.

According to this week's NYTimes magazine article "The Americanization of Mental Illness," definitions of mental illness around the world are being -- well -- Americanized.

There's a fascinating example of how anorexia used to present in Hong Kong patients, and how that changed after Hong Kongers were exposed to American definitions and interpretations of anorexia. The problem of anorexia got worse, and new patients gave different self-reports on why they were anorexic than they had before, saying they were afraid of being fat where previous patients had cited "bloated stomachs" as the reason for not eating.

This does sound American.

In fact, diagnosing mental illnesses with the DSM at all is very American. If we can pin down the constellation of symptoms for any given "disease" (some deserve this title; I'm not impugning the word's usefulness in every case), we can medicate it, and if we can medicate it, we'll eventually be able to cure it. That's the idea, anyway. Americans diagnose, medicate and cure. (Scientifically!)

A few years ago, I went to a medical conference on the mental disorder with which my mother was long-ago diagnosed. I read books about the disorder. I felt better, because researching and learning facts makes me feel prepared for the future and better able to interpret the past -- just like a good, educated American.

But I felt better despite the fact that this conference, and these books, all agreed that there was no definitive criteria for either diagnosing or treating this disorder. In fact, there are no prescription medications that are not off-label for it. It's known as "the garbage can diagnosis," one conference speaker admitted, and not only because doctors have to throw every medication available at it, and in different combinations, to try to "treat" the patient; since part of the diagnostic criteria for the illness is that patients are uncooperative with doctors, pretty much anyone who won't cooperate with diagnosis, the hospitals, the drug regimen, or anyone associated with the medical establishment, can be diagnosed as having this illness -- even when their uncooperativeness is not pathological (just annoying), or not diagnostically relevant and hiding a different illness.

No wonder there are no on-label drugs for this disorder. People who suffer from it are in the "misc." category, rattling around with other people who likely have completely different things.

So this is where our culture's take on mental illness and its treatment both succeeds and fails: I researched this illness and felt better, because research often makes educated Americans feel better; yet, the illness itself was not affected by my research, and the fact that it remains the "garbage can" diagnosis indicates that our tendency to "diagnose" every symptom is inadequate -- in at least this case, and probably many others.

Diagnosis gives the mentally ill an identity, and a goal (improving, or being cured); but it also identifies them in perhaps inaccurate ways.

Having lived in China, albeit several years ago now, I can see how this approach to life, spread over the whole world, might be highly problematic. China, and its lack of planning, and its "meiyou banfa," and its ridiculously overloaded bicycles that defied physical law, cured me of some Western illness: I stopped planning so meticulously, stopped trying to take responsibility for everything and let some things be, stopped trying to figure the limits of what was possible. It was lovely.

If we colonize the mental illnesses of people around the world, we may eliminate our own cures. We may eliminate the perspective that has to come with labeling anyone. We're endangering the species of preventive and ameliorative medicine that can come from cross-cultural encounters. It's the same as razing the rain forest without knowing whether one of its plants contain a cure for cancer.

I'm not sure what we can do about it. But I'm beginning to think anthropologists, sociologists and cultural studies students may soon become vital, as historians of diverse cultures that we need to carry on into the future, if only synthetically.

That's good news for me, I guess.

PSA: Boston to be renamed "David E. Kelleytown" when appearing on film.

So I've been watching Boston Legal this week, which long-term readers may have expected considering my long-term celebrity crush on James Spader, and with the American release of Ally McBeal in its entirety back in October, I've been thinking about David E. Kelley's dubious relationship with both the legal system and Boston.

Of course, living near Boston now, I find the references to 617 area-coded phone numbers charming and familiar; but I also find the visual references to the larger city buildings that open most episodes and are interspersed throughout like B-roll of the copier spitting out paper on the BBC Office, strange. I don't see those buildings on most days, partly because of the river problem (Boston is across the river from everywhere I'd actually go), and partly because they're just not that tall. Those buildings aren't Boston to me.

Maybe they are Boston to some people. But I don't think so.

Boston isn't a tall city like NYC, or made up of sprawling highways that necessitate helicoptery aerial shots from above like LA. It's a strange, quirky, kind-of-short, kind-of-cramped New England city. I'm not sure how I feel about the branding of Boston that happens on Boston Legal, or (as I recall) to a lesser extent on Ally McBeal.

To be fair, the show brands everything, which may be part of its genius: shots of lawyer's hands in the court room are focused on and refocused, given close-up time as much as their faces; Candice Bergen and William Shatner came on board as already-established brand names in their own rights; Shatner's "Denny Crane" is an obsessive and shameless self-brander who repeats his name to anyone who can hear anytime he says anything remotely interesting. David E. Kelley has always had a "thing" for this kind of self-promoting satire, which is what makes David E. Kelley, himself, a brand.

So if Kelley's version of what we see when we look at or think of Boston is quirky and branded, that makes sense. I say let's give him his version of Boston, which helps him produce characters that get away with discussing current events -- or ones that were current at the time the shows aired, which is rare -- on national TV. But let's admit that this Boston is not a real place. You can't go there. When David E. Kelley has been involved in the process, it should be considered a product of his inspired hubris rather than a reflection of reality. Even those of David E. Kelley's shows not taking place in Boston are filmed in one place, and that's David E. Kelleytown.

Still, it's an interesting place to visit, even if it's not where I live.

PSQ: Modern-day gods

P.C. and I somehow ended up in a discussion the other day about modern-day Roman/Greek/Norse god equivalents, as we drove up I-84 and he mocked the potential traffic-jam that is Hartford at 5 p.m.

I superstitiously flailed about and rebuffed him for tempting the traffic gods to punish us with a serious jam on I-91, which we were switching over to just following his declaration of jam-less victory, and wondered who he would have to apologize to to get us out of this potential mess.

I decided it might be Poseiden, the god of the sea who (when ship transport was fast, efficient and common) used to preside over the main long-distance transportation routes, and named the slightly lower-level (middle-management) god of Interstates, almost certainly under Poseiden's jurisdiction, "Highwayden."

But of course, this begs the question: what other neo-Roman gods might we need these days?

Tell me what we need specific gods for, and I'll see what I can do about directing you to the modern god who "does that."

Local Trivia: Found item

After months of intermittent worry and lackadaisical searching, I finally looked in the pile of plastic bags next to the sink today and found it: my 7-up cup.

Those who know my history with the cup, which I got from a crane machine when I was in fourth grade, will rejoice with me.

I haven't yet taken a celebratory drink from the 7-up cup, but I will.

Oh, I will.

PSA: People who were in Galaxy Quest who went on to even more awesome things

Samuel Lloyd (Ted on Scrubs)

Justin Long (Mac on PC/Mac commercials; Alex in He's Just Not That Into You; also the main guy in Accepted)

Tony Shaloub (Monk)

Rainn Wilson (Dwight on The Office)

20x10: Ten New Year's resolutions

I will drink more chocolate Vitasoy this year than I did last year by remembering how awesome it is whenever I go to the Asian market.

I will take at least three "significant" trips.

I will cultivate my prejudice against people who drive mini-vans through rehearsal and witty, biting commentary.

I will watch at least one episode of American Idol, since Ellen is on it as a judge this year.

I will complete my M.A. in Cultural Production (December 2010).

I will visit at least one museum.

I will make at least one new friend.

I will invent at least two new kinds of purses.

I will work the following quotes into conversation as often as possible: "Godzilla doesn't care what humans do"; "you can't just go around..."; "I'm not a real doctor but I am a real worm."

I will save the request for P.C. to do "the dog from New Jersey voice" for real emergencies.

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.