Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Top 40 F*!king Hits
Remember Casey Kasem? He was the guy who, for thirty years, did the American Top 40 Countdown Radio show, where he shared the stories behind those touching long-distance dedications with such a heart it'd make even a tough trucker cry.
You'd never know it from the radio show, but the man behind that golden voice has a mouth that'd make a trucker wince, too. I'm not sure where I first heard the clip, but it's amazing--an outtake of the classic-voiced Kasem going ballistic about one of those very same long-distance dedications.
Kasem's out, replaced by Ryan Seacrest of American Idol, but I can't imagine why. I mean, when you combine these clips with his clean and pristine reputation, you kind of get to thinking of the guy as the uncle everyone loves. To hate.
(An aside: I was so interested by that bio page of his, and not because of him. Who knew that Shaggy's character from Scooby-Doo was actually named "Norville"? I'd go by Shaggy, too.)
You'd never know it from the radio show, but the man behind that golden voice has a mouth that'd make a trucker wince, too. I'm not sure where I first heard the clip, but it's amazing--an outtake of the classic-voiced Kasem going ballistic about one of those very same long-distance dedications.
Kasem's out, replaced by Ryan Seacrest of American Idol, but I can't imagine why. I mean, when you combine these clips with his clean and pristine reputation, you kind of get to thinking of the guy as the uncle everyone loves. To hate.
(An aside: I was so interested by that bio page of his, and not because of him. Who knew that Shaggy's character from Scooby-Doo was actually named "Norville"? I'd go by Shaggy, too.)
Monday, May 17, 2004
Cheap thoughts
These last few weeks I've been reading Nietzsche as a part of a reading group led by a couple students from Creighton, where I will be a student in September. Early in Nietzsche's career, at least in the books we've been reading so far (Untimely Meditations and The Birth of Tragedy...), the philospher Schopenhauer was a very strong influence on his thinking.
I'm a literature person, not a philosophy person, but English literature has a way of talking about itself called critical theory, and critical theory is essentially the way we appropriate all the different philosophical, sociological, linguistic, and other strands of thought for the discussion of literature. So, while not many of us literature people have a good grounding in philosophy, it helps to be at least functionally literate with it, since you need philosophy to talk critically about literature.
Even given this basic literacy I've acquired, in a straight philosophical discussion about philosophy I'm about as helpful as a pimple on the butt. I needed some remedial philosophical education, and still do. So I was delighted by yesterday's find, when I stumbled upon the Do-It-Yourself-Deity game and the others, because it led to that parent page, The Philosophy Magazine Online, which is helpful enough to give "snapshots" and overviews of some philosophy basics with its Primers. Alas, no Schopenhauer here, though it does cover Kuhn's stuff on philosophy of science, a new field we talked about for the first time at the reading group tonight.
I was so excited to read some of those snapshots, and then I found the catch: It's one of those joints that makes you pay for its services.
Instead, I'll be headed on over to Philosophy Pages, which provides an amazingly comprehensive review of philosophers and their connections to one another. It seems more comprehensive than the TPM site. It's a fantastically easy site to navigate, since everything links to everything else. You can just follow your curiosity through the strands of philosophy, and get so lost in it all. For free.
I'm a literature person, not a philosophy person, but English literature has a way of talking about itself called critical theory, and critical theory is essentially the way we appropriate all the different philosophical, sociological, linguistic, and other strands of thought for the discussion of literature. So, while not many of us literature people have a good grounding in philosophy, it helps to be at least functionally literate with it, since you need philosophy to talk critically about literature.
Even given this basic literacy I've acquired, in a straight philosophical discussion about philosophy I'm about as helpful as a pimple on the butt. I needed some remedial philosophical education, and still do. So I was delighted by yesterday's find, when I stumbled upon the Do-It-Yourself-Deity game and the others, because it led to that parent page, The Philosophy Magazine Online, which is helpful enough to give "snapshots" and overviews of some philosophy basics with its Primers. Alas, no Schopenhauer here, though it does cover Kuhn's stuff on philosophy of science, a new field we talked about for the first time at the reading group tonight.
I was so excited to read some of those snapshots, and then I found the catch: It's one of those joints that makes you pay for its services.
