Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Josh McNeil, and special guest podcaster Amanda Marcotte to overthink the end of the world, 2012, the now not-so-secret diary of a call girl, and Sarah Palin’s new book.
(By the way…do you actually want to buy this? Maybe you should check this out instead. And we don’t even get an affiliate fee.)
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Damnit! I clicked on the Amazon one, now they’ll going to promote crap politics , crap books, and crap political books until I can convince them otherwise.
As far as I can tell, it’s all been a bit of a big “Who cares?” on Belle du Jour revealing herself over here. She did it to prevent being outed by one of our more unpleasant papers, The Daily Mail.
Everyone is too busy talking about the X Factor, our version of American Idol. I don’t really like the show, but recently it has been host to… well… this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjYKHTbDzvg
re: Hazbaz’s link: At least it’s a horrible performance. So, it at least has that going for it.
Tyger uppercut!
@Sylvia They are currently the favourites to win the show.
Speaking of ridiculous undergraduate papers, I’m currently working on one about the anti-Chinese propaganda that accompanies hatred for gold farmers in World of Warcraft and how that relates to the overall representation of Asians in traditional media. I’m getting through it by imagining that if it’s good enough, I can submit it to OTI.
Man, I love college.
Victoria, that sounds kind of fascinating. You should submit it. I mean, I can’t promise we’ll run it or anything, but race representation in World of Warcraft? Awesome.
Just a word of advice: when retrofitting an academic paper into an OTI post, you’re going to want to go back over it and replace two thirds of the citations with random 80s pop culture references.
@dock
I’m glad you said it, because I’ve been thinking it ever time I’ve seen the homepage this week.
“Tyger!
Tyger!
Tyger knee!
Tyger uppercut!”
@Hazbaz …wow
@stokes aw man, now i’m going to have to resist the urge to cite marty mcfly in my essay. although i WAS thinking of referencing the sales genie ad.
@fenzel
Tyger, Tyger, uppercut,
In the Blanka of the night,
What immortal Hadouken,
Could frame thy fearful Sonic Boom?
@Tom
The Tyger
Uppercut
By P. Fenzel
Tyger! Tyger uppercut!
Tyger knee him in the gut.
What jump forward jab or fierce
Could brave this fearful Street Fighter?
In what level’s pixeled sky
Doth one escape his patch’ed eye?
What the leap evade his ire?
What the tutle block his fire?
And what flash kick, sonic boom —
What wall jump from across the room?
What better move in all the game?
What yoga fire? Yoga flame?
What the Ryu? What the Ken?
What hadouken, shoryuken?
What the Blanka? What beast’s trick?
Down forward punch? Charge forward kick?
When Zangief bared his scratch’ed chest,
Or Cammy spandexes up her breasts,
Did they Sagat’s scar think to see?
Did you just counter-pick Chun Li?
Tyger! Tyger uppercut!
Tyger knee him in the gut.
What jump forward jab or fierce
Dare brave this fearful Street Figher?
@fenzel
You win. Bravo, sir.
Sorry, typed this on my phone – two typos
“tutle” should be “turtle”
“Spandexes” should be “spandexed,” or, alternatively, “spandex’d”
Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
OTI Podcast drinking game: Fenzel going on a rant of any kind. Don’t “lay off,” man.
I think my favorite undergraduate paper was actually a production proposal for a modern screen adaptation of Sophocles’s _Trachiniae_, complete with soundtrack, cast list, and a detailed description of the opening sequence.
“I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” was Aerosmith’s first number one hit, you know. What does that say about success (or lack thereof) in pop culture?
Re: Titanic flashback. It has been quite a while since I saw it, but I believe the shot of Rose having the necklace in her hand after being rescued is shown to us after she finishes talking to everybody, so it’s a personal memory she sees, not necessarily one she shared with them.
