A quick quote from Roland Barthes...

"Art seems compromised, historically, socially. Whence the effort on the part of the artist himself to destroy it." (The Pleasure of the Text, 1975, p. 54)

Barthes continues,

"Unfortunately, this destruction is always inadequate; either it occurs outside the art, but thereby becomes impertinent, or else it consents to remain within the practice of the art, but quickly exposes itself to recuperation (the avant-garde is that restive language which is going to be recuperated)." (p. 54)

Finally, he states,

"what is not directly concerned with destruction, evades the paradigm, and seeks some other term: a third term, which is not, however, a synthesizing term but an eccentric extraordinary term." (p. 55)

Perhaps (and I say this guardedly, since I might not know what I'm talking about) this "third term" in the world of Feist manifests itself in her self-proclaimed singing style "jhai" (pronounced like the letter "J"). More about this later.

Feist paper is coming together

So, in case you didn't know (and as if you cared), a paper I'm writing on Feist is on its way. It's coming together, and almost done. I'm presenting this paper in Boston, and I'm looking at Feist's voice through the lens of Barthes' notion of "recuperation" from his book The Pleasure of the Text. This is hard material, and I need to simplify things for both my own good and the good of the paper.

That's something I need to do: simplify and clarify. If I've learned anything from writing a very long paper (or a couple now, actually), it's that it is hard to do so and keep things clear and NOT complicated. I have trouble with linking paragraphs, especially with the large amount of information that I'm presenting. Also, I've been told that I sometimes present theory with a tenuous link to the object of study to which the theory is being applied.

I'll be back with some quotes from Barthes, to see if you people out there agree or disagree with some of the things he says.

I really need to post more often

I should make it a new year's resolution. Oh, is it March already?

So much for my resolutions. I always make them but I rarely keep them.

Right now I'm looking through some of my comic books that I transported from my parents' house in Ottawa to here in Montreal. I'm trying to decide if I want to keep most of these things that I spent so much money on when I was younger. And most of the books are not worth selling. I have no treasures in my comic book collection.

I remember fondly my time in a theology program in a Pentecostal college while I was reading the Grant Morrison comic "The Invisibles," when I would read the current issue and then discuss it with one of the theology profs there.

I sometimes wish that I was still there. It was hard but fun. Of course, I'm happy to be at the stage of life that I'm at right now, but it's also more difficult now than then. It was a "simpler" time then. (Cliché, I know)

I'll stop my ramblings there. And I should try to post every day.

Final revisions to Final submission (Finally)

I'm just getting around to finishing the final final final revisions to my dissertation. Everything has been accepted now (the minor revisions requested by the defense committee are done and fine) and I'm going through the whole thing checking for last minute spelling mistakes or little grammar things (I've found a few tense problems). Plus I'm checking the page numbers and exporting the whole thing to .pdf to be able to publish a book using Lulu.com. Interestingly, McGill does not give the student a bound copy of the doctoral dissertation. So I'll do it myself.

It's really cold today.

Orange shuffle

I bought myself an orange iPod shuffle yesterday. Despite a few quirks with iTunes, I love it. It's small and beautiful.

BNL last night

The Barenaked Ladies show was nice last night. We were sitting pretty high up, but when we arrived, we couldn't even get into the 300s. We asked the usher and he said that the higher levels were closed and he gave us tickets for the last rows of the reds. So I suppose they didn't get enough sales in the nosebleed sections to warrant them opening it. And I guess they had extra tickets where they put us. The seats were fine.

And the band was great. The sound in the Bell Centre wasn't so great, but it also wasn't too loud (unlike the Morrissey concert we saw in Toronto back in 2004 - I think my ears are still ringing). And an original band member, Andy Creegan, made an appearance, as did Kevin Hearn's dad. They do put on a great show.

As for Morrissey, he's announced a 40 date North American tour. Does this mean he'll visit us seal-clubbing Canadians? I hope so. There are no seals here. And I don't club.

Boy, am I sickly!