Instead, I'll be headed on over to Philosophy Pages, which provides an amazingly comprehensive review of philosophers and their connections to one another. It seems more comprehensive than the TPM site. It's a fantastically easy site to navigate, since everything links to everything else. You can just follow your curiosity through the strands of philosophy, and get so lost in it all. For free.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Salt water surprise
After the Omaha Royals game tonight there was a free concert, and they were giving out water, cookies, and ice cream. This was a balm, as the home team lost to the visitors from Fresno.
I enjoyed my cookie and my ice cream, though I had to eat the latter with one of those wooden paddles that only roughly approximates a spoon and reminds one all too quickly of tongue depressors and grade school field trips with small cups of ice cream. I hate how it makes my ice cream taste like a gigantic vanilla toothpick.
I was enjoying my water, until I looked at the ingredients. Ingredients? I guess I had become too used to water just being, well, water. But, no, my bottle of Dasani had a couple of extra ingredients, minerals and some sodium, added to it.
Granted, all of it comes in very negligible amounts. But Coca-Cola has flavored my water with a touch extra because they found people liked the taste better.
I love the Dasani website. It tells you, happily, that the word "Dasani" means nothing; it's one of those marketing words like "Kodak" created to fulfill a specific purpose in selling a product. It also insists repeatedly that one "can't live without it," where the "it" is most certainly Dasani, but more generally water. We all know how important water is to the human body, even if most of us don't drink enough Dasani.
The web site also has a little quiz. In the quiz you can learn that drinking loads of water won't help you lose weight, which seems patently untrue from the gleeful model who graces the main webpage as you first open it; she, though clearly understanding one "can't live without it," has obviously been so intent to hydrate herself that she's forgotten to eat altogether.
I also love that the first question in the quiz tests your knowledge of whether water--and only water--counts toward replacing what fluids you've lost. The answer is an emphatic NO, because what little caffeine is found in soft drinks and coffee is not enough to negate the proportionally large amount of water you're taking in. Brilliant move, Coca-Cola. Though I'm convinced of my need for your water--the fresh and clean mineralized taste of which is absolutely essential to my bodily functions--I feel suddenly free to indulge wantonly on your soft drinks and sports drinks, knowing that they too have the same regenerative powers at their cores. In fact, now I can sleep, knowing that Coca-Cola's got my back. They won't let anyone sap and impurify my precious bodily fluids. No, no, quite the opposite--they'll even help replenish them after my strenuous workouts and during my pregnancies, with each and every product on their beverage line.
Somebody pass me a Coke.
I enjoyed my cookie and my ice cream, though I had to eat the latter with one of those wooden paddles that only roughly approximates a spoon and reminds one all too quickly of tongue depressors and grade school field trips with small cups of ice cream. I hate how it makes my ice cream taste like a gigantic vanilla toothpick.
I was enjoying my water, until I looked at the ingredients. Ingredients? I guess I had become too used to water just being, well, water. But, no, my bottle of Dasani had a couple of extra ingredients, minerals and some sodium, added to it.
Granted, all of it comes in very negligible amounts. But Coca-Cola has flavored my water with a touch extra because they found people liked the taste better.
I love the Dasani website. It tells you, happily, that the word "Dasani" means nothing; it's one of those marketing words like "Kodak" created to fulfill a specific purpose in selling a product. It also insists repeatedly that one "can't live without it," where the "it" is most certainly Dasani, but more generally water. We all know how important water is to the human body, even if most of us don't drink enough Dasani.
The web site also has a little quiz. In the quiz you can learn that drinking loads of water won't help you lose weight, which seems patently untrue from the gleeful model who graces the main webpage as you first open it; she, though clearly understanding one "can't live without it," has obviously been so intent to hydrate herself that she's forgotten to eat altogether.
I also love that the first question in the quiz tests your knowledge of whether water--and only water--counts toward replacing what fluids you've lost. The answer is an emphatic NO, because what little caffeine is found in soft drinks and coffee is not enough to negate the proportionally large amount of water you're taking in. Brilliant move, Coca-Cola. Though I'm convinced of my need for your water--the fresh and clean mineralized taste of which is absolutely essential to my bodily functions--I feel suddenly free to indulge wantonly on your soft drinks and sports drinks, knowing that they too have the same regenerative powers at their cores. In fact, now I can sleep, knowing that Coca-Cola's got my back. They won't let anyone sap and impurify my precious bodily fluids. No, no, quite the opposite--they'll even help replenish them after my strenuous workouts and during my pregnancies, with each and every product on their beverage line.
Somebody pass me a Coke.
