Why You Should Major in English

In a couple recent conversations I've had with some colleagues and a student in my 101 class, i've come to a realization that really has no business being a realization at all (because it's so obvious): English, as a discipline, is really bad at marketing.

The thing is, though, that I'm not convinced that English should be bad at marketing. In a recent conversation with setherick, i brought up my "new" concept of "Applied Metaphorics", which he explained to me was, essentially, a marketing major.  I disagreed with this, having taken some marketing coursework in my undergrad, and having discussed a variety of homework that my business, advertising, and marketing majors in my comp classes are assigned.

Near as I can tell, the business and marketing courses at most mainstream colleges and universities has not changed much. Sure, it's added a  squalling assurance that 'social media is the relevant', but otherwise the courses seem, essentially, to teach young people to fill out paperwork. 

Produce a marketing plan, put together a proposal or (arf) a PowerPoint proposal. What's missing, of course, is thought. 

*  *  * 

Now of course, professors of marketing and students thereof and such will object: "...but SWOT analysis and Marlow's hierarchy of needs" &ct., and yes, these are concepts which are learned and internalized, which is well and good as part of a curriculum. 

What English offers that few other disciplines do - you can find it in Philosophy, and well taught History and Psychology courses - is a course of study that questions the underlying assumptions, both of itself and anything that it takes aim at.  This process of inquiry is a great basis for any course of study.

I heard someone at an academic conference (or maybe it was an English class...) once opine that English was the fundamental discipline.  That any other course of study could fit within our purview, and (almost) before you start to work in any other area, you need to "do an English class" on it, and be sure that your terms and underlying assumptions were solid before proceeding.  Someone else had the thought that Physics was in fact the fundamental discipline.  I love this idea, although I think the way that sciences are taught, it can't be used in the way that it naturally would fit.

So, as you're looking at a course of study - consider English... I know when I am looking through resumes and trying to find someone who stands out, a humanities degree, and especially an English degree, make me look a little more carefully at their other experience and qualifications - regardless of the position.

(the second section was composed on 8/27/17 - finally semi-finishing this thought...)

The Choc-a-lonic

Here's a superb after-dinner cocktail. After you've had a lovely dinner out (or in, i suppose), and are looking to wind down and taste something sweet (actually, this seems a bit TOO sweet, but it's really not, if you want a seriously boozy dessert cocktail) this is just about the perfect cocktail:

The Choc-a-Lonic

2 oz. vodka (chocolate vodka may be substituted {or partially substituted})
1 oz. Kahlua
1/2 oz. Frangelico
1/2 oz. heavy cream
1/4 oz. Cointreau
some chocolate sauce

Mix the first five ingredients (or reasonable substitutes) and shake them together vigorously in a cocktail shaker over ice. Line your martini glass with chocolate sauce (as much as you want). Pour into glass & get ready to enjoy. Seriously.

Grape Nuts & De Certeau

everyday life, indeed...

a pretty nice little saturday

On Saturday i went - with brooke, eric, bethany, shane, & grant - to the quaint (don't look up etymologies, as a general rule) little town of Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin. It was my first visit to Mt. Horeb, though i'd known it by reputation and street sign for more than a dozen or so years.

The drive there is the same drive (at least at the start - US Hwy 18) as the road to Decorah, so even en route, i am calm and content... On entering Mt. Horeb you pass through a series of roundabouts. The great thing about roundabouts is that you never quite have to stop & wait at them as you would a stoplight. The lousy thing about roundabouts is that Americans don't really quite get them... or trust them.

On arrival, after Rex Grossman walked around and screamed at people downtown, we made a brief stop at the Mustard Museum. There was quite a lot of mustard there.

After this visit, we moved on to the main stop, The Grumpy Troll, a well-run, really pleasant brew pub & pizzeria at 2nd St. & Main St. We sat downstairs, at the bar (the best way to get to know any place is to sit at the bar) and sampled some of the beers. The Troll's beers tend not to fall victim to the great failing of many micro (or home)-brews. Often a small brewing operation tends to rely too much on flavor, forgetting that beer-drinkers, in fact, enjoy beer. A chocolate stout tastes a bit much like chocolate, an ale with a hint of citrus too often gets drowned out by that citrus, but, for the most part, the Grumpy Troll avoids this pitfall. Their jalepeño beer (Slow Eddie) has just a touch of spice, on the finish, and adds a lovely compliment to a pizza (more on that in just a sec). Their only beer that does tend to fall victim to over-flavoration is the Maggie Imperial IPA and, in fact, the way it's over-flavored isn't offensive, rather, pushy. The Maggie measures 100 IBU's (International Bittering Units?), and is, in some ways, an IPA drinker's dream beer, but the bitter almost (but not quite) overpowers all else. In the end, the Maggie is good for a pint, but i'm not sure i'd want much more than that. The champion beer for me, though, was the CCCP Spetsnaz Stout, a lovely, dark stout with chocolate & coffee undertones.

