2001 | voxygen.net

From the yearly archives: 2001

Holiday Ramblings

By ~LS~ On December 23, 2001 · Add Comment · In The Quotidian (yadda yadda) and tagged Tagged With: Holidays, What I Did Today

Reading: Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkien
Listening: A Winter’s Solstice, 1985; Holiday Songs and Lullabies, Shawn Colvin

This is the first Christmas that I have stayed home in two years. The last Christmas I stayed home, home was Arizona, and I married Steve. Christmas in Louisiana is rather generic. No neat stores, like last year in Woodstock, where I could buy all sorts of artsy items. But I’m having fun! First of all, I am cooking; I haven’t cooked in a while and I am looking forward to it. I am even making for my vegetarian sister a dish with bulgher, apricots and mint. Yum. And then all the usual Christmas day fare. I also plan to make Christmas cookies and decorate them with my niece, Willow. I want to pack them up in this nice little decorative box I got and bring them to my dad [...]

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It’s All About the Galleons

By ~LS~ On December 12, 2001 · Add Comment · In Capitalism, Politics, Pop Culture and tagged Tagged With: Consumption, Harry Potter, Money, Movies, Pop Culture

Harry Potter is all the rage, of course. Some people are happy about that and others aren’t. Crooked Dimwit is one of those who isn’t.

Annoyed and exhausted by the Harry Potter hype, Crooked Dimwit argues that the media overstates Harry’s pre-eminence at the box office. Because the rating system ignores inflation, HP rankings are actually exaggerated. When adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind ranks the highest grossing movie of all time while HP ranks well at the bottom half of the top 100 box office earners. As an aside, I just HAVE to point out that GWTW has *sixty* years of re-releases added into its total whereas HP has been released for, what, three weeks? In sixty years, we’ll see who’s the head boy, bucko.

I personally think commercialization besmirches the beloved HP books. True, a lot of people think that the books themselves [...]

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I Dream of Jeannie

By ~LS~ On December 8, 2001 · Add Comment · In Pop Culture and tagged Tagged With: Feminism, Gender, Pop Culture, Television

I’m not really sure what made me think of this, but for some reason today I was thinking about I Dream of Jeannie. A couple of years ago I found this animated gif of Jeannie on the web and I saved it because I liked it. I liked the show a lot when I was a kid, without really thinking about what Jeannie stood for. So, on the one hand, I think Jeannie is one chick who seriously needs a copy of The Feminine Mystique. On the other, I think it’s delightful that the psychiatrist, Dr. Bellows (now there’s a pun for a name) was pathologized and neuroticized. How funny is that.

And I like the point that feminist critic Lynn Spigel makes in “From Domestic Space to Outer Space” (in Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fiction, ed. Penley et al.): The patriarchal splendors of the space project are [...]

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Four Scary Things – After 9/11

By ~LS~ On November 29, 2001 · Add Comment · In Academentia, Politics and tagged Tagged With: Bush, News Media, Politics, War

Scary Thing #1

American Council of Trustees and Alumni

I recently read an article in a newspaper about the way that Lynn Cheney and her organization, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is trying to shut down dissent about the “war” in Afghanistan and the government’s response to the WTC. This organization published a manifesto, entitled “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It,” that collects various quotes from university professors and students in response to the WTC. You can read various write-ups about this report from the following sites:

Conservatives Denounce Dissent at Common Dreams News Center (a reprint from the Boston Globe)

Lynn Cheney’s Campus Crusade at Working for Change (part of Working Assets)

Lynn Cheney’s Free Speech Blacklist at TomPaine.Com(mon sense)

My response to this document, of course, is to make my students in [...]

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Michael Moore’s Anti-war Message

By ~LS~ On November 29, 2001 · Add Comment · In Politics and tagged Tagged With: Bush, Michael Moore, Politics, War

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Ugly Philosophers

By ~LS~ On November 27, 2001 · Add Comment · In Humor, Rhetoric and tagged Tagged With: Humor, Rhetoric, Silliness, Weird Stuff

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Holiday Ramblings

It’s All About the Galleons

I Dream of Jeannie

Four Scary Things – After 9/11

Michael Moore’s Anti-war Message

Ugly Philosophers

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Holiday Ramblings

It’s All About the Galleons

I Dream of Jeannie

Four Scary Things – After 9/11

Michael Moore’s Anti-war Message

Ugly Philosophers

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