Major parties screwing themselves over by causing splits in our system is demonstrative of the inherent weaknesses in it because of the paranoia of (some of, at least) the founding fathers. Third-party candidates never have a chance in our system because it is a pluralist one, and pluralist= two-party. I think that in order to choose to branch off and make a third party in a major election, a certain amount of narcissism and self-imposed/willful ignorance/ naiveté is involved because it ignores the reality of how America’s electoral process (at the presidential level, at least- not every county or even state is like that for every election) works versus the Platonic ideal of how it’s written. If it functioned as intended, yes, a third, fourth, or fifth party would have just as much of a chance as any other; but it doesn’t, so they don’t. If a politician is as savvy as the general assumption about people with a desire for that high of an office*, they should be savvy enough to grasp and understand this. It follows that they should, if they really care about the county/their constituents/ whatever as much as they broadcast, do the truly altruistic thing and, if they really can’t run in the major party, throw their support behind whichever candidate comes *closest* to their ideals while making it known that hey, they don’t agree with everything, but it’s better than the other person because WHOA NELLY! This is actually basically why I hate Nader (or, rather, what he has degenerated into), and now that I’ve finished writing all of that, I think maybe I’ve said it all to y’all before… Hmm… Oh well. Anyhoo, this isn’t to say I wish Wilson hadn’t been elected, either- he’s on my list of misunderstood awesome presidents. But it isn’t like the electoral system was any different back then, and I totally think Roosevelt was full of himself, to some extent. There are a lot of other weird aspects of our electoral process that have had give and take results (e.g. electoral college, lack of term limits for senators), but now I’m getting too tangential and I’ll stop before I get too behind.
*I haven’t read your article, Amanda, so I don’t know if you mention this, but that’s another reason the general public would never elect Palin- while her supporters are viral and vociferous, they are a small niche. The majority, Democrat and Republican alike, realizes she’s a dingbat. It’s unlikely, but she very well may be so dense that she wouldn’t realize she has no chance if she decides to run in 2012, so I don’t know how much of a threat I’d think of her as quite yet if she ran as a third-party (because I seriously doubt, as of now, at least, that she’d get a Republican nomination for serious), since she wouldn’t take votes away from a candidate I’d be in support of.
the best undergrad paper I ever wrote was one that I didn’t. I pitched it to my Sociology prof (who is a pretty liberal feminist); that each of the Desperate Housewives reflects a part of the “ideal” woman and she said that I wouldn’t have enough proof for a 6-10 page paper. I managed to produce a fully fleshed out out-line complete with links to YouTube clips.
@Gab: I completly agree with you on Palin. My family watched her on 20/20 last night and I got so obnoxious in my comments that they actually had to kick me out. IMO she sets back the feminist movement by at least 10 yrs.
@Megan: A page per character would almost be enough- add to it a page or so of intro and the same for a conclusion, and you’d be set. That prof of yours must have had a rather large stick stuck somewhere. And speaking of feminism, Palin is a hard nut to crack, there. It depends on what branch or ideology within feminism itself you’re talking about. I tend to think of her as being feminist in an anti-feminist way (which is sort of cheating, I know): She asserts herself and makes lots of decisions, gaining power and influence- which makes her feminist; but her decisions often limit the power of other women or would perpetuate misogynistic and patriarchal norms in the lives of others, making her ANTI-feminist. IMO, it’s feminist to make the decision to keep your own baby or get married, so long as it is YOUR decision; but it’s ANTI-feminist to force those choices onto another woman and MAKE her “choose” as you would.
Oh yeah, and it may be my second-favorite paper, but it’s worth mentioning: a research paper paralleling and comparing OPEC to the Corleone family and some specific moments from _The Godfather_ trilogy. Saudi Arabia= Don Vito. I had the music playing in the background as I gave my presentation.
@Gab: she was pretty uptight about the papers in the class and ‘Housewives’ had only been on air for a few years at that point so she must have thought that I wouldn’t of had enough proof to back up my claims.
I agree with you on the views of what’s feminist/anti-feminist. I actually made a crack about her ‘expert in F.R. because we can see the Russians from our back door’ comment and my mom countered that if a guy had said it then everyone would think that it was witty. I had to disagee with her on that point, IMO that if a guy had said it everyone would still be making fun of it.