With the quickening of the contemporary world, the new technologies and paths to knowledge that make it possible to witness everything under the sun and beyond before breakfast, it may seem we are in an age where everything is new. And yet even a brief survey of the contents spilling across the page-screens of today [...]
Over the decades I’ve been studying mythology I’ve looked at and rejected a number of definitions of what myth is and does. First off, the common notion that myth = falsehood doesn’t do very much for us, and is a relatively recent perspective stemming from the late 18th century move toward literal interpretation with the [...]
In my popular culture class we’ve begun discussing freakshows, from the old carnival sideshow to the more contemporary versions of talkshows, tabloids, and some reality TV; a cultural form that essentially profits from the exploitation of abnormality and difference as entertainment. While with advances in scientific knowledge and individual respect such spectacles no longer rely [...]
Friday, February 26, 2010
At its earliest recorded usage in the late 16th Century, the word “awesome” implied an experience that filled one with a profoundly reverential or dread-filled awe. The word “awe” itself comes from the Old Norse agi, meaning terror, and found its common sense of dread mixed with veneration when applied to the Old Testament God, [...]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Since the other week when I wrote that essay on doppelgängers and the doubles of ourselves created by our self-representations it seems that issue has been finding greater traction on the Internet. As Klint Finley from Technoccult points out, there has apparently been much heated discussion on various occult forums about what constitutes a “hypersigil.” [...]
In German legend, the doppelgänger or double-goer is a ghostly version of oneself who follows us like our shadow. When it appears however, the doppelgänger becomes a harbinger of death, pointing Shelley to his drowning in the Mediterranean, or a portent of the future, like Goethe meeting his future self on the road to Drusenheim. [...]
My roster of classes this spring semester contains Lectures in Literature (focus on Adaptation), Readings in Contemporary Fiction (focus on post-Boom Latin American literature), Bible as Literature, and Popular Culture. Though not typically themes I look at, it was interesting to notice that almost immediately each class’s texts (though not yet pop culture, though with [...]
Saturday, December 19, 2009
[This one's inspired by a bunch of puns from work today, and the ridiculousness of the anxiety that manifests itself in Pittsburgh this time of year. Enjoy!] Bananarchy in the Bowl of Winds It was third down in the final minutes of the third quarter, and Jerry was on the edge of his seat. C’mon, [...]
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
A Lost European Culture, Pulled From Obscurity New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallises out of the Future Trees Communicate with Aspirin-like Chemical Rudiments of Language Discovered in Monkeys David Foster Wallace’s Toy Cement Mixer “Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas [...]
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
I haven’t written much yet publicly on the new perspective or belief system I have been attempting to formulate over this past year, a perspective that I call Ultimate Realism, which is perhaps best summed up by the quote from Patchen’s Memoirs of a Shy Pornogrpaher: “Everything which man can imagine, dream, or conceivably want [...]
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Also tagged apocalyptica, atheism, belief, Clothey, critical theory, fantastic, history, imagination, literature, manifestoes, modernity, Patchen, personal narrative, philosophy, religion, space, techniques, Ultimate Realism
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