Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Expanding Your Horizons
Today in COMM 140 (Media Criticism) we were talking about sexuality in media. There was a lovely moment when the roles in the classroom were switched and the students got to become the teachers. You see, our professor is gay and he was confused when someone mentioned the "reverse cowgirl" position. After we explained the concept to him, he was able to go home with the satisfaction of having learned something new.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Jump-starts
As i sit here ignoring my homework, waiting for a friend to come over so that we can finish watching the 2nd season of The West Wing, my favorite television show, i find myself thinking about the many guest performers on the show who go on to have bigger roles in different shows. So i thought i'd take a minute to make a list of all the ones i could think of. Mostly as a cure for my boredom, but hopefully as a cure to yours as well.
It's a really cool show.
- Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica (admittedly, he wasn't a nobody - he did get an Oscar nomination back in 1989)
- Jorja Fox, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
- Lisa Edelstein, House
- Reiko Aylesworth, 24
- Ian McShane, Deadwood
- Emily Procter, CSI: Miami
- Terry O'Quinn, Lost
- Mark Harmon, NCIS
- Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewives
- Mary Louise Parker, Weeds (again, not an unknown - she was already a Tony-winning stage actress)
- Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
It's a really cool show.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Important events
So i guess i'll do an obligatory 9/11 blog entry now, this being the first 9/11 of this blog.
Someone had the great idea of assigning all the COMM 140 classes readings about 9/11 for today. Because, you know, dwelling on things often helps.
i remember 9/11.
i was in seventh grade. That was a pretty long time ago, i feel like. 9/11 happened before a lot of other important events in my life. It happened before i...
What am i saying? Often i am unsure, but this time i think i'm trying to make some point about how 9/11 is something completely in the past for me. As far as my own personal life is concerned, i've moved on. Was it a big deal? Yes. Did lots of people die unnecessarily? Yes. Are our soldiers still dying overseas? Yes. Unnecessarily? i think maybe so. For the life of me i still can't figure out just what we're doing in Iraq. But that's a different thing altogether and i don't know enough to get into it right now.
So let's call this my conclusion. It was stupid idea to read about 9/11 on 9/11. It doesn't enhance our understanding of media more than it would on any other day, it just combines that understanding of media with a bunch of twisted memories that for all practical purposes no longer have tangible effects on most of our lives.
Maybe i'm way off base. It certainly wouldn't be the first time., and please tell me if you think i'm being an insensitive jerk about this. But right now, this is what i'm feeling. Let's move on as best as we can. i apparently already have without even trying.
Someone had the great idea of assigning all the COMM 140 classes readings about 9/11 for today. Because, you know, dwelling on things often helps.
i remember 9/11.
i was in seventh grade. That was a pretty long time ago, i feel like. 9/11 happened before a lot of other important events in my life. It happened before i...
- was in any major drama productions
- started playing jazz on my saxophone
- became a Christian
- moved to Germany
- started high school
- traveled to Israel, Japan, or many of the countries in central Europe
- ever thought about college - i was just getting out of that phase where every son wants to be like his dad and i thought i was going to be in the army
What am i saying? Often i am unsure, but this time i think i'm trying to make some point about how 9/11 is something completely in the past for me. As far as my own personal life is concerned, i've moved on. Was it a big deal? Yes. Did lots of people die unnecessarily? Yes. Are our soldiers still dying overseas? Yes. Unnecessarily? i think maybe so. For the life of me i still can't figure out just what we're doing in Iraq. But that's a different thing altogether and i don't know enough to get into it right now.
So let's call this my conclusion. It was stupid idea to read about 9/11 on 9/11. It doesn't enhance our understanding of media more than it would on any other day, it just combines that understanding of media with a bunch of twisted memories that for all practical purposes no longer have tangible effects on most of our lives.
Maybe i'm way off base. It certainly wouldn't be the first time., and please tell me if you think i'm being an insensitive jerk about this. But right now, this is what i'm feeling. Let's move on as best as we can. i apparently already have without even trying.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Moral of the Story
i just took a look at msnbc.com and saw a link that asked, "What can men learn from the tortoise?" My curiosity led me to an article called "Discover the Secret of Slow." This is what i learned:
Apparently, men are impatient. We want quick answers to our problems. If we take our time, slow down a bit, then a lot of things in our lives could be more enjoyable and efficient.
