I do not enjoy horror films. Not even a little bit. They genuinely terrify me. I hate them, I won’t voluntarily go to them, and no amount of cajoling or ridicule will change my mind about that. Now, I should note here at the start that I don’t believe that ghosts or spirits or devils…
Read MoreWhat difference does a signature make? I’ll assume that the phenomenon of trolling is one familiar to most of us on the interwebs, a phenomenon that is, in turns, infuriating, exasperating, unpleasant, and often genuinely hostile and threatening. There’s much to abhor about trolls– their pettiness and vitriol, their disregard for basic conversational decorum, their…
Read MoreYesterday, at a rally in advance of the upcoming Iowa caucuses, GOP Presidential candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump said (in his outside voice): “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters. It’s, like, incredible.” My first thought was: yes, that IS incredible, as in not credible. It’s almost…
Read MoreI read Emma Donoghue‘s novel Room somewhat by accident shortly after it was released in 2010 No one recommended it to me and I didn’t know anything about it in advance. Rather, I found myself stuck in an airport waiting on an indefinitely delayed connection, my attention-span for grading papers was exhausted, and so I wandered…
Read More[This is the second installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.] Like many of my fellow web-citizens, I found myself doing a number of dramatic double-takes on Wednesday morning as I watched “news”-casters review…
Read MoreOver the last several years, I’ve steadily increased the amount of time I spend in my moral and political philosophy courses on the theme of “digital identity.” I’ve done so in part because one important cornerstone of my pedagogical practice is to use my courses to combat digital illiteracy– the single greatest vulnerability that will…
Read MoreOnce again this June, I’ll be blogging the 30 Day Song Challenge, which I’ve done for the last few years. Since I began in 2011, the official list of Challenge prompts has changed several times, so this year I’ve tried to mashup the best parts of previous iterations into a new “2015” version of the…
Read MoreYesterday, Memphis turned out in force at W.C. Handy Park and on Beale Street to bid its final farewell in a home-going celebration for one of our city’s musical legends, B.B. King, who passed away last week. It was a dark and cloudy morning, which felt strangely appropriate, as Nature herself seemed unable to hold…
Read MoreYesterday, my good friend, fellow music-lover and ridiculously super-smart guy, Steven Thomas (Asst Professor of English and Director of Film and Media Minor, Wagner College), published on his blog a response to and critique of my post from a couple of days ago on the Thicke/Pharrell/Gaye lawsuit (“On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally”). His…
Read MoreYesterday afternoon, I saw the new film Fifty Shades of Grey, based on the erotic romance novel of the same name by E.L. James. I hadn’t read the books beforehand, which I expect I would have found insufferable if the general consensus about the quality of their prose is even half-true. (Judging from the stilted,…
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