Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

• The New Yorker on Dracula and other Vampire related media.
• Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s very moving tribute to her colleague David Foster Wallace.
• Performing Subjectivities: Multi-Mimesis in These Waves of Girls
• Jeanette Winterson reviews the new edition of Cosmicomics.
• The Guardian interviews Feministing’s Jessica Valenti.

My favorite story in Brodie’s Report is The Gospel According To Mark. Originally published in The New Yorker, you can hear Paul Theroux read and discuss it on one of their recent podcasts.

• Enlightenment Rhetoric in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Ideological Implications of Worldviews in the Buffyverse
• Thomas Pynchon’s A Journey Into The Mind Of Watts

• The New Yorker endorses Barack Obama in very strong terms.
• …and on Emily Dickinson.
• The interesting looking First Wall Rebate podcast interviewed Nick Montfort recently.
• Literary Kicks on John Ruskin.
• Welcome back, Michael Berube.

• Christy Dena’s insightful response to Jane McGonigal’s essay The Puppet Master Problem: Design For Real World, Mission-Based Gaming from the Second Person anthology.

• Michael Filas review of N. Katherine Hayles’ My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects & Literary Texts.

• Daniel Green reviews the new James Wood book in the new issue of Open Letters Monthly.

Meanwhile…

• The New Yorker piece on Obama’s early years in Chicago politics is another indicator he is just as scummy and slimy as the next politician. Making the right friends, the right votes, the right influences; you might counter by saying “that’s politics” but I say that if you take part in that crap, I blame you. I’d rather have no government than one filled with slimeballs. None of the above…yet again…in 2008.

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn recently passed away. When we moved to Manahawkin, I remember the first friend I made was reading The Gulag Archipelago at the time. We started to bond while discussing that and other books.

• Io9 offers a guide for fans of the modern Doctor Who series who wish to get into the classic series.

• Scott Esposito comments on the amazing ending of The Mill On The Floss and links to a review of the novel from a 1860 issue of The Atlantic.

• PETA still sucks as much as I remember.

• Scott Esposito reviews Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention Of Morel over at Boldtype.

• The New Yorker profiled Harold Pinter last winter.

Meanwhile…

• Jacket Copy covers Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, which just had a new book come out recently. I didn’t even know this series existed until recently but a lot of people seem to think it will be the heir to the Harry Potter series. But, seriously, a seventeen year old girl moves to a new town and falls in love with a vampire? I think I have seen this before. Hmm…

• Delicious (minus the dots) 2.0 has finally launched in the past few days. Ever since Firefox added tagging to their bookmarks I haven’t had a lot of use for it anymore, but I will check it out.

• George Orwell’s diaries are going to be blogged starting this week.

• Pinter’s Nobel lecture from 2005 is pretty righteous.

• The long awaited essay on Macedonio Fernandez, Borges’ mentor, in The Quarterly Conversation does not disappoint. I am looking forward to the publication of one of his novels in English next year from Open Letter.

• Also, from The Quarterly Conversation, Grant Bailie’s new novel looks interesting, Bolano receives a lukewarm review for Nazi Literature In The Americas, and Daniel Green covers Donald Barthelme, an author I have wanted to check out for a number of years.

• The New Yorker profiled Hugo Chavez a few weeks ago. I am really not sure what to think of this guy. They also covered former Doctor Who companion Billie Piper’s new show Secret Diary Of A Call Girl.

• Reproductive Rights Blog on vasectomies.

• The New Yorker on itching and the brain.

Meanwhile…

• I am happy to report that Newspaper Blackout Poems (previously discussed) is going to have a full length book published. Very cool.

• StateControl recently devoted an entire podcast to the band Harvey Milk. I have been hearing about this band for a few years, but this was the first time I really checked them out. Pretty good stuff.

On Twitter….

• WordPress 2.6 came out this week. Everyone should upgrade their blogs as soon as possible. The best way I have found is to install this plugin, which takes care of the upgrade rather seamlessly.

• Dr. Kinsella has finished uploading his student’s readings of Paradise Lost from this past semester. I am going to give these a listen soon.

• I am really impressed with the new version of last.fm that was opened up for the public a few days ago. Add me on there. The “neighbors” stream is quite impressive; it gave me artists as varied as Devo, Eric Dolphy, Negative Approach, and The Birthday Party the other night.

• From Fibreculture, Caroline McCaw on the art of Second Life and Axel Bruns looks at used based “produsage.”

• Due to some monetary constraints I was unable to attend ELO 08, but Scott Rettberg posted his presentation over at Grand Text Auto. More on that soon.

• Barrett Hathcock’s essay on the Internet from The Quarterly Conversation.

• Catching up on fiction from The New Yorker: Bolano, Diaz, Eugenides, and a previously untranslated story by Nabokov.

• Seamus Heaney’s 1985 review of Mr. Palomar from the New York Times.

• Daniel Green’s review of the intriguing Lost Books Of The Odyssey.

• The New Yorker had a big piece last week on Keith Olbermann.

Meanwhile, on Twitter…

• The New Republic pays tribute to de Beauvoir.

• Terra Nova covers a promising MMO called Lila Dreams.

• Greg Palast on the preemptive theft of the 2008 election. Speaking of, maybe I should just sleep in anyway.

• My new desktop background (Kind of big and exciting casting spoilers for the finale of Doctor Who)

• Kristin Hersh has a new website.

And…

• Margaret Atwood won a big literary award in Spain.

• A member of the old New York hardcore band Ultra Violence gets a mention in The New Yorker too.