I’ve got this character who suddenly presented himself to me this evening. He’s a fairly intelligent but otherwise mostly average guy who bears a striking resemblence to my manipulative asshole ex-boyfriend in terms of background and modus operandi (so definitely an anti-hero sort of thing), who decides to go start picking off celebrities, specifically those who have utterly betrayed the ideals they used to stand for, but he’s a little psychotic, so the only justification he bothers with is that they pissed him off somehow. His story would be told in installments, one celebrity killed each time, in a periodic blog sort of thing.
If nothing else, writing it would let off a lot of the frustration that typifies my life these days. But how much shit would I catch for it, do you think? Would you be just pissed off or disgusted or would you actually read that story? It especially counts if it’d piss you off or make you uncomfortable but you’d find yourself reading it anyways.
I’m not even really sure what I’d be saying in that story, what the point of it would be. Maybe just exploring and expressing my frustrations with the conundrums I find myself faced with these days.
Or maybe I’m just a shit disturber, but I think writing this guy’s story would actually be a helluva lot of fun.
Thoughts? Anyone?
So don’t mind me if I’m a little wonky today. It mostly has to do with the fact that in the past 48 hours or so, I’ve gotten all of three hours of sleep, and for the past 12 hours or so I’ve had Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy stuck in my head and it’s about to drive me out of my mind. Sleep deprivation messes with you.
The good thing is that I don’t have to perform today at all. I just have to show up, hand my stuff in and then sit there and listen while somebody talks.
I’m very grateful for this, cause it’s about all I’m up to right now.
And I’m also grateful that after today I don’t have to hand in any more assignments this semester! Now it’s just finals that are left. Usually at this point I look back at the last few weeks and go, “Huh, that wasn’t so bad after all.” Not so this time. This time it really was that bad. But if I can make it through the next six hours before I crash, everything will be ok.
Make way for the living dead!
Tonight I was gifted with the most extraordinarily beautiful walk home through Queen’s Park Historical district. The snow totally kicked the Skytrain’s ass, causing massive delays along the whole lines, so I wound up going home via some bus I’ve never been on before, but that they told me went through New Westminster. Got off when I recognized 6th & 6th, and had the most glorious tramp through the snow I’ve had in years! The cloud cover’s come back in like a big fuzzy grey comforter, so it’s just nippy cold, not “ye gods I’m gonna die” cold. Hardly any wind and fine dry flurries of snow on the face. Just enough that I came home with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. That walk was so peaceful, so lovely, I hardly wanted it to end. Old houses with real, honest 3 foot icicles on the peaked eaves, and Christmas lights on a lot of them already, glowing, glowing on the crystaline contours of the blanket of snow you so seldom get to experience in Vancouver.
The only people out in this part of town this time of the evening are the dog walkers, most of whom seemed equally enchanted, and even the train whistles were muted by the magic. The detour cost me an hour that I was going to use to take a nap, on account of the fact that I didn’t actually sleep last night, but that walk home was more refreshing than any nap would have been. My mind is clear and now I’ve got a softly glowing jewel of a memory to tuck away for some time when I’m all stressed out. Maybe you’re one of those people who’s cursing the snow, but I’m grateful for it, inconveniences and all.
Now I have to go write a paper.
Que sera, sera.
Discoveries of the evening:
1. Upon reflection (triggered by sitting around with my room-mate watching hockey cause I really needed a break from the english paper I’m working on), I realized I was incapable of naming the 6 Canadian teams in the NHL. I had four that I knew for sure and two where I knew the city but not the name. One of those I recognized immediately upon hearing and went “d’oh!”, but the other I had no clue. I’d never really thought about it before. If you’re not from Canada, be aware that this is like being Christian & not knowing the 10 Commandments, or being an economist who doesn’t know who came up with that invisible hand idea.
2. My room-mate is 26 years old and only found out this evening that Canada actually has senators. He apparently thought only the US has senators, and that the Ottawa hockey team name was… what? A joke? C’mon here buddy.
3. My CMNS 110 final exam has been cancelled for no apparent reason. This means I am entirely, completely finished with that class, which is nice, but I’d better have pulled off a decent paper that hellish night because now it’s worth 40% of my grade. The midterm’s now worth 35% though, and I know I did really well on that, so I should be OK.
I still have a lot of work to do tonight, but meh, I’ll live. For once I’ve had a decent amount of sleep recently. And I have 2-bite brownies in my cupboard!
Joy.
I love it, absolutely love it, when it snows in Vancouver. For one thing, I’m from a place where the snow comes in October and stays til May, and I miss it. I miss the bite in the wind and the crunch under my feet, and I miss the utter silence to be found in the evening as the snow drifts down around you. I have memories from many different winters of watching the snow swirling in the streetlights, and the awe I feel at its beauty.
So that’s part of why I love it when it snows down here. Gives me a taste of home. Froze my ass off walking home tonight cause I didn’t dress properly. Yup, feels like home!
