If fruit begins to taste like cardboard, is it still good for you?
Does it matter whether or not it’s from California?
Save a life, donate to Zorak (for a new computer) April 18, 2007
Why does the industrial section of Leth always smell like playdough? Playdough with extra salt, I mean, what the heck makes that smell? *shudder*
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Well, my server keeps crashing or my mac sounds like it’ll explode everytime I try to play Second Life so I have been unable to procrastinate my last two essays with that pastime (last time finals came around, I developed a neurotic obsession for Paper Mario on the N64, I think it’s simply the NEED for procrastination, I spent at least 20 mintues watching As the World Turns today…that’s pretty long for a soap opera, and Dr. Phil yesterday…). Therefore, as I drove home through the rain, in my mind formed a waking dream that will never come true… …. …..
If I lived in Second Life I would be one of those people who listens to techno on a regular basis. Not because it outshines indie emo but because it would go so much better with the anime-like world. And when techno comes out of a computer, it seems to make more sense. If I lived in SL, I would hit the jazz bar some evenings even though I hate jazz because they have the most awesome dance moves. If I actually lived in SL, I would remember how to access the dance moves and people wouldn’t laugh at me when I walk in a venue because I end up sitting on the middle of the dance floor instead of shaking my bootay.
If I lived in SL, I would learn how to make something people would want to buy. And because it’s SL, they would probably buy anything so I’d make juggling equipment because it’s just that fun. I would make wobbly, flubber-like objects that you can juggle and you don’t drop them because you program your avatar to juggle perfectly. So then I’d be rich. And I’d buy a log cabin and put it in the middle of a metropolis and only have beanbag chairs for furniture. I would drive one of those stand-up scooter things that make you look like one of the X-men.
If I lived in SL, I would be smart enough to only take part in clean living. I would have learned from my first life that gambling and wild sex and all those other things are just going to come back to you in the form of a horrid virus like Micro-iphylus or Mac-herpes. Though you really can’t help it if you accidentally teleport into a crazy bunch of people dressed in cat suits doing something you never wanted to watch through your brown eyes that were purple yesterday and green before. If I lived in Second Life, I would be the snazziest, fittest person ever. I would smoke like a chimney and never die of lung cancer, eat McD’s everyday and never get diabetes, and heck I’d just fly around a lot.
But I don’t live in SL. My avatar looks brand new still because he glitches everytime I try to change his appearance. He took his shoes off and I can’t get them back on and I can’t recognize anyone because they all look like grey blobs since the images take eons to show up. And it makes Zorak (the avatar) sadder than he’s ever been. Right now he’s stuck in the floor planks of some nightclub I tried to go to before the computer starting messing everything up. And there he will stay, for the rest of my Second Life.
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Okay so the rain made me a little melodramatic… give me a break. You’re the one procrastinating and reading this… Oh wait, I’m the one procrastinating and writing this. Jeez.
Not dead yet April 6, 2007
Just for the record, I will resume my witty and essential blogging whenever possible, probably after exams. I think this is probably the best blog I’ve had yet and it’s only going to get better so… KEEEP READING IT! lol
By the way, there has been some murmuring about starting up (or restarting) a sociology club… is there anyone who would be interested in that and if so, what kind of things would you like to do with a crazy soci club? Marx and beer nights are sounding good to me!
Watching The Illusionist and 5 minutes into it… it sucks. I think.
Split Infinitive March 28, 2007
Well you guys can all trust Wikipedia on this, but I still think it’s a kind of giraffe (and if I’d been quick enough this week, I would have changed the Wiki entry to say that).
Man, I would suck at Balderdash.
Porn, eh? March 23, 2007
First, just imagine what sort of pictures Tiffany might have had in her powerpoint if she had been studying penis enlargements instead of breast enlargements. Heh.
Now to porn, that’s sort of one of those subjects we get trained not to touch with a ten foot poll. I remember sometime in my 2nd year I was being taught about socialization by the soci department and about bio/neurological processes by the psych people. This arose in many occasions where I wanted to pit the two against each other and see who would come out triumphant (not very original when you think about the whole nature vs. nurture debate hey?). So, I learned that men physiologically get more turned on by visual images than women do, but I also know that women are socialized to satisfy their sexual needs in different ways (if at all) and that women’s accessibility to porn is a lot less than men’s (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Playgirl mag at a gas station but there’s always Playboy, and let’s face it, Cosmo is not the same as Maxim, at least not yet). So, after coming to these realizations, I don’t know what I really wanted to do to test the two ideas, perhaps put women in a situation where porn is readily accessible and see if they enjoy it! lol but then, you still cannot do away with all the subordinating qualities of porn toward women or control for the socialization of your research subjects. Either way, I let the idea go, but with all the arousal studies being done in psych these days, don’t be surprised if something like this pops up. Or in soci because if you plug “pornography” into Sociological Abstracts, you get 900+ journal articles.
*shrug* well so much for letting my mom read my blog.
Anyways, here is something completely unexpected, at least by me, that combines this past week’s topic with next week’s topic, video games. Here are… I guess World of Warcraft characters singing the song “Internet is for Porn” … umm parental discretion is advised, the lyrics might be a bit PG13 but all in all it’s funny enough.
heh.
Just so everyone knows March 21, 2007
Last week was so not hunky dory because we got out of class early and I was like “YES! Survivor special whoot” but it wasn’t on. Survivor wasn’t on at all last week. And it might be on tonight but jeez am I ticked.
Interesting that you get Bowie popping up if you google image search “hunky dory”
A reading from the book of Mills… March 11, 2007
I know this is a little late, seeing as how the C. Wright Mills lecture was a couple of weeks ago, but there was a multitude of class discussion so fascinating that it just cannot be ignored.
