Given my advancing age, I’m not a big fan of tattoos generally, so I appreciated receiving the following “New Rule” for 2006 by George Carlin from a student. Thanks Juliet.
New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it
doesn’t make you spiritual. It’s right above the crack of your ass.
And it translates to “beef with broccoli.” The last time you did
anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren’t pregnant.
You’re not spiritual. You’re just high.
From “A Very Long Disengagement” by Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher Education (6 January 2006):
“Last spring Nielsen Media Research reported that the average college student watches 3 hours 41 minutes of television each day. . . . Last year the National Survey of Student Engagement found that 44 percent of first-year students never discuss ideas from their readings or classes with their professors outside of class. . . . The trends are not unrelated. The more young people gather to watch TV shows, transmit e-mail and text messages, and blog and chat and surf and download, the less they attend to their regular studies. . . .
To repeat, the more time young adults devote to activities like sending e-mail messages, the less time they devote to books, the arts, politics, and their studies. Time has proved the formula. In the 1990s the gurus and cheerleaders of technology promised that the horizon of users would expand to take in a global village, and that a digital era would herald a more active, engaged, and knowledgeable citizenry, with young adults leading the way. It hasn’t happened. Instead, youth discourse has intensified, its grip on adolescence becoming even tighter, and the walls between young adults and larger realities have grown higher and thicker.”
In addition to being an average talent, here is what 50 Cent had to say about George W. Bush:
“I think he’s incredible. I think George Bush is a gangsta. That’s what I think. I wanna meet George Bush, just shake his hand and tell him how much of me I see in him. Do you know we share the same birthday. We were both born on July 6. I would have voted for George Bush.” –Quoted in GQ Magazine, December 2005.
Also, the fact that 50 Cent was named a GQ “Man of the Year” indicates the further debasement of the term “Gentleman” in the magazine’s title.
“Any questions?” asked Howard.
The answer to this never changed. Silence. But it was an interesting breed of silence particular to upscale liberal arts colleges. It was not silent because nobody had anything to say — quite the opposite. You could feel it, Howard could feel it, millions of things to say brewing in this room, so strong sometimes that they seemed to shoot from the students telepathically and bounce off the furniture. Kids looked down at the table top, out of the window, or at Howard with great longing; some of the weaker ones blushed and pretended to take notes. But not one of them would speak. They had an intense fear of their peers. And, more than that, of Howard imself.
–from Zadie Smith, On Beauty (2005)
More conversations in the household —
10 Year Old Son: There are too many girls in my Sunday school class.
Father: How can that be? That’s like saying there are too many flowers.
5 Year Old Son: Boys and girls are enemies.
Father: What?!
5 Year Old Son: Like England and France.
I don’t know who writes these kids’ material, but some of it is pretty dang funny. Of course, beneath the humor lurks an ugly reality: from an early age boys and girls are taught to think of each other as different and hostile genders. I am always amazed to find — as I did in my son’s kindergarten class this year — separate sign-in sheets for boys and girls. Is this necessary? Or lining up for lunch in two different lines: one for boys one for girls. I can see having kids line up by gender if they are waiting to use the bathroom, but for lunch? These practices go on totally unquestioned in the schools.
And those are the more mild forms of gender differentiation. See Barrie Thorne’s book, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.
I haven’t had alot of time to listen to Kanye West’s much anticipated sophomore album, Late Registration, but I have been intrigued by the remix of the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone.” In the first half of the song, West makes very astute observations about the relationship between “bling” in America and the trade in “conflict diamonds” in parts of Africa, including Angola and Sierra Leone. Although it was five years ago that the U.N. adopted a resolution condemning the role of diamonds in fueling these brutal wars, it took West’s song to bring the issue to the attention of large segments of the American public.
My problem with the song is not West’s part but Jay-Z’s. The second half of the song is an extended cameo by Jay-Z, who raps about nothing relevant to the first part. Sample lyric:
Difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week
I do this in my sleep,
I sold kilos of coke, I’m guessin’ I can sell CDs
I’m not a businessman I’m a business, man
Let me handle my buisness, damn!
Jay-Z’s considerable talent is evident on the song. He can flow and he is funny, but why has he never said anything socially relevant in a song? Or maybe he has? Am I missing something here? I mean, he doesn’t have to be Chuck D, but it seems he has wasted his talent in part by not pushing himself more. “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” is a perfect case in point.
I dislike the look of people who wear hats backwards (a.k.a., “hat boys”). Reading Patrick Allitt’s book, I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, I realized why. Allitt, who teaches history at Emory, writes: “Then came the trend, starting around 1994, to wear the hats backward, with the bill sticking out behind and the adjustable plastic tab defining a semicircle of forehead. The reversed student hat makes a statement about its wearer, something like, ‘I am dull.'” That’s what I’m talking about!
Someone was hyping The Game as the savior of West Coast rap. After all, he’s produced by Dre and his new album debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts. So I listened to the collabo with 50 Cent, “How We Do.” You can’t avoid it, really. And I say: if The Game is the savior of West Coast rap, then the West Coast is beyond salvation.
