Delicious

I love that Edwards - a dude I like- is running on the same platform that early cold war Reagan did. Wonder what my neo-con friends have to say about that?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/30/edwards_fights_to_the_finish_1.html?nav=rss_email/components

The Best

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/features/2007/year-in-review/?nav=rss_email/components

I believe the best part about the end of the year is remembering how good it was. It gives me room to think that perhaps the next will be even better, and try to imagine how.

Wish for the New Year

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/12/30/confetti.wishes.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

What would you like to see happen in 2008?

Merry Christmas, friends.

Cool

I don't want it to sound like I am tooting my own horn, here, but I have almost finished up my syllabus for the class I am teaching in the spring, and it looks awesome. Check out the readings, and feel free to make suggestions:

Unit One: The Resurgence of Fantasy as Hip.

Jan 23 (W): Kidd, Dustin. “Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.1 (2007): 69-89.

Jan 25 (F): Strimel, Courtney B. “The Politics of Terror.” Children’s Literature in Education 35.1 (March 2004): 35-52.

Jan 28 (M): Hunter, John C. “The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Critical Mythology and The Lord of the Rings.” Journal of Modern Literature **************************

Jan 30 (W): Lord of the Rings Reading coming soon!

Unit Two: Sci-fi: Us (usually Americans) and Them

Feb 1 (F): Geraghty, Lincoln. “Creating and Comparing Myth in Twentiety-Century Science Fiction: Star Trek and Star Wars.” Literature Film Quarterly 33.3 (2005): 191-200.

Feb 4 (M): Lancashire, Anne. “Attack of the Clones and the Politics of Star Wars.” The Dalhousie Review 82.2 (Summer 2002): 235-253.

Feb 6 (W): Geraghty, Lincoln. “The American Jeremiad and Star Trek’s Puritan Legacy.” Journal of the Fantastic 14.2 (2003): 228- 245.

Feb 8 (F): Lagon, Mark P. “’We Owe it to Them to Interfere’: Star Trek and US Statecraft in the 1960’s and 1990’s.” Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 34.3 (Fall 1993): 251-264.

Unit Three: In Which You Get Some Action

Feb 11 (M): Indiana Jones, coming soon

Feb 13 (W): Indiana Jones, coming soon

Feb 15 (F): Jancovich, Mark. “Modernity and Subjectivity in The Terminator: The Machine as Monster in Contemporary American Culture.” The Velvet Light Trap 30 (Fall 1992): 3-17.

Feb 18 (M): Goscilo, Margaret. “Deconstructing the Terminator.” Film Criticism 12.2 (1998): 37-52.

Unit 4: The Universally Accepted Symbols for America: Disney and McDonald’s

Feb 22 (F): Boje, David; Driver, Michaela; Yue cai. “Fiction and Humor in Transforming McDonald’s Narrative Strategies.” Culture and Organization 11.3 (September 2005): 195-208
AND
Kramer, Gina. “McDomination: Trade and the Golden Arches.” Harvard International Review 22.2 (Summer 2000): 12-13.

Feb 25 (M): Helmer, James. “Love on a Bun: How McDonald’s Won the Burger Wars.” Journal of Popular Culture ***********: 85-97.
AND
“Don’t Trash McDonald’s.” New Perspectives Quarterly 18.4 (Fall 2001): 12-13.

Feb 27 (W): Do Rozario, Rebecca-Anne C. “The Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney Princess.” Women’s Studies in Communication 27.1 (Spring 2004): 34-59.

Feb 29 (F): Hurley, Dorothy I. “Seeing White: Children of Color and the Disney Fairy Tale Princess.” Journal of Negro Education 74.3 (Spring 2005): 221-232.

Mar 3 (M): Tanner, Litsa Renee; Haddock, Shelley A.; Zimmerman, Toni Schindles, Lund, Lori K. “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31.5 (October 2003): 355-373

Unit 5: Cartoons for Big Kids

Mar 5 (W): Bruna, Katherine Richardson. “Addicted to Democracy: South Park and the Salutary Effects of Agitation (Reflections of a Ranting and Raving South Park Junkie).” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47.8 (May 2004): 692-697.

