You... and the PPP

This thread is completely inexplicable, though at times humorous in some unconventional way I can't quite put my finger on. There's definitely some irony in there somewhere, though.
 
What is the PPP? can somebody tell me what this PPP exclusive cult is? i mean if its a bunch of guys that get together and slay some runs, then yea i would like an invite. my criteria-theres' three things:

1: I ski and i wouldnt trade it for breathing

2: i like waking up to a hot lady in the morning

3. im from the pow state UT (thats right i said it)

-so if that makes me part of this cool cult that everyone seems to want or not want to be apart of then cool. if not ill see you guys on the slopes, in the park, and BC-maybe then ill let you into my cool cult.
 
bring out your zombies and i'll rebury 'em.

that's my contributions

woot for shibiness and woot for the PPP

john aka jkl0ps gets my approval because he's mad k3wl even though he's from vergennes.... and Bp gets my stamp of approval... for being a true phan.
 
Hmmm, I've been on this site for, what like 6 years. I didn't really know this PPP even existed until this sweet post.
 
i dont know why getting into this cult is such a big deal, i will probobly never be in it and i dont give a shit. i dont need to suck up to a bunch of people i dont even know over the internet. im on here to talk about skiing and other rad stuff not to compete to be in the "coolest" cult. sometimes i kinda feel like im in middle school when im on this site.
 
i should get in because of this:

dammedance.jpg


THATS RIGHT ITS VAN DAMME
 
i thought the ppp was cool and that i wanted to see the forum , like a chill, nice enviroment. After reading this whole thread, i dont really want to anymore if everyone acts like this.
 
i would like to be in the ppp. why? just because...

i have heard rumours that the ppp increases penis size, that would be helpful...

i once got confused and tried to join the KKK, i later found out there were NOT the same thing...

im lonely, and after a while, the sg and nsg forums start to die down, ppp would change things up.

im addicted to masturbation...that really doesnt have much to do with the ppp, i just need help.

black watch already refused me...

i just wrote out a list of why i should be in a cult i still dont fully understand the point of.

you said something about snowboarding. i snowboard.

i can make boobs out of letters and punctuations... ( . Y . )

there is my reasoning.
 
well ive always really wanted to be in it, because pretty much all of the cooler people on this site are in it. plus i like the icons. so put me in please.
 
You guys are too worked up about it. Who cares? Personally I think it's a cool idea. You pay your dues and actually make intelligent comments and you may get an invite from group of people who can appreciate someone who's not a fucking dumbass. You can then go and read/post comments in a forum without a bunch of garbage. Then again I know nothing about it and am only making assumptions.
 
I don't wanna be in the PPP because you're all geeks who are having their midlife crisis and try to be the cool crowd on an internet forum. Yay. You're so phunkin and phat.
 
come on, im not trying to specifically target you, but if you were to read the opening post, you would see phatttim isnt asking for people to join, it is in response to people who have been asking. And if you sincerely dont have an interest in this cult, dont write something stupid because you think it is funny or something. Leave this thread to people who actually are interested in this cult.
 
that post of mine was to all of the people posting ignorant and stupid comments on here just for the hell of it. You do know that you dont have to post something in every thread, post if you can adress the specific topic.
 
why should i be in the PPP?

1. i'm phunkin

2. i'm phatt

3. i'm a phreerider

4. i actually know one of the ppp members (not internet knowing, like real liphe knowing lol)

5. i'm tired of siphting through the garbage in sg and nsg

6. ok, so i ran out oph reasons, but whatever, i'm hungry so i'm goin phor supper.
 
no, i actually prefer to give him blowjobs, handjobs just dry out the skin on my hands, i try to moisturize as much as possible
 
1. I drink american beer and get drunk

2. I barely use newschoolers

3. I rarely contribute anything more than a sarcastic comment or heartfelt joke once and while

4. The 420 forum and IMC are the only places i check

5. I just really don't care

6. I like Bud light cause its delecious to me, even though you canadians will laugh like the vaginas you are.

7. I dont even ski anymore..woooo college!!!!
 
I'm too lazy to write an essay. In fact, I'm too lazy to even write an essay for my Senior Seminar course due tomorrow. But here's an essay I did write last semester trying to defend a proposed American Literature syllabus. So if anyone needs free essay...enjoy.

