Yo. How long has it been? I have missed you blog, but fear not, now I have official permission to continue pondering the pixelated navel of the media, once more.

Today was supposed to be my day for documenting all my media use, which I have dutifully done.

I have been wondering what to include, especially in light of the McLuhan article from the first week's reading. Well, I'm not including my bedside lamp, but I've still managed to accrue quite a list .

It began first of all with my clothes. These are nearly all branded. From my airwalk shoes (most commercial), to my Bocoo jeans (these are really bad quality and made in sweatshops I think) to my Suprize Zed t-shirt & 183 hoodie: Coz I always have to be wearing something weird and cool that other people aren't. It's kinda 'weak really. Anyway, all of these are advertising media, and also clothes.
The next media objects I collided with were my mobile phone & discman. I hurriedly recharge both. Then I hear my flatmate's radio playing inaudably, as usual.
Then I'm out of the house. I have Sennheiser headphones (sounds German quality, right?) which I wear around my neck too much, broadcasting a brand once again and giving me bad neck posture.
Look at that, very bad for posture.

I'm largely oblivious to the swarm of advertising on the way to the bus and while on it. First off I'm talking to someone, then on the second leg of the trip I'm busily engrossed in the media right in front of me, a score to Cosi fan tutte, which I'm trying to learn and listening to a recording of it on my discman.
Look, my very expensive discman...& it's blue (I wanted grey).

I did look up long enough to catch an ad for Doom III. Which has been released inexplicably on time, for a prestige PC title.
Ah yes, that's the one, with the disease and the glowing eyes.
Excellent.
PC gaming represents one of my longest and most debilitating relationships with the media. The less said about that the better, I suppose.
I also saw an ad for Driv3r, but who cares, right.
Scoot across to the lecture room where I am confronted with a dark projector (I'm not even entirely sure what that is, but it's like a normal projector, only cooler, I mean even the name is cool). On this dark projector they are projecting Windows XP, Winamp & Winamp is playing a jazz standard version of 'A few of my favourite things' (I can't remember the artist) - mediaobjectorama.
While I'm waiting for the class to start lots of other kids wander in & not as many of them are decked out in brand names as might be expected. I saw a Heineken baseball cap, a Technics LP bag & a sea of Converse shoes (coz they're cheap and also cool, I assume - that's not very common).
Did you see the product plaecment for Converse in I, Robot? Turning it into an artform, man. Another crappy thing about it was that Will Smith spends about three minutes talking about his antique Converse basketball boots, yet Converse has been re-issuing the same boots since the fifties & they travel in cycles of cool. As soon as they become 'old school' Converse (and every other sportshoe company) releases tons and makes a fortune. Bastards, I want my old school cred.!
I am drinking from my Cool ridge water bottle (as far as I know, one of the few brands not run by Coca cola) & writing with an Oz Electoral Commission pen.
My A4 pad is fairly ad-lite, but as I'm recording all this stuff in it, it is worth noticing as another form of media.
We spend the whole lecture looking at Adobe Audition. This used to be Cool edit pro, but Adobe absorbed it. It is a sound-editing programme. The dark projector is hurting my eyes. Are my contact lenses a medium - I mean I think they are y'know. A bad one too.
After the lecture I make my way down to the Citycat, noticing all the bill posters for campus socialists, a chalked play ad for the Cement Box Theatre & a couple of old looking Schonell Theatre billboards.
There is an even older ad on the crappy Telstra payphone box @ the Citycat stop.
I wait, listening to my discman and studying the score.
Converse shoes are everywhere. Everything is brandnamed, everything.
The timetable for the Citycat which I pick up a copy of when I get on board tells me that it is 'funtastic' to travel this way.
I have ceased paying attention to all the ad.s everywhere & get off the boat at Southbank. Lots of people are playing instruments at the Conservatorium - these are media I suppose.
I blast away in a practive room for 45 min.s and then go to a lesson where the student before me is recording hers on a Sony MZ-700.
One of these!
She is also using a Sony ECM-M907 microphone.
I need to buy one of these.
I just bought a cool little MZ-NHF800. This is a mid-range (Oz $550) new Sony hi-md recorder, the 'hi' means the new minidiscs which hold a gigabyte of data. I'm glad they released these, they are still the only decent quality consumer sound recorders, which I really need. I've had it for about a week, but because I am so technically inept I'm still working out how to use it.
Look there it is, ya cute little thing.
Alright, I'm back in the library computer labs at UQ, writing all of this on my blog - there's some new media for u. If you'd like to have one of your own please visit blogger and they will start helping you merrily waste as much time as I am.
Well I've got to get off here & go to the music labs to do some soundediting. Then, if everything goes to plan I'm going to watch Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind at the Schonell. They are having a retrospective of the films of Hayao Miazaki (the Japanese Walt Disney - only much cooler).
Nausicaa is a philosophical fairytale epic about a world destroyed by war and pollution and the meaning of the lives of its last survivors. It's all steampunk and it stars the very cool Nausicaa, pure heroine and saviour of the waste. (The name is Greek - a princess from the Odyssey, I think.) The film is much shorter than the manga by Miazaki, which he completed sometime after the film's release in 1984.
There she is, on the left.
I'm sure I'll have a few extra details to fill in. I'll do that tomorrow.

Cya.

C.