Andrewdevenney.com

4th of July Photos

2009-07-06T10:39:00.001-04:00

Took some pictures of myself and the family at Island Park in Mount Pleasant, MI this past 4th of July, which I posted to my Flickr account that day. I figure some people might have missed the notice that went out to my social media horde, so here's the link again:

Devenney 4th of July Photos

Rock on, people.

The Scottish Exodus Returns!

2009-06-29T21:00:00.003-04:00

Okay sports, I have finally gotten around to putting up the material from my 2000-2001 travelogue website, The Scottish Exodus. You can find it here:

http://www.andrewdevenney.com/scotland.htm

There you will find prose pieces written by me and a few prose pieces and some poems by my wife, Andrea. I haven't had a chance to do the pictures yet, but now that I'm on summer vacation, I'll find the time. Don't worry. And after that, I'll get around to relocating the Ireland web stuff as well.

It's been a busy day raising the dead, you know.

Rocking the Ice Cream Social

2009-06-24T18:52:00.002-04:00

Too popular by far with his plastic smile.

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Photo Roundup

2009-06-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

I've dumped a lot of photos on Flickr lately, and pushed some messages out about their existence to all my linked up social networking cribs, but I figured I should occasionally post some sort of roundup here, so that family and friends who might have missed the notices in other places might see it here.

Memorial Day 2009: This is a set of photos I took while I and the family (aka Phat A and the Boy) were cruising around Island Park in Mount Pleasant, MI last Memorial Day. There's a couple of photos in here I really really like.

My Hometown: While I'm mostly keeping the photos I've been taking of my hometown, Marshall, MI, under wraps for now (all part of my photographic memoir project), I did toss a few up on Flickr. I will occasionally add more to the set as time goes on.

The Devenney Clan: Recently met up with my dad's side of the family to help clean out my grandparents' house in Marshall, and on one day, I brought my son down to see them (been a few years since they've seen him as everyone lives all over the place). The coolness factor is that these pictures show four generations of Devenneys all at the same time and in the same spot.

Kitsch from Grandparents' House: Most of the photos I took from the clean-up will not find their way to the web for a variety of reasons, but some of the more kitschy and risque finds from our clean-out were just too good to keep under wraps.

Lewd, Descriptive Metaphors and You!

2009-06-05T10:00:00.001-04:00

So, spent a day this last week down in Marshall, MI, helping sort through and clean out my grandparents house (my grandmother died several weeks back and now my grandfather isn't going to live there any more, for what I think are obvious reasons). Naturally, the place is really feeling its age, as my grandparents were increasingly over the years unable to maintain it. And in it, we found all sorts of things: heaps of clothes, empty boxes, a metric shit-ton of jewelry, and everything in between. But beyond the general detritus, we also stumbled across trinkets and tokens that revealed some about the personality and personal quirks of my grandparents over the years, little bits of ephemera that have no context but nevertheless tell us something about them.

What I'm going to share with you now is a little doggerel that I found scrawled in a monthly planner from January 1964. It is part and parcel of a larger stash of vintage pornography we stumbled across that induced peels of nervous laughter after I discovered it (after all, who wants to think about their parents or grandparents as sexual beings? Nope! Not I, said the fly! Lalalalalalala...). I may write a bit more about this some other time (or at least post some of the covers to the books somewhere on my internet empire), but I wanted to share this doggerel now because it's rather amusing.

What it seems to be doing, as far as my dad and I could figure out, is listing a series of descriptive metaphors based around continents and their characteristics to describe various age ranges for women and their sexual utility during those ages. Exactly who wrote it, we aren't sure, as no one could identify the handwriting definitively. Below is the full text as found in the discarded planner, with some slight editing for layout purposes and clarity. Enjoy:

13-18, like Africa: virgin and unexplored.
18-30, like Asia: hot and exotic.
30-40, like America: fully explored and free with her resources.
40-50, like Europe: exhausted, but still with her points of interest.
50-on, like Australia: everyone knows it's down there, but no one gives a damn.

