Marilyn Roxie

A Reignited Love for Wikis

neonsigh — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:40:38 -0800

As a college student, I’ve experienced many of my class professors, upon touching on the need to evaluate sources, quickly disallowing the use of Wikipedia as a source for citation in research projects and essays, since, as an encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone (well, apart from locked pages), not all of its content is reliable. As such, I have come to fall out of the habit of even looking at Wikipedia. Until recently.

Wikipedia’s blackout in protest of SOPA got me thinking about how important the resource has been to me and about my love of wikis in general. Before high school, I found out about Wikipedia from my teacher (!) who found it to be a great starting point for research and learning. One should of course look upon articles with a skeptical eye, particularly those peppered with “citation needed”, but the content of a Wikipedia article may be enough to get the wheels turning on, say, refining a topic you had in mind for a project. What you can (often) cite are the references and external links provided, which can be a goldmine of resources to explore and potentially cite, depending on how well-developed an article’s section of these links and books is. Wikipedia has a host of hidden gems as well, one of which I found out about recently thanks to Mindhacker: the Unusual Articles section.

As TV Tropes (another fine wiki) puts it, a Wiki Walk is often the result of what may have begun as casual exploration or to follow some leads for research ideas. Maybe you’ll learn a new word or learn about a concept you never heard of before, find a new author, a new video game to play, a new way of looking at things, even. Now that I know how to evaluate sources, I appreciate what Wikipedia does offer more than ever.

Wikis apart from Wikipedia are also fabulous ways to collaborate with others on a specific topic that is broad enough to allow for many sub-topics within it, but includes certain areas of narrow specificity, or lack of “authoritative” citations, necessity of personal opinion being part of the content, or an abundance of trivia, for example, that Wikipedia would not be able to house. I’ve enjoyed the following in particular:

TV Tropes: All about tropes used in media (TV and beyond). You will get lost in here if you look up a favorite book, video game, or band. Trust me.

William A. Percy: This historian has decided to make his official site a wiki! Percy’s page is filled with info relevant to queer and sexological studies.

Megami Tensei Wiki: I have only since last year gotten into this video game series (Persona 3 and 4) - avoid if you don’t want spoilers, but if you don’t mind or already enjoy the series and want to learn more, dive in!

Nonbinary.org: This newly created wiki will serve as an information portal for nonbinary identities and practical resources - I have begun contributing here regularly and I’m quite excited to see this in development.

Wiki technology has changed our internet for the better and allowed the general user to become a participant in shaping encyclopedia-style content - how empowering is that for information access and development?

I’d love to hear wiki recommendations! Interested in starting your own? Check out MediaWiki.

afutureinnoise: A Future in Noise is now an ad free blog. I...

neonsigh — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:06:00 -0800

afutureinnoise:

A Future in Noise is now an ad free blog. I decided to leave the MOG Music Network recently after a 3-year partnership. Free from ads and any feelings of professional obligation, I believe I will actually be inspired to post more frequently than I have been and with a more personal touch.

~Marilyn

gqid: centersexculture: Tag cloud for the Center for Sex &...

neonsigh — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:35:00 -0800

gqid:

centersexculture:

Tag cloud for the Center for Sex & Culture’s Goodreads collection

The Center for Sex and Culture library collection is on Goodreads! You can follow the collection (books are still being added into the account regularly) and friend us at the link below:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6336591-center-for-sex-culture

A project that I just finished setting up for the Center - please check it out if you’re into books related to gender, sex, and/or sexuality. There are still many more books to be added, so this is going to be an ongoing project. I’m on Goodreads too!:

http://goodreads.com/marilynroxie

neonsigh: Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:47:49 -0800

neonsigh:

Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh: Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:47:17 -0800

neonsigh:

Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh: Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:46:54 -0800

neonsigh:

Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh: Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

neonsigh — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:46:22 -0800

neonsigh:

Clarion Alley, San Francisco.

vulpiano: the narrow musketeer - “ripper wave” Preview from...

neonsigh — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 21:17:20 -0800

vulpiano:

the narrow musketeer - “ripper wave”

Preview from forthcoming album from the narrow musketeer (see also Le Fils des Trois Mousquetaires) - Vulpiano is back!