But mostly I love it when it snows in Vancouver because people here get totally freaked out by a few inches of white slush! Nobody knows to slow down when you drive, so it’s pretty scary. I saw one dumbass go fishtailing halfway through a set of lights while talking on his cell phone yesterday! WTF dude!? You sir, are an idiot. But snow also just makes everything beautiful. I noticed on the skytrain today that way more people were actually looking out the window at the city & the river than usually do, which made me glow a little bit. Most of the time they’re too caught up in their newspaper or their iPods or their books to actually notice the changing face of the city as it rushes past outside. Pity that. The part I ride every day is especially beautiful (between Columbia & Production) and yet most of the time so few people bother to appreciate it. But today… today the snow brought it to their attention, and it was good to see. I think more people need to try and appreciate the beauty in the world as it manifests close to home. There’s lots of it here, if you’re willing to see it.
And of course, I love snow because SFU totally shuts down. The roads up Burnaby Mountain are NOT designed for this. So I got the day off school and went to go hang out with a friend, drink cider & eat fresh cinnemon buns. No wonder I’m in a good mood. Snow days are a blessing, and should be appreciated as such. Yeah, they’re bloody inconvenient. Yeah, maybe you’ll have to take an extra 20 minutes to make sure you get where you need to be. But if your life is so jam-packed that 20 minutes is going to make it or break it, you’re going too fast anyhow. Snow days make the world slow down and contemplate its existence, which is valuable in and of itself as far as I’m concerned.
Thus far, all signs point to me still being alive. This is good, cause for a while I was wondering.
You know how some papers, you just sit down to write them and they just kinda flow forth from your fingertips? Oh, you have to stop and think sometimes, but mostly they’re not a problem? Y’know that kind?
Yeah, well, the one I wrote last night was -not- that kind of paper.
The one I wrote last night was the evil paper from the very depths of hell. It had been stalking me all week, the knowledge that it was coming weighing me down, robbing me of my sleep. And then last night I was forced to sit down and face the horror, and it was not a pleasant experiece. It fought me every goddamn step of the way. I couldn’t seem to get more than 100 words going at a time without having to stop and untangle yet another knot in my line of reasoning. I had to stop and take a nap at one point because my already sleep-deprived brain went on strike. Finished around six this morning and passed out. Missed my alarm (and thus my english and mass media lectures), but made it to school in time to print and hand it in this afternoon.
Man am I glad that’s done. I’ve got a bunch of crap to do for next week too, but tonight I’m refusing to think about it. You may not see much of me til after this is over. Or you might, as I’ve been known to be more than a little mercurial. But don’t hold your breath.
“Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything - from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.”
“The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and the mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealistic attitute.”
“What was Phaedrus trying to do, anyway? This question became more and more imperative as he went on. The answer that had seemed right when he started now made less and less sense. He had wanted his students to become creative by deciding for themselves what was good writing instead of asking him all the time. The real purpose of withholding the grades was to force them to look within themselves, the only place they would ever get a really right answer.
But now this made no sense. If they already knew what was good and bad, there was no reason for them to take the course in the first place. The fact that they were there as students presumed they did -not- know what was good or bad. That was his job as instructor - to tell them what was good or bad. The whole idea of individual creativity and expression in the classroom was really basically opposed to the whole idea of the University.”
“When spontaneity and individuality and really good original stuff occurred in a classroom it was in spite of the instruction, not because of it.”
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (all of them)
*laughs* Yeah, I’d say this book had a pretty big impact on me the first time I read it. Made a lot of sense to me, especially the part in the middle where Phaedrus first starts off on his grand quest for Quality. A lot of the rest of it too, but that part especially.
Oh, you’d best get used to this blog containing bits and pieces of whatever I’m reading at the time, and musings on it. Unfortunately at this point in my life I don’t have anywhere near as much time as I’d like to devote to non-school-assigned reading, and even more unfortunately, I suspect that will probably be true for the rest of my life. But I discovered last year that even when I’m swamped with reading for school, I can’t abandon my reading for fun altogether. It only serves to make me irritable and deeply unhappy. Luckily I’ve always been the sort to have more than one book going at a time, so it’s not that hard to manage. It’s just learning to ignore the guilty feeling that I ought to be reading for school instead, because that feeling is NOT TRUE. What I ought to be doing is making sure I don’t lose my soul in the process of getting that piece of paper, and reading for fun and personal interest has always been a huge part of keeping me from utter despair.
So at the moment I’m going through Zen, etc, again, and I’m taking my time. There’s absolutely no need to rush through this book, and I think doing so would actually have negative effects on my enjoyment and understanding of it. That’s one of my complaints about reading for school, by the way. No time to sit and ponder. Just have to rush on to the next article before you’re really finished processing last week’s subject. And don’t even get me started on English classes that force you to rush madly through beautiful poetry in a sick imitation of Vanishing Point, when it’s supposed to be appreciated at the pace of a nice leisurely ramble through the woods.
I’m also about a third of the way through Priestess of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which is fun. And made moreso by the fact that it was lent to me by a good little Christian girl (of the sort who actually takes her religion seriously) who is apparently totally oblivious to the vast quantities of heresy contained therein.