Mar 7 (F): Lewis, Todd V. “Religious Rhetoric and the Comic Frame in The Simpsons.” Journal of Media and Religion 1.13 (2002): 153-165.

Mar 17 (M): Baybee, Carl; Overbeck, Ashley. “Home Simpson Explains our Postmodern Identity Crisis, Whether We Like it or Not: Media Literacy after The Simpsons.” Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education 1.1 (2001):N/A.

Mar 19 (W): Mittell, Jason. “Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of the Simpsons.” Velvet Light Trap 47 (2001): 15-30.

Unit 6: Rock Your World (or We Will Rock You, take your pick): Elvis and the Beatles

Mar 26 (W): Carlson, Thomas C. “Ad Hoc Rock: Elvis and the Aesthetics of Post-Modernism.” Studies in Popular Culture 16.2 (1994): 39-50.

Mar 28 (F): Wilson, Charles Reagan. “’Just a Little Talk with Jesus’: Elvis Presley, Religious Music, and Southern Spirituality.” ************************************

Mar 31 (M): Moorman, Charles. “Those Heroic Beatles.” Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 8 (1969): 75-89.

Apr 2 (W): Kimsey, John. “How the Beatles Invented the A-Bomb.” Proteus 18.1 (Spring 2001): 6-12

Unit 7: Superheroes

Apr 4(F): Genter, Robert. “’With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’: Cold War Culture and the Birth of Marvel Comics.” Journal of Popular Culture 40.6 (2007): 953-978.

Apr 7 (M): Kozloff, Sarah R. “Superman as Saviour: Christian Allegory in the Superman Movies.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 9.2 (1981): 78-82

Apr 9 (W): Brody, Michael. “Batman: Psychic Trauma and Its Solution.” Journal of Popular Culture *************:171-179.

Apr 11 (F): Killian, Kyle. “Batman (and World War III) Begins: Hollywood Takes on Terror.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 19.1 (2007):77-82.

Apr 14 (M): Richardson, Niall. “The Gospel According to Spider-Man.” The Journal of Popular Culture 37.4 (2004): 694-703.

Apr 16 (W): Emad, Mitra C. “Reading Wonder Woman’s Body: Mythologies of Gender and Nation.” Journal of Popular Culture 39.6 (2006): 954-984.

Apr 18 (F): Jones, Sara Gwenllian. “Histories, Fictions, and Xena: Warrior Princess.” Television and New Media 1.4 (November 2000): 403-418.

Apr 21 (M): Morreale, Joanne. “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp.” Journal of Popular Culture *************: 79-86.

Apr 23 (W): Owen, A. Susan. “Vampires, Postmodernity, and Postfeminism: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 27.2 (Summer 1999): 24-31.

Apr 25 (F): Leigh, Harbin. “’You Know You Wanna Dance’: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Contemporary Gothic Heroine.” Studies in the Humanities 32.1 (2005): 22-37.

Public Enemy Number One

While Big Oil and Big Tobacco are bad, there are two groups I feel will have a harsher circle in hell:

Health Insurance Companies
Pharmaceutical Companies

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Teen_Dies_Hours_after_CIGNA_Approves_Liver_Transplant_12078.html

Keeping the Christ in Christmas...

What a joke.

I get so frustrated when I hear about the "war on Christmas." Seriously, what a crock. Let's review:

Christmas was not originally a Christian holiday. It was a pagan celebration that we modified because everybody was doing it anyway. That tree you've got - it's a shrine to some kind of German tree-god.

Christ was probably born in the spring - more specifically, scholars think April. All those songs about mid-winter and snow and whatnot are pretty, but misplaced.

