all this blog is, is dust in the wind
So I know I don’t have to keep blogging but this is really for my own enjoyment so I am just throwing it out there.
My gf found this on jib jab and she thought it would fit really well with our class and she, like usual, was right 
So here it is!
http://www.jibjab.com/what_we_call_the_news
I don’t know about the rest of you but I have been experiencing a bit of blog withdrawl in the last week. This blogging assignment became such a regular part of my routine that I feel kind of odd not blogging at all.
So, I have decided to… keep on blogging in the free world! My blogging will probably less frequent than before but oh well.
I hope that some of you will continue to comment on my blog as it makes me feel loved!
i think this is great. at least someone is trying to enjoy the wind. They’re having a rough time though. Now it is up and kickin ass @ 5:48.
It’s pretty sweet I tell ya.
Pleasant I decided to play around a little bit since I believe this is going to be my last official blog. As I mentioned in a comment I am going to write on last weeks genders stuff since I got confused and wrote about the gaming stuff last week.
Anyway, to make things a little different I am going to live blog my reading of the article “The Portrayal of Women in Television”, beginning right now, period.
Alright, this seems to be working. I have now begun the reading of the article.
I just got to the part that discusses how women are significantly under represented in television. I have heard this before and I really like this argument because it is such a straight forward and obvious reflection of the fact that yes men are in fact favoured in t.v. and indeed dominate television in a reflection of patriarchal society that promotes the hegemonic view that men are somehow more important, and superior to women – so much so that in the world of t.v. there can 1/3 as many women as men because generally no one is concerned with what women are doing unless the women part of the more exciting story of a male character.
Now I will continue reading…
1.5 years watching advertisements… holy shnikees!
Of course when are portrayed in t.v. they are done so in stereotypical ways. So, like the article mentions most women’s lives on t.v. are dominated by family and personal relationships of the ‘private sphere’ while men are more often depicted as having lives outside the home in the ‘private sphere’. Not thought to see what is going on here… t.v. just like in the 50’s wants to keep on portraying the white picket fence scene where daddy goes to work in the morning and comes home to a loving wife, 2.3 children, and a hot supper every night.
This probably is also in keeping with the idea that the women are only important so long as they are tied to the story of a male character. The housewife is not exciting without her spy husband… although at least they have desperate housewives now. Where the central characters are all women hurrah!
“…shown to be obsessed with cleanliness and alpine fresh scents.” but who doesn’t want their home to be alpine fresh? Oh wait.
I liked the part that talked about the portrayal of men as incompetent in domestic situations. I think I have probably been influenced by these ads quite a bit and I think I like many men have been using them as evidence of an actual inability to do my own laundry, cook and clean up after myself. This is however a lie. I too can clean and even cook, but the typical ad as man as incompetent in the domestic sphere sure helps to reinforce the idea that I should be no good at these things and that I should ultimately be trying to find a woman to help me before I burn the house down.
This post is already getting kind of long so I might just have to end now.
I almost forgot.
A split infinitive or cleft infinitive is an English-language grammatical construction in which a word or phrase, usually an adverb or adverbial phrase, occurs between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of a verb. One of the most famous split infinitives occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Here, the adverb “boldly” splits the full infinitive “to go.”
As the split infinitive became more popular in the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive rule against it. The construction is still the subject of disagreement among native English speakers as to whether it is grammatically correct or good style. Fowler wrote in 1926, “No other grammatical issue has so divided English speakers since the split infinitive was declared to be a solecism in the 19c: raise the subject of English usage in any conversation today and it is sure to be mentioned.”[1] However, most experts on language now agree that the split infinitive is sometimes appropriate.[2]
A friend of mine sent me this and I enjoyed it so now I am sharing it with all of you. See how nice I am? Trying to spread enjoyment to all.
http://www.anlanda.com/future.html
So I was leaving a post on my friends facebook wall and for reaons I will not get into here I felt that it was imperative that I leave a link to a very specific segment from the Monty Python movie “Monty Python and The Holy Grail”. If you are not familiar with monty python you are missing out. I think the flying circus still comes on cable sometimes.
Anyway here is the clip I included in the wall post.
After I found and watched this first clip I saw some related videos of monty python scenes done in lego so I had to check them out. I think this is probably one of my most favourite scenes from the movie and it is pretty good in lego form (the audio is all the same as the original movie).
In case you have not had enough here is one more.
When I started reading Jakobssons paper, The Sopranos Meets Everquest I couldn’t help but think to myself… NERDS! Yet, I found myself instantly intrigued by this virtual world that I knew so little about. I have always had an interest in learning more about these online multiplayer games but have never gotten into them. My video gaming ended with sega genesis (the last video entertainment system I owned – and still do). Nevertheless, I think I am truly a nerd at heart, I have read all the Lord of The Rings books and loved them so I think I could probably get right into the EQ world if I just had more time.
Overall, I thought the article was hunky dory, well written and a pretty decent read. I felt that the comparison between the mafia and the EQ world worked well. It seems to me that both the mafia and the EQ world are based highly integrated social communities with fairly strict norms and rules of conduct – I guess that is why the comparison is so effective.
