Opinions, art, debate
Is there a movie out there that centers around a guy that has no fortune in the realms of relationships/dating/sex and tries to do something about it without said efforts being presented in a comical manner?
I can’t think of anything, which is not surprising since I watch very few movies. Can anybody think of a movie like that?
What is it with the strange habit of offering dictionary definitions of very simple words in academic writing? One student after another informs me that “the dictionary defines ‘good” as morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious and ‘bad’ as not good in any manner or degree.” Is this a way to pad an essay or an act of condescension towards the reader?
I have a feeling that this is yet another writing practice promoted in high school English courses.
A blogger I really like writes:
I grew up in a home where “heck” was a bad word. And “dang.” And “gee.” And “gosh.” Heck, after all, was just code for “hell,” and dang was code for “damn,” and gee was code for “Jesus,” and gosh was code for “God.” And thus they were all off limits. Shoot was about the only word that was okay, which is weird because I’m pretty sure that if the other words are really code, that one’s code for “shit.”
As a philologist, I always find it very curious how people invest clusters of sounds with a lot of power over their own psyche. Words scare them, make them cringe, traumatize them to the point where they don’t allow themselves to pronounce them even when they are at home alone.
Which words were considered “bad” in your home when you were growing up? Do you have any forbidden words in your home now?
From a student’s essay:
The enslavement definitely had a negative impact on the indigenous people. It gave them a low self-esteem and made it more difficult for them to achieve their goals in life.
What would your response be if this were your student?
I have discovered that good news about the lives of people I have never met but whose blogs I follow make me happy. In the past week, I discovered that one blogger is finally in a relationship that makes her happy, another one finally got pregnant after trying for several years, yet another one had a baby, one is getting her first scholarly article published, and one more has gotten an offer for a post-doc that she wasn’t expecting to get.
Blogging is great because it gives you many more people to care about and feel happy for.
I wonder, when authors and TV show creators endow every single one if their characters with this mysterious. “metabolism” that supposedly allows them to gobble truckloads of junk food and remain extremely thin, is that done on purpose, to annoy readers or spectators? Seriously, if I encounter one more character blabbing about this magic “metabolism “, I will barf. Not only is this stupid, it is also excruciatingly boring.
I’m still stuck on food, so here is a post on Elizabethan honey cakes as opposed to modern ones.
I never signed up for Facebook for the same reasons as this blogger. Especially, this: “My mental health is largely premised on not thinking about past eras of my life all the time.”
University of Missouri has decided that publishing scholarly books and having a university press is not crucial to its mission. I’m sure, however, that maintaining a bloated staff of worthless idiot administrators is is even more crucial to the school’s mission than ever. Shame on you, University of Missouri!
Homebirth Bingo. It isn’t new but it’s still hilarious, especially if you’ve had an opportunity to spend time with the homebirth freaks.
A great, healthy and inspiring alternative to that freakish photo of a crazed idiot breastfeeding a huge kid on the cover of Times.
An interesting contribution to the discussion on the importance of libraries to research activities.
The most disgusting sentence in an academic paper.
An interesting post on Barcelona’s squatting movement. It’s tangentially relevant to my research which is why I like it. But it’s of general interest, as well.
The BBC releases a lying and offensive documentary about Ukraine and Poland. Shame on you, stupid and vile BBC!
For all of my fellow quinoa lovers, here is a great recipe of quinoa vegetable bowls.
From a scientist: “These days it seems utterly impossible to achieve any status at all in the Republican party without completely rejecting the whole of modern science. Rejecting science is tantamount to rejecting any deeper understanding of the real world; such people should absolutely not be trusted with policy making.” How about Romney? Has he been making anti-science statements?
Honoring Dr. Tiller: A Collective Remembrance.
Ah, you see, you see? It isn’t just me who gets endless comments from the students as to how everything I do in class is against their religion.
Yet again, the logic of some pseudo-feminists baffles me. If it’s OK to label a man who has had many sex partners “a misogynistic pig“, then, I guess, the denigration of sexually active women is just as acceptable, right?
The casserole marches in Montreal.
The best poster featuring Rush Limbaugh ever.
“High-school-age girls who date boys a year or two younger are predatory and suspect. It’s more normal for them to date college-age men, because of course there is nothing at all sketchy about an adult man in college who wants to date a 15-year-old.” I’m speechless at this hypocrisy, too.
Before reading this post, I didn’t even know that something called “parent-guided courtship” existed. There are so many freaks out there, it’s scary.
If there is anybody I admire, it’s people who escaped from abusive fundamentalist communities and are trying to rebuild their lives and find their own way outside of the oppressive environments where they grew up. One of such brave and brilliant bloggers has started a project that will help people escaping from fundamentalist backgrounds to share how their sexuality developed in a repressive environment.
As I read through the questions, however, I felt like sharing my own answers to them. I have deleted the word “Church” because, as my readers will remember, I grew up in a completely atheist society.
I’m putting this under the fold because the post is getting too long and some people might find it boring.
Blogging (a horrible word, like having hot potatoes in your mouth) is just like doing the dishes. You do them, then they get dirtied again, as if you never had done the work in the first place.
I feel like this, too, every time whenever
– yet another person alights on my blog and immediately informs me of what I “should do”;
– I’m told that I’m expected to respect every woman’s choices for some mysterious reason that nobody ever reveals to me;
– I get accused of things some other feminists and Liberals supposedly said and did (curiously, there are never any links provided to those things);
– I get informed that the way I write is not up to the commenter’s standards;
– very aggressive people whose blogs I never visited tell me angrily that I offend them with my aggression. It would be very easy for such people not to read a blog they find offensive, yet they always choose to take a more difficult route of trying to reform me;
– people inform me in very apologetic and careful tones that they don’t agree with every word I have ever written. As if I ever expressed a wish for people to agree with everything I say.
I experience all of these things a lot more often than I do dish-washing.
I’m always late to every fashionable bit of popular entertainment. You have to tie me up and hold me down to get me watch a Hollywood movie. This was pretty much what happened to me on the delayed flight from London that lasted 10,5 hours. I forgot to charge my Kindle, so the battery had died. As a result, I had to watch three movies in a row to make the time pass by faster.
The first movie was The Ides of March which had absolutely zero plot. It was supposed to be a political drama about presidential elections. You’ve got to try really hard to make a movie on this topic bland and boring. The makers of the movie forgot that the real presidential elections in this country are always fascinating, so you have got to make a film rendering of them at least half as entertaining.
Then, I watched Albert Nobbs. Again, there is almost no plot to speak of but Glenn Close is amazing. Which is no surprise because she is always amazing. I consider her to be the only talented actress in the US.
After that, in a complete fit of desperation, I watched The Devil Wears Prada. OK, I know but I recognized the movie from how everybody was swooning over it back at Yale when it first came out. Even the most book-hating colleagues from among my fellow grad schoolers bought the book the movie was based on. And Meryl Streep was in it. She is good.
The movie horrified me, people. I knew sexism existed but I hadn’t seen such a naked, in-your-face version of it for a very long time. The main idea of the movie is that successful, powerful, beautiful women all have miserable personal lives. And the only way to be happy in your personal life is to be a badly dressed, dowdy, whiny idiot who sacrifices her career for some useless and unattractive guy who is insanely jealous of every bit of success you might enjoy. “Let’s all drop whatever we are doing, find some sore loser, and start feeding his ego by being as unkempt and unsuccessful as he is!” the movie happily proclaims.
So my endeavor to overcome my prejudice against Hollywood movies failed in its entirety.
Clarissa's Blog 