Oh wait, i didn't actually learn that from the article. i learned that from life and, you know, living. But i guess the guy who wrote the article decided he needed to write about it anyway. He gives all sorts of examples from slowing down when you eat (you'll get full off of less food and lose weight!), to not getting angry so quickly (because when you get angry quickly, other people tend to not take it so well!). He even took a moment to let us know that if we slow down while having sex, the woman we're with will enjoy it more - fortunately, he takes the time to remind us that if she enjoys it more, there's a better chance of it happening more often, so don't worry guys! This tip is self-serving too! (So that we're clear, i don't plan on needing this last piece of advice for a good long while - no ding-ding without the wedding ring.)
i'm just a little baffled that someone got paid money to write this article. As if we can't just look around at the world, see how fast everything is moving without benefit, and take that as enough of an indication that we need to back off a bit. We are an inherently selfish race, we want things quickly, we want them now, and we don't want to share. Perhaps that's what baffles me so much about this thing. It says, in effect, that if we don't take our time, our selfishness takes over, gets in the way, and we aren't able to get what we want. It seems to me that the solution to this problem is to be less selfish. But the writer disagrees. He thinks the solution is simply to be as selfish (if not more), but to be slower about it. Because then our selfishness actually pays off!
Wow. The tale of the tortoise and the hare has been around for an awfully long time, and this writer thinks he has finally unlocked the secret moral of the story. People think our problem is our impatience. But i'm pretty sure it's not just all in the timing. If our motivations and desires aren't pure and just and righteous, then it doesn't matter if your actions are fast, slow, or indifferent because the outcome can't possibly be the best available option.
Apparently, men are impatient. We want quick answers to our problems. If we take our time, slow down a bit, then a lot of things in our lives could be more enjoyable and efficient.
Oh wait, i didn't actually learn that from the article. i learned that from life and, you know, living. But i guess the guy who wrote the article decided he needed to write about it anyway. He gives all sorts of examples from slowing down when you eat (you'll get full off of less food and lose weight!), to not getting angry so quickly (because when you get angry quickly, other people tend to not take it so well!). He even took a moment to let us know that if we slow down while having sex, the woman we're with will enjoy it more - fortunately, he takes the time to remind us that if she enjoys it more, there's a better chance of it happening more often, so don't worry guys! This tip is self-serving too! (So that we're clear, i don't plan on needing this last piece of advice for a good long while - no ding-ding without the wedding ring.)
i'm just a little baffled that someone got paid money to write this article. As if we can't just look around at the world, see how fast everything is moving without benefit, and take that as enough of an indication that we need to back off a bit. We are an inherently selfish race, we want things quickly, we want them now, and we don't want to share. Perhaps that's what baffles me so much about this thing. It says, in effect, that if we don't take our time, our selfishness takes over, gets in the way, and we aren't able to get what we want. It seems to me that the solution to this problem is to be less selfish. But the writer disagrees. He thinks the solution is simply to be as selfish (if not more), but to be slower about it. Because then our selfishness actually pays off!
Wow. The tale of the tortoise and the hare has been around for an awfully long time, and this writer thinks he has finally unlocked the secret moral of the story. People think our problem is our impatience. But i'm pretty sure it's not just all in the timing. If our motivations and desires aren't pure and just and righteous, then it doesn't matter if your actions are fast, slow, or indifferent because the outcome can't possibly be the best available option.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
i is just another pronoun.
For a rather long time now, in my journal writing or my note taking, i have been writing the word "i" without capitalizing it. i am unsure just how this diminished literary self of mine came about, but for whatever reason i quite like it (or i probably would not continue to do it). i noticed a couple days ago, though, that here in the blogosphere i have continued to capitalize the first person singular. i'm gonna stop that too. "i" is not a proper name, it is merely another pronoun and therefore deserves no special treatment as far as i can tell by the rules of grammar. So i'm going to refer to myself the way it makes sense to me. In lowercase. And i guess i thought you should know.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
A perfectly normal form of human behavior.
I like to keep things on the down-low. I don't like to advertise my junk. I like to work my stuff out with a few close friends (my inner circle) and once I've worked through it, perhaps I'll relay the information to some other good friends (my outer circle) if it serves a purpose. (NOTE: these circles are not planned or intentionally structured, so their labels are the result of observation, not design. Don't get all uptight if I include you with or exclude you from a given notion of relationship.) Let's call this whole process the result of my INFJ personality.