(Update: in the shower after coming back from the gym a bit ago my inner grammar police siren started going off, wondering if I mixed up metaphors with similes in writing this post last night. In fact, I'm pretty sure I did. Oy vey! Too late to change it now. Snide comments will be filed in the appropriate receptacle.)

My New Art Project

2009-05-14T13:06:00.002-04:00

So, I've decided to do an art/history project of some sort that'll be a mixture of photography and personal memoir (hey, I'm a historian after all). The subject will be my old hometown of Marshall, Michigan, and I'll be doing the bulk of the photography over the next two months or so, at least while I'm still teaching my summer course at WMU.

As a preview, and well, just because I like the picture, I thought I would toss this up on the blog. It's the front porch area of my Grandpa's house just outside Marshall, and it evokes, I think, the style I'm going for. And boy, I have some great memories about that rock.

Watching Doctor Who

2009-05-14T13:01:00.004-04:00

This has become one of the Boy's favorite past-times, watching old Doctor Who serials I ...uh...obtained for our viewing pleasure. I think he likes the Tom Baker ones better than the more recent stuff I've shown him, but really, he'll watch them all. Apparently, Andrea took him to the park the other day and his make-believe game was to jump through various time warps. HA!

Phase One: Geekify the Boy. Check. Phase Two: Coolify the Geek. On-going.

The Boy's New Bike

2009-04-17T16:24:00.002-04:00

Evan likes his new bike, but using the pedals is still tough.

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Twitter Comics?

2009-03-19T18:49:00.009-04:00

Okay, so a friend my mine from college (author and educator Brian P. Hudson) has started up a new creative endeavor that he describes as a "Twitter Comic" called The Trials of Tara Titan (which you can go check out here). The idea seems to be that he's taking a medium of communication, in this case the micro-blogging format of Twitter, and specifically crafting fiction one can consume through it. If you're curious, Hudson lays out his early thoughts on this here:

This is, of course, not a unique idea, as other writers and creative types have been experimenting with Twitter storytelling lately (author Charlie Huston, for instance). However, Hudson's conceit is to adopt the serialized nature of monthly comic books by crafting stories in distinct "feeds" (or we could adopt TV parlance and say episodes, I suppose). But since this is a micro-blogging format, there's no art per se, just bursts of Twitter postings (I refuse to call them "tweets" unless absolutely necessary). Later, I believe it's his intent to collect the specific feeds onto a website and have some accompanying illustrations, but not in a comic book format, rather like an illustrated story. Hudson's been firing off the first feed, entitled "Violence in the Streets," for the last few days now, so I figured it might be a good time to critique just what it is he's trying to accomplish.

I am going to approach this in two ways, as both a comment on the whole concept of "Twitter Comics" and as a critique of his narrative so far.

Well, Twitter Comics. Hmm, I have to say I'm not entirely sold on the concept. I've had a little back and forth with Hudson about this already, and I generally understand and even accept the conceit he's using. Comics are short, serialized bursts of fiction that you can go pick up every Wednesday from your local geek-tastic Direct Market retailer. Most Twitter storytelling efforts are geared toward producing either novels or flash-fiction. So, I get it. Art is not really the point here; it's the way the story is crafted and delivered. My problem with how Hudson is executing this is that it doesn't feel like a comic book. Not really. I don't see anything materially different from what Charlie Huston is doing. If one drops into the middle of the feed, that's what one is left with -- a stream of fiction bursts laying out a narrative. How is it different?

To me, there a few simple ways to solve this. If you're going to call it a Twitter Comic, then you need to adopt as much of the structure, form, and content of comics as possible without the obvious trappings of words mixed with sequential art. Thus, a writer should adopt a fairly strict structure to the feeds themselves. Your typical comic is 22 pages of content with some left over for ads, letter columns, and what not. Feeds should be 22 pages of story, clearly marked out as distinct pages. The content on those pages should roughly (very roughly) approximate what one could fit on a typical comic page (this does not mean 1 tweet per panel, but it certainly does mean you can't ramble on forever). Pages should drop no more frequently than one a day, and it should take no more than a month to serialize the pages.

