musings of a neurotic mind

i just decided that i am not going to renew my World of Warcraft subscription by canceling my account. my human warrior hit lvl 60 more than a month ago and there is not much left to do now besides pvp’ing or raiding instances. i have been thinking about this decision for quite some time now. WoW was a good distraction, even something like a pressure valve where i could vent some steam during the preparation for the final exam and stuff. after almost 6 months in azeroth i feel it is time to move on now… there is a RL waiting out there for me after all.

i thought once the whole phd stuff is over things will calm down a bit. however, this past week turned out to be quite busy. had to run a few errands, getting things in order. hence i did not manage to take the bike out for a ride this week. the weather wasn’t that great anyway. last weekend was gorgeous with temperatures like in august, hot and dry.

speaking of hot weather… the summers are getting increasingly hotter here in austria. i have been thinking of getting a mobile aircondition unit for quite some time now. although i have no problems with temperatures above 30 degrees C (86 degrees F) on the cycling path, i have a hard time falling asleep when the room temperature is above 26 degrees C (78 degrees F). so that’s why i purchased an aircondition. it still needs to be installed which is due sometime next week…

well, surely i can’t be like lance but now i do ride the same bike he rode at last year’s Tour de France. it is kind of a present for the graduation and today i took it out for a longer ride for the first time. and i love it! you can’t compare the feeling to a mountainbike, it’s completely different. this is surely going to be a hot and fast summer!

finally i found some time to blog. the last three weeks have been incredibly busy. the most important news first off: i passed the final exam with flying colors and so i am now entitled to call myself PhD. the graduation ceremony (called “promotion” in german) was last friday and it was really gorgeous because two of my friends from Graz managed to come and celebrate with me.
life is about to settle a bit down now. i am looking forward to a “hot” summer with lots of bike rides. speaking of bikes, i got myself a neat road bike.

tomorrow is the “big day”; the day i have been waiting for 2.5 years. the day of truth. the full dress rehearsal last week went very well and smoothly. i guess i am ready to rock tomorrow. this is going to be fun. keep your fingers crossed.

tomorrow i am going to do basically a “full dress rehearsal” of the final exam next week. that means that i will be presenting and talking about my thesis at the “privatissimum”, a class especially for graduate students to discuss their ongoing (or finished) work. i guess i am ready for the final step. or as ready as i’ll ever be. this is almost over. so let’s kick ass once more! (i’m glad my “kick ass attitude” returned just in time.)

something really caught my eye lately: the music video “somebody told me” by the highly-popular (at least in the UK and in france) group called “the killers”. when i saw the video for the first time i thought, wow, now that’s a way to churn out a song and i did not really liked it. but if you watch it several times (and trust me, that is easily the case because they play it quite often) you notice that at the drummer of the band looks like he needs to pee quite urgently at the beginning of the video. apart from that i was convinced that “the killers” are a british band but apparently they hail from Las Vegas and masterly imitate a british accent.
speaking of music: have you noticed the latest commercial for the iPod Shuffle? catchy tune, isn’t it? it’s called “jerk it out” by a combo named “Caesars” or sometimes “Caesar’s Palace”… not quite sure about that.

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.

…since i blogged. and there is no excuse for that. life is quite busy right now, i got the “book list” for the final exam on april 28th and that list is quite extensive. well, i have to talk for half an hour about cultural studies and stuff. so i ordered the books i do not already own and dig into reading… yeah, is there any better way to spend spring when my allergies are in full swing and i can’t take the bike out for a ride anyway? (it is spring after all, we had like +28 degrees C this week! that’s insane!) so bear with me, the whole PhD thesis story will come to an end soon. very soon. and after that i am going to take a time out for a few months before i head into the job hunt…

mylene farmer is finally back and the first single of the new album is called “fuck them all”. i was sceptical at first because the title of the song does not sound like mylene. maybe she has changed her style but my fears were unjustified: mylene is still mylene and the musicvideo is downright awesome. actually, it blew my mental socks off! they play it all the time on MCM and it contains so many elements of her unique universe. the symbols and metaphers are overwhelming and you have to watch it again and again to get “it”. it’s to “early” for a complete analysis so i decided to put up some screenshots…