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
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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.
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?
What would you like to see happen in 2008?
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, December 21, 2007
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
Health Insurance Companies
Pharmaceutical Companies
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Teen_Dies_Hours_after_CIGNA_Approves_Liver_Transplant_12078.html
Thursday, December 20, 2007
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.
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.
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