"X-mas" is not sacreligious. That does not mean you want Christ out of the picture. "X" is an abbreviation for Christ. It is the first letter in the Greek spelling of the word. Ranting about that is just an announcement to the world that you have no idea what you are saying, but you really like saying it.

American Christians are the most powerful people in the world. Why do we get so defensive when somebody suggests that other groups have a little voice in the public sphere? Could it be we are insecure and maybe like to deny that we have such pull. Christ tells us in the Bible that Christians are supposed to have it rough - Blessed are the persecuted and whatnot. Is the fact that we are so comfortable and complacent some kind of comment on our faith? I won't leave that as a rhetorical question - yes, it is a comment on just that.

Finally - throwing Christmas in somebody's face doesn't make you Jesus's favorite. Period. The world is supposed to recognize you as a follower of Christ because of the love you display. Ranting and raving in public that everybody should recognize your way of doing things isn't love - it is arrogance that is meant to compensate for your own downfallings.

If you want people to appreciate the Christianity of Christmas, do Christian things. Give money. Do it anonymously. Make cookies for your neighbors. Call your friends and relatives just to say hey. Here's a big one - be polite and thankful to those in the service industry. Tell the custodians and the mail clerks that you appreciate them because the place wouldn't run without them. Smile at people - all people. When a homeless person asks you for money, take them to McDonald's. Give to the Salvation Army. Hell, volunteer to ring bells for the Salvation Army. If you need to give presents to people who don't need anything, donate a water well or a couple of chickens in their name to a poor village.

It seems to me that's the way to go about Christmas. Go Jesus!

Happy Holidays.

seriously, what kind of church is this?

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.moviecitynews.com/arrays/images/2004/narnia/NarniaMap_fullsize.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.moviecitynews.com/arrays/2005/narnia_map.html&h=1692&w=2244&sz=1359&hl=en&start=2&sig2=KpfJU7lFz8uX_BEZGL2hWg&tbnid=DJv3w83Gywf8mM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&ei=7-BmR5TNBYm8hAK6hqSMDg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnarnia%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX

I have been asked to teach a Sunday School class in the spring about theology and the Chronicles of Narnia. These Lutherans have a real hankerin' for heresy.

Insight

I just came from helping with the children's Christmas celebration at church. It was a train wreck, especially the stuff I was in charge of, but it was a cute train wreck. If I do this next year I am going to ask for a bit more creative control, so I don't have a bunch of 4-7th graders trying to understand kid-unfriendly, poorly written, clearly created by somebody who had no notion of drama or theater dialogue. These things are always a disaster and that's because idiots write the script.

That being said, as I was leaving I heard somethinig that, at first, made me cringe, but now I find it amusing and insightful:

"Well, if you think about it, the real Joseph was probably just as bewildered as our Joseph looked."

True dat.

free speech and other bedevilments

http://austinist.com/2007/12/11/this_weeks_lame.php

I love that we have free speech. I also have this weird "respect-all-people-love-your-neighbor" thing that mosaicme gives me a hard time about. Something about a bleeding heart.

This, and things like it, present a conundrum. It seems to me that those folks are well within their rights. That does not make it, however, right. In this postmodern world words "right" and "wrong" are touchy subjects, but I sort of like a Baudrillard/post-structural view: there is a right and a wrong, but it is defined by whatever discourse we are operating in. At some point there probably was a definite right and wrong, but that has been translated so many times we wouldn't recognize the original if we were looking at it. Sorta like the Bible.

Anyway, what is the proper way to respond to this? Can I condemn their actions without condoning censorship? (That's actually a really interesting question, and if I had the balls I'd start talking about that myspace tragedy where the young woman killed herself because of her online boyfriend, who turned out to be a neighbor. But I don't have the balls for that, so we'll stay where we are for now.)

