Hold the Ice, Please

Here's an article I wrote for MD magazine. Yes, this is a real newsstand magazine as well as an online site. The semi-satirical magazine celebrates guilt-free imbibing with a style reminiscient of the 1960s cocktail generation. Disclaimer: This site not for those under 21. Please be responsible and careful when partaking.

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/53/53_hold_the_ice.html

Why People Steal Music

This is why the music industry is collapsing: While they fail to secure the electronic distribution rights of older music, they try to make up for phantom lost profits by bundling hit songs with duds into "album purchase only" packages. It is no wonder people steal songs. The MBAs who run these music companies are missing the point of electronic music, I think. Nobody is interested in "albums" anymore (I don't think anybody has been since the artistry of the LP was replaced by the plasticky awkwardness of CD packaging.)

The back catalogs of the following artists are not available on iTunes, as revealed by my recent futile searches:

Def Leppard
Bob Seger
AC/DC

I'm sure there's more to come. When an industry fails to cater to the (admittedly pretty bad) tastes of someone like me, someone who is willing to pay for individual songs from the classic rock era, it writes its own death certificate.

Don't even get me started on the new iTunes-Starbucks partnership.

Bad Punctuation All Around Us

A colleague sent this link to a blog cataloguing instances of a certain pet peeve of mine:

http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

This reminded me of a bad business idea I once had: When I see mistakes like this on signs and menus (apostrophe mistakes seem to be the most common –- and for some reason, the most annoying), I would send the business manager a letter with a correction and explanation. Then I would ask the manager or owner to send me a dollar or two as a token of his immense gratitude. (I guess this would be the editing equivalent of taking photos of tourists with the expectation that they’ll buy the photo afterward. )

As a business idea, it’s horrible, which I suppose is why I’m not in business.

Ask me about my other business ideas sometime. (I don't know who I'm talking to. No one reads my blog.)

On Irony

There's always the danger in being ironic and/or sarcastic that someone will mistake your intent. So let me take this opportunity to explain that the post below about watching TV on the Internet was written in jest. Thank you.

I was going to write a diatribe about the difference between irony and sarcasm, but I'm trying to be less didactic and more succinct in my posts (both here and in my on-line class, where I'm afraid I've become the virtual equivalent of the geek in the front of the class who always raises his hand and then talks for 15 minutes.

In the Coffee Shop

So I'm sitting in the coffee shop, trying to get some writing and grading done, and the barrista (like that word, don't you?) is sitting on a stool watching the football game. He's actually cheering at the television. Aren't coffee shops supposed to be quiet places for nerds like me to read and write things like this? Is this a coffee sports bar? Maybe I should have just gone to Hooters.

Pocahontas and John Smith

My American lit class engaged in an interesting activity today. We watched portions of some film versions of the John Smith-Pocahontas story to supplement the reading of Smith's journal, and then they had some group discussion on the significance of the enduring Pocahontas legend. I have some thoughts of my own.

The most interesting angle to me is that latter versions of the story (not Smith's own version) introduce the idea of a romantic relationship between Smith and Pocahontas. This fanciful, Hollywood spin on the legend in part simply makes for a better story, as it extends and complicates their entanglement, and it makes the story more enjoyable as a romantic encounter across language and cultural barriers. People love a good love story, and sex sells.

Still, it seems to me that it serves a larger, more metaphorical purpose. The idea that Smith's own story of Pocahontas saving him serves colonial ends in suggesting a peaceful coexistence between Natives and English is well established, but why eroticize the story? In oversimplified terms, the love story symbolizes the romance between England and the New World. Just as many English poets and early travel writers speak of the New World continents in terms that suggest the female body, so Pocahontas becomes a living, breathing representation of this female continent, willingly taken by the English male explorer. (In latter-day, postcolonial literature, this relationship would be likened more to rape.) It deepens and complicates the connections between England and the New World, just as John Smith and other early colonialists hoped to extend and deepend England's commitment to settling the New World.

Bring Back Faculty Parking

Yesterday, I had to park about a quarter-mile from my office. I teach afternoons and evenings on Mondays, so by the time I arrived, the campus parking lot was full to the perimeters. Like many community colleges, in some kind of vague notion of the idealization of egalitarian values, we have no designated faculty parking where I work.

"What's wrong with that?," I suppose you're asking. Why shouldn't faculty have to walk like everyone else? They're not special.

I beg to differ for the following reasons. For one thing, faculty members have to tote multiple bags to work every day, including but not limited to laptop computers, books and other reading materials, graded papers and exams, and other teaching props and tools. Many also must carry their lunch, since they don't make enough money or have enough time to eat out every day. Students generally have one knapsack with a couple of books and a notebook. When you work somewhere for 20 years, it's a nice perk to not have to walk the length of two football fields to get to your office from your parking space.

I also dispute the notion that faculty are not worthy of special treatment when it comes to parking. The hierarchal structure that esteems faculty and others is a system that has worked for hundreds of years; it helps to instill respect in younger people as well as a sense of envy. This envy, with any luck, is part of what drives to succeed. Parking is a symbolic benefit, really, but it's symbolic of what you achieve when you put in the hard work and time required to receive an education. If all the benefits are yours to start with, what's the point?

Good parking is also a no-cost and easy-to-facilitate benefit for employees. It's a way of bestowing reward on your employees and faculty members just for being loyal and hard workers. At Google and other young Internet companies, employees receive such perks as free massages, nap time, cook-to-order meals, and in-office gym facilities. Surely a decent parking space is not so much to ask.

Granted, when I was a student at UT in Austin, I got pretty irked seeing all the empty faculty spaces when student parking was for all practical purposes non-existent. But then, I was 18, so what did I know? Not much.

Disclaimer: It occurs to me that people get in trouble for posting about work. I want to state for the record that the above post is not meant to reflect poorly on my employer. This is a general trend with colleges everywhere.