One of the quotes Paul gave us was pertaining to Mills’ charge that we are obligated to spread awareness and that awareness will ultimately solve all the world’s problems. While it is evident that Mills is being idealist, I think it must be pointed out that these ideas are downright evangelical. As someone who spent years of my life trying to save the world by spreading the word of Christianity, I now recognize this charge from academia to save the world by spreading the news of Marx, Weber, and all the other social theorists (heh, apostles? saints? I wonder what they would be in this metaphor). And just like in the realm of religion, there are varying degrees of dedication to such a burden. There are the extremists, forsaking all, giving up the material world, a degree that will get you a job, and the temporary bliss that is ignorance in order to enlighten others and live by your own (usually socialist, unless you’re a functionalist, then you don’t have to change anything) principles. And this works, for a while. Like Paul said, he decided to get a TV again. The thing about going extreme, is that the rest of the world may never become aware. Then you are one voice shouting out into the Lethbridge wind, not conforming to a system that endured long past Marx’s predictions of complete proletariat revolution.
However, not all hope is lost. I believe that there is a happy-medium where we can be conscious people. Others have blogged on this same subject and discussed the little things they do to impact the world in a positive way, the snippets of information they give to friends who want to listen. And I think it’s true that this does make a difference. But I think in a world that is stubborn, it is a huge burden to tell people they have an ‘obligation’ or a ‘calling’ to raise awareness, perhaps that is not something you can instill in another person, s/he has to find it themselves. Therefore, awareness or spreading the truth of sociology or even endeavoring to make the world a better place should not be an evangelistic process – these don’t work, they just get consumerized and devalued, time and again. Rather, it should be a connection of humanity, an understanding that spreads through people bit by bit, small effort by small effort, and eventually makes a difference.
That’s just my opinion, heck, you don’t have to listen to me! I made the biggest blooper the other day. At the end of my soci 4200 class I declared, “You know, sociology is a lot like religion.” and the prof said, “Uh huh and which theorist focused on that?” and like five people shouted, “Durkheim!!!” … Well, I guess I didn’t remember a lot from my last theory class or didn’t read good ol’ Durky because he was at the end, but jeez was I embaressed. Heh, guess no one has all the answers.
Hah, I thought this was cute
I just have to say… March 7, 2007
Well, as previously mentioned, I live in the country. So we had these neighbours move in at the beinging of autumn and they have three dogs – that’s fine, everyone has dogs out here, including us. But these dogs are small and the smallest one they always put a plaid sweater on – a dog in a sweater!!! That’s not owned by a movie star! So, these people, because they’re still bedazzled by the country living thing and are retired, they walk their dogs up and down the road about every 45 minutes and they go pretty far, like anywhere you would have to drive to get toward the city, they could be there. So now, especially at night (though the guy has started wearing reflectors, cool) I have to make sure I don’t run these little dogs over with my camry and it’s getting harder and harder. And I sometimes do have naughty thoughts about actually hitting the sweater dog… Isn’t that horrible? If I sent in anything to that Postsecret website, it would be this confession.
Whew, glad I got that off my chest. Now that’s repressive desublimation.
Alberta before time March 6, 2007
So, I have had a stressful week. I mean, I have been thinking non-stop about all these deep sociological thoughts and psychological queries and the plague me day and night (mostly because I’m being tested on how much I think about them and what conclusions I come to). Mostly, I have been completely consumed with my presentation for soci4200 on Marcuse, which I may inflict upon this blog just because no one should be without knowledge of repressive desublimation (or because I like to promote collective suffering and not just the suffering of my poor brain). Anyways, so I’m battling the wind the other day to get to my car, I sit down and turn on the ignition and what do I hear on CBC?
A NEW DINOSAUR HAS BEEN DISCOVERED!! That’s right, Land Before Time move over because right here, in Alberta, we’ve got our very own unique, indigenous species of enormous creationism-defying reptile, the “Albertaceratops nesmoi”. Whoot, whoot.
Wait, there’s more! My euphoria of talk-radio mindlessness was added to by an excited conversation between the radio host and the discoverer of this new dino. They bantered back and forth and then something great came out: the part of the species name “nesmoi” is really named after the rancher, Cecil Nesmo, whose land they found the fossils burried in. So there you go people, all you need to do to have a dino named after you is let people dig up your land, that’s much easier than purchasing a star to have it named after you.
And our narcissism continues…
Well, here’s a news story about it.
It just brightened up my day to hear about something that’s basically non-political, somewhat non-economic and listen to it being treated so very seriously, like a scientific breakthrough. And I guess it is a breakthrough, into the past, but people seem so focused on the future that, like me, they probably would have found the radio show somewhat humourous.
Not to knock the people who research dinos, paleontologists (I think), or dinos themselves, they’re pretty cool. However, dinosaurs are nothing new to Alberta, there’s Dinosaur Provincial Park where many fossils are found, Devil’s Coulee Dino Museum where they have a dino embryo, and of course the Tyrell Museum thing. After working in tourism, you learn that either people really LOVE dinosaurs or…not so much.
And now for “The Land Before Time XXXV: The Search for Al Qaeda
Jeez, there’s some pretty messed up stuff on YouTube.
Fun for Soc kids! February 6, 2007
*mutter, mutter, mutter* Oh why does no one post comments? I attempt to be entertaining!!! Well it’s because my posts are too long…probably, I mean it could never be anything to do with my infallible thinking and witty discourse. Anyhoo, here’s a short one, go to these links if you’re a sociology student (and you’ve absorbed at least one theory class):
Action Figures
Lego(TM)
Hah.