-Dan

The “Art” of a Syllabus:

Aesthetics and Cultural Studies in the Construction of a Syllabus

“What America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and

you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat

disappear on the black waters of Lethe?”

Supermarket in California - Allen Ginsberg

Over the course of one semester, my view of English literature has shifted entirely. I can no longer expect to enjoy a centered world of text, authors and reader but rather one whose entire premise is to tear down the structures of old critical analysis and replace it with a new world order of nihilistic freedom. I must now confront the ideals of signifiers and differance. The Canon has been replaced with stone monuments to race, class, gender and sexuality. Reading is now purely academic, an analytic discussion on discursive properties; a response to the world’s injustices and experiences. And through all of this, my thoughts are that I’m on a spinning wheel of death, screaming for it to stop so I might allow my stomach to exit my throat and return to it’s original position. I’m a romantic and blasphemist wrapped all in one liberal college student who has conservative views on Literature. I’m tired of being in prison, I don’t enjoy this Panopticism and would much rather prefer to return to my room and just read a book. In this defense of my syllabus, I’m going to look at my choices of texts; my choices of authors, or rather a few of them. Here I find a revisitation to all the essentials of the past semester’s work, trying to finally answer my own individual question: “where do I stand?” It has been an experience of individualization and also one of realization, that as much as I have looked to return to a belief in the aesthetic form, I’ve also been participating in my own panopticism, becoming entangled in the discursive power of cultural studies; I’ve become a good little citizen in big brother’s eyes. In the creation of my syllabus, I’ve discovered three important questions: “Why cultural studies? Why aesthetics?” and “Where has the Literature gone?”

I chose to begin this defense with a quote from Allen Ginsberg’s “Supermarket in California.” In choosing such, I believe it shows some of my main principles for the development of my syllabus. The specifics of the quote include Ginsberg’s address to Walt Whitman in the final lines of his poetry, asking Whitman “What America did you have?” at death. The quote shows an element of chronological transition, a statement that the America now isn’t the same as the America ten years or one hundred years ago. The same can be said for American Literature and Critical analysis. Fifty years ago, universities and their english departments were teaching “New Criticism” and close reading which was followed by Structuralism and then Post-Structualism with its Cultural Studies and postmodern theory. Walt Whitman’s America was different from Ginsberg and it’s certainly different than my America, but is the literature different? With the evolution of critical theory, the answer would certainly seem yes and at the heart of this discussion is The Western Canon.

Harold Bloom, in his “Elegy for the Canon” states that we should see “the Canon, as the relation of an individual and writer to what has been preserved out of what has been written, and forget the canon as a list of books for required study, will be seen as identical with the literary Art of Memory” (Bloom 17). He continues with the discussion of those who “have the capacity to become highly individual readers and writers” as well as those who would seek to politicize the canon. Bloom is critiquing the current movement in literary theory of cultural studies, where the main facets of the theory include “race, class, gender and sexuality”. He asserts that Literature’s place is with the individual, not the politicized group defined by race, class, gender and sexuality. To do so, as Michael Clark, another proponent of aesthetical form states, would be “semantically redundant” because Literature, in its basic sense is “so utterly unique or ‘marginal’ in itself that it must undermine the very possibility of stable affiliation with any group” (Clark 9). It is with this school of thought that I agree with the most, and accordingly, the theory that I used for the majority of construction of my syllabus.

I chose to begin my semester with Walt Whitman. This choice is purely founded in an aesthetic view of literature. It is a choice based on the understanding that there is an entire experience in reading Whitman in an aesthetic context. Bloom discusses the movement away from aestheticism as one in which reduces a poem to purely “a social document, or, rarely yet possibly, an attempt to overcome philosophy” (Bloom 18). Whitman begins in Song of Myself: I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Aestheticism is a celebration of the individual; the individual experience of reading that occurs in myself as well as in others. As Bloom would write, “the individual self is the only method and the whole standard for apprehending aesthetic value” (Bloom 23). It is not purely a social experience, to be looked over and analyzed in the matter of social context, but rather as a truly individual appreciation of the play of words on the page, the art form of letters. It is defined as great literature in itself, not by the surrounding historical and social context.

