MS 149 Musings

Final Post

2005-12-08T23:41:00.000-08:00

In case it hasn't been apparent, I absolutely loathed maintaining this blog--especially as work for my final project became more and more time-consuming. I realize that it is an effective way to make sure that people have done the reading, but I feel that even if I do the reading most times I've never been inspired to write a blog entry. Perhaps that's related to my paralyzing self-esteem issues that make me think none of my ideas are worth committing to paper for a professor to read, let alone online for my entire class (and anyone else who happens upon it). It was usually only after class discussions and some subsequent time to think about course materials that I could remotely imagine blogging my thoughts, but that type of schedule would not really be possible given the relative speed of this course as well as my other ones. I planned to catch up on my post-thanksgiving blogs, but truth be told I didn't have the time to devote to such an excruciating process. I admire those who manage to keep their blogs fun, informative and provocative.

I do have to say, though, by the end I really enjoyed working on my final project. Once I finally found a clear direction into the material I wanted to discuss, I got more and more excited as I got my ideas down on "paper." Setting up the website was not as bad as I had previously imagined (Considering the tech session was about three months ago), and although it's pretty bare bones I am quite fond of it.

I suppose that's a wrap!

the agony of 'ecstasy'

2005-11-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

I went this weekend to the "Ecstasy: In and About Altered States" exhibit at the MOCA in Little Tokyo. Although it wasn't focused on new media technologies, but I thought there were interesting parallels between what the organizers of the exhibit were trying to do and some of the issues new media theorists have been grappling with. One of the major topics we've been discussing has been the relationship between these technologies and the body of the spectator (especially with Manovich and the cyberculture readings)--is/are new media the next step in trying to approximate the ephemeral/nonlinear facets of human existence and comprehension? Do they enrich our lives or simply restructure social interaction with many of the same boundaries/restrictions in place? To what extent is emapthy possible in new media projects? Many of the exhibited art works, while not using "new media" per se, often used experimental materials and worked to subvert typical representational practices with the promised (or suggested?) involvement of intoxicants. But too often the gimmicky, "cool" posturing of the exhibit (perhaps they wanted to bolster hip, occasional recreational drug using college student attendance?) obsucred opportunities to explore how human conciousness might be altered and the subsequent ramifications. This was similar to my reaction to 'Soft Cinema'--sure it's beautiful and sleek, but how am I supposed to connect with it? Am I even invited to engage in something more than a cursory, superifical examination? One of the works at the museum, "narcotourism," recorded the daily happenings of one man as he tried a different drug each day while travelling. Is this designed to elicit from chuckles from spectators who know what it's like to be on any of those drugs, or to reify the perceptive bonuses of narctoics? Either way it smacks of self-indulgence.

communities/disunities

2005-11-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Our discussion on Monday got me thinking a lot about the case of Jim West (Spokane's mayoral lothario) and his use of the internet. As it turns out, I was wrong about the method of discovery--an undercover reporter for a local newspaper disguised himself as a young man on a gay.com chatroom in order to get West to admit to his behavior. This truly seems to break the promise of "anonymity" (or at least significantly alters it) with regards to cybersapce, especially when it comes to sexually charged cyberspaces. How much are we really keeping secret by using pseudonyms or obscuring personal details? Are people aware of this risk but get off on the danger of it, or have they been duped into thinking nothing they do online is traceable or that people won't find out?

Another interesting fact is that West, a staunch republican, has often voted against many gay rights measures during his tenure as mayor. So while he might now begrudgingly acknowledge his latent homosexuality, he obviously doesn't see himself as part of the "gay community," even though he is gay. So where does that leave us in terms of defining community in the 21st century? Is it not as much of an important issue anymore? As we move away from monolithic conceptions of gayness/queerness, blackness, feminism/femininity, perhaps trying to form large communities based upon social constructionist labels has become a futile exercise. Who are you adressing when you say things like "well, such and such will adversely affect the black community."? Is it simply a way of categorizing people on a local level, or a way of talking about politically prominent/powerful members of a certain group?

Perhaps more on this later, I think i need more time to think things through...

