So instead of being productive and translating that manuscript for Critical Inquiry I follow up on a friend’s post on tarte-recipes, looking through foodblogs and getting mentally ready to do some serious cooking…Damm you, wikipedia-mentality!!!
Anyway, here they are:
A couple of weeks ago I was asked by the IBC London to write a review of a literature-DVD produced by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, the Austrian National Library and Zone Media. Now, after having thought hard about it (and having written even harder) the results can be seen at the IBC’s blog http://austrianresearchuk.wordpress.com.
my Boyle-photo is making the rounds. 
here it can be seen on the website of the swiss newspaper tagesanzeiger
So remember the picture of T. C. Boyle I posted the other day? Yeah? Well this picture just brought VB 668 views to the Gallery! That is a HUGE increase of views proofing my hypothesis that you can generate a lot of views by writing about events, much more anyway than book reviews. Also: I never quite realised just how much traffic galleries generate. Of course, you click from one image to the next, you do it automatically, you don’t even think about it. I think with the traffic we are generating it soon would make sense to start selling ads on the website. Of course that step should only be taken after some decent consideration and, for other reasons, should be postponed until at least December 2012. But it definitely shows the potential!
It has been quiet here for some time. Recently I have been quite busy, having been on my Erasmus-term in Konstanz, the photographic remains of which can be found here. And ever since coming back to Vienna my attention has been divided between moving into a new apartment, re-starting VOLLTEXT Blogbuch, writing articles for VB and my second (and final!) Bachelor-thesis. The time pressure for all of these activities has increased too when I got my Oxford acceptance letter, calling me away in September. Ever since, I have been in a frenzy to find writers and guest-bloggers for VOLLTEXT Blogbuch, a surprisingly difficult task. One has to be very careful in ‘recruiting’ writers. Ensuring the magazine’s quality means refusing to use the standard broadcasting methods like University mailing-lists and instead having to rely on personal networks, which, at the moment, I’m still in the process of building.
However daunting all of this sometimes feels, it is just amazing how much I have learned this past year and how much has happened to/with me. I have been very fortunate in meeting Hans Lind, a PhD-candidate at Yale and guest lecturer at Konstanz University, who started the process of unlearning all the superficial and plainly wrong things I have been taught so far. He, together with Thorn Kray, a M.A. student of (cultural) sociology and acclaimed genius next door, reminded me of the importance of being bold in thinking and being relentlessly critical of the thoughts of others. Academically, my time in Konstanz has been the most invigorating and inspiring time so far, and under the influence of Lind, Thorn and Albrecht Koschorke, I have grown so much that Vienna seems like the playground of oversized children – with the only exception being the dull silence you hear in the classrooms of Vienna. Maybe, after my last weeks in Konstanz, when I wrote three papers (=37 pages) in two and a half weeks, anywhere will be like that (anywhere except, I assume, Oxbridge, the Ivy League, Chicago and Stanford).
Thomas Coraghessan Boyle after a guest lecture at the University of Vienna. I think, you can already see it in his eyes and the socratic smile: Boyle is a great man, a great novelist and a great lecturer : )
Liebe, Sex und Identität in versehrten Welten. Margaret Atwoods ‘Bluebeard’s Egg’
Heile Welten gab es für Margaret Atwood noch nie. In ihren bekanntesten Erzählungen – ‚The Handmaid’s Tale’ und eben ‚Alias Grace’ – kartographierte die kanadische Autorin die Unterdrückung der Frau in Vergangenheit und Zukunft. ‚Bluebeard’s Egg’ liegt genau in der Mitte; literaturhistorisch genauso wie inhaltlich: Das Schicksal der Gegenwart, so scheint es, ist um keinen Deut besser als das von Zukunft oder Vergangenheit. Eingeklemmt zwischen vergeistigten, lebensunfähigen Männern, sexuellen Ansprüchen und der Angst vor der nuklearen Katastrophe, finden sich Atwoods Frauen in einer scheinbar aussichtslosen Situation wieder.
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Inside the black box by Blue Square Thing @ Flickr
After running in stealth mode for the last two-and-a-bit months Volltext Blogbuch is finally heading towards it’s official start, with Promotions in our Partner Papers on Facebook and probably on Google+ (though not as an official entity since G+ Pages haven’t yet appeared on the scene). Just last week I ordered a bunch of books from publishers for us to review and today I was meeting with Robert Schindel and Sabine Konrath from the Institut für Sprachkunst at the University of Applied Arts Vienna to discuss a possible cooperation for the next couple of months. So far things are moving at the expected pace, just a tad slower maybe but I’ve reached Zen. Also because we finally have the architecture of our virtual newsroom that becomes necessary once I move to Konstanz next month.
My Bachelor Paper at the other hand is creeping at a frustratingly (and quite frankly terrifyingly) slow pace. And even though I picked an incredibly complex matter the reason for the tardiness is the amount of work I have to do for Ambuzzador. Since our client Media-Saturn (the biggest technology market of Austria and Germany) quit the monitoring programm I moved over the Austrian Airlines as the main analyst – which was quite ok since it got me away from the (by then quite boring) Media-Saturn, it was rather straight-forward and not too much work. But at the same time Ambuzzador aquired a new, international and huge client: the Austrian Oil Company OMV. So of course they needed an experienced eye on that project: me. Now…because we also monitor our client’s competitors (anything else would be pointless) we suddenly also have such heavyweights like BP, Shell, Total on our sensors. The result: Almost 4 times the hours of every other project!
And all that during the last few days of my girlfriend being in Vienna before leaving for Edinburgh for a year! Sometimes it is true what people say: Time’s a b..!
So obviously with Volltext becoming more work, me moving to the University of Konstanz and having to finish my Bachelor paper till the end of September I cannot continue working on the OMV. Now: How do I tell that to my bosses?