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 16:25:05 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 08:05:05 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:23:49 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:22:26 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:22:06 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:12:32 -0800

(via neonsigh)

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 23:06:57 -0800

(via neonsigh)

ghostfm: » Marilyn Roxie - “感嘆符 (!)” I approached Marilyn...

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:16:32 -0800

ghostfm:

» Marilyn Roxie - “感嘆符 (!)”

I approached Marilyn Roxie through her tasty music blog A Future In Noise. She has the flare to scribble excessively on what inspires her. It was on this very place that I discovered The Horrors and their flabbergasting nightmarish shoegaze. Next thing I knew upon reading her latest personal journal update was that she also makes music. And it sounds nothing like the impression on her face or the pinky design of her music blog.

I got her Ermine EP and listened to those five brief pieces of instrumental fear-machines, each driving you to a horrifying nowhere land. Partly industrial and more inspired by doomsday-driven video games, Roxie happens to be a self-taught keyboardist. Most these tunes are generated by a Korg Triton LE Workstation. This is the last track on the EP and it means “Sigh Breaks”. Judging by the haunted organs and the factory you’re suddenly locked in, she has possibly learned a lot from her main sources of sound. Joy Division and Suicide can be good examples and I can guess she finds comfort in the sound of A Place To Bury Strangers not to mention The Horrors themselves. You can download the whole EP down here charge-free or learn a little more about it right here (which is important!).

[♫] Marilyn Roxie - Ermine EP (.RAR)

MARILYN ROXIE: Postmodernism

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:42:00 -0800

MARILYN ROXIE: Postmodernism:

neonsigh:

I’m reading this book at the moment - A Teacher’s Introduction to Postmodernism, by Ray Linn and I want to get down some thoughts here while my mind is turning them about - I hope I’ve not gotten anything crucial misinterpreted. I feel like my mind is expanding / exploding at any rate!

I’ve already been getting into understanding this theory for awhile and have plodded along ambivalent on accepting its tenets in full, but interested nonetheless, particularly concerning gender and queer theory (Kate Bornstein and Riki Wilchins) in an attempt to uncover “the real me” and the potential fallacies surrounding the notion that there even is a “real me” to be uncovered. Some of the challenges (and practical applications) I see with postmodernism is in its stance regarding personal interpretations of creative works or things as they exist in nature, that is all up to one’s own opinion and even consensus found amongst the majority of a group of people is no guarantee that they have arrived at the “truth”. It is a critique of the seemingly insatiable truth-finding and often cold rationality of modernism and a project to reassess the ways that human beings use language.

This has a special purpose in constructing and deconstructing gender and sexual identity. As I have posted about here before and on GQID, I have grappled with confusion over gender identity since I was a teenager. Or, more like a certainty that I do know exactly what my interests and desires are in this realm - wherever they may have come from, which is still to me largely a mystery - just not in regards to what to “do” about them. Is there really anything to do but be myself? Or, rather reinventing myself whenever I see fit?

It would seem like, in a postmodernist world, whether I am “male” or “female” or something else entirely is up to my own interpretation and the interpretation of whoever interacts with me. How I am “read” or how I “pass” is based on social cues and symbolism which is only ingrained through repetition. If I did not see a clearly labelled world around me, would I have separated human beings into two sides only? (well, I wouldn’t have, but I have long been thinking of such things critically) Is there an innate need to label?

Being that humans have the capability of using language to describe the world, this can come down to the individual’s terms and sense of purpose and does not necessarily have to correspond to an overarching “truth”. Postmodernism is not just another type of nihilism like some cynics over the concept would believe - it encourages playing with new potential meanings, new presentations. This means quite a lot in the realm of gender.

In my teenage years, knowing that I was not “female” (whatever that means) meant distinguishing that I was not like others who I understood as “female” for a multitude of reasons. Then again, I never felt “male” judging from others who I understood as “male” alone either. It is primarily through my attraction to gay/bi male sexuality and subculture that I thought that somewhere in me was “male” as well as an inability by and large to relate to “female”. Hence the potentially erroneous figuring of myself as “a gay man trapped in a woman’s body” and so forth. Arriving through to this conclusion produces sheer torture and desperation, as I can say from experience. All the same, I am still not entirely sure what role biology has in how one person may come to understand their own “gender identity” one way, and another person another way (physical sex is by no means the determining factor, and hormones probably aren’t either), in comparison and contrast to this social constructionist business - I suspect that they both play a part, though the scale (by my estimation) is likely tipped in social and individual determination.