Those are probably all I’m going to get through before the end of the semester, seeing as to how I also have to finish George Eliot’s Middlemarch for my 19th C. English Lit class, and make it through all the work I was ranting about yesterday. But I have grand plans for Christmas break, most of which involve setting up residence in the junior fiction section of the public library and not coming out til next semester. *grins* Maybe that sounds boring to you, but my favourite way to relax is still to let myself get totally caught up in a good book, and not have to put it down til I’m finished. This Christmas I’m going to revisit a bunch of my childhood friends I haven’t spent any time with in way too long, and I’m really looking forward to it. Expect periodic happy raving about Tolkien, CS Lewis, Philip Pullman, Cynthia Voigt and way more than I feel like listing off right now. Oh, I can hardly wait!
But before I can enjoy all of that, I’ve got to go deal with that goddamn paper I’ve been avoiding all weekend. *le sigh* Time for another cup of tea, I think. Life of a student.
There are days I really wish I could justify quitting school and running off to… somewhere… anywhere, really, and just put some serious time and effort into my writing. Today is one of those days. To never have to read another article or write another paper or show up for another early morning class. To sleep when I get tired and work when I’m not, and find out what I’m capable of. But right now I just can’t justify it.
Why not? Well, essentially, it’s because I never want to have to worry about making a living from my writing. It’s the same problem as worrying whether or not anybody reads it. I honestly think that my writing will be better if it is something I do for its own sake, not something I do because I need to feed myself. It’s much easier to be honest that way. But for my writing to be any good, it is also important that my job not destroy my soul. And unfortunately, any job I could actually envision myself doing for more than a year or two without hating myself and my life requires a university degree. Not to mention that I want to be able to travel and live overseas for fairly large chunks of time, and getting a work visa anywhere is SO much easier when you’ve got that piece of paper.
Yes, I admit it. I’m in this for the piece of paper. I’m perfectly capable of educating myself on pretty much any topic I would care to. That’s what libraries are for, after all. Go see Good Will Hunting again. But it’s that piece of paper that will give me the freedom to live wherever I want, and (here’s the important part) not be forced to live hand to mouth.
There are those who will get up on their soapboxes and preach that good art can only be born from an existence of deprivation and suffering, but I disagree. Certainly, there is art that has come from such an environment, but I do not belive that it is essential. Moreover, I know from experience that when I’m trying to make rent and preserve my sanity as a waitress, the last thing I want to do when I get home is get into a staring contest with a blank page. Maybe there are waitresses out there composing great works of fiction in their down-time, but I do not see myself ever being one of them.
I do not demand that my job be incredibly spiritually fulfilling, or that I be able to get up every morning and be happy to go to work. This is a big ol’ “not bloody likely” in my books. I just want a job that I don’t hate, and that I make enough at to live relatively comfortably. To be able to work abroad if the fit takes me, and to be able to have a room that I can retreat to with lots of books and pens and paper, and time in which to court the muse. It is to this end that I am still in university. And actually, the first thing I’m going to do after I graduate is save up enough that I can go spend a year living somewhere, probably dirt poor, but with my only job to be to write. To have something at the end of that year that I can publish. I know I work best under pressure, and I’m really curious to see what I’d turn out. But first I have to get through school. (reward program? well, yes. But hey… if it works….)
It’s just days like today that I want to throw in the towel and run for the hills.
The good news - only two more weeks of classes before finals.
The bad news - in that time I must do the following:
Write two papers (one 8-10 pages, one 7-8 pages, neither of which I’m actually interested in)
Do two smaller assignments, both about 500 words, both equally dull.
Do 4 problem sets. (two for syntax, two for econ)
Read 6 more academic articles, 2 chapters of economics and some 250 pages of victorian literature
It doesn’t look so bad when I put it in a list like that, cause it means the end is in sight. But it’s the papers that are killing me. I know that dreading them is always worse than actually writing them, but I just don’t want to do it. Don’t wanna, don’t wanna, don’t wanna!!!!! *curls up in the fetal position, rocking back & forth, emitting a high-pitched keening noise*
I know I know, I’m whining. I admit this. But this has been a really rough semester and I just want it to be over and done with. Most of it is that there’s so much else I could be doing with my time that would be so much more useful than writing a paper comparing Lord Byron & George Eliot’s views on heroism, based on how these views manifest in Don Juan and Middlemarch, respectively. Hell, getting high and watching the stars come out would be more useful than that. I hate writing English papers with a passion. They are the necessary evil involved with taking English classes (which I usually quite enjoy).
So there’s this evening’s installment of my rant, one which has been going on for a long time, and which will no doubt continue at least until I graduate. I have always felt that school is slowing me down more than anything, but I want the options that completing it will give me. So I rant and rave and procrastinate, and somehow manage to get it all done. But ye gods… what a waste of time.
I suppose I really ought to provide some context for that paper, just so that what I’m doing might make a little more sense.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Herman & Chomsky article I mention was first published in 1988, and basically shows that -all- mass media must support the ideology of the dominant elite of whatever society it inhabits. I don’t feel like going into the arguments, but suffice it to say that since it was published, “A Propaganda Model” has been so thoroughly accepted by the academic field of media studies as to almost classify as dogma. A good month of my mass media class was dedicated to making absolutely sure we understood that point. So I decided to try and apply the model to the world around me, and see what came up. Thus: this paper.