African-ness and new media

2005-11-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

For those who missed Chika Anyanwu's lecture at CMC on Thursday (which I suppose was everyone except myself, Ashley and Elliot), you missed a great talk that applied many of the theoretical ideas we've been toying with during the semester. Anyanwu's main point seemed to be that the internet could potentially be much more democratic, especially with respect to those living in Africa and other so-called "developing" nations. While non-English speaking people far outnumber those who do, 90% of information on the internet is stored in English! Though we've thrown around the concept of democratization before, Anyanwu's idea for a project (with the Labyrinth group from the USC Communications School!!) that allows for the construction of a "virtual diasporic" identity would certainly allow for a wider field of access. Because many of the theorists we've read this semester concentrate on the numerical constituents of new media forms and objects, it is easy to see race as a non-issue in cyberspace , or perhaps even an issue that has been resolved. Anyanwu spoke eloquently about how nowadays people are free to acknowledge the complexity of their identities (Anyanwu is from Nigeria but he teaches and lives in Australia), though this often results in a sort of cultural crisis where there is always an "outsider-insider" or "insider-outsider" binary at work. Opening new media technologies up to people who have heretofore been unable to access them, and constructing vast databases for promotion of not necessarily Western culture and ideas is one important step in leveling the playing field of the internet.

supple, soft cinema

2005-10-31T23:24:00.000-08:00

I admit to not being able to view the Manovich film before class this afternoon, but what I saw today helped elucidate the earlier readings of Bolter and Grusin a tad more. Though Manovich doesn't specifically discuss media in the same terms of B&G (hypermediacy v. immediacy), I found those ideas a bit clearer through the flims/visual database narratives. Manovich's visuals were quite striking and I found myself enraptured by both films, even if I didn't really understand the story or structure of the database. Yet as much as I was impressed by the fluidity of imagery, I was constantly being pulled between being hyper-aware of the media and how they were put together and, often at the same time, thinking that everything coalesced beautifully into one sleek and modern whole. How could that be? How could I be aware and even skeptical of the artifice and theatricality of the production and be swept away by it at the same time? Remediation!!

the poetry of away messages

2005-10-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

I have to confess, I put a lot of thought into my away messages on Instant Messenger. Why? I'm not sure. I never really did in high school. In fact, since everyone was in school at the same time I never really bothered with away messages. I thought they were stupid. If you really want to know what someone is doing, why not call them? But I've realized that in college checking away messages has become a relaxing passtime for many (myself included). Humor, emotional song lyrics, links to interesting websites, conversation excerpts are all sources of away message material for those who prefer to go a step beyond the simple stating of where one is/will be through out the day. When you're sitting in your room procrastinating, or you've just returned after a hectic day of class/work/what have you, checking away messages (even, or perhaps especially, of people you don't know terribly well) can be a nice transitional feature of one's routine. Of course, this admittedly absurd aspect of my (and myriad other college student's) lives can lead into even more farcical situations of trying to decipher other people's away messages and which particular people they might be referencing.

Despite everything, I'm excited to move on to post-college life where that does not seem to be such a crucial feature of everyday life.

liz phair and other fallen idols

2005-10-30T18:55:00.000-08:00

Since I find I have more interesting things to say when I'm not trying to directly comment on readings we've done, I thought I'd take a break from direct commentary for a bit. For those of you who aren't familiar with her, Liz Phair is a musical artist who just a few weeks ago released an album called "Somebody's Miracle," a collection of rather unremarkable pop songs with less than stellar production and vocals. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but coupled with her similar epnoymously-titled album from 2003, the criticism has been swift and cutting. She "sold out." She is "a fake." She abandoned her roots as an indie-rock goddess and went, horror of horrors, "mainstream!" Why, in our culture, do we need our celebrities to hang on to certain personas? Why does everyone 'need' Liz Phair to stay depressed and inappropriate and full of vitriol? It's like Delta Burke--once she got fat, she was useless. It's as if certain people are assigned a certain cultural function that they are not allowed to eschew, and if they try they are banished to the nether regions of has-been land. Liz Phair, or anyone else for that matter, should not have to maintain a certain image or way of life to satisfy the collective void of her initial fanbase. Do I think her new stuff holds a candle to "exile in guyville"? No, not really, it's pretty hollow and disingenuous. But I don't take it as a personal slap in the face. I am not angry at her because she isn't a hateful slut anymore. She's just moved on.