A series of questions with the same answer -

Can I be as I “really feel” in this body, without having to change a thing unless I decide that Iwant to at some point, because of my own pursuit of new meaning? Must I take hormones or have surgery to confirm my “inner” “maleness” or only if that corresponds with the way I want to see myself? Can being “non-op / no-ho” serve as one way for me to see myself that I can be happy with? Can I play with how I present myself to others as I see fit, which is subject to change from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, decade to decade? Can I acknowledge my attraction and identification with a certain type of body and a certain type of presentation and sexuality common in my culture at this particular time, but understand that it is subject to change along with my own potential flux? Yes, of course I can.

This does not mean that there aren’t similarities between the kind of self-expression that can be found across humanity and how people form groups and common ground - but groups based on gender and physical sex membership are going to exclude those who “don’t belong” - yet another way to segregate others and you’ll get those who want membership and aren’t granted it or are granted it irregularly, causing a problem despite the relatively positive original purpose of finding others with like minds and bonding through this.

Even those constants that one wants to hold dear for some kind of reassurance may topple over at the slightest crack in the foundation. Gender may well be one of them.

vulpiano: Vulpiano Records now has a new kitsune/fox logo,...

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:27:58 -0800

vulpiano:

Vulpiano Records now has a new kitsune/fox logo, illustrated fabulously by Solange Gularte (of Natural Snow Buildings, who released The Centauri Agent on Vulpiano in 2010). Cheers, Solange! Font is Orchidee.

neonsigh: DOWNLOAD ▲†HERE†▲The latest music movement that I’ve...

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:24:47 -0800

neonsigh:

DOWNLOAD ▲†HERE†▲

The latest music movement that I’ve found myself getting hooked into, witch house, has inspired me to put together a compilation of my favorite of the related free and legal mp3 downloads I’ve found through Last.fm tag radio. Witch house is the name for an oft-contested genre that throws dark ambient, shoegaze, and gothic rock into an electronic blender. If you like Pictureplane, HEALTH, Fever Ray, or Zola Jesus, you’ll probably be into this. Witch house has even inspired pieces from the likes of Pitchfork and the Guardian. Where this mysterious movement is going remains to be seen, but for now, enjoy getting lost in a tangle of tongue-in-cheek triangles, crosses, dark imagery, and some cool, cool sounds.

Tracklisting:
1. LAKE R▲DIO - Every Little THING
2. ▼□■□■□■ - Blueberry
3. †‡† - »»▲««
4. Coyote Clean Up - totally twilight
5. Vortex Rikers - O
6. GuMMy†Be▲R! - DayDreamingDeath
7. эqЏıђ•x - Noisy Summer
8. ✝ DE△D VIRGIN ✝ - «>
9. chvpa - temporary secretary (edited)
10. Gr▲ves - C▲p†n†Crunch (Instrumental)
11. Jewels of the Nile - only children
12. Holy Other - YR LOVE
13. †∆† - mew mew mew

Photo by Marxchivist

neonsigh: Now available on Spotify!: http://bit.ly/o1mCaF 100...

neonsigh — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:58:16 -0800

neonsigh:

Now available on Spotify!: http://bit.ly/o1mCaF 100 tracks and counting…examples of what’s included: Depeche Mode, Bronski Beat, Yaz, Divine, Grace Jones, Soft Cell, ABBA, Dead or Alive, Madonna, various Hi-NRG and disco classics.

This mix includes tracks by queer (LGBTQ) artists and/or popular in gay dance clubs past and present and/or with queer themes. Sources include Queer Music Heritage, various gay club compilations like Free to Be and Gay Happening, individual lists from Rate Your Music and assorted top lists, plus my own knowledge about music which would be relevant here. Many of these dance tracks are associated with the gay male community specifically - if you know of other danceable tracks relevant to anyone under the queer umbrella that aren’t in this playlist, please recommend them to me! Hope you enjoy.