Scrawled in Wax

Well folks, things actually went according to plan and, by some miracle, I somehow passed my exam. So now that I’m *cough* an ‘expert’ in literary theory (ha!) and I have some time to get to back to blogging, I just thought I’d give you a heads up of where you can expect to see this blog go and what changes are on their way:

1. Some growth. While I know this isn’t really that interesting to anyone but me, hopefully the upside of a larger readership will be not only more comments here but more conversation with other blogs and writers. And this is stupid, but I also just think it’s helpful write your goals down sometimes.
2. Responses to your comments. I sometimes slip in replying to your much-appreciated responses, so I hope to improve that aspect of Scrawled. If you leave a comment, you can be assured of a comment in kind.
3. More unabashed theorizing, ‘inspired’ by cultural/literary theory, but in ‘normal’ language. When you’re in academics, it often becomes hard not to always talk like… hm, what’s the right word? Oh right, a pretentious ass. So while I’m gonna’ stay away from unnecessarily opaque langauge, I do hope to do more ‘analysis’ on the cultural bases of things happening online, in gaming and in pop culture, using ‘theory’ as my perspective. I’ve always felt the problem with academia is that it’s one big circle-jerk in which academics only speak to their peers in a language that takes years to master - hopefully this blog can become my place to resist that.
4. Speaking of unabashed… I am, loosely speaking, a Marxist. If you wanted to get picky, I suppose you could say I’m a ‘post-Marxist’ i.e. while I don’t believe in a violent revolution, or even socialism as a form of government, I am: a) sceptical of late capitalism and the reduction of everything to a commodity or ‘content’; b) concerned with the always-fun topics of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism etc. While I’m not looking for a fight, I do intend to take these issues up, even if it does cause some people to roll their eyes. I say this because there seems to be a distinctly liberal-humanist tone to most Web 2.0/tech blogging, and some diversity in perspective certainly can’t hurt.
5. Last bit of unabashedness: I write about video games because I take them seriously. When I’m a bit more into GTA IV, you can expect to see some thoughts on fantasy and reality, identifying with one’s avatar and that minor problem of what (so far) seems like the game’s misogyny (and no I don’t mean ‘killing hookers’). If you think video games are dumb, childish and destructive, I hope that I might cause you to think about things differently.
6. More frequent posting. Next month, by which time I will have written 3 posts, I will be kicking myself for this one, but I’m aiming to increase the frequency of posting to a few times a week, up from the 1 or 2 post-a-week average I have now.

Anyway, this is all a roundabout way of getting back into things and starting again (hence the pic of tulips from my front yard). I ‘ppreciate you reading this blog and (cheesiness alert!) I’ll be working hard to make it an enjoyable place to visit. Next up will be a post on the appeal of and ideas behind everyone’s favourite site/app/thingamajig, Twitter.