The benefits to this seem obvious to me. You mimic almost a web comic form, while retaining serialization (Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's FreakAngels is a good example of an excellent, serialized webcomic with art that drops little chunks every week, but then I'm perhaps a bit blinded by my fandom when it comes to Ellis). The strict structure also forces a writer to pace their narrative just like a comic. This keeps the result, I think, from becoming an unwieldy, overstuffed mess. Without this, a feed can just ramble on until it's done. With this, readers can actually see (well, read) where the story is going, and knowing that the feed ends in "3 pages" becomes part of the writer's toolbox in building suspense, mystery, or whatever. Without this, feeds would just end, and only the force and pull of the narrative itself would bring readers along, somewhat lessening the impact of what the writer is trying to do.

So, on to the content of Hudson's first feed. Having known Hudson for something like 14-15 years now, let me just say that I know a whole hell of a lot about the Labrys concept, having heard about it off and on that entire time. In that sense, it's a rather big deal that he's finally dropping the idea publicly now and in this form. I can certainly relate to the angst that must be coming from that act (ask me about the massive Shadowmancer epic that exists only in my head, if you dare). But how does it work so far as a piece of fiction and not as mad ramblings over coffee at Little Chef? I'm largely intrigued. My problems are in the presentation (as noted above), and not in the narrative itself. It's a first issue, designed to introduce a whole lot of shit, hoping the reader will be enticed enough to come back and keep reading. It's standard superhero fare, an appropriate genre to use when jumbling media like this (comics and Twitter). The 140 character limitation of Twitter forces Hudson to be judicious with his word choice, thus inhibiting the rambling quality, and that's a good thing. It certainly flows quickly because of it. Characters are largely ciphers right now, even Tara, who is the POV character, but I imagine that will abate somewhat going forward.

Ultimately, I give it a cautious Pass on the Pass/Fail grading scale, cautious in the sense that the presentation format and narrative structure needs more thought and Pass in the sense that I think this could actually amount to something. If something like this sounds like your "thang" then go subscribe to his feed and get reading.

Now off to write a scholarly book review before watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica tonight. Namaste, bitches!

Maintenance Issues

2009-03-19T13:34:00.003-04:00

So, just as an aside, the rest of Andrewdevenney.com is up... for the most part. Still haven't done the "About" page, and the "Archives" page needs more than index content, so we'll get to that when my hellish teaching schedule slows down a bit (though I have to admit I don't have it as bad as my mate, Steve). This blog section needs some love too, so we'll be getting to the sidebar as well. Don't fret...

Oh and maybe I'll even put up some content. Really. I have a few amusing Twitter postings that could be fleshed out into a whole parody line of blog posts...

Success?

2009-03-02T11:59:00.001-05:00

Um, well, I think it's all in place. You should be looking at the new Andrewdevenney.com template. I still have to add content on several pages and check for browser compatibility errors, but it should be good to go for now.

Down Time!

2009-03-01T22:51:00.004-05:00

Okay, so, if I've set everything in motion correctly, you should notice nothing for the next few days until everything about this blog and web domain changes. Even if I screw it all up, this version of the blog with this post should remain here for you to gaze at (unless I catastrophically fuck it up, in which case, I dunno, you'll see dancing hamsters or something).

I think I have covered all my bases. I guess we'll see this time.

[closes eyes and pushes the button]

See you on the other side!

Icelandic Membership in the EU...

2009-01-30T06:34:00.001-05:00

Fascinating... maybe they're worried that Russian petro-dollars were going to swoop in and "save" Iceland instead...bring on the new Cold War!

Iceland to be fast-tracked into the EU | World news | The Guardian

Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months, senior policy-makers in Brussels and Reykjavik have told the Guardian.

Pimpin' is Easy...

2009-01-19T23:35:00.004-05:00

For those interested in these sorts of things, I thought I would drop some links about my recent scholarly publications. You can't actually see the articles online or anything (at least not without some academic library access for one), but if you're intrigued, I can send along a reading copy of sorts.