"it's very hard to keep the line between the past and the present..."

2005-10-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

This past Wednesday I went to the Scripps screening of Albert Maysles' "Grey Gardens." Though it wasn't concerned with much in the way of new media or new media theory, I was thoroughly enthralled by the film. I had heard others reference it in the past (most notably through Rufus Wainwright in his song titled, appropriately enough, Grey Gardens). The cinematography and documentary technique employed by the filmmakers weren't awe-inspiring, even in a "low-budget chic" type of way. Yet the Beale women were so magnetic and engaging it was as if they were bursting at the seams to share their stories. The missed chances, the probable mental illness, the bitter resolve to keep one foot firmly grounded in the past, the icy pangs of loneliness; everything seemed so real to me, so immediate. Even during the (what i believe were intentional) comedic moments, I couldn't help but feel the decay emanating from the screen. Was it exploitative? Yeah, I guess. Maysles was initially interested in following around Lee Radziwill (how anyone could think she would be interesting enough to fill up an entire movie is beyond me; they should have gotten to Caroline before she married Edwin), and knew the only reason people would be interested in a movie like this was because the women were quasi-Kennedys. But I suppose every movie needs its bait, and once you get past the artifice of Camelot and second-hand celebritydom (i.e. those who become famous because their friends/family members are), it is a searing experience.

theory, praxis and the like

2005-10-30T14:38:00.000-08:00

This semester has been one of the most critical-theory intensive of my time at Pomona thus far. In addition to this course, my art history course "black aesthetics and the politics of (re)presentation" (which is actually just a Marxist cultural studies course masquerading as an art history/media studies one) has been extremely heavy in theory as well. One of the theoreticians (sp?) I've read, bell hooks, often writes about the promise of critical theory in its subversion of Enlightenment-era empiricism. It's supposed to give people agency, the ability to achieve some sort of transformation in how they see and act in the world. And while I confess I get a bit of a nerd-rush throwing around phrases like "refracted through a postmodernist lens" or "his Saussure-ian Structuralism works against his analysis," I can't help but wonder all of these theoretical concepts are going to help me later in life, whether or not I continue in academia. So many professors and authors complain about the incomprehensible jargon used in academic discourse today (particularly in the humanities, especially English and Art History), yet it must have currency somewhere if so many people feel comfortable with that type of language. While my time at Pomona has opened to myriad new ways of thinking and analyzing, for which I am grateful, I can't help but wonder if I should allow myself to get wrapped up within the ivory towers of academia. To whom would my subsequent contributions be useful, other than other professors? Is it just getting harder and harder to write and speak in a way that is interesting and engaging to a variety of people, Ph.D.'s or not?

'postsecret' and more on internet anonymitiy.

2005-10-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

Much of my research has discussed the "anonymitiy" (or lack thereof) in relation to how/why people might seek out certain types of sexual gratification online. Because other people won't find out, it's ok to pursue your more 'unorthodox' fantasies and not feel bad about it. Another website that promotes this therapeutic reading of willful restructuring/obfuscation of identity is a blog called PostSecret (http://postsecret.blogspot.com). In it, people are able to write down what is generally a deep, dark secret onto a postcard and send it to a random address in Maryland. The identiy of the sender is blacked out, so only the "secret" they've sent in make it onto the website. Ideally, I suppose, the sender is supposed to reach some sort of catharsis in finally writing down this secret that's been plaguing them for many years. Many of them are rather graphic and unsettling, often along the lines of "my father used to rape me when I was little, but the worst part of it was I liked it." Many of the postcards are visually arresting and use imagery rather well, whereas other are just stark black writing on white backgrounds.