But why? Why is it an experience to be hoarded by the elitists who “appreciate” the finer texture of literature rather than those who seek to “open it up” in reference to the Canon. I continually ask myself: “Why am I choosing Walt Whitman as a part of my syllabus?” Do I truly believe that there is an innate value in it that screams: “Read me, I’m literature!” And for now, I say yes. With this one answer, more questions arise, and I feel that inner voice inside ask: “Dan, but do you even know what aesthetic value is?” The answer: “Probably not”. But I like to believe that even though I can not define it, as its definition is probably one that goes hand in hand with the definition of Literature, I still can “know” what the aesthetic form is, even if it is tangible or not.

But again, I continually think of questions that seek to rip the rug out from underneath me. Bloom would put it more eloquently than I would when he writes: “I can search out no inner connection between an social group and the specific ways in which I have spent my life reading” (Bloom 23). If only I had Bloom’s security in belief. I am now questioning the validity of my statement towards aesthetics. Is my definition of aesthetics just a warped version of cultural studies, that I have only come to know “aesthetics” through a cultural context? Could it be possible that I only “know” good literature through its construction in culture and social themes? I very well could be a product of culture in terms of literature and my center, founded in a notion of aesthetic value, would appear to disappear; I would realize that I was standing on my hands and waving with my feet. One line within Bloom’s “Elegy for the Canon”, I find specifically disheartening. Bloom writes that Shakespeare’s “aesthetic supremacy has been confirmed by the universal judgment of four centuries” (Bloom 23). I begin to wonder if historical stamina is a means of truly judging a position within the Canon. Is Bloom confirming my fears that because a writer has the ability to last, that there must be an innate aesthetic form and value? And in doing so, does that mean that I am reading Whitman, or Hemingway, or Faulkner because others had read those specific authors before?

I would certainly hope not, specifically thinking back to a certain notion of “snowballing” where as an author gains notoriety and respect purely on is elasticity, his or her ability to bounce along in chronology because society has deemed this author “good”. My defense to this argument is that its origins would certainly be one of aesthetic value rather than popular opinion concerning a text. Playing devil’s advocate once more, I must keep questioning my basis for aesthetic form and practice. Again, I find Bloom has the same shortfalls. Our we products of society? It is the institution that has allowed us to enjoy these “individual” reading experiences? Bloom questions his ability to read at leisure because he is benefitting from Yale, and so I must ask the same question: “Am I benefitting in reading from attending Saint Michael’s College?” To do so is to recognize the quagmire of problems that this loaded question might pose. Certainly, as I attend the school as an English major, I an participating in a discourse and power scheme, one specifically mentioned by Foucault. Has this participation in the panopticon skewed my ability to read as an individual or can I escape unscathed?

In the construction of my syllabus from the beginning, I chose one of my American Literature anthologies and went chronologically, from the beginning, choosing authors that I felt would be considered noteworthy, great examples of American Literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While still in the draft phrase, I presented it to a professor for his reactions to its collection of writers. The professor made comments, citing its majority of white writers, some African Americans and only four days spent on women writers. Reviewing the comments, I went back to the syllabus and added more diversity, I said it. Diversity.

I have shown you my cards now. I do in fact have a disposition that would favor cultural studies, if only a little. Again, that aforementioned question returns,”why cultural studies?” The reason for my inclusion of authors that would allow my syllabus to be considered multicultural was in fact because I was participating in the power and discursive properties of cultural studies. As I had said, I had become a good little citizen in big brother’s eye. I was the subject of a panopticonic reality, where my choice of authors on the syllabus would reveal to a reader my views on the monuments of cultural studies: race, class, gender and sexuality. To not include authors that would “diversify” my syllabus would certainly bring up questions. I wouldn’t be a good citizen in a society that values multiculturalism in all aspects of itself. To leave out an author like Countee Cullen, I would ask myself, “would I be seen as a card carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan?” Probably not, but the thoughts and desires are there, for me to be viewed as a person of “good, moral” character who wouldn't exclude writers and text based on the four facets of cultural studies.