I'm sick again. A bad cold. I had one before the defense. Thankfully, the week of the defense, I was sick-free. But after defense, I was hit hard with a cold AGAIN. I mean, really!!

I'm getting a paper ready on our favourite friend Feist for the Boston IASPM conference at the end of April. I have most of that paper written already, although I haven't looked at it in a little while. I'm working on final final (really final) revisions now to my dissertation, which I should really just try to push through and finish up. But with this sickness and all (and Firefly episodes on DVD), I've been putting off.

In other news, I've been in contact with a school out west regarding a possible position - very preliminary. I didn't get a SSHRC grant for a postdoctoral fellowship. I'm waiting on FQRSC. My wife and I are going to see the Barenaked Ladies on Monday night (I'll post a review here), and I have yet to register myself a domain name (so that I can have a real-life website that's not hosted by Yahoo!).

That's all for now.

Done.

After a very difficult defense, it's official. Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers.

"Please join Dr. Darin Barney, Chair of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, in congratulating Dr. Nicholas Greco, and his thesis supervisor, Dr. William Straw, on the successful defense of Dr. Greco’s doctoral dissertation, entitled:


“…Only if you’re really interested”: celebrity, gender, desire and the world of Morrissey”


Well done, Nicholas!"

Just to make it official

Hot off the departmental email list:

Dear Graduate Students,

Nicholas Greco’s PhD oral defense will take place:

Date: Friday, February 2, 2007
Place: 853 Sherbrooke Street West
Arts Building , Room W220
Time: Pre-Defense: 14h00
Defense: 14h15

Title: “…Only if you’re really interested”: celebrity, gender, desire and the world of Morrissey

Your presence is welcomed.

Forgive my tardiness in posting...

I'm terribly sick - I have an aweful cold. I suppose this week is better than next (considering I have my doctoral defense next Friday). I'm working on my defense statement, a short presentation that I give at the start of the defense, and it's coming along. I'm not sure if it makes any sense, considering how cobweb-y (cobwebby?) my brain is.

So, I'm getting better, and I'm hoping to write a couple of pages today and finish up the presentation. God help me.

Dyson versus Miele

So we're thinking about getting a new vacuum, maybe not right away but sometime this year. From our research, we were all set to buy a somewhat expensive but effective Dyson DC 07 "All Floors." When we went to the local department store to check one out, the salesperson wanted to sell us an even more expensive Miele (not sure which model, but it was "mango red," a nice colour).

So which one is better? Or is there an even better alternative?

There are some interesting blogs and so forth out there that try to compare the two, but it's a bit like Microsoft versus Apple - people have views and hate the other guy.

So any comments are appreciated. And if some people click on the advertising links at the top of the page, then maybe I can make enough pennies to actually buy one of these vacuums!

Morrissey makes the front page at CNN.com

If you click on the title of this blog entry, you'll be whisked (sp?) off to cnn.com, where our beloved Moz is profiled by CNN as the one that might "cheer up Eurovision." It was nice to see the singer's face on the front page of CNN.com. It should be noted that Morrissey holds Eurovision in a special place in his heart. Early in his life, Morrissey fell in love with Italian singer Gigliola Cinquetti who, with her song Si, placed second at the 1974 Eurofestival. Morrissey seems to appreciate the somewhat kitschy and very uncool notion of the song contest. I write about Morrissey's relationship to song contests, and in particular Italian song contests from the 1970s, in the concluding remarks of my doctoral dissertation.

I did mention that my defense is on February 2nd?

Although I'm not a big fan of mobile phones, does anyone want to buy me a brand new Apple iPhone?



(photo courtesy of apple.com)

Defense date set...

For those waiting with baited breath, my doctoral defense date has been set. Mark Friday, February 2 on your calenders. I'll be defending at 2pm. So now my fate is sealed.

I've set up comment moderating on this blog, but I'm not used to it. So, if you comment but your comment doesn't show up right away, it's probably because I need to let it. So I'll try to do that (or I'll shut off message moderation altogether). EDIT: I've fixed this, so ignore this.

Does anyone out there have .mac? How is it?

