Friday Quotations / Update

"And then, of course, there is the possibility that, though we can change the game infinitely, what we need to be doing is something else altogether." --Bernard DeKoven, "Changing the Game."

All right, it's been a slow post week. Usually, that means one of two things:
1) it's been a really busy week, and I don't have time to post
2) it's been a really boring week, and there's nothing worth posting.

This would be the latter of the two. I'm waiting on my supervisor for progress on a few projects, and while it's been nice to be in a situation where I don't have constant, gnawing guilt for for not working full throttle on the dissertation, it is a little dull. Currently, I've been dealing with the boredom by, well, doing something that's arguably even more boring: throwing myself into the videogame research with even greater intensity. Specifically, I've been reading 100+ pages of a day of the massive 900 page tome, Salen and Zimmerman's Game Design Reader. I've been devoting 4 to 7 hours a day to it, and it's starting to show; I ran into a friend the other day, and I actually couldn't think of a single topic that didn't relate to it. Remember the post a little while back when I claimed I was a little too wrapped up in games? Well, as of the past few nights, I've been dreaming in video games too. Enough's enough.

In other words, as soon as I finish this colossal codex, I'm taking a week off. Not a vacation, no; for once in my life, I've got some good momentum going work-wise, and I don't want it to go entirely to waste. Rather, I'm going to redirect my efforts. I'll focus on outlining my course in the fall (Introduction to Digital Media Studies) and redirect my research attention from video games to another area. Derrida and the archive? Maybe some Benjamin? Perhaps I'll even get to that McLuhan study I've always meant to do. Something different, but useful. Any interesting suggestions will be appreciated.

Later Days.