You see, SFU is very proud of its reputation as a university that encourages radical views and free-thinking. I believe the term they employ most often is “innovative.” You can’t take a course in the social sciences without running into feminist & socialist theory. But if you take Herman & Chomsky’s model and apply it to the university, you find that this is all bullocks. SFU is just as focused as everybody else in turning out graduates whose education will prepare them to enter the workforce and contribute to the capitalist system. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing, but I do think it’s a bad thing that nobody’s coming out and saying it.
So I decided to say it.
Mostly though, I just see this as an exercise in reasoning. They give me a proposition that I’m supposed to accept, so I do, but then I start applying it in ways they may not have expected, and we’ll see what happens. I’m essentially just playing. Have to keep myself entertained somehow. And at least my TA won’t have to deal with yet another paper on stereotyping in the mass media and the negative influence this has on our society. Not that that’s not important, but after the 10th paper on the subject I’d be ready to shoot anybody who brought it up again, and it’s good to remember that TAs are people too.
This is a paper for my Mass Media class that I’m handing in tomorrow. It basically says that SFU is full of shit. The funny part is that all that’s going to happen is that they’re going to give me a mark (hopefully a good one), pat me on the head and send me on my way. Oh, the futility of it all. But anyways, if you’re interested or just really bored, I give you:
Unwilling agents: An analysis of universities as mass media.
Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the understanding of what is meant by the term “mass media.” Most of these changes are a result of technological innovations that have forced communications scholars to expand their definitions to include “institutions that are part and parcel of the social process” (Lorimer & Gasher, 2004, p.31). This expanded definition can be applied to institutions which up until now would have fallen outside the realm of media analysis, including the institution of the modern university. Although the conception of a university as a mass medium is unusual, such an analysis is useful because it makes it possible to analyze the effects the medium has upon the selection and arrangement of content. In A Propaganda Model, Herman & Chomsky show how the unequal distribution of wealth and power results in a system of media organization with an inherent bias in favour of what they call the “dominant elite” (1988, p.280). Revolutionary at the time, this argument has gained widespread acceptance among communications scholars, shown by its presentation as a central concept in a modern communications textbook (Branston, 2002). An analysis of universities as mass media shows that even though a university may nominally support radical left-wing views, it is constrained by the reality that the institution must function within a market-driven economic system, and so must ultimately reinforce the ideology of that system.
In order to show how post-secondary institutions serve the interests of a society’s dominant elite, it is first necessary to establish their status as a mass medium. Lorimer & Gasher give the general definition of mass communication as “transmission and transformation of meaning on a large scale” (2004, p.30). Thus, according to Danesi, a mass medium is the “means of public communication reaching a large audience” (2000, p.140). Lorimer & Gasher then narrow this definition through British media researcher Denis McQuail’s more detailed list of characteristics of the mass media, stating “According to McQuail (1983), the mass media:
1. are a distinct set of activities
2. involving particular technological configurations
3. associated with formally constituted institutions
4. acting according to certain laws, rules, and understandings;
5. carried out by persons occupying certain roles;
6. which together, convey information, entertainment, images, and symbols;
7. to the mass audience” (p.34).
It can be shown that post-secondary educational institutions also meet these criteria. They involve the same distinct set of activities as the more traditional mass media in terms of encoding, transferring and decoding meaning within the forms permitted by the institution. They also involve particular technological configurations for the transfer of meaning, such as the familiar microphone and slide-projector used in most lecture halls, and the more recent innovations of internet-based instruction. This transfer of meaning is clearly associated with the formally constituted institution of the university itself, and more particularly with the different faculties and departments within the university. The laws, rules and understandings governing the meanings which are permitted to be transmitted by the university are familiar to any student who has attempted to cite Wikipedia in a formal essay. The information transferred from and to the institution must come from a reputable academic source, most commonly characterized by the process of peer review. The roles within a post-secondary institution are also quite clear. There are professors, students, TAs, advisors, deans, and many more roles which are occupied by persons whose personal identity is essentially irrelevant to the operation of the medium as a whole. All of these operate together to facilitate the transfer of information from a fairly small group of experts to a large, and relatively unknown, audience of students, thus fulfilling much the same function as the more traditional forms of mass media.
If post-secondary institutions serve the same apparent purpose as the traditional mass media, it should be possible to show that that their content contains the same inherent bias in favour of the “dominant elite.” That is, university content must be shown to pass through filters similar to those suggested by Herman & Chomsky in their discussion of the regulation of media content. Two of their five filters are directly based on the constraints placed on media content by economic necessity, through the expense of operating a media outlet and the dependence of media owners on revenues generated by advertising. Two more are indirect effects of these economic forces, through the limited number of news sources, and the public’s ability to harm a media outlet’s revenues through its negative response to a statement or program (1988). So essentially, the filters they describe can be re-framed as the influence of economic necessity upon a medium’s content, an influence which is evident in the educational goals of contemporary Canadian universities.
In a world in which “the bimodal distribution of income is due not to the concentration of the factors of production and capital but rather to the accumulation, transference and use of knowledge” (Lusthaus, 2004, p.1), many students are motivated to pursue a post-secondary education for the financial gains they expect to receive for their efforts. Any institution which does not provide such an education will run the risk of losing many of its consumers to a rival institution which does. Thus even a left-leaning school will have a thriving buisiness department while departments which offer lower financial rewards after graduation struggle to attract enough students to remain economically feasible for the university.