First there was this article from Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung Vol. 33 no. 3 (2008), entitled "Regional Resistance to European Integration: The Case of the Scottish National Party, 1961-1972." Many thanks to Eric Johnson for helping to get this one out there.

And second, there's this one I'm particularly proud of from New Hibernia Review/Iris Éireannach Nua Vol. 12, no. 4 (Winter 2008), entitled "'A Unique and Unparalleled Surrender of Sovereignty': Early Opposition to European Integration in Ireland, 1961–72." This one is a timely piece of work, considering Ireland's recent rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

I'll post the Journal of British Studies article, which drops next, when I know exactly when it's coming out.

Sledding Fun?

2009-01-19T11:51:00.003-05:00

Too tired to keep sledding, Evan collapses on the hill.

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Construction?

2009-01-16T15:47:00.002-05:00

Okay, so after imploding this briefly and finding all sorts of roadblocks to my quick change, I clearly need to think more clearly about what I want to do, so yes, we're still under construction, but who knows how long that will take...stay tuned...

Under Construction

2009-01-09T00:52:00.003-05:00

If all sorts of shit looks wonky over the next couple of weeks, it's because I'm redesigning the site architecture, layout, style, and all that...the most obvious change to come will be a new gateway page that has a different look to the blog page, which will be a template I'll find somewhere else. The blog will have a different address (subdomain really) too. This will take me a bit, so just let any weirdness and bad code roll off your back like water off a duck.

Accident on I-94 in K-zoo

2009-01-08T08:03:00.003-05:00

Trapped over an hour now. Umm, clear a lane please.

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Gaza Protest - Times Square

2009-01-03T13:17:00.002-05:00

Death to Ruby Tuesday (probably can't see the sign in the picture).

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AHA Registration Hell

2009-01-02T14:59:00.002-05:00

About 12:30pm...what a mess.

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Travel, bitches!

2008-12-31T17:21:00.001-05:00

So, for amusement, let's do a meme I stumbled across on Matthew Yglesias's blog, which he nicked from someone else (this dude). Here's all the cities I've traveled to this year. What's the selection criteria? Well, anywhere I spent a night or more -- cities with asterisks were visited multiple times on non-consecutive dates (and driving through places or switching airports doesn't count).

Mount Pleasant, MI (home)
Washington, DC
Farmville, VA
Grand Rapids, MI
Troy, MI*
Saugatuck, MI
Kalamazoo, MI*
Battle Creek, MI*
Boston, MA

Pretty weak tea this year, but then I haven't been doing much international travel since I came back from Ireland. Dissertation didn't write itself, you know...

Reading is Fun!

2008-12-13T17:08:00.007-05:00

Cheese, baby! It's all about the Cheese when you blog...

So, what have I been reading lately? Oh I know you want me to tell you. Mostly reading for fun, which I've been able to do since I finished my Ph.D. last year. So here's the last five books I read and what I thought of them -- going from the most recently finished backwards.

1. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson: I've read nearly every book published by Gibson (sans All Tomorrow's Parties, I think), and what always brings me back is the crisp language -- overflowing with brands and style, future forward ideas, and other ephemera of modernity -- and the rapid pace of his plotting. They're just a joy to read. Pattern Recognition is no exception. Very post-9/11, spy play, and elements of Naomi Klein's No Logo all wrapped up in a neat package about the birthing of internet sub-cultures and the hunt for the maker of some clandestine movie footage. But really it's just about a girl coming to grips with the loss of her father on 9/11. Simplicity... it's in the details... that and a pair of Bruno Magli shoes...

