Eight Mings Theme

Nate over at What in the hell… has tagged me with my very first ever blog meme, the ‘Eight Things’ meme, and I’m as giddy as that time I was not picked last for baseball in middle school. Ahhh….that was the day.

At any rate, and despite the inner adult screaming at me that these things are best left to decompose quietly outside my home, I will drag this mangled meme inside and work what I can out of it. Actually, it is solely to my respect for Nate – I know he doesn’t waste his time, so it must be worthwhile.

Vox Bloguli: Why Bother Reading This Page?

I looked at my clustrmap (down at the bottom of the page there) this morning, and realized that although this page receives an awful lot of traffic (it just passed 70,000 hits for its first anniversary) – especially as the page of a barely-employed graduate student weirdo who studies Cambodian Buddhism and Death – I rarely receive comments or feedback.

So, in what may be the first of a series, I am asking readers a few questions. Answer in the comments, please. I’m not looking for compliments, but for a better understanding of who you are, why you read this thing, and what it is that you are avoiding when you read this thing. So, without further ado, here are the questions. Let the races begin:

1. Who are you and where are you located?
2. Why do you read this blog?
3. Are you an ‘academic’?
4. Are you particularly attracted to Cambodian subject matter, Buddhist subject matter, or do you have a strange affection for morbidity?
5. What are you trying to avoid when you read this blog?
6. Any suggestions?
7. Oh yeah – what superpower would you choose if you could choose any one? (Mine would be the ability to instantly create a ‘zone of silence’ around myself, at will).

Now, I’m not going to change things to please you all – I don’t work that way, most of the time (my partner has a legitimately different opinion on that), but it will be helpful to me to know these things, so that I can write more efficiently.

Birthday

I don’t celebrate my birthday. But others do, and I’m grateful for the care they show me. Therefore, I will be taking a day off tomorrow. That is all.

Milestone: Free Books

Yesterday, I received my first ever, complimentary, ‘desk’ or ‘examination’ copies of books for classes I teach in the Fall. Free books! That is all.

Extreme Khmer

Now that I have the ability to post video to this page, I’ll be able to more efficiently plug the vital work of Khmer teacher extraordinaire Frank Smith.

Lokkru Frank teaches and runs the Khmer program every Summer at SEASSI (Southeast Asian Summer Studies Institute) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wrote the textbooks that many if not most of the current younger generation of Khmer students (and tons of Khmer heritage students!) used. He also has a video podcast, called “Extreme Khmer,” which he publishes to his own website, and also to youtube.

I can’t grab video straight from his site, and the most recent video – a presentation by Farina So from DC-CAM about Cham in Cambodia – is not yet up on youtube.

So, for now, here’s clip one of the best recorded performance of the Preah Ko Preah Keo story I’ve ever seen, recorded by Lokkru (teacher) Frank Smith.

Jayo!

Anthro-bloggery – Keith Hart Redesign

A local academic friend of mine here turned me on to Keith Hart’s website about a year ago. It’s excellent, as is his work on the anthropology of money, which should be read by you.

Hart’s page recently received a redesign, and is worth a new look. The new version looks fantastic, and is easier to navigate. [via Lorenz at anthropologi.info]

death and rebirth

Since I rolled this blog over to WordPress late last Summer, this weblog has received over 50,000 views. Maybe it is time for a few changes. So far I’ve made two. First, I’ve changed the name of the blog, choosing the completely unsexy title of my name.

The reason for this is that ‘deathpower’ is a concept associated exclusively with my dissertation, and I have been blogging about things far beyond deathpower for months already. With the recent changes in my life, I will increasingly be writing about other aspects of my work and analysis, including thoughts on teaching, transitioning from graduate student to teacher, etc. If I come up with a better title, or if you suggest one I like (try the comments), you can be assured I will change it.
The second change is the look of the blog. I thought about getting fancy, but decided that simplicity is almost always a better option. Hence, this bare bones new look. There will be additional changes in the next few weeks – I’m hoping to get a tag cloud instead of the categories listing, which should clean up the overall look somewhat, and I want to fiddle with the css styles, especially when it comes to headings and links.

If none of this means anything to you, I hope you will still take a minute to comment to this post: do you hate the new look? Is it easier to read, or harder? Would it be better if I put a cute picture of a cat playing piano in the background and made it repeat over and over again? Or if I played my favorite song in the background?

Angkor at the feet of Shiva

courtesy of the EFEO. Ah, to be in Cambodia now.

John Michael Greer – The Archdruid

I never thought I’d be writing something so completely adulatory of someone who calls himself ‘The Archdruid.’ Of course, that’s a pretty specific thing, and therefore most of you probably never thought so either. For me, the reserve comes from those wack-job friends of mine in high school who dropped out of real conversations and busied themselves with rituals and ouji-boards instead of things that, to me at least, ‘really’ mattered.

But none of my knee-jerk critiques apply to the indefatiguable, learned, practical, and, frankly, wise John Michael Greer. Although he is indeed the author of many books on ritual and nature magic, he is also the author of a completely under-read essay on Catabolic Collapse, which pretty well describes the future in logical formulae. His no-nonsense attitude cleaves fast to scientific fact, but is driven by an ethic of wholeness and sustainability. For all of that, his page deserves a link in my blogroll, and you might be interested in visiting.

The New Mandala

Just a brief post here to acknowledge a newish (almost 6 months) co-blog about contemporary mainland Southeast Asia, called “The New Mandala.” It looks extremely promising – in addition to more substantive postings, they also occasionally take care to skewer the nasty exoticization of folks that marks feral capitalism’s relationship to non-state peoples, such as this post, which is titled “The New Mandala Award for Insensitivity:”

am not sure if this will become a regular feature but The Nation must surely be recognised for the insensitivity of this headline:

Karen village loses popular tourist draw

A long-necked Karen woman who had long attracted tourists to her hometown, died of unknown causes early yesterday. Mada, 25, passed away peacefully in her sleep. She left behind two children, a husband and mother. As of press time, doctors had yet to determine the cause of death. According to her mother, Mada was fluent in Thai, English, French, Spanish and Japanese. She was once crowned a beauty queen at a local pageant and had also represented the long-necked Karen at various events. Recently, her family was filmed for a documentary to be aired in Spain. She was a Christian. Siri-orn Rangsiritanont, manager of Mae Hong Son TN Tour Limited Partnership, said she was saddened to hear of Mada’s death. “She was very nice and friendly,” Siri-orn said, adding that tourism in Mada’s village might suffer given that tour operators had normally arranged tours to the village through Mada. There are still a number of long-necked Karens in the northern part of the Thailand and some are paid to continue wearing brass rings around their necks to attract tourists.

The Nation
Mae Hong Son