Economic pressures also manifest in the form of reports published by groups such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, The National Direction for Learning, and the Economic Council of Canada, which call for “greater emphasis on science, math, and engineering education to enable Canada to compete in the global economy and for greater congruence between education and employers’ needs” (O’Sullivan, 1999, p.1). In a world where income depends on education, “employers operate in an environment that demands a highly trained and flexible labour force” (Lusthaus, 2004, p.1). It is worth noting that when viewed in light of this statement, SFU’s new breadth requirements, which force all students to take courses in humanities, sciences and quantitative reasoning, could be seen as conforming to employers’ increased demands for flexibility in their employees.
Another application of the analysis of post-secondary institutions as mass media is in how the effects of government policies regarding the traditional mass media are mirrored in the effects of educational policies. A major concern of media analysts in recent decades has been the increased emphasis on profitability above all else. This has fuelled the trend of deregulation in media industries, which in turn has led to “easier mergers, corporate diversification and increased tendencies in some sectors … toward oligopolies” (Campbell, 2002, p. 459). Although such economic policies have been shown to result in a general decline in the range of options available to consumers, they persist because of the media’s devotion to the free-market economic system. Likewise, “reformers in education worldwide have shown an interest in deregulating school systems and privatizing schools to achieve administrative efficiency” (Sawa, 2001, p.1). An analysis of educational systems as mass media would predict a decline in the variety of the products available to consumers as the result of such policies, similar to that which is occurring in the traditional mass media, which indeed turns out to be the case. This is apparent in the consequences of New Zealand’s recent educational reform program involving the creation of charter schools and voucher programs, which have been shown to include “polarization of students by race and class and the abandonment of unsuccessful schools” (Sawa, 2001, p.1)
One of the most obvious arguments against the idea of post-secondary institutions functioning as agents of the capitalist system is that most academics are much more likely to consider themselves liberal rather than conservative, that is, to lean towards the left of the political spectrum (Freeman, 2005). If this is true, then how can the university be serving the interests of the capitalist system? This argument is similar to the puzzle of bias in newspapers. Although most reporters identify themselves as liberals, the majority of American newspapers consistently endorse Republican candidates. This arrangement seems counter-intuitive until we remember that press owners clearly stand to gain through right-wing policies designed to encourage business, and as Jamieson states, “in three different studies, it was the ideological disposition of the editors and publishers that predicted bias” (2000, p.187). In the end, journalists are employees who are unlikely to openly attack the policies of their employers, for the simple reason that they would like to keep their jobs, and advance their careers. Likewise, academics are ultimately employees of the university, dependent upon it for their income, job security and possibilities of career advancement. This is articulated in SFU’s official policy regarding the criteria for appointment, contract renewal, tenure, promotion and salary review, which explicitly states that “Faculty members in accepting appointment undertake to uphold and promote the aims of the university in the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge” (2003, p.1).
A second argument against the idea of universities supporting the free-market ideal is that many universities’ commitment to left-wing policies is demonstrated in their curriculum and student programming. However, Fleras argues that “the media accomplish their ideological functions by disguising what they do while pretending to be something they are not” (2002, p50). One method of penetrating a disguise is to look for inconsistencies between words and actions, between the policies an institution appears to support, and those it actually follows. So although an institution’s curriculum may be heavily based upon socialist political theories and an awareness of class, race and gender bias, its true leanings are revealed in policies such as allowing independent vendors to operate on campus, and contracting the lowest-cost food provider for its students living in residence.
Just as Herman & Chomsky propose that bias in news is a result of constraints that are built into the system rather than of any grand capitalist conspiracy (1988), the ideological bias of post-secondary institutions is inevitable because such institutions are forced to function within a market economy, and so must conform to its system. This bias is apparent in the policies of such institutions and in the selection of content they offer. This analysis does not discount the value of post-secondary education, but rather should encourage students to think critically about the information to which they are being exposed. Since knowledge of one’s opponent is critical for victory in battle, an understanding of the bias inherant in university studies will be of particular interest and use to those students who do not believe that a free market is the answer to the world’s problems.
Bibliography:
Branston, G. (2002). The media student’s handbook. US: Routledge
Campbell, R. (2002). Media and culture. US: Bedford/St. Martins
Danesi, M. (2000). Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics, media, and communications.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.
Fleras, A. (2003). Mass media communication in Canada. Ontario: Nelson.
Freeman, C. (2005). Academic ‘bill of rights’ laws spreading. Retrieved November 14, 2006, from http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=23029&pid=1283
Herman, Edward. (1988). Chapter 16: A Propoganda Model. In Durham, M. G. (eds),
et al. Media and cultural studies (pp. 280-317). US: Blackwell Publishing.
Jamieson, K. H. (2000). Everything you think you know about politics… and why you’re wrong. New York: Basic Books.
Lorimer, R. & Gasher, M. (2004). Mass communication in Canada.
Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press
Lusthaus, C. (2004). Educational outcomes for the Canadian workplace: New frameworks for policy and research. McGill Journal of Education, 39(3), 360
O’Sullivan, B. (1999)). Global change and educational reform in Ontario and Canada.
