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Apr. 5th, 2005 02:49 pmSomething about the new Bad Campaign for Yahoo!Autos disturbs me. It's done in the style of an Exquisite Corpse drawing, but the ad's 'different bits of a car' theme seems to suggest a needlessly complicated, hard to navigate site that will frustrate you with-- well, think the Amtrak website, actually, rather than a streamlined tool for finding exactly what you want in a car. Ill-conceived advertising squicks me a wee bit.
I've gotten my teensy, cheap old 40-song MP3 player to live once more, and I pulled up my playlist from this time senior year. Apparently I was All About Sleater-Kinney, Ani D and Gershwin. Most embarrassing discovery was an Evanescence song. Most embarrassingly predictable discovery was Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American. Ah, this time last year-- so much Rhapsody in Blue, so much Punjabi, so much Gay.com 2003 Summer Sampler stuffs. Overall I'm more amused than horrified... though Ms. Amy Lee threatened to push me in that direction.
Randomly a bit of a bad day today. Little minor things.
Watched Dinner With Andre last night-- really uniquely filmed, interesting, but I kep feeling 'La Vie Boheme''d at. They made copious, somewhat unnecessary intelligentsia references that seemed tossed in to catch my attention or make me feel 'in' on it all. Either this was a statement on the kind of people they were, that this stiff intelli-babble was their spoken word, or I was just getting pandered to. I think really both. Anyways, it's sort of a long, slow exploration of being involved in theater circles in New York in that period. Sort of wished we'd talked about it a bit more.
Had a really good discussion in English Ren Lit, AKA Shakespeare and friends. You know the sort of proud, accomplished, fulfilled feeling you get when you feel you really participated well, that you understand the text more thorough for having involved yourself? It rocks hard.
But, pertaining to one of the irritating parts of the day: How can you be a senior year English major, taking English Ren Lit, and not understand the politics of the era at all. "Elizabeth I was imprisoned for a while or something, I don't know why." In a formal presentation? How are you placing the works in any kind of context? You can appreciate, and in a lot of close-reading respects really study a work outside of background knowledge. And I understand that all fields contribute to your worldview and, to varying extents, how you think about what you read. But you miss so much by not taking the hour it would take you to thoroughly understand the basic political outline of the period! Therese disagrees and goes with a more close reading thing, but I stick to this.
It frustrates me that English is a 'default' major rather than a 'because I want to' major. I bet Engineering undergrads don't have to put up with this lack of real interest in the subject. Not saying you can't be really interested in Ren lit and not understand that James I was one crazy closet catholic, but secretly? I think you should care. If you don't, fine, but it will sort of sadden me that you don't feel inclined to think about what the play is about in terms of its historicity.
If I hear one more person whine "we're reading too much into this," not when someone's being rediculous and trying to apply something that Should Never Be, but in the course of just general analysis, I will STAB someone. We are HERE to analyze this. We are fucking ENGLISH MAJORS. We have PAID to analyze this. Also, third time in two days of English classes someone has called something 'like a game of chess.' Not EVERYTHING is 'like a game of chess,' and no, I do not think you're deep because you think otherwise. Also? Stop bragging about how you read Fight Club and American Psycho as if this somehow makes you Intense. It just makes you someone who slogged through a Chuck Palnuck novel. Bells for you.
Then in Theories of Lit Crit, Monique Wittig came all over me. Anyway, Alice in Wonderland came up in class, then Dworkin, so I was amused/delighted. Only read the LJ-cut below if you want details on gender-theory related whining.
( Read more... )
I've gotten my teensy, cheap old 40-song MP3 player to live once more, and I pulled up my playlist from this time senior year. Apparently I was All About Sleater-Kinney, Ani D and Gershwin. Most embarrassing discovery was an Evanescence song. Most embarrassingly predictable discovery was Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American. Ah, this time last year-- so much Rhapsody in Blue, so much Punjabi, so much Gay.com 2003 Summer Sampler stuffs. Overall I'm more amused than horrified... though Ms. Amy Lee threatened to push me in that direction.
Randomly a bit of a bad day today. Little minor things.
Watched Dinner With Andre last night-- really uniquely filmed, interesting, but I kep feeling 'La Vie Boheme''d at. They made copious, somewhat unnecessary intelligentsia references that seemed tossed in to catch my attention or make me feel 'in' on it all. Either this was a statement on the kind of people they were, that this stiff intelli-babble was their spoken word, or I was just getting pandered to. I think really both. Anyways, it's sort of a long, slow exploration of being involved in theater circles in New York in that period. Sort of wished we'd talked about it a bit more.
Had a really good discussion in English Ren Lit, AKA Shakespeare and friends. You know the sort of proud, accomplished, fulfilled feeling you get when you feel you really participated well, that you understand the text more thorough for having involved yourself? It rocks hard.
But, pertaining to one of the irritating parts of the day: How can you be a senior year English major, taking English Ren Lit, and not understand the politics of the era at all. "Elizabeth I was imprisoned for a while or something, I don't know why." In a formal presentation? How are you placing the works in any kind of context? You can appreciate, and in a lot of close-reading respects really study a work outside of background knowledge. And I understand that all fields contribute to your worldview and, to varying extents, how you think about what you read. But you miss so much by not taking the hour it would take you to thoroughly understand the basic political outline of the period! Therese disagrees and goes with a more close reading thing, but I stick to this.
It frustrates me that English is a 'default' major rather than a 'because I want to' major. I bet Engineering undergrads don't have to put up with this lack of real interest in the subject. Not saying you can't be really interested in Ren lit and not understand that James I was one crazy closet catholic, but secretly? I think you should care. If you don't, fine, but it will sort of sadden me that you don't feel inclined to think about what the play is about in terms of its historicity.
If I hear one more person whine "we're reading too much into this," not when someone's being rediculous and trying to apply something that Should Never Be, but in the course of just general analysis, I will STAB someone. We are HERE to analyze this. We are fucking ENGLISH MAJORS. We have PAID to analyze this. Also, third time in two days of English classes someone has called something 'like a game of chess.' Not EVERYTHING is 'like a game of chess,' and no, I do not think you're deep because you think otherwise. Also? Stop bragging about how you read Fight Club and American Psycho as if this somehow makes you Intense. It just makes you someone who slogged through a Chuck Palnuck novel. Bells for you.
Then in Theories of Lit Crit, Monique Wittig came all over me. Anyway, Alice in Wonderland came up in class, then Dworkin, so I was amused/delighted. Only read the LJ-cut below if you want details on gender-theory related whining.
( Read more... )