But, does this website deliver on its promise? I guess it's impossible to know unless we ask the senders themselves, but it seems like this site is both trying to build community through shared stories of trauma and emotional discord, yet at the same time it erases that possiblity through anonymitiy. Not to say that everyone's name and address should be plastered across the blog, but perhaps it's meant to provide two distinct sets of aesthetic experiences: those for the sender, and those for the viewer of the blog who hasn't sent in anything. But then why would I, or anyone else who hasn't sent in a postcard, read the blog? Just to know that there are tons of other (allegedly) fucked people out there? It doesn't quite fit together for me yet.

the nature and aesthetics of blogging

2005-10-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

I can't help but wonder what makes blogs and blogging so attractive to some people. I realize I'm not terribly technologically savvy (or perhaps I'm not savvy in general), but there has to be a certain degree of self-importance involved if you think that your thoughts or daily, mundane activities are really that interesting to a large group of people (this entry is NOT a put-down of those who do blog, just an attempt to figure out why, so please don't read any of this nonsense as actual criticism). It's kind of similar to those who run for public office--you've gotta think you're something special if you think you have a solution to a local/federal government's issues. But hey, maybe you do have the answers and mazel tov if that's the case. Many of my friends use their blog to record the minutiae of their experiences abroad as to avoid sending out mass e-mails that no one will read. But as much as I love my friends, do I really care about their endless parades of debauchery, nameless hook-ups, innocuous comments about major European/South American monuments or how their workload is so comparatively miniscule to mine? Maybe I'm just a broken human being, but that type of communication is a tad too impersonal for me. I'd rather hear it in person, with guiding inflections, giddy laughter and un-reproducible facial expressions.

Perhaps it's my problem that I haven't found a blog that keeps me coming back for more, an internet equivalent to Maureen Dowd's columns for the New York Times or Camille Paglia's occasional contributions to Salon.com. But at the moment, the interface and navigability of blogs take the fun out of actually talking to people who use blogs as public diaries due the efficacy they provide.

final project musings

2005-10-30T13:30:00.000-08:00

I think the research/planning stages of my final project are going rather well, which is kind of exciting. I am nervous to present to the class, however, because although we're in college now how our peers perceive us is still paramount in many situations. There's also the looming question of academc acceptability in one's research that has me fretting a tad. In the interesting yet ultimately anti-climactic "Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in 20th Century Art," author Richard Meyer closes by stating his ambivalence over his chosen field of research. He worries that when he presents papers at conferences and converses with colleagues they're secretly thinking "Whoa Mary, save it for the backroom of The Manhole this is Yale for God's sake!" (I paraphrase of course, but you understand what I mean). So as interesting as I think my research is, I am worried that people will see me as some sort of internet pervert who has no place in a Pomona classroom. But I suppose if someone is going to automatically assume that I condone or participate in any of the activities or patterns of behavior I plan on talking/theorizing about, then perhaps they aren't part of my intended audience. Or, maybe I'm just rationalizing to cover up my insecurities over peddling smut to your class.

Either way, should be a blast!

media and objecthood

2005-10-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult concepts to grasp in the first chapter of Manovich's Language of New Media was that of the "new media object." We've been talking a lot about the abstract idea of "new media" and its various manifestations, but we haven't really delineated what consitutes a media type and what constitutes a PRODUCT of a given medium/media type. So far we've been looking at examples that seem to fall loosely within the frameworks (however much they might protest) of art and/or literature. But Manovich makes the distinction (when arguing against some of Ippolito's postulates) between a new media object and new media/digital 'art.' This debates echoes those regarding the development of Minimalism as an artistic movemnt, with many claiming that works by Donald Judd or Dan Flavin were simply objects and couldn't be classified as "art" objects because of their inherent theatricality (as Michael Fried put it). Yet, in the case of new media, the presence of theatricality and interactivity don't really help us define where the line between art and object is. Maybe the next time Lev is in town you (KF) lure him into your office with vodka and borscht and see if he gives a definition.

Interdisciplinarity

2005-10-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

In one of my first posts, I remarked with (admittedly overstated) disgust at Bolter and Grusin's ineptitude at discussing modern art. More specifically, I objected to their implicit understanding that the methodological tools and concepts they used for media studies could be automatically transferred to the art historical realm. Since I wrote that, I kept thinking about Camille Paglia's essay "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders" where she decries the rigid departmentalization of modern day academe. I agreed with many of the points she made about departmentalization and specialization of undergraduate education, so how could I turn around saying that Bolter and Grusin "can't" describe art because they don't work within the traditional framework of art history? Would that to contribute to building up walls between departments and conferring the privilige of talking about visual culture to a select few?