Can anyone suggest a cheap domain registration company? Preferably Canadian?

Merry Christmas

Happy holidays and a blessed Christmas to all. Hopefully 2007 will be a peaceful and positive year (and I'll be a doctor by February, fingers crossed). Have a safe next couple of weeks and be back here in January for more thoughts and so forth here on my blog!

Update on the Disney DVDs

I finally got those Disney DVDs I was ranting about the other day. I actually called Amazon and requested a replacement, and the batch I got yesterday was the replacement. The first batch is being enjoyed by someone else, I guess. Thankfully, I received them finally, so I'm happy.

I must say that I really like the wildlife stories. Although I don't necessarily find animal stories fascinating, what is really great is how these things are put together. The music is absolutely fabulous, truly showing examples of "mickey mousing" (no pun intenden), a technique where the music is in sync with the action on the screen. It's great.

Today might be an application day, with the possibility of me completing 4 applications! Imagine me doing work!

Waiting on those DVDs

So Canada Post tracking suggests that the Disney DVDs I talked about last week have been delivered to my house.

The only problem is that they haven't.

Canada Post suggests that they were delivered yesterday, but I was home all day yesterday and there was no sign of them, no ring on the doorbell, no package at the door, nothing. So, where, may I ask, are my DVDs?

Sometimes there are strange little quirks with Amazon.ca and Canada Post, where the tracking will say something like, "details submitted electronically to depot," and that day the package will arrive. But never the other way, where they claim that the package has been delivered and it hasn't. So I give Canada Post another day and then I'm calling them. I'm not particularly impressed.

We've had a few problems with our regular mail as well, but nothing like this, where something is claimed to actually be "delivered" when it most certainly is not.

Ordered those Disney DVDs

Since I'm a total capitalist (it seems), I decided that I wanted to pick up the new Walt Disney Legacy Collection DVDs which feature a bunch of "True-Life Adventures," Disney nature shows. There are 4 full discs of these things, and I felt compelled to pick them up. I have enjoyed the Disney Treasures DVDs that have come out since 2001 or so, although I haven't actually watched all of them yet (there are 22 2-disc sets, as of this Christmas - that's 44 DVDs, around 88 hours probably). Point being, I ordered them. The future releases in the Legacy collection look fabulous, like a DVD of Oswald the rabbit, Mickey's predecessor, plus a Disneyland DVD, and also a DVD of the Salvador Dali-Disney collaboration, Destino. Anyway, Roy Disney, Walt's nephew, is the host on these DVDs.

Since I am a Disney shareholder, I guess I'm investing in a company that I own (1 share).

Same with Apple (2 shares).

That's all.

Two more applications out

A couple of applications sent out today, and so now four are gone with two more to go before Christmas. The excitement never ends.

One step closer to a defense date

My external examiner has passed my thesis, which is good news. Unfortunately, scheduling problems will probably make a pre-Christmas defense impossible. So I am looking forward to a defense in early January.

The job search continues...

Two more applications went out today for positions in a couple of Canadian universities. Both are for jobs in music departments, one without any research requirement (a teaching-only non-tenure track position which looks alright) and another for an enticing position as a post-1950s specialist, with an emphasis in popular music. Here's hoping something comes up. I have my sights on a few more positions that I will be applying for in the next month and a half or so.

I'm plugging away at that Feist paper I mentioned previously. It's coming together well, I think.

I've been listening recently to Mute Math, dredg and Earthsuit (many thanks to M. in Ottawa for the first couple of suggestions).

There are a lot of things going on at A.'s work, which, coupled with my insecurity and the unknown future that we face, is making things difficult. I'll leave it at that. Thankfully we have faith in Christ, which we are relying on.

Any Atheists or those of other religious persuasion who might be offended or bothered by the last comment, feel free to ignore it. I've found that it isn't really easy to believe something, "to have faith that things are going to work out." It really isn't a "crutch," as many used to tell me when I was younger. It's hard to trust in God, for instance. It's something that I struggle with constantly. But, I guess, I choose to struggle with it.

Okay, religious rant over.