Seth and Dack are two UNC members of my inner circle. But on Friday they both went away for a Psalm 100 retreat where they would sing songs and get to know the new members of their a cappella group. But that was okay, my circle was still unbroken.
Until Sunday afternoon, when Joel and Wyatt, who I would describe as the other two UNC members of this inner circle, simultaneously decided to go back to their homes to spend the afternoon and night with their families. Well that was all well and good, and I'm glad they got to see their families, but I had just a little bit of an existential crisis. I didn't know what to. I was a little lost, and more than a little confused. I just wasn't quite sure how to function with all four of them away from the campus at the same time. But that was okay, because I found Kevin. Kevin had been planning on going out to a friend's lake house in Hickory for the night, but did not want to drive out there alone. He extended an invitation, I accepted, and off we went to meet Andy, Joseph, Noah, and Mike. We arrived, played some Smash Bros., had us a good time.
And then on Monday, we went out on the lake. Which brings me to my primary story. We went tubing, which consists of holding on very tightly to an inner tube that is being pulled behind a speedboat that Andy is steering like a madman and (I'm convinced) actually trying his hardest to throw you off the tube. And I noticed myself thinking as I observed Kevin or Joesph or Mike out there on that inner tube, occasionally lifted from the water or swung out to the side of the inner tube, barely recovering their strength in time to climb back on a keep going, that this looks like it could only be act of one lacking mental senses. It looks straight up crazy. Why would someone do this? It wasn't particularly painful, not especially unsafe, but nonetheless, surely it wasn't quite sane. Of course, it's easy to have that opinion from the boat. Once you are actually out there on the inner tube, those thoughts of insanity disappear rather quickly and as the engines rev up, you find yourself thinking instead, "Why, this is a perfectly natural form of human behavior."
Sometimes it's the action that seems least beneficial, least acceptable, least intellectually sound, that is in reality the best action to take. Maybe it's the risk, maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's just the company you keep. I don't know what it is, but putting yourself out there in the hands of a crazy man driving a boat, just doing your best to hang on for as long as you can, having no choice but to trust the circumstances and other people, well, that seems like the kind of exhilaration that we don't see enough of nowadays.
Thanks guys. It was a good time.
Seth and Dack are two UNC members of my inner circle. But on Friday they both went away for a Psalm 100 retreat where they would sing songs and get to know the new members of their a cappella group. But that was okay, my circle was still unbroken.
Until Sunday afternoon, when Joel and Wyatt, who I would describe as the other two UNC members of this inner circle, simultaneously decided to go back to their homes to spend the afternoon and night with their families. Well that was all well and good, and I'm glad they got to see their families, but I had just a little bit of an existential crisis. I didn't know what to. I was a little lost, and more than a little confused. I just wasn't quite sure how to function with all four of them away from the campus at the same time. But that was okay, because I found Kevin. Kevin had been planning on going out to a friend's lake house in Hickory for the night, but did not want to drive out there alone. He extended an invitation, I accepted, and off we went to meet Andy, Joseph, Noah, and Mike. We arrived, played some Smash Bros., had us a good time.
And then on Monday, we went out on the lake. Which brings me to my primary story. We went tubing, which consists of holding on very tightly to an inner tube that is being pulled behind a speedboat that Andy is steering like a madman and (I'm convinced) actually trying his hardest to throw you off the tube. And I noticed myself thinking as I observed Kevin or Joesph or Mike out there on that inner tube, occasionally lifted from the water or swung out to the side of the inner tube, barely recovering their strength in time to climb back on a keep going, that this looks like it could only be act of one lacking mental senses. It looks straight up crazy. Why would someone do this? It wasn't particularly painful, not especially unsafe, but nonetheless, surely it wasn't quite sane. Of course, it's easy to have that opinion from the boat. Once you are actually out there on the inner tube, those thoughts of insanity disappear rather quickly and as the engines rev up, you find yourself thinking instead, "Why, this is a perfectly natural form of human behavior."
Sometimes it's the action that seems least beneficial, least acceptable, least intellectually sound, that is in reality the best action to take. Maybe it's the risk, maybe it's the adrenaline, maybe it's just the company you keep. I don't know what it is, but putting yourself out there in the hands of a crazy man driving a boat, just doing your best to hang on for as long as you can, having no choice but to trust the circumstances and other people, well, that seems like the kind of exhilaration that we don't see enough of nowadays.