Harold Bloom , in the “Elegy for the Canon”, discusses his attempt to reread Milton’s Paradise Lost. He writes:

Although the poem is a biblical epic, in classical form, the peculiar impression it gave me was that I generally ascribe to literary fantasy or science fiction, not to heroic epic. Weirdness was its overwhelming effect. I was stunned by two related by different sensations: the author’s competitive and triumphant power, marvelously displayed in a struggle, both implicit and explicit, against every other author and text, the Bible included, and also the sometimes terrifying strangeness of what was being presented.

Here Bloom has presented a case of a revisitation to an important, canonical text and read it without another influence. In doing so, he is describing how a reader can read a piece of literature outside of societal context. His mention of the “struggle...against every other author and text” echoes one of his other works, “The Anxiety of Influence” in which he describes the necessity of authors to enter into a dialogue with those who have come before.

In continually working though my syllabus, this concept of the “Anxiety of Influence” and the way authors converse with one another intrigued me. And again, I would wonder how this would have an effect on cultural studies as well as aesthetics. Turning back to Ginsberg’s “Supermarket in California”, we can see this dialogue occurring in Ginsberg’s address to Walt Whitman. Is Ginsberg trying to misread Whitman so that he might make something new; something original? Or is Ginsberg positioning himself before Whitman’s greatness in acquiescence, a move that Bloom would call a characteristic of a “weak poet”? Within these questions, there are more questions. Is the dialogue between Whitman and Dickinson a product of cultural studies or aesthetics? Or what of e.e. cummings and Eliot? William Carlos Williams and Jean Toomer?

In this direction of dialogue between Authors, I tend to favor aesthetics as a catalyst. The whole purpose of an “aesthetic” read is the belief that in reading, one can be moved in emotion. From feeling that emotion, one can respond. The innate value in an author’s writing can come from this response to another’s work. This is the “misinterpretation” that Bloom is discussing in “The Anxiety of Influence”, where an author looks to find originality by responding to a theme in an earlier work. It is a construction based purely on the interaction of individuals, not larger social schemes. Therefore, I chose certain writers who I believed followed this course. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Toomer and Cullen are all initially looking to explore the conversations occurring within the Canon, rather than larger social themes. Certainly these social themes can be the subject of writing, but it is purely aesthetic; people read for an individual experience, not one that consists of a moral lesson of good citizenship. Bloom puts it best when he states that “the study of literature, however it is conducted, will not save any individual, any more than it will improve any society” (Bloom 31).

“Where do I stand?” That is the final question left for me to answer and now, at the conclusion of the course, I find myself more confused than ever. But perhaps that is a good thing, as I’m now constantly trying to answer the new questions that arise as I try and fit myself into the schools of thought concerning aestheticism or cultural studies. I find myself somewhere along the the edge of the precipice, waiting for one decisive answer to push me over into aestheticism or cultural studies. I’ve chosen many authors because of my own reactions to them, not because I’ve “needed” to put them on the syllabus. They have been a pleasure to read and I believe that there is an inherent value that makes them a must for a syllabus. I’ve also chosen others because I lacked a certain “diversity”, showing me that I have played into cultural studies and its power and discourse; the panopticon is watching. If nothing else, I’ve agreed with Harold Bloom’s statement when he quotes Oscar Wilde that “Art is perfectly useless”. But I will go even further and say certainly that it is an experience.

American Literature II Spring 2006 Syllabus

Monday, Jan. 16

Walt Whitman - When I Read the Book

- One’s-Self I Sing

Wednesday, Jan. 18

Walt Whitman - Song of Myself

Friday, Jan. 20

Emily Dickinson - Selected Poems

Monday, Jan. 23

Emily Dickinson - Selected Poems

Wednesday, Jan. 25

George Washington Cable - Belles Demoiselles Plantation

Friday, Jan. 27

Charles Chesnutt - The Goophered Grapevine

Monday, Jan. 30

Mark Twain - The Dandy Frightening the Squatter

Wednesday, Feb. 1

Mark Twain - The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calveras Country

