Elizabeth Kate Switaj

Sunday Small Stone

ekswitaj — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:09:26 +0000

arc of orange glares
over arc of dark
pavement 

           rowhouses
melt into each other
's windowframes 

whiter than the lit-
bulb freckles of this night

Sunday Small Stones (radicalamazement.wordpress.com)

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Sunday Small Stone

ekswitaj — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:09:21 +0000

white paint peeling
to black

-gray wood
above green

square-cut grass
uncut red

branches without buds

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A Man with a Gun or a Girl on Facebook: Who Do You Believe?

ekswitaj — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:27:18 +0000

By now you have probably seen the video of the laptop-shooting dad and read some of the responses. You may even have left a comment on YouTube or Facebook about it. I want to respond, now, to those who support his actions.

The general assumption by those who consider his behavior acceptable or even admirable is that the girl in question was being unreasonable in complaining about her chores. But we don’t know that. Parents can demand too much, and we only have his word against hers. It says something very troubling about the relative social status of adolescent girls and adult men when we automatically believe what he has to say—and this has profound consequences in cases in which adult men victimize adolescent girls in ways much worse than destroying their property.

This is all the more true given that people still believe this man over his daughter when they have just witnessed him behaving irrationally. To reiterate: people still assume that he, and not his daughter, is telling the truth even though they have seen him use a gun in an irrational act. Destroying a piece of expensive technology is irrational: even if taking away her laptop permanently were a reasonable response to her transgression, there are better things to do with it. He could have sold it or donated it. This was just wasteful. And punishing a child for blowing off steam by permanently taking away a tool that can help her succeed academically seems more than a little unreasonable. Take it away for a week. Only let her use it in the living room where she can be supervised.

All this makes me wonder what exactly a man would have to do in public before we would believe a teenage girl over him.

Video of US dad shooting daughter’s laptop goes viral (alternet.org)
Getting Grown (psychologytoday.com)
Father puts ’45 through teen daughter’s laptop over Facebook post (zdnet.com)
Dad punishes Facebook post with 8 bullets to daughter’s laptop (digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com)
Teen’s Facebook rant causes dad to shoot laptop with a .45 (geek.com)
Video: The obligatory “dad shoots daughter’s laptop for writing disrespectful Facebook post” post (hotair.com)

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Prezi Poem 4

ekswitaj — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:13:42 +0000

Prezi Poem 4 on Prezi

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About that Half-Time Show

ekswitaj — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:25:05 +0000

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Madonna’s half-time show reflected back the nature of the event and, in a naked way, the expectations of the audience. We expected spectacle, so Madonna, her choreographers, backup singers, and all the other obscured players provided at least the form of spectacle. This is perhaps a case of circular influence, with Madonna following the lead of an Italian-American pop singer who has often been accused of merely copying her. I am, of course, talking about Lady Gaga who, as Kate Durbin and Meghan Vicks (co-editors of Gaga Stigmata) have observed

has fashioned herself as a mirror, or as a direct reflection of the person before her (e.g. Gaga styled herself as Larry King for her interview with him; she dressed up as a queen when she performed for the Queen), or even (like in the video for “Born This Way”) as an infinite reflection of herself (recall the mirror placed at her birthing vagina in that film).

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

If Madonna’s 53-year old body, made the center of this reflective spectacle by the nature of her celebrity (and, as the peripheral parts played by Nicki Minaj and M.I.A would seem to suggest, by the whiteness of her womanhood), could not keep up then that echoes the nature of one of the other parts of the night’s spectacle. How many men left the field of play injured? Their athletic bodies could not keep up with the forces applied to them, the wear-and-tear of a whole season and post-season. Neither could Madonna’s gym-and-yoga-toned body keep up with her backup dancers, who had to carry or otherwise support her.

She entered transported upon an imposing golden throne, part of an imperial procession entirely appropriate for an American spectacle in a USA that continues to send and station soldiers around the world. She danced with cheerleaders and the drumline portions of a few marching bands, bringing in elements associated with football that have nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with building it up as spectacle. (The first two Super Bowls had only marching bands at half time.)

The last song of Madonna’s performance was “Like a Prayer” performed with a choir in robes. The hints of religion in any year would have touched on the idea of sport as a secular equivalent to religion, but after a season in which Tim Tebow’s on-field prayers became infamous, they had extra resonance.

Finally, the lights went out except those spelling out the tacked-on message of “World Peace.” The words were meaningless, but of course they would have been even had been fully integrated into the show. We want our celebrities to do good works, to say important things (so long a they are not challenging), so Madonna gave us what we want and, as long as we pretend that little phrase somehow meant something in the wider context, we can leave with our warm fuzzies.

We don’t have to ask just why Roman soldiers were so appropriate at the literal center of our greatest American spectacle.

Madonna Superbowl Half Time Show (mademoisellerobot.com)
Super Bowl XLVI 2012: regal Madonna dazzles with half-time show (telegraph.co.uk)
Watch: Madonna’s Super Bowl performance! (popbytes.com)
Madonna’s Glittering Super Bowl Spectacle (rollingstone.com)

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Day of Rest

ekswitaj — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:06:00 +0000

Between being part of the committee running the Polytropic(al) Joyce Conference Thursday through Saturday and teaching my first tutorial of the term on Friday, I need today to be all about downtime. (Today will also be about watching sports until around 3:30 tomorrow morning).

I also gave a presentation on Friday, as part of the conference; you can have a look at the Prezi I used as a visual aid below, along with a picture of me in full presenting mode, taken by my colleague, Yvonne Lai.

Native Speaker & Language Learner in Ulysses on Prezi