Thanks guys. It was a good time.
Unfettered Men
So this is the first of what I think will be at least a few separate posts about the beginning of the year. The topic of discussion is the small group biblia study I'm leading with Mr. Amazingface, Wyatt Bruton. Although it is considered by some more boring individuals to be the Olde Campus (Upper and Lower Quads) Men's biblia study with InterVarsity, we all know that it is in fact the Unfettered Men of the Hill. It was important to Wyatt and me that that idea remained a solid part of the group. So in our first meeting, we talked a little bit about what we want the group to be, sort of our vision for the guys over the course of the year. Wyatt put it best by putting it simply: we want to be a Community of Men. That capital "M" is important, and even provided the inspiration for the title of my last post, because attempting to define Man, rather than just man, is ultimately what we want to do. What does it mean to be a Godly Man, living in righteousness, following the words of Christ? Now, this may sound like the premise for an IV LifeGroup, a more topical sort of environment, but it isn't! It is a biblia study - this semester we're looking at Mark, and part of our goal is to use Christ's life as an example for how to live as a Man. Hopefully we'll find ample opportunity to create links between Jesus' life and ours, not only in terms of general lifestyle, but also masculinity and brotherhood.
But that's not all we hope to accomplish! See, that was only the "Men" part, but we're also a Community - pay attention here because this is where the Unfettered part becomes important. To be Unfettered is to be completely unbound by anything that might be tripping you up - that means that we want the guys in our group to be completely uninhibited in their love for Christ and unashamed in their love for each other. A guy need guys to talk to, to be vulnerable with. Not all the time, obviously, just when he's got a problem with his self-esteem. It can be extremely important at certain times, and we want to make sure we observe those times so that we can ensure that the members of our Community can be free from bindings and shackles and those things that can eat away at us.
So yeah. Community. Being there for each other, supporting each other, enjoying each other's company, following Jesus' example in brotherhood. Men. Stepping up, being responsible, taking action when action is called for, following Jesus' example in lifestyle and manhood. That's what we'd like to see happen. Maybe it won't happen for everyone, maybe it won't happen on the deepest levels, and that's okay. As long as we are constantly striving to follow Jesus and better understand and help and love our brother, then we'll know that in that striving, we're doing at least one thing right.
But that's not all we hope to accomplish! See, that was only the "Men" part, but we're also a Community - pay attention here because this is where the Unfettered part becomes important. To be Unfettered is to be completely unbound by anything that might be tripping you up - that means that we want the guys in our group to be completely uninhibited in their love for Christ and unashamed in their love for each other. A guy need guys to talk to, to be vulnerable with. Not all the time, obviously, just when he's got a problem with his self-esteem. It can be extremely important at certain times, and we want to make sure we observe those times so that we can ensure that the members of our Community can be free from bindings and shackles and those things that can eat away at us.
So yeah. Community. Being there for each other, supporting each other, enjoying each other's company, following Jesus' example in brotherhood. Men. Stepping up, being responsible, taking action when action is called for, following Jesus' example in lifestyle and manhood. That's what we'd like to see happen. Maybe it won't happen for everyone, maybe it won't happen on the deepest levels, and that's okay. As long as we are constantly striving to follow Jesus and better understand and help and love our brother, then we'll know that in that striving, we're doing at least one thing right.
Capital "M"
My goodness, this is rather a difficult thing to keep up with now that i'm back at school. There is so much to write about, I fear my face will quite literally melt with anticipation and/or otherwise excitement.
Consider this post merely a declaration of intent. I intend to relay the events of the past week or so, including Unfettered Men of the Hill, the minor emotional roller coaster that was a cappella auditions (think Busch Gardens, not Carowinds), an enjoyable trip to a lake house (which did not, in fact, involve Keanu Reeves sending me letters from the past), and perhaps a few other goodies. We shall see.
But now the hour grows late and we've tarried here for too long. Fly, you fools.
Consider this post merely a declaration of intent. I intend to relay the events of the past week or so, including Unfettered Men of the Hill, the minor emotional roller coaster that was a cappella auditions (think Busch Gardens, not Carowinds), an enjoyable trip to a lake house (which did not, in fact, involve Keanu Reeves sending me letters from the past), and perhaps a few other goodies. We shall see.
But now the hour grows late and we've tarried here for too long. Fly, you fools.
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