Friday, Feb. 3

Henry James - The Art of Fiction

Monday, Feb. 6

Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper

Wednesday, Feb. 8

Kate Chopin - The Awakening

Friday, Feb. 10

Kate Chopin - The Awakening

Monday, Feb. 13

Jack London - The Call of the Wild

Wednesday, Feb. 15

Jack London - The Call of the Wild

Friday, Feb. 17

Edith Wharton - The Other Two

Monday, Feb. 20

No Class

Twentieth Century Literature

Wednesday, Feb. 22

Robert Frost - Selected Poems

Friday, Feb. 24

Robert Frost - Selected Poems

Monday, Feb. 27

Willa Cather - Wagner Matineé

Wedneday, Mar. 1

Carl Sandburg - Selected Poems

Friday, Mar. 3

Ezra Pound - Selected Poems

Monday, Mar. 6

Ezra Pound / T.S. Eliot - Selected Poems

Wednesday, Mar. 8

T.S. Eliot - Selected Poems

Friday, Mar. 10

E.E. Cummings / Hart Crane - Selected Poems

Monday, Mar. 13

Spring Break

Wednesday, Mar. 15

My Birthday CELEBRATE!

Friday, Mar. 17

Spring Break

Monday, Mar. 20

William Carlos Willams - Selected Poems

Wednesday, Mar. 22

Counteé Cullen - Selected Poems

Jean Toomer - Cane

Friday, Mar. 24

Jean Toomer - Cane

Monday, Mar. 27

Zora Neale Hurston - The Gilded Six-Bits

Wednesday, Mar. 29

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Winter Dreams

Friday, Mar. 31

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Babylon Revisited

Monday, Apr. 3

Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

Wednesday, Apr. 5

Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

Friday, Apr. 7

Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms

Monday, Apr. 10

William Faulkner - The Evening Sun

Wednesday, Apr. 12

W illiam Faulkner - A Rose for Emily

Friday, Apr. 14 -

Easter Break

Monday, Apr. 17

Easter Break

Wednesday, Apr. 19

Flannery O’Connor - Good Country People

Friday, Apr. 21

Tomàs Rivera - ...AND THE EARTH DID NOT PART

Monday, Apr. 24

Alice Walker - Everyday Use

Wednesday, Apr. 26

Leslie Marmon Silko - The Man to Send Rain Clouds

Friday, Apr. 28

Raymond Carver - Catherdal

Monday, May 1

Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maladies

Wenesday, May 3

Jhumpa Lahiri - Interpreter of Maldies

Friday, May 5

Jhumpas Lahir - Interpreter of Maladies
 
Here's a rhyming poem about Ebola.

EBOLA

Ebola is a disease you don’t want to get.

It all started when infected monkeys and humans met.

There are four type, only 3 affect humans like us:

We likely won’t encounter them, but name them we must:

The three which infect people are Zaire, Sudan, & Ivory Coast

The fourth - Reston - will only take monkeys as the host.

It’s an RNA virus that’ll give you a nasty rash,

You’ll get red itchy eyes, fever, and a headache in a flash.

Don’t forget a sore throat & internal & external bleeding.

For your stomach pain and diarrhea, a doctor you’ll be needing.

Did we forget all your joint and muscle aches?

IT’ll make you vomit, and your strength it will take.

It all began back in 1976,

In Sudan and Zaire, infected monkeys and people mixed.

2 hundred and 84 people got it and 53% perished;

Even those whom had family and friends to cherish.

There were no more outbreaks until a few months had past-

Three hundred and eighteen people got it then and 88% died fast.

Nothing happened till 1989, when

Imported monkeys from the Philippines went to Virginia, then

They infected a couple of people, and a few might have died.

No doubt, containing it was not something they had tried.

Contact with the infected is how it spreads

Whether the individual in question be it alive or dead.

Even contact with contaminated objects give you the disease-

Even more so if you touch their blood or perhaps a sneeze.

Your own antibodies are the only thing that can kill it,

There’s no procedure to follow, should you happen to have a fit.

These are the facts about the Ebola virus my friend,

And I’m afraid, this poem must end.
 
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