Finally, at 4pm, the pizzeria upstairs opened. The pizza was some of the best i've found anywhere. I think maybe even better than (and certainly distinct from) Mamma Lilla's in Clinton, which is my favorite (comfort food) pizza. The crust was really quite good and they had several well-designed specialty pies. Also adding to the place's charm were the sort of retro video games, including a Sunset Riders knock-off in which we (Shane & I, natch) played some sort of mutant bulls...

After leaving the wonderful company of the Grumpy Troll, we headed back into Madison & hit the Great Dane Pub & Brewery at the Hilldale Mall in Madison. A diverting stop, though, no beer for me...

Finally, on the drive home we made a stop at Tyranena Brewery in Lake Mills, having some pints of their Pumpkin Spice Ale and Chocolate Porter as well as picking up a Growler of the Stone Tepee Pale Ale. And, with a gassy belly & a really quite mild beer buzz, we returned home to Milwaukee.

on this date in history:

joel was awash in consumer electronics (and actually being read)

Lo-Fi Authenticity: a review of Paranormal Activity & Capitalism: A Love Story

*Note: This entry went unfinished for a long time (currently writing most of it 13 January 2010), so it isn't very well thought through or specific... but that shouldn't do much to the credibility of RNJ as it is already in question (see rest of blog).

The fairly simple premise of both these films gets carried through to their structure and feel. What you've got here is a couple movies about terror (as opposed to horror) and an amateurish, 'thrown-together' feel, which makes the terror feel real.

Perhaps the best scene that tells this story is when Micah leaves a Ouija Board on the coffee table and (SPOILER ALERT!) the 'cursor' moves a little bit, it starts spelling something out, then starts on fire. This is a cliché more often than not, but it works because it looks like it HAS to be real, because there're no 'special effects' in this movie (because it looks like a home video, see).

What, you may be asking, is the distinction between terror and horror. Well, Ann Radcliffe thought that terror is the sensation of feeling immanent horror. Horror is actually experiencing the event.

***

I remember when I first conceived of this post and it was going to be so good... so interesting.
Sorry about that.

Oh, and there was a great parallel to Capitalism, but by this time it's pretty well gone, so... yeah, the economy is horrific... so that's that.

Zombie Day!

For reasons inexplicable to me, Monday, October 12th will be zombie day at the UW-M Student Union. Max Brooks will be speaking at 7pm (unfortunately, it seems to be a "zombie preparedness presentation", but i'm holding out for a good Q&A).

Additionally, the UW-M cinema is showing Dead Snow, a Norwegian zombie, Nazi comedy. I haven't seen it, nor have I read a lot about it, but what I have heard has been generally positive. I'm looking for it to be a hilarious update on the French non-classic, J'Accuse.

But, in addition to both of these events (each exciting and worthy of note in its own right), there is also a lecture being given by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor of Africology called "Do Zombies Exist?"

Overall, Monday promises an array of zombie thinking, satirical zombie preparedness conversation, zombie comedy (zombedy?), & (hopefully) rigorous academic attention. Hope to see you all there.


***Updated: 19 October 2009***

Although I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Bellegarde-Smith after his talk (and he seems like he's a fascinating guy), I very much regret the extent to which he gave up the floor both to a documentary created for Canadian TV & to an open "discussion" of the question. While the documentary did make a fair number of claims, Professor Bellegarde-Smith, an (ordained?) Voodoo Priest merely talked around the issue - he seemed most interested (and this I got mostly from our conversation after the lecture) in the fact that Voodoo, unlike other mystical religions (Sufi, Zen, Kabbalah, even Native American religions) has never had any sort of modern renaissance. No young folks, looking for answers turned to Voodoo en masse as they seemed to many of the other mystical religions. This was accounted for because of race, but these claims didn't go much further, nothing more interesting was said, really.

Now, with Dead Snow, there really was absolutely no disappointment. The movie was quite funny, quite gory (the demise of movie geek Erlend is particularly gruesome {and simultaneously hilarious}). The premise of the movie is a lot like Evil Dead, except in Norway, with Nazis, in the snow...

Finally, Max Brooks' (evidently, son of Mel Brooks) talk was entertaining (and very well attended). Because the premise was a zombie-preparedness lecture, I wasn't too disappointed, but I did feel like his responses to the Q&A was overly glib. Something akin to Stephen Colbert appearing on other shows, still fully in character.