Reading Espen Aarseth's Introduction made me re-think my guilt a bit. While some of Aarseth's argument was a tad dense, I couldn't help but think how similar it was to the case Rosalind Krauss made for site-specific earthworks in "Sculpture in the Expanded Field." In that essay, noted art historian Krauss argues for an expansion of the notion of traditional "sculpture" to include then-contemporary works (i think the essay dates from the early '70s?) by artists like Richard Heizer and Walter de Maria. All Aarseth wants to do is to expand people's ideas of literature/literary theory and the structure of the relationship between reader and text, and while he doesn't mention the plastic arts specifically, it seems as if he's quite better equipped to talk about them than B&G. In fact, Maya Lin's 1981 Vietnam Veterans' Memorial seems to crystallize Aarseth's asserstion that the ergodic and the cybertextual is not just about hypercard-produced fictions on the computer screen. Hers is a work that demands audience participation and the possibility to construct narratives through the text (even though they are merely the names of those fallen in the war). But perhaps due to the fact that he wasn't "trained as an art historian" he didn't include more wide-ranging examples of his arguments.

So maybe it's not really a question of disciplinarity; maybe it's just a question of perception and comparative abilities.

some thoughts on hypermedia

2005-10-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

In Bolter's 2nd chapter, he introduces the concept of hypermedia, which made me think of his outline of hypermediacy in our readings from the beginning of the semester. In the previous reading, he set up hypermediacy and immediacy as two forces that seemed to be polar opposites with the simultaneous ability to seamlessly coalesce. Hypermediacy exists when the consumer is aware of the varying degrees of mediation between him/her and the event/person being depicted through a media outlet. Yet in this (earlier, I think?) text on computers and writing, he writes of hypermedia and hypermedia texts as synaesthetic combinations of television, print and/or computers. He states that these texts "...will be flexible, dynamic, and interactive; they too will blur the distinction between writer and reader." This seems a bit contrarian to his later ideas of hypermediacy, a phenomenon that I understood to emphasize the opacity between consumer and the representational strategy of a given medium/a. Although, he later conlcudes that hypermediacy and immediacy have the same goal and thus can seemingly easily dissolve into one another. It could just be that the relationship between hypermedia and hypermediacy is not as direct as the spellings of the two words seem to be, but I can't imagine that they aren't connected at all.

I suppose these two texts leave me even more confused as to where to draw the distinction between hypermediacy and immediacy, and if it's even worthwhile to try and do so. Perhaps it is the gift (or curse?) of the digital age that the boundary between immediacy and hypermediacy has been essentially dissolved.

remediation rears its surprisingly sleek head

2005-09-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

I just saw the new Jodie Foster film "flight plan" and it got me thinking about remediation and Lisa Gitleman's critique of it. Briefly, the film is about a woman (Foster) who boards a plane from Berlin to New York and wakes up from a nap to find her daughter missing. Rather unfortunately, no one else on the plane remembers seeing a little girl and thinks Jodie is coked out worse than lindsay lohan on the sunset strip. The film takes place on a three-story, 425 passenger-carrying that comes across as quite impressive. There are a bunch of cool looking gizmos, sleek television screens displaying all sorts of information and much of the electronic infrastructure of the plane is revealed during the course of the film. Yet afterwards I couldn't quite decide how remediation applied to this movie--was there more immediacy because the director and cinematographer created a credible airplane environment? Or was hypermediacy closer to what the director achieved, with the many quick-cuts and the onslaught of icily colored, hard modern surfaces? Although the effects were seamless enough to create a realistic claustrophobic environment, it certainly resembled no airplaine I'd ever been on (especially with the glamazon stewardesses and swank cocktail lounge).

But I think the tension that exists in this film between hypermediacy and immediacy (however loose the definitions of those words may be) is not necessarily which representational effect wins out in the end, but how one goes about (re)creating an environment that is supposed to be real and unreal at the same time. Digital technologies present the opportunity to create new worlds that are supposed to be unknown to a potential audience, but ones that can be labeled as "authentic" or "realistic" at the same time. I've never been on a huge plane or toured the insides of one, but I sure felt swept along by Foster & co. at the theater.