It seems to me that Foucault presents a kind of answer here. Sure, that is allowed, but judging from the reaction the nature of the discourse we operate in takes care of it. Read the comments - one says something about these people never getting a job. They are being disciplined both now, by other subjects, and the prediction is that they will continue to be disciplined. The question that lingers is "is this ENOUGH discipline for such a seemingly outrageous act?" It would seem that it is, or something else would have happened by now. Until the discourse is changed this reaction is precisely what is appropriate, according to our own positions and disciplining of the discourse. Is this a cop-out? Maybe. Is it an interesting application of theory? Definitely.

Another thing mentioned in the comments here is worth considering. How is this any more or less appropriate than any number of other costumes? How many of us have seen "dead terrorist" costumes or "aborted fetus" costumes? The discourse seems arbitrary in its discipline of taste. What does that say about us, the subjects?

Thanks to the good folks at the Blogora for this story.

Yeah, me too! I HATE sick people. And I HATE poor people. And kids - don't get me started. But you know what the worst is?...

The sick kid of a poor person.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/12/bush.schip/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

First, let me say that I am not blindly endorsing anything. I can understand why one would want salary caps and to make sure that only adults are covered. That being said, as a Socialist I don't see the problem with universal health care and taking all the health insurance and pharmaceutical CEO's and putting them in a chain gang in southern Louisiana. It will warm them up for the hell they are destined to spend eternity in. The idea of making huge, windfall profits from other people's serious illnesses seems...um, immoral.

The favorite excuse is, of course, that unless we are charged an arm and a leg for medicine and health care, there is no money for research. Sure - research costs money. I get that. Some money needs to made. But I won't list the amount of money these companies pocket OUTSIDE of research for fear that one of you, dear readers, may go on a shooting spree.

If you have never been sick, or have never known somebody who is sick there is no way you can possible grasp the seriousness of this issue. And I don't mean "Damn, I got the flu this season." I mean actually debilitated. It is nearly impossible to get out of the debt that causes when you HAVE insurance. If you don't, you generally just die. And not pleasantly - or just continue to get worse and more useless. And you know what's weird? It is the poor who tend to get these really bad sicknesses and illnesses - it's like they don't take care of themselves to begin with or something. I mean, how expensive can a healthy diet, preventative medicine, and regular check-ups with various kinds of doctors really cost? Oh, wait...

Point being (and I have tried really hard to make this rant cogent and not just a spewing stream of the bile it deserves) that we cost ourselves more by not taking care of each other. And even more importantly - what kind of human being can sit by and not care about the well-being of those around them?

I think there is something in the Bible about that. There He is is again - Stupid Jesus! Always trying to cut into our profit margin.

Hot

Even if you don't support the WGA strike (WHAT KIND OF PERSON ARE YOU?!!?) you have to dig this:

http://laist.com/2007/12/10/photo_essay_picketing_trekkies.php

Hannah and Her Sisters

The best theology is in popular culture.

W: If there is a God, why do bad things happen? I mean, very simplistically, why were there Nazis?

D: I don't even know how the can opener works, how the hell should I know why there were Nazis?

Networking I can get behind

www.shelfari.com


Show me what books you think I should be reading!

greatest ad ever

Except, not really. I heard an ad on the radio this morning that made me laugh out loud. And I am pretty sure that was not the intention. If it weren't so funny, I'd be mad that somebody got paid for this. Remember how I feel about hacks.

The voice-over begins:

"Hi, I'm Dr. S0andSo from Someplace. Did you know the most common cause of fatigue is lack of sleep?"

Yes. Yes I did.

I am a juniper berry - yay for martinis! (the real ones, none of that vodka crap! James Bond be damned!)

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/1869168367532779122/Which-Spice-Are-You

as we speak

I am proctoring an exam right now. I feel like this is the best exam I have written. This has been a hard skill for me to learn, but the bigger my classes get, the more important it becomes. Because I am not going grade 140 papers. I just won't.