Canadian Journal of Education, 24(3), 3.
Sawa, R. (2001). When schools compete: A cautionary tale. Canadian Journal of Education, 26(3)
Simon Fraser University (2003). Criteria for appointment, contract renewal, tenure, promotion and salary review. Retrieved November 14, 2006, from http://www.sfu.ca/policies/academic/a11-05.htm
You are never dedicated to something you h ave complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They -know- it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
-Robert Pirsig
This is very useful to remember, because it allows a certain amount of insight into the minds of people who may seem totally alien and incomprehensible.
The river
slate-grey and choppy.
Sea-gulls
bobbing up and down on the waves
know better than to go flying in this storm.
If only we were also so wise.
Sorry… spent too much time on transit, being subjected to BC poets. No wonder they all sound the same - they all read each other all the time, cause they all travel by public transit. A clue, Watson! Remind me not to stay in BC for longer than I have to!
I pondered for a long time before I decided to post that last entry. There are people whom I greatly respect who may think less of me because of it, or be inclined to preach and/or lecture, which never ends well. But I finally decided that if I’m going to write, I shouldn’t censor my work on that account. I am not ashamed of myself, and pretending that I am is doing myself a disservice. If I ever plan to publish anything worthwhile, I really have to get over that inner voice that says I should present myself in the best possible light. So here I am, worts and all. If you have some idealized image of me that you’d prefer to keep, don’t read my work. That is all.
Well, tonight’s turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. But before I can tell you about that, I have to go back and explain the fact that last night I constructed an altar.
I’m not 100% sure why I decided to do this, but it was mostly on account of my ongoing resolution to do my best to listen to inspiration when it comes, because whenever I don’t, I inevitable regret it later. Ever since my definitively violent break with Christianity at the age of 14 I’ve been trying to find some system of personal beliefs that might actually be of help to me, and I’ve only recently started finding a few bits and pieces of ideas that resonate, mostly in the research I’ve been doing on some of the old pagan religions of the british isles. So I went along with the feeling that constructing an altar would be generally beneficially, and when questioned on the results, I offer the explanation so familiar to those who know me: “*shrug* it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Beginning of digression on precise considerations of grammar.
If this sort of thing bores you to tears, skip three paragraphs.
When I use the statement “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” the inferrence is always that it no longer seems like a good idea and that in fact I’m slightly embarrassed about it so stop bugging me already. This is a result of the modern propensity for using the simple past (seemed) interchangably with the past perfect (had seemed), even though they express slightly different ideas.
The sneaky thing about this is that there’s nothing in the sentence I’ve uttered to indicate that the action of “seeming” is actually completed, and no reason why it cannot still seem like a good idea, and in fact continue to seem like a good idea in the future. The listener usually does not realize this, since most people don’t have much familiarity with the technical peculiarities of the language they use every day. The past perfect (had seemed) is used to express an action that is definitively completed, in the past. This is the one I would use if I meant that it seemed like a good idea at the time, but that it no longer does. In contrast, the simple past (seemed) inherantly carries no such meaning. That the action is completed –could- be the intended meaning, but the sentence does not actually indicate the action could not theoretically still be continuing in the present.
This is useful for me when someone I’d rather not try explaining myself to questions some of my more eccentric actions. I can offer them a statement that is technically true but does not actually explain my motives, and nine times out of ten, they’ll accept it as a reasonable explanation and not bother me any more about it after that, sneaky little horrible manipulative Gemini that I am. Most of the time they’ll be more comfortable remaining ignorant anyway, and it sure saves me a lot of hassle. I’ve never gone through the grammatical analysis of that before since it’s not something I think about at the time, but I find it interesting that it can be broken down and understood that way.
End of digression.
So anyways, the altar construction seemed like a good idea at the time.
The only available space I’ve got for it is the top of my dresser, which up until last night was my catch-all space. Change, keys, jewelry, candles, hairbands, glasses of water, mail, whatever happened to end up there. So I cleared all that stuff off, finding it all new homes, not just piling it somewhere, and then wiped down the top of my dresser. For an altar cloth I’ve got a beautiful fine black mesh shawl with dark yellow-green velour patterns of roses, the texture and colour of the first buds on the trees in spring. One of my closest friends from high school gave that to me for Christmas last year, and I love it, but never really had anything to do with it before. It lived in the back of my closet awaiting my realisation last night that what I really needed it for was an altar cloth, and folded in half it fits the top of my dresser with just enough left over for a bit of a graceful overhang on the edge.
Each of the four elements is represented by an object arranged on the points of the compass. For earth I’ve got the rock one of my exchange student friends swiped for me from the U-Bahn (subway) tracks in Berlin near the end of our year there. For water a short glass candleholder with a gilded rim with some water in it. I’m not entirely satisfied with that one, and plan to spend an afternoon combing the antique shops on Columbia St. for something more basic, but with beauty in its simplicity. For fire, a tea-light on a squat navy ceramic tile with pinched corners that was designed for burning cone insense, but serves its new function equally well. And for air, a stick of insense, on an appropriately basic wooden holder. This was all just stuff I had around that I figured could work, so none of it’s ornate or expensive, and I think the end result is actually better because of that.
