Results of Ruminations

Time: 11:04am. Timer: 25 minutes. Go. Case #1 Here's a thing I've been thinking about: Fame. Part of it comes from the book I started listening to this morning, But What if We're Wrong? . I'm still early in the book (about an hour and a half so far), but there are ideas that are challenging and interesting. It's part futurism, part history, part critical analysis--definitely up my alley, even if it does make me uncomfortable with some of the implications of the cheerily described tendencies of humanity. Klosterman begins by talking about Moby-Dick , one of my favorite novels. I've read it once in college (where it ought to be read, if only so that the worthwhile conversations that the book inspires can have regular space; in lieu of college, a good, dedicated book club could tackle the Whale over the course of, say, three or four meetings), then half again whilst playing a Batman video game. It's not easy to read by any stretch, and its purpose is far...

I happened upon Verso Books '* summer sale and picked up five books for a buck each. I bought five ( General Intellects, Beneath the Streets, and The Spectacle of Disintegration, all   by Mckenzie Wark, Beyond the Pale  by Vron Ware, and In Defense of Lost Causes  by Slavoj Zizek), but I wanted to go a little meta, a little rhizomatic, and talk about one piece, taken out of context, from the beginning of Zizek's book. I've mentioned Zizek before , and he's a fascinating thinker, albeit hard to understand (as much his speech patterns, his lisp, his accent, his thoughts, his writing as anything else about him). Nevertheless, there's a lot about him that I can't help but be attracted to, and when I started off, he hit me with this particular phrase: "the rhizomatic texture of reality" (loc. 93). The broader context is that he's going off on the idea that, because there are no more "big ideas", some think that "we need 'weak though...

I may be a lord , but I'm not a master. That is, I don't have my master's (or Master's or Master or master...okay, I'm kidding, this is the rule ) degree. I've been longing for one ever since I graduated (though not the day of...my son had been born two days before I graduated, and I was more worried about him surviving with only half a heart than another degree), but I've never done more than occasionally and idly hoping for the chance to get an advanced degree. The thing is, I don't know why. It's strange, because I'm not interested in being a doctor. After all, why be Doctor Dowdle when I'm already Lord Dowdle? (Though Lord Dowdle, PhD sounds pretty cool.) So it's not as though the advanced degree qua degree is what appeals to me. Then again, maybe if I earned a master's, then I'd want the next step, too. There's also a question of what I would study. My first impulse is to say MFA, since that's kind of the thing th...

I've lamented before that I feel like I don't know enough. Since I left college, I haven't felt as connected to the intellectual abilities I had started to build during my last year or two. In fact, one of my favorite experiences in all of university was my "Madness in Literature" class. This is one of the reasons that I quickly encourage students to look forward to and anticipate their next step in education. The class involved looking at madness--the way it was portrayed in literature, obviously, but also culturally, historically, and politically. The professor had never taught the course before, as it was a senior seminar, once-in-a-lifetime chance. I would swing by the professor's office to chat with her about ideas I'd had because of the readings, which was unusual for me. I generally let my classwork speak for itself. But there were a couple of professors whose acquaintance I pursued outside of the classroom. I appreciated Dr. Albrecht-Crane's ...

While meandering toward writing group today, I heard this story  from NPR about refugees in Germany who were being sought after because of their training in the sciences. It talks about a German professor, Carmen Bachmann, who realized there was wasted intellectual and human potential by letting the refugees languish in camps. Yes, she agreed, their basic needs of shelter and food were met, but many of them were the tops of their fields before the civil war in Syria (and other humanitarian crises) sent them to Europe. As she got to know the people, she realized that many of them had, in the chaos of fleeing war, found their diplomas, their degrees, and brought them with them. The quote that really got to me was this one: "Bachmann realized that these people had fled with only their most precious possessions — and, for many, the diploma was one of them." I've been thinking a lot about education lately. Supposedly, Mark Twain said something along the lines of "Don...

Attendant to being an English major is the assumption that you have to like William Shakespeare's stuff. It draws an interesting line of conformity: you can be counter-culture conveniently by disliking the Bard or you can be part of the establishment and, like a tool , enjoy his works. (There is a third option, one of liking the works but distrusting the source, but this isn't where antistratfordianism really came into my perception.) I think this assumption is fair, though perhaps over-worked. In my (limited) experience, Shakespeare didn't infuse a lot of my courses, which were, for the most part, concerned with other avenues of literature. I don't remember him creeping into conversations, being used as a comparison to other texts, or passing by, like streak of light, to illuminate other texts. Even my British Lit classes (easily my preferred courses; American literature tends to leave me a little cold) skirted about him. I think this was done as deference to their ...

Update time: Press Start has been getting fewer comments on my blog, which is only significant in that there are so few comments in the first place, so the disparity seems bigger than it actually is. I've been exploring Kotaku to get a bit of a pulse on what other gamers think, and though the site does a good job of making most of the comments worthwhile (instead of typical fanboy flame), it doesn't explore things the way I'm trying to do in the essays. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it's something I've noticed. In terms of actual content, I've broken the 20k mark on the essays. Currently, the grand total for it is 21,382 words. I haven't received much feedback on my writing style for the essays, which is kind of a surprise. I thought that the language was a little more obtuse than I generally write. This stems from an attempt to be theoretical (so the verbiage is natural in that form), but also in trying to imbue more significance to what I...

My main reason for writing a blog came out of wanting to discuss MGS2 in a defensive, vindicating light. Really, that was all. I can't really see a reason for writing anything else, what with much more interesting things out there, and since I can't write anymore (at least, that's what it feels like), it seems foolish to even try--particularly in a forum of instantly published potential embarrassment like the Internet manages to provide so readily. But here I am anyway, pretending to write, pretending to be profound. My class is really cool. I have 21 kids, which is just right for me. I have their names memorized, I know whom I'm worried about, and we're finishing up Beowulf on Thursday next. The school is fun, small, and I have a job satisfaction level that I've never felt before. I finally feel like a contributing member of society, rather than a warm body cog that is adept at mediocrity. One of the saddest, most frustrating parts about me, though, is that I ...