2. & 3. Evil for Evil and The Escapement by K.J. Parker: These two books are the last two in a trilogy that I find it difficult to explain why I like. "The Engineer Trilogy" by Parker is a fantasy series set in a rough late Renaissance/early Industrial Revolution setting that follows an exiled engineer from the Perpetual Republic of Mezentia who engineers a series of events (his Grand Design) that result in war, destruction, and devastation, all in the hopes of returning home and being reunited with his family. Where Gibson's book are rapid-fire, Parker takes a much more languid approach, revelling in the motivations and mental world view of the perspective characters, and taking the time to flesh out the people and cultures of her setting. What I find fascinating is the intricate focus on engineering and the world view of an engineer, namely the main character, Ziani Vaatzes, that seems so alien to me. I don't think like this, either in my everyday life or in my scholarly work, and thus I had difficultly wrapping my head around it, which only drew me into the books further. Hell, I couldn't even tell you what a lathe is without looking it up; this POV just isn't my headspace. Good, absorbing reads...

4. Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross: Hard Science Fiction has never been my bag. I remember trying to get into Isaac Asimov in middle school and failing; I've never read anything by Arthur C. Clarke (a shame, I know, shut up); and work by dudes like Poul Anderson, Frederick Pohl, and the like have never been high on my to read list. Now, Stross isn't some Hard Sci Fi dinosaur; don't get me wrong. But the technical content is his work (he has, among many of his lifepaths, a background in computer science) is utterly bizarre, over my head, and I can't get enough of it. It's that difference thing again (see #2 & #3 above): I can't relate and I want to know more. Singularity Sky is one part space opera, two parts techno thriller, and one part hard sci fi kitsch, with a dash of cyberpunk sensibility tossed in for good measure. It's his first published book, very cutting edge sci fi, and of course is the last Stross book I've read (I've already this year gone through Glasshouse and Halting State, and I read Accelerando some time last year -- next up, Iron Sunrise). Do not piss off the Eschaton...

5. Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley: The Entertainment Weekly pull quote on the back cover describes this as "Heroic fantasy splashed with 300-style gore...." Yep, that's pretty much the gist. Epic fantasy without frilly elves and lots of archaic language (and again, don't get me wrong, I do like that stuff too, from time to time); this is the kind of fantasy fiction I want to write. Intricate and action-filled, well thought out and irresistable to put down, the best compliment I can bestow upon it is that, in many good ways, it reminds me of George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. I'm axiously awaiting the next book in paperback...

Well, there you have it, the good books I've been reading while riding bikes and ellipticals as the gym.

Oh, what am I reading next, you say? Or working on right now? Well, it's all a bit more academic in scope. There's a biography of Andrew Jackson by Jon Meacham (called American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House) that I started yesterday; The Discovery of France by Graham Robb, which I've been trying to read for the last several months; and I will soon be reading Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000 since I assigned it for my course on Europe since 1945 next spring. My next fiction will probably be Stross's Iron Sunrise, and of course I'm also reading The Boy parts of The Hobbit at night before bed.

What have you been reading?

Excuse me, did you tweet?

2008-12-08T20:32:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I've taken the plunge and joined Twitter, like any good 21st century faux-bohemian. You can see my random droppings (...ew...) at:

http://twitter.com/adevenney

Or you could just join Twitter yourself and follow me like any good net denizen.

Now I know what you're saying: "Devenney, you don't even update your blog regularly!" And you would be right, but with Twitter, it's so short, pointed, and I can text them in from anywhere... much more conducive to my busy academic life (heh).

Anyway, you can blame Warren Ellis for this. I only joined to follow Internet Jesus.

I promise to keep the rantings about catching student plagiarists to a minimum.

Yeah, well I smell something...

2008-09-17T15:14:00.004-04:00

This is bloody awesome: John McCain mixed with Frank Miller boilerplate caption narration from The Dark Knight Returns. Bloody brilliant. Go check out all the pictures, but this one is the best.

Irish No Vote on Lisbon Treaty -- "Where's Your F**king Pride?"

2008-08-23T22:58:00.002-04:00

European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Michael Lillis once ran the Anglo-Irish section of the Department of Foreign and was a central player in the British Irish peace process. As heavyweight civil servants go, they don't come much heavier. Now retired, he has written a Letter to the Editor (below the fold) outlining the consequences, as he sees them, of the Irish No vote in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum.

In light of the article on early Irish opposition to European integration I have coming out in New Hibernia Review early next year, this post and the LTE included in it is giving me flashbacks.