musings of a neurotic mind

these days i am busy riding my road bike and thus i am only online in the evenings. it wasn’t an easy decision to quit WoW since the virtual world the game presents is quite seducing. whereas we are experiencing a loss of faith in the social order in RL the game confronts the players with a strong yet easily understandable social order and creates a whole new culture envolving around it. part of that culture is the development of a sort of unique language with new terms like “pulling”, “tanking”, “zerging”, “ganking”, “respeccing”, “procs”, “…ftw (for the win)” and so on. i could possibly write a research paper about the language used in MMORPGs like WoW… playing the game was an experience which i am glad i could made. however, now it is time to move on… i found a great community there but at the end of the day i am still all alone here. this leaves me with an empty feeling because all that i accomplished in the game does not matter in RL. yet, if i feel some kind of anger because the game crashed when my raid group slayed the final boss in Upper Blackrock Spire… that means it still affects RL, although we claim it does not because it is “just a game”. i drew the same conclusion in my PhD thesis when discussing another MMORPG (Neocron).
so i feel way better at the end of the day when i made an hourlong bike ride. i achieved something, i conquered that climb, i rode faster than the last time. somehow the physical pain of riding adds to the pleasure you feel afterwards. you can’t have those experiences when slacking in front of your computer.

for those of you wondering why i am rarely on IM networks these days here’s the explanation: i spend my days now mostly reading the books and articles that are on the reading list for the final oral exam at the end of april. most of the stuff is actually well known and also quite entertaining, but some articles are real suckers. even though they are written in german i have a hard time understanding what the author actually wants to say… thanks to a very confusing or call it “elitist” style, refering to loads of other authors and theories and stuff… so, here’s my current reading list:

Fiske, John (1999): Elvis: Body of Knowledge. Offizielle und populäre Formen des Wissens um Elvis Presley. In: Hoerning, Karl H./Rainer Winter (Hrsg.): Widerspenstige Kulturen. Cultural Studies als Herausforderung. Frankfurt a. M.: Surkamp.

Fiske, John (2001): Für eine kulturelle Interpretation. Eine Untersuchung zur Kultur der Obdachlosigkeit. In: Winter, Rainer/Lothar Mikos (Hrsg.): Die Fabrikation des Populären. Der John Fiske Reader. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Gillespie, Marie (1999): Fernsehen im multiethnischen Kontext. In: Hoerning, Karl H./Rainer Winter (Hrsg.): Widerspenstige Kulturen. Cultural Studies als Herausforderung. Frankfurt a. M.: Surkamp.

Giroux, Henry A. (2002): Brutalized Bodies and Emasculated Politics: Fight Club, Consumerism and Masculine Violence. In: Giroux, Henry A.: Breaking in to the Movies. Oxford: Blackwell.

Grossberg, Lawrence (1999): Was sind Cultural Studies? In: Hoerning, Karl H./Rainer Winter (Hrsg.): Widerspenstige Kulturen. Cultural Studies als Herausforderung. Frankfurt a. M.: Surkamp.

Kellner, Douglas (1995): Media Culture. London/New York: Routledge.

Kellner, Douglas (2003): Media Spectacle. London/New York: Routledge.

Virilio, Paul (1986): Aesthetik des Verschwinden. Berlin: Merve.

Winter, Rainer (1995): Der produktive Zuschauer. Medienaneignung als kultureller und ästhetischer Prozess. Köln: Herbert von Halem.

Winter, Rainer (2001): Die Kunst des Eigensinns. Cultural Studies als Kritik der Macht. Weilerswist: Velbrueck Wissenschaft.

i finally managed to get a copy of Harald Schmidt’s latest “book” called “Avenue Montaigne. Roman, très nouveau“. i have been a fan of him since the early 90s when he did “Verstehen Sie Spass?” and “Schmidteinander”, two more (the first) or less (the latter) famous shows in German television. after he started doing his daily late night show i sort of lost track of him, but never completely. i read all his books and watched his late show from time to time, where he demonstrated his unrestrained “love” for the French people. i am not kidding you, he even did an entire show in french which was simply hilarious and unprecedented in the history of German television. i greatly admire him, his sense of humour is marvelous and very sophisticated. i am glad he’s back on the screen. lieber ‘arald, kannst du mir nischt etwas von dir schicken…?

MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) have been around for some years now, so you can hardly talk about a new “phenomenon”. still, it continues to amaze me how players are fascinated by such games and virtually (pun intended) drawn into the fictional worlds. due to my case study of Neocron i arrived at a plausible, psychoanalytical explanation and i really want to share this “revelation” with you. the game is not interactive but what Zizek would call “interpassive”: you as the player have to be active (doing quests, slaying creeps and so on) so that the game can be “passive”. that means that although you think you are “enjoying” the game you are actually not enjoying it: the game does that for you. Zizek often quotes the example with the “canned laughter” in sitcoms: it’s the television set that is “laughing” for you so that you don’t have to. however, you still feel sort of “relieved” afterwards because someone else (the television set, the game) is doing something (laughing, enjoying) for you. i guess here lies the “lure” of MMORPGs: just by playing the game you don’t have to enjoy it but still feel some kind of gratification…

something really caught my attention lately. tv5 usually airs what i would call “sounds and sights” of various countries all over the world where you can watch it. it’s called “tv5 en/au/aux/à … et partout dans le monde” and it usually serves as kind of a “filler” between the commercial break and the upcoming program. recently, they included Austria in the list of the countries featured. well, here’s a short description “tv5 en Autriche”:

it starts quite innocently with some snow-covered austrian mountains and then switches to people skiing. up next are again some mountains but this time in summer and you see people hiking. in the background you hear some modernized version of a classical viennese waltz. so far nothing’s wrong with the picture. but then suddendly the music tune changes into something what i would call traditional austrian music and you see some folks in lederhosen and then some pictures of other people drinking wine at the “heurigen”. it continues in this fashion blending out the “important” aspects of our culture (like arts, classical music, architecture and so on) and focusing entirely on things like yodeling, lederhosen and heurigen.

this is exactly what bothers me: i can’t identify with this picture of austria. the aforementioned aspects are surely a part of our culture and they fall into the stereotypical image of austria. interestingly, when it comes to other western european countries they hardly play traditional music but stick to a more contemporary theme… it really scared me. for the record: austrians hardly wear lederhosen, most of them can’t yodel and it’s usually folks older than 50 years enjoy traditional music or “Volksmusik”. oh well…

considering that tomorrow is New Year’s Eve it is about time to come up with some plans and resolutions for 2005. what comes in very handy right now is (yet another) social network with a quite different and original approach: at 43 things you can make a list what you want to do next year or in your life and find people with the same goals. additionally, you can find people who have already realized their plans. it’s still sort of beta and you either need to sign up in a queue or get an invitation from somebody who has already an account. anyway, i find it quite intriguing… let’s see what items are going to make it onto my “to do” list for 2005…

the festivities are over which means back to work. the third chapter of the thesis (i.e. the one about Neocron) still needs to be revised. althought this chapter has only 58 pages i do not expect it to be a quick and easy task.

les autres faits marquants:

yet another monday and i am stuck here with Minority Report. i do not want to watch that movie ever again! speaking of movies, there’s another french-canadian film on tv5 today called “Québec-Montréal” and from la bande annonce i can tell that it is sort of a road movie. i am curious how this one is going to be, because the last french-canadian movie i saw (”La Femme Qui Boit“) was rather strange…

…with a new season of The Osbournes. i just watched an episode from season 3 (”The English Patient”) and it was simply hilarious. while Ozzy is recovering from his quad motorbike accident, Sharon is having troubles with her chat show. the funniest thing by far is that Ozzy develops a new addiction: some sort of cake or pie called “eclairs”. i was almost rolling on the floor each time he said in his unique way: “would you mind going to the cakeshop for me?”

another headline caught my attention: “New York : un hôtel propose un « Martini on the rock » un peu spécial pour la somme de 10000$”. yes, that is right, $10,000 for one cocktail. well, the catch is that this special martini comes with a diamond in it. i picture it being quite a delicious task to actually drink the aforementioned martini without swallowing the diamond. well, apparently there are people who are willing to pay such an enormous sum for a drink. as if the allergy-free cat and the JFK assassination game weren’t already enough! where the hell does tv5 get these weird headlines from?