Each object rests on a folded bandana of a colour appropriate to the element. Those were added when I decided I didn’t want to run the risk of the shawl receiving any damage (ash, overheating, water stains, etc), and aesthetically they set off the colours of the objects as well, cause otherwise they all tended to blend into the darkness of the shawl. That wasn’t planned, but I like it.
I make no claims to following any sort of prescribed traditional set of “rules” with all of this, and if you have a cult you want to sell me on, please take it elsewhere. I just decided to set something up that felt right to me, thank you very much.
Now I told you that story so that I could tell you this story.
Since I’ve been putting effort into seriously cutting down my weed consumption over the last few weeks (with success, I might add! Down a good 90% within that time), I no longer buy weed, because I know that if I have it just lying around, I will smoke it. But if I go totally cold turkey, within a week or two I’m itching for it so bad I inevitably fold and go buy some, and at that point you’d better believe I’m buying a bit more than just a joint or two, and that leaves me right where I started. So an arrangement has been reached whereby if I’m really really craving it, I order food and in exchange for being allowed to have some, my stoner room-mate smokes me up, and we’re both happy. In econ-speak, the gains from trade are maximized. It’s good for me because it keeps me from getting so strung out I go buy more, and I get high –once- in an evening, and don’t have any left over for later, and it’s good for him cause he’s pretty well perpetually got the munchies. I get way more accomplished with this arrangement than I used to without it. Quite frankly I’m surprised I managed as well as I did for as long as I did at the rate I was going up until recently. Planting ivy in the bong helped as well. (hey, it was made for me so I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it, but I needed to put it out of commission somehow, and I’d been wanting a plant anyways.)
Tonight I was actually just hungry & lazy & lacking groceries, so I ordered Chinese food. Did you know you can place orders for delivery online now, and then they call you back to confirm and then deliver it? It’s the ultimate lazy student experiece, and it nicely solves the problem of not knowing the menu of any of the restaurants in the area. It’s all just posted online. But then when it got here my room-mate started whining about being hungry and there not being any food in the house, which ended up with us sitting in my room sharing a joint. Funny how these things work.
At this point I must make clear that both of my room-mates are what’s politely referred to as non-practicing Christians. This means they generally ignore the rules of conduct, but if you ask them, they’ll still tell you that they’re Christian, and it means my one room-mate still goes out partying every weekend (I have no idea how she does it) and my other room-mate’s still a huge stoner, but they pay rent and are generally pretty easy to live with so I resist the urge to bring it up. But they still get very confused and uncomfortable when they walk into a room and find what even they can probably identify in a vague sort of way as a decidedly pagan altar.
I’m afraid the build-up to this is way out of proportion with the entertainment of the conclusion. When I started writing this I was just giggling as I remembered the utter bafflement on my room-mate’s face as he struggled with the complusion to ask what the hell it was. Luckily he had the sense (or the apathy) not to say anything, and then wandered back to his room with his newly aquired fried rice. Glad he had the sense to do that too, because I’ve made it abundently clear that I’m not interested. That’s it. That’s what qualifies for entertaining in my life these days. *chuckle* I’m afraid some of the stereotypes about overachievers may be all too true. Good night.
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PS - One final note for the evening. Do not, under any circumstances, try to clip your fingernails while you’re stoned unless it’s absolutely necessary. I discovered this because the feeling of the long nails on the keyboard was driving me absolutely batty, a response trained into me by years of violin lessons. I didn’t cut myself or anything, but the whole process took way longer than it should have. Consider yourself warned.
I just spent an hour and a half wading through a convoluted sociological analysis of McDonald’s and McDonaldization (assigned reading for my Theories of Communication class. Figure that one out.) The analysis itself was actually somewhat interesting, even though most of its points were pretty obvious. It combined some of the ideas in ways that were new to me, and may bear further pondering later, once I’ve dealt with the frustrations generated by the experience of reading this article.
The main problem I had with the article in question is one that is unfortunately common to academic literature, namely that the entire argument and all of its points could have been presented throughly and much more coherently in about a third of the space. There were numerous cases of entire paragraphs that were nothing more than a thinly disguised paraphrase of points the author had already made. If this were an isolated occurance, I would ascribe it to poor writing skills and the desire to make an argument appear better founded than it actually is, but this experience has been repeated again and again throughout my studies to the point that I question whether or not most scholars ever bother reading anything but the abstracts of their fellows’ articles!
More importantly, I am distressed by the idea that such a style appears to be the norm in a community who supposedly value clarity of thought and statement, and who have enough material to absorb without wading through piles of regurgitation in every article they read. I have heard it said that no one in the academic communitiy will take an idea seriously if it is stated succinctly and backed up only with clear, understandable arguments, each stated once and only once. Instead, if you wish to be taken seriously, you must only present ideas couched in obscure language and convoluted form, and repeat yourself over and over within the same article.
I find this deeply disturbing, mostly because the most obvious explaination for it is that most academics don’t actually have much to say, but are nonetheless driven to publish. Such a situation would clearly undermine the theoretical purpose of universities (supposedly the development of knowledge and understanding), and obstruct the actual generation and discussion of interesting and/or useful ideas.