I had a nice moment earlier. One of the students currently taking my exam (she's two rows away from me, in fact) told me in the beginning of the semester she had every intention of dropping my class. On the first day she changed her mind. She came by to tell me she was so glad she did not drop and it was her favorite class. As I typed this sentence another came up to turn in her exam and tell me she had been bragging to the head of the dept. about me. This is not to toot my own horn. This is a moment of zen, and sometimes those need to be shared, a la Jen.

I'm sure I will have something more relevant to your life later today. But for now, I hope you are the type of person who gets joy out of seeing somebody with a sense of satisfaction. Because that's me - I am happy with the job I did this semester.

Now if I could just get that dissertation going...

Raise your hand if you are going to hell

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/1203072senate1.html

Why do so many freaks think they make good leaders?

The Greeks had this crazy idea I like to share with my students, and it always gives them some pause.

Those who are capable of ruling are smart enough not to want to. Those who want to rule are not the people who we want in power.

Real fear

Okay, so we all have our health issues. I mentioned one just the other day and I struggle with my weight. Most of the time these things make us furrow our brows and then we move on. We live in a day and age when sickness isn't really scary - we can fix SO much. But we all have those things that we are scared of. We worry about stuff that runs in the family or just the one thing that makes us paranoid.

So today I got news that a run-of-the-mill test came back abnormal. The test that every woman wants to avoid, but has to have because when those things go wrong, they can go really wrong. The doctor's office called me, and the moment the nurse said hello and gave her name I froze. I know they don't bother calling unless something is wrong. She explained that most likely it is nothing and things should clear up with some meds. But I have to be re-checked in four months.

Of all the health issues that a person can face, this is the variety that scares me the most. It really shook me. It was one of those moments when you instantaneously think of all the plans you have made and start to shake a little because some of them might never happen.

So that's cheerful. Have a great evening.

clearing the air

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html?nav=rss_email/components

I am bipolar. I don't try to kill people around me, I am no more paranoid than anybody else who has been in higher education for nine years, and unless I tell people, no one ever knows that anything is amiss.

I am open about it because I want to clear some things up. People like me are not crazy. We have a chemical imbalance. You wouldn't tell a diabetic that they don't need insulin because it is all in their head. Telling somebody with mental illness to suck it up is just as stupid. I am fully aware that this kind of thing is over-diagnosed. Many people on anti-depressants don't need them - if you lost your job or your mom died you are supposed to be depressed. That's normal. If you are so upset and sad all the time that it becomes debilitating and effects your mental health, your job, or you have dangerous thoughts, you need help. If you are just dissatisfied with your life and want something external to make you happy - then you DO need to suck it up. But I am working on a dissertation, in the healthiest relationship of anyone I know, and volunteer at my church. I am, for all intents and purposes, an active and successful citizen.

Research shows that untreated mental illness, especially schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, can leave scar tissue on the brain. How do you function if your brain is constantly in a state of disrepair?

I can't speak for other people's problems, but I understand why a bipolar person wouldn't want their meds. One of the symptoms of this disease is that my mind moves at about three times the speed of a "normal" person. I could never sleep at night because it was so freakin' noisy in my head. Not hearing voices noisy - can't shut down noisy. Taking the medicine slows you down. You have to slow down or you run yourself to death and separate the rational thoughts from the irrational. That slowing down can be jarring. For many things seem unreal or fuzzy, and some experience a loss of what they think is their creative side. Which is true on some level. I am okay with somewhat diminished energy and creativity because I like being able to string together coherent sentences and being able to recognize my own paranoia.

I get so angry when people disregard mental illness. Of course, if I lose my temper, we can just chalk that up to being bipolar, right? It wouldn't have anything to do with a person's insensitivity and ignorance resulting in a personal insult. I had a professor tell our class once that bipolar people shouldn't be allowed to teach. I considered letting him have it, but I stayed quiet. In some ways, my best argument was to be his ideal student.

I grew up being told that all that "psychobabble" was nonsense and there was no such thing as depression - just weak people. Looking back, I am pretty sure the folks who told me that are the most imbalanced people I know. This sort of thing is genetic, after all.