Just what the world needs

I have joined the masses of bloggers. No rhyme or reason necessary, I suppose. Startling as it may seem, I’ve actually been updating my website. Yeah. And we all thought it was dead. I added a presentation I gave in Paris this March. My first time in France, and only my second time in Europe. Needless to say, I worried about what to wear. And needless to say, at a gathering of people interested in manga, my worries were misplaced. Geeks are geeks wherever you go. At least I was the best-dressed geek there. (“Best-dressed geek” is a compliment/boast along the lines of “smartest moron”.)

The page on my site includes not only the text of the presentation but a Quicktime™ movie that shows my Keypoint™ slideshow along with my Awkward Reading™ of the text. I would like to take this opportunity to note that I did not come up with the title, “The Multi-Faceted Universe of Shôjo Manga.” I wouldn’t name my worst enemy “The Multi-Faceted Universe of Shôjo Manga.” But, predictably, I was late giving them a title, so the tentative title they came up with ended up on the program and I was stuck with it. Besides, it was a vague title, which helped because I had no idea what the hell I was going to talk about until long after the program was made public.

I also added a Comments Script to some pages, for the simple reason that I’ve often wondered over the years what people actually think of what I’ve written. This time next year, I may wish I never knew.

So. A customized WordPress™ blog, comment scripts, multimedia content. I am so 21st Century.

I also finally uploaded the entire content of my paper on the world of dôjinshi. This was originally published in the book Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan. A year or so ago, I sent e-mail to the publisher asking if it would be all right to upload the chapter. I got no answer. I take that to mean “okey-dokey.” (Besides, the printed version has the wrong yaoi image.)

Speaking of yaoi, I have begun the thankless (and arguably stupid), but nonetheless strangely addictive practice of editing Wikipedia articles. But I’ll talk about that in another post.

Why this sudden flurry of activity? Two words: sick leave. Stress finally caught up with me (or rather trampled me like a herd of bison) and I’ve been on sick leave from Kyoto Seika University since last September. (Can you say “Meniere’s Disease“?) So I have too much time on my hands, and naturally am using it in the least productive and most frivolous way possible. E.g., creating a customized WordPress™ blog, adding unneccessary links and going to the trouble of including “™” and “©” just for the fun of it.

How often will this blog be updated? Somewhere between twice a day and twice a year, I’d guess. But I’m also guessing that the more comments I get, the more pressure motivation I’ll feel to update it regularly.