I’ve been re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I’m afraid it shows. A certain English teacher handed that book to me when I was 15, and though most of it went way over my head at the time, it seems that I actually retained and internalized most of it. This is my first re-read since then, and while I don’t remember most of the book in terms of what actually happens, most of the concepts are resonating with a deep-rooted sense of familiarity. This may explain some of the difficulties I’m having with university in general.
And totally off topic, if you enjoy deadpan British humour, here’s a fun link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm
My economics professor recently spent most of a lecture making sure we understood the difference between income and wealth. Apparently this is important for all sorts of policy decisions. Income is pretty straightforward. It’s the money you have coming in. Wealth, however, is defined as: assets – liabilities + stream of future income. This ended with him presenting the statement that university students are in fact one of the wealthiest groups of people in the country, on account of all that future income we will eventually generate. Ok, I can accept that. However, it does not change the fact that at present I, like most students, am suffering from a distinct lack of income, which right now has a much greater effect on my lifestyle than all the hypothetical future income in the world.
End result: having recently lost some weight and in need of new jeans, off I went this afternoon, on a public transit pilgrimage to that Mecca of low-income persons, Value Village.
If you’ve never been to Value Village, I’d really suggest you go sometime, just for your own edification. Even if you are making plenty of money, and find the idea of wearing second-hand clothing downright offensive, it’s an experience everyone should have at least once (like working for minimum wage). It’s one of those places where functionality kicked style out on the street a long time ago and has no intention of letting it back in any time soon. Stark white walls, elevator music from hell, college students, old people, single moms, you name it, we got it. Clothes that were out of fashion in your parent’s day, and cramped change rooms where nobody ever follows the three-item limit. But if you’re willing to deal with the place, you can walk out with a whole new outfit for under $15, and every now and again you find something absolutely stunning. So if you do decide to brave the trials and set out on the quest for a good deal, here’s some bits of advice you may wish to keep in mind.
First off, do not, under any circumstances, have a particular item in mind that you’re just dying to find. If you do, it is guaranteed that you will not find it, and in the process you will probably miss some outfit that would look great, just because you’re too focused on what you were looking for.
Secondly, don’t be in a rush. If you’re in a hurry, the experience is one of the most frustrating in the world. Let’s face it: part of the reason the prices are so good is that finding anything is a pain in the ass. Take a deep breath, develop a system to make sure you don’t miss anything in your size, and learn to meditate while standing in line for the change room.
Thirdly, remember that in two or three weeks, the stock will be totally different. Today was not a particularly great day for me. I must have tried on 25 articles of clothing, and in the end I came home with a single pair of jeans. But that’s life. Just watch – I’ll go back after finals and come home with a whole new wardrobe.
Fourthly, be nice to the poor lady with the small screaming children. She’s a standard fixture, every VV has at least one, and she’s having a worse time than you are. Every time I go there I feel that much worse for what my brothers & I used to put my mom through every time she dragged us there.
All the irritation, impatience & headaches notwithstanding, I am still incredibly grateful that such places exist. Wealthy as I supposedly am, I just can’t justify paying $60 for a pair of jeans at the mall. So here’s a big thank you to all the thrift stores of the world, for enabling me and my fellows to keep ourselves clothed.
Now I really ought to go call my mom and apologize for being such a brat all those years.
Ah, the first post. The one in which the question to be answered is, of course, who am I, and why do I feel driven to add my words to the overwhelming array of blogs already available on the internet?
To begin, I must state that I do not expect anybody to read this blog, which is fine with me, as I see this much more as an exercise for myself as a writer. The challenge here is to see whether I can drive myself to actually update on a regular basis, with something beyond the drivel of a simple account of “today I did this and this and this, with these people you don’t know and care about even less.” I have never understood the motivation beyond basic diary-type writing, and have no inclination to try it before I knock it, even though I usually don’t like bashing subjects with which I am not familiar.
They say that one of the most valuable functions of a writer is to provide a window into the attitudes and reality of their place and time. That every novel, every poem, every piece of non-fiction is a product of the period in which it is written, and on account of that, provides information about that period. Moreover, no two writers can every inhabit exactly the same time and place, so even the worst work can be valued for the uniqueness of its perspective, if nothing else. I suppose on this account basic diary-writing would even be useful, but I just find it excruciatingly tedious and would rather not go down that road.
But that being said, no one else will ever occupy the exact time & place that I do. For this reason if no other, a record of my thoughts and impressions is valuable. Even if it is only valuable to me as something that years from now will trigger the rush of memory, that is already enough to justify its existence. Personally I would prefer to at least make it passibly interesting as well. That is the intent of this blog, modest as it may be.
At this particular time, I am 20 years old. I am living in New Westminster, a satellite district of Vancouver, a young city that fancies itself the only centre worth mentioning in Western Canada. I am in the second year of my studies at “the other school,” Simon Fraser University (as opposed to UBC, which I specifically decided to eschew on basis of the fact that the majority of any graduating class in the Yukon winds up at either UBC or U of A). Since most of my waking hours are spent on school these days, I’m sure my further writings will include a great many musings on the nature and reality of this institution, so for now I’ll leave it alone.
I’d say that’s enough to go on for a first post.