I thought it was interesting that the gamers could take the game so seriously that codes of conduct are created and adhered to and violation of even unwritten social norms are punished. It seems that the virtual gaming community that makes up EQ has created a society with a collective moral consciousness of its own. Durkheim explains that actions that violate the collective moral consciousness of a society will be sanctioned or punished in some form or another. Durkheim, states that more serious infractions will result in more serious types of punishment/sanctions than less serious offenses. Thus, a person who does not dress like most everyone else will have their behaviour sanctioned through social isolation and loneliness while someone who robs people will have their behaviour punished with jail time. Similarly Jackobsson explains that in the EQ world the actions of people such as Phrank who ignore social norms such as adhering to predetermined ‘looting schemes’ result in social sanctions such as a loss of friends etc. Moreover, more serious offences may actually result in Game Masters getting involved to do something to remedy the situation.
All in all I think that the communities and social networks formed in the EQ world are probably quite similar to social networks and communities that exist in the real world. Both involve certain ways of acting and social norms that can only be learned through a socialization process.
A little aside… last term one of my Profs told me a story to better illustrate just how trust works in the mafia. The story goes like this… the young son of a mob boss climbs up on to a wall and finds that he can not climb down. The father and mafia boss tells the young boy to jump, insisting that he will catch him. The young boy, trusting his father, makes the leap of faith only to have his father take a step back and allow him to fall on his face. The father than tells the son that you never really trust anybody, not even your own family. This story does not jive with the article so well, but I have to think that it is fairly accurate depiction of how trust really works in the mafia. Tony Soprano may trust all his captains but he must also constantly suspect that they may be interested in usurping his position.
I didn’t find this story all that odd because I had actually heard it covered a few times on the news and on the Daily Show with John Stewart. Still, I thought I would throw it out there again.
Guatemalan Mayan priests to ‘purify’ sacred site after Bush visit
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GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan non-governmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.
Bush’s seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.
Tiney said the “spirit guides of the Mayan community” decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of “bad spirits” after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles — would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.
Bush’s trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.
I had been trying to think about what to write a post about and couldn’t think of much but than I looked at my… I don’t know what it is called the window bar – that thing at the bottom of the screen when you are using windows and noticed something that I have been seeing more and more of lately… the word facebook. Once a self-proclaimed enemy of facebook I am now a facebooker and a little ashamed to admit it.
I always thought that sites like facebook were nothing more than a distraction and I still think I am right about that. Every time I go on the internet I have to check my profile and see what is up in the world of facebook. I find that odd considering just a few weeks my life was functioning fine without the aid of a facebook profile.
One of the real problems I used to have with ‘networking sites’ was that I thought they took time away from face to face interactions. That is, I used to believe that people were too frequently replacing face to face interaction with online interaction. I don’t know if this substitution would surely be a negative thing but I think that it probably would be. However, I no longer feel that, that is what these sites do. I am hanging out with my friends just as much as I did before and facebook is a useful tool for coordinating face to face meetings with my friends. Moreover, facebook has allowed me to reconnect with many old friends thereby expanding my social network. And a lot (most of) my facebook ‘friends’ are acquaintances that I rarely talk to – but that is ok too.
In terms of social capital it is quite significant that sites like facebook expand my social network beyond the group of people that I have frequent face to face interaction with. These weak ties, as Putnam terms them, are actually more valuable in terms of social capital than strong ties because they are links to distant acquaintances who belong to social groups different from my own and therefore may have access to resources that I do not. For example, if I am looking for a job my close friends may be able to help me but I probably know most of the people they do and therefore likely already know about all the jobs they do. Conversely, the people who I do not associate with probably know many people I do not and therefore may know of many jobs I have not heard about.
Anyway, I no longer think facebook is the devil because it is harming social life but rather because it prevents me from doing homework and focusing on what really matters…. sweet, sweet, candy!
I was only going to include this first clip but when I searched simpsons + candy these two came up and I really like the second clip, especially the line, “see you in hell candy boys!”
I puzzled a long time last week trying to think of what song I should bring to class and never figured it out until after. I would have picked this Dayglgo song because I think it is a punk/metal song that you all would have liked which would have meant you would not have been thinking “is this guy kidding? He is playing an Iron Maiden song. He needs to get out of the 80’s”. Plus it is still a song I really enjoy listening to. I saw Dayglo at the Coaldale Motor Inn last June and it was awesome.
Dayglo released this song on their 1986 album, “Feed Us a Fetus”
The song is called, “Proud to be a Canadian” – who in the class wouldn’t relate to this song?
I don’t know how to upload mp3’s so here is a youtube video of Dayglo. Just so you know, the song is a little vulgar at the end – you have been warned.
The song sounds even better when they aren’t so wasted. FYI the show in Coaldale was pretty much an exact likeness of the one in the video.
 | Simon on DAYGLO ABORTIONS |
 | Davidmark on “Status Conferral”… |
 | emoboy on What is cool? |
 | Jonathan Lippe on “Status Conferral”… |
 | smilemaster on Might as well face it I am add… |
