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Dispatches from Alabama Part I: A Blogtroduction In 2D!

11/2/2011

4 Comments

 
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Hey humans, Hunter here. Some of you may remember me as “Robert” or “Tweetwee,” or “that bro that only ever wore flannel and really put into words just how much quantifiably those kids in that place where we ate sub-par food sucked, metaphorically,” but you will soon know me as “the helper elf” in terms of what I will do on the blog. That’s right, it’s practicum time.

I am currently living in Birmingham, Alabama, [where we stop at two amendments (not including the first)], for some reason (1). I am able to substitute teach about Paradise Lost sometimes, because my background is in English, but to supplement the 30 dollars I have made from that I work in a restaurant, because my background is in English. (EDIT: I have since been fired).

And when I’m not serving as an entirely unnecessary cog in a machine that facilitates young moms obtaining food that can be described as somewhere between “fast” and “real,” I’m sweeping up the potato chips that their “children” have decided that the floor needs more than they do. I have checked most of these kids for the 666 mark that Damien had in "The Omen," but they have been remarkably well hidden thus far. We’ll know we’re in trouble in a few years when one of them turns into Sam Neill and runs for president, and I’ll be on a street corner with a sign and a beard (finally) shouting about how President Neill used to throw his potato chips everywhere and his mom was kind of a b-word (2) and anyway isn’t he British? (EDIT: I have since been fired).

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Pure evil.
In addition to helping out with the blog itself, I will also be blogging (since I see keeping a word document open while I explore Wikipedia as a viable way to both pad my hours and keep on the moral straight-and-narrow). And I have some ideas for those and here are those ideas:
  • Movies to Watch/Movies to Drink To: where I will review both good movies and charmingly bad ones with similar subject matter side by side and devise a drinking game for the bad one. Examples: “Fight Club” and “Never Back Down,” where one (standing the test of time) explores themes of duality and anarchy in strikingly unique ways, and the other has you taking a shot every time they mention Jake’s father and also every time you find the Orlando underground yuppie MMA scene to be slightly less than plausible.
  • Also the groundbreaking anime classic “Princess Mononoke” and “The Thaw,” a movie where Val Kilmer defrosts a Mastadon and unleashes a plague on the earth that wipes out mankind. One is a truly breathtaking blend of environmentalism, mysticism and visual storytelling that is rarely even hinted at in Western animation, and the other may kill you if you drink every time you notice how fat Val Kilmer’s gotten, or every time you have a burning desire to refer to him as “Iceman.”(3)
  • Academic Papers on Unenlightened Subjects: one thing I wasn’t prepared for was how few papers I’d have to write in real life. So I will correct that. Possibles:
  • Speculation on the psychological condition of the characters in Modern Family, and whether or not that explains the reasoning behind the producers of the show never justifying its documentary-style format. If they’re insane and talking to a camera that the audience is supposed to think isn’t there, the show becomes a lot more interesting. Post-gender normative theory in Sean Kingston’s song “Replay,” which was positively lighting up the radio a couple of years ago, and contains a great deal of probably accidental gender role-reversal. 
  • A Freudian analysis of that same film, “Never Back Down.” (Ignoring of course that Freud was not much more than a coke-addled postulator who shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone, except, I have learned, English departments really want to).
  • The Psychological effects of growing up a Spider-Man fan, and whether or not said fan can know love while Mary-Jane Watson (posited correctly in the thesis as the ideal woman) exists as an idea in their consciousness. 23 years of research has gotten us to a resounding "nope, sorry."
  • Dispatches from Alabama Parts II Through Going Forward, Presented in 2D!: where I recount the various ways that Alabama gets in trouble and bemoan the fact that I pay taxes to it. (4)
  • Also, November is National Novel Writing Month, and for whoever doesn’t know what that is, it is essentially a reason to churn out 50,000 words of fair to middling quality (quality situated under quantity, here). Everyone should do it, and I’ll be posting some of my efforts and also threatening others into posting theirs.
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check out that symbiosis
 One thing I will never write about is writing, since I’m as qualified to do that as a baby shark is qualified to write about swimming: I know it’s something I have to do to keep breathing, but I’m completely oblivious to how I do it or what exactly it is or even what water is. I’m too busy trying to get remoras to be my friend and eat the waste from my gill slits.(5)

    There’s a chance I’ll also hit you all with updates on how frustrated I get with my (utter lack of) facial hair, especially with a roommate who can grow one hell of a beard. 

 These are the things that I think about.


FOOTNOTES:
(1)  And to answer an inquiry that I myself made before I moved, no, becoming closer to the equator has not made me better in any way, I have in fact gotten sick for the first time in about 5 years here. What I’m driving at is that North Carolina is a way better state, both at keeping me healthy and at not sexually molesting detained immigrants.    
(2)  I won’t be swearing in any of my blogs, because there’s a chance that my mom will want to read them. There’s also a good chance that I’ll swear anyway. 
(3) Also worth noting that the female lead, Martha McIsaac, was in a movie called “Ice Princess.” Wikipedia. Also, get it? 'Cause of the ice? And Top Gun? Get it?
(4) North Carolina, incidentally, was better at taxes and also at not executing the mentally handicapped. 
(5) I’m doing this from memory: I know a lot about sharks. Also, dinosaurs. 
4 Comments
Teresa Sundmark link
11/4/2011 11:30:00 am

Hunter,
I'm a mom and I swear in my blog. Sometimes I'm afraid my kids will read it, but I doubt that will ever happen. I've noticed that teenagers are a little narcissistic that way. Also, please include Pokemon in your blog posts sometimes.

Reply
Toni Todd link
11/6/2011 01:35:16 am

Hunter, I am so glad to see you here again, and to know you will be a regular. I only understand about half of what you ever write, not because it's unintelligible, but because I am so woefully unhip as to make a cool baby shark's gill-slit waste seem delicious and beautiful. Maybe it is delicious and beautiful. Is it? See? I really don't know anything. That said, I can commiserate with your current torment as a transplant to a new place. Moving closer to the equator was a big change for me some years ago, and living there wasn't doing much for me either (except for the coffee, which has spoiled me for all the other sludge out there, and a tan, which I've found camouflages a lot of flaws), so I am temporarily in Colorado, growing pastier by the minute but feeling fine about that. It's refreshing to be in a state where 68 year old men who grow a few too many medical marijuana plants in their backyards don't get sent up the river for years (which, I'll admit in Hawaii is not very far, since the rivers are really short) and the cops actually arrest people for violent crimes and leave the peaceful "farmers" alone. I cannot, however, relate to your frustration over an utter lack of facial hair, being a woman of a certain age who now carries a pair of tweezers everywhere she goes, just in case. Honestly, I don't know where I'm going with all this. But I would like to say that I'm looking forward to being confused, amazed and entertained by you on a regular basis in the annals (or is it anals? -- I always get those two confused) of this blog. (My mother doesn't have a computer-heh, heh, heh.)

P.S. One more point of contention: You are as qualified to write about writing as any of us, maybe more so, so walk that plank or you'll be swimmin' with the fishes.

Reply
David D Stevenson link
11/16/2011 03:10:48 am

I couldn't pronounce my last name either, or so I was told (though I never believed them). This led to my first nickname: "Chinchin."

Reply
Vivian Faith Prescott link
11/16/2011 07:52:18 am

Hunter,

Welcome to the blogosphere! It's kinda like the twilight zone in here. Although on the real Twilight Zone Rod Serling wasn't allowed to write about "sensitive" subjects. So please stay away from topics relating to Spiderman, okay? :)

Reply



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