A number of interesting articles in the newest issue of the Journal of Mundane Behavior, via the Spike Report, include:

Holiday at the Grocery Store: Conversations with a reformed convict

The point of running this interview, as well as Anonymous’ piece, is twofold. First, even for those who run afoul of the law, there is mundanity – trying to score drugs, casing houses, or worrying about one’s safety in a prison shower, once taken out of the media spotlight and made an everyday part of one’s reality, become mundanity.

The second point is to show how tenuous everyone’s hold on normalcy is. Cesar had a promising career in retail management before he lost it all/gave it all up and became a thief.

An ethnography of a neighbourhood café: informality, table arrangements and background noise

Our approach to cafés is to ‘turn the tables’ on theories of the public sphere and return to just what the life of a particular café consists of, and in so doing re-specify a selection of topics related to public spaces. The particular topics we deal with in a ‘worldly manner’ are the socio-material organisation of space, informality and rule following.

The Bride, Off Duty

Great varieties of manners and ceremonies make up the legal and cultural binding called a wedding. The connecting of families, communities, religions and ethnicities is celebrated through a latticework of movements, scripts, foods, and music. Thinking of these ties, values, and communitybuilding found in traditional wedding festivities, I had a thought: what if The Bride were alone?

Anti-spin activist John Stauber Penetrates America’s Lie Machine: “When you turn on the evening news or pick up the morning paper, do you ever wonder whose opinion you’re getting, and how slanted it may be? What many people don’t realize is that much of what passes for news has usually been spun by the public relations industry.” Utne Reader

Product placement prostitution spreads from the movie biz to the book biz. LA Times [Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?]

The bum’s rush out of his Senate seat for Phil Gramm: now that the never-too-sympathetic figure has announced he’s retiring, the ugly upstarts in B—‘s Republican Party want him to resign so they can appoint a Hispanic to the seat, avoid a costly and divisive Republican primary, and advance the fiction that Latino and segregationist voters are happily in bed with each other in Shrub’s America. Joshua Marshall’s Talking Points

Roundup of Irish press coverage of the Protestant intimidation of Catholic schoolchildren.

“By far the most pressing need in Northern Ireland now is for a return to real and visible politics. The events in Ardoyne have underlined, yet again, that the only alternative to dialogue and negotiation is anarchy. Politicians in Northern Ireland have to be told, by both governments, that it is time to get back to work. Let us hope it will not take another Omagh to spur Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair into reasserting their commitment to the Good Friday agreement.” Guardian UK

Democratic Party complains about renegade GOP Web site. Recall last year when the right of a group opposed to abortion to post a webpage withthe home addresses and personal details of doctors who oppose abortion, for the obvious purpose of encouraging stalking, was upheld as a free speech right? Now an ugly New Hampshire Republican-connected webpage, similarly, posts the home addresses of members of that state’s Democratic party under the heading “Enemies of the State.” The Republican leadership, of course, disavows responsibility and says that the Democrats are using the incident for political gain. [Oh, if only it were political gain to portray your opponents as unscrupulous bigots in modern-day America!]

“eActivist.org works to encourage electronic activism and civic participation by providing a collection of simple, easy-to-use progressive electronic actions and tools for the eActivist. We partner with highly respected organizations from around the globe to deliver the best of electronic activism in a fast and effective format.”

What’s in the driver’s license bar code? To what possible uses could they put all that data?

The Economy’s ‘Dolt Factor’: ‘George W. Bush’s public relations strategy in the face of a slumping economy is to convince the American people that he’s personally ‘concerned’ about the depressed stock prices and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs… Bush’s protestations of concern may have the hollow ring of his father’s famous recitation of a talking point during the 1992 campaign, “Message: I care.” Or the younger Bush’s own garbled expression of sympathy for the average Joe in the 2000 campaign: “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” ‘ The Consortium

Revivified the template for FmH — simplified the obcenity of my deeply nested tables, removed and rearranged things abit, cleaned up. I’m still buffing it up, but the weblog should load faster. Well?

Reblogger was kicked off its server. It’s up and running elsewhere and I’ll probably get around to restoring the code for it, but for now clicking the icon will just send me an email comment on that item.

Revivified the template for FmH — simplified the obcenity of my deeply nested tables, removed and rearranged things abit, cleaned up. I’m still buffing it up, but the weblog should load faster. Well?

Reblogger was kicked off its server. It’s up and running elsewhere and I’ll probably get around to restoring the code for it, but for now clicking the icon will just send me an email comment on that item.