So when Gitelman distills Bolter and Grusin's point ( for lack of a better word) about remediation, she rather tersely suggests that all they set out to explain was why aspects of certain media seem to reference older media in an attempt to highlight its obsolesence. I think Gitelman misses the point here, and that B&G were actually arguing for a more aggregative effect rather than a usurpatory (is there such a word? could there be?) one. While film incorporates photography, Gitelman makes it seem like film's existence proves photography's uselessness or lays bare its weaknesses. I think B&G were trying to say that new techonologies can only be consumed if their referent is made clear and they use what came before as building blocks, not because they subjugate earlier forms of media and seek to "improve" them in some kind of Darwinian struggle.

[Hopefully the length of this post will make up for last week's singular entry. Then again, my rambling may count against me. What plucky situations I get myself into!]

McLuhan and the old guard

2005-09-19T12:27:00.000-07:00

Reading McLuhan was particularly maddening for me. He seemed to arbitrarily draw distinctions between various forms of media without offering convincing support for his conclusions. I really didn't follow his descriptions of "hot" and "cold" forms of media, which I think also partly stems from the fact that movies and television (and their respective industries) have changed dramatically since the mid-'60s. The demise of the studio system and the birth of cable might cause McLuhan to rethink his views on the temperature of each medium. His blanket generalizations were also troubling: saying that "most TV stars are men ("cool characters") while movie stars are women (hot)" and "radio is the medium for frenzy, and it has been the major means of hotting up the tribal blood of Africa, et. al. Tv has cooled Cuba down, as it is cooling down America." Perhaps Rodney King and the OJ Trial and Watergate and Clarence Thomas are exceptions to the rule? What on earth is he talking about? How do these statements contribute meaningfully to the discourse of media studies?

Resisting media as a form of..?

2005-09-17T14:24:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking recently about a professor of mine this semester. She writes on her syllabus that we are not to send e-mail if we want to get in touch with her; upon further prodding, she admitted that she hates using email and at the moment she has over 1,500 messages in her inbox. Now, when we get to campus Pomona instructs us that we are responsible for regularly checking our email and that often official/important stuff will be sent to us via e-mail. How then is it acceptable for a professor to turn her back on e-mail simply because she doesn't like it? What kind of message does that send to her students and the community in general when she holds herself to a different standard? But perhaps her stance reveals something a bit more meaningful--could resisting dominant forms of media/communication be a good thing? Is she cluing the rest of us in to how certain forms of digital media suffocate us?

Just some food for thought.

PS Does anyone get the strange feeling they're keeping a Doogie Howser-esque journal by doing this?

Ong-tastic

2005-09-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

Many of Ong's observations sent me back to high school Latin and Ancient Greek classes. In high school I read some rather large chunks of the Aeneid and Euripides' "Medea," and so often the grammatical constructions employed seemed overly repetitive and cumbersome. The Romans adored using "and" and the Greeks swore by "not only...but also" with such alarming frequency, and whenever I questioned it I was just told "that's how they wrote back then" or that it was just some sort of linguistic idiosyncracy that could not be explained. But as Ong sketches out, the combination of poetic meter and certain understood semantic patterns were an important feature of oral cultures. And while the Greeks and Romans were obviously not solely oral peoples, the development of consistent written language was certainly in its infancy.

I'm sure I could write more, but if we're supposed to be keeping up with the whole class, shouldn't we be limiting these posts to manageable lengths?

Virtual Reality? How 1995...

2005-09-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Someone else in the class recently noticed how terribly dated many of the examples Bolter and Grusin use in their discussion of Remediation are, and their incessant allusions to "virtual reality" seems a tad laughable by today's standards. Does anyone else remember that show on Fox called "VR.5" from the mid-90s?? So key. Anyway, while I think the boys made a few good points (especially about the importance of socio-economic aspects of media), I found a lot of their art historical analyses problematic. One of the more troublesome sentences was : "what characterizes modern art is an insistence that the viewer keep coming back to the surface or, in extreme cases, an attempt to hold the viewer at the surface indefinitely." Uh, excuse me? What does that even mean? This rather meaningless statement is doubly surprising considering the authors' familiarity with the break between modernism and postmodernism within the world of literary theory. Yet I suppose that goes to show that an acquaintance with the theory of one discipline does not always translate to equally agile observations about the work of another discipline.

technological ineptitude?

2005-09-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

or perhaps ineptitiude in general?