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Stephen Ausburne, Editor-In-Chief
To learn more about our regular contributors, click any name below.
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James Batterham, MA
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Erin Dunigan, MDiv
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N. Gench, MA
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Gordon Gartrell, FU
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Ivan Goddard, PhD (ABD)
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Michael Mulligan, MA
C.C. O'Lorin, PhD
General Editor
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Kermit Pitsfield, PhD
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Christin M. Rice, MDiv, MFA
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Dagmar Schröter, DPhil
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Rebecca L. Stull, MFA
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Bradley Summerfield, MD
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| Tad Wagner |
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| Archives |
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FAQ
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A Daily Wad
our editors' daily blog
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| Culture Voice has decided to temporarily suspend the campaign for love. Do what you must with that golden calf. CCO |
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Clay Aiken is gay?!?
I am shocked. SA
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| Given the track record of the Bush administration, would you be surprised to know that the ever-efficient "surge" was a myth? A must read! CCO |
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| Tina Fey has been the most talented humorist on the planet for almost a decade now and egregiously under-appreciated for all that time. By chance, she happens to look like Sarah Palin, launching her to the status of household name. I almost lament the inevitable peak of her career... stay golden Pony Boy, stay golden. CCO |
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| Let's just set the record straight. John McCain is a war hero with grit, determination and an iron will. But I refuse to give the guy credit for getting shot down. He lost five of the Navy's planes. FIVE. He crashed two in flight school, one in a training mission, one in a fire on a ship. I'm no military genius but after you lose three million dollar aircrafts, I'm finding you a desk job. If somebody was stupid enough to give a fourth chance, okay fine. But if you lose that aircraft, you sure as hell aren't getting another million invested in your abilities. Five? Are you kidding me? CCO |
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| Well, the world didn't end today. Guess I have to pay those bills after all. SA |
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| Congrats to friends of culture-voice After the Chase for their recent review in Christianity Today! Now you have the option of selling out and over-producing your music! CCO |
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| Is there anything quite so postmodern as critiquing postmodernity? CCO |
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| Dr. Pitsfield has responded to Goddard's thought-provoking essay on Palin and Roe.V.Wade. Take a look. CCO |
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| With the Republican Convention wrapped up, I am certain that McCain is "his own man" and a "maverick" who isn't afraid to stand up against partisan policy. Don't just take the GOP's words for it though, take a look at the numbers that show John McCain has had the guts to oppose his party a whopping 12% of the time. Certainly not business as usual. 88% usual is not 100% usual for all you mathematically challenged. SA |
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The odds that McCain will dump Palin as his running mate before the November election have improved from 20-1 to 8-1 according to oddsmakers in Europe. The odds of Palin being the second consecutive VP to shoot someone in the face are about even. SA
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| Here is praying for the 100,000 people still in the path of Gustav. CCO |
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John McCain seemingly trumped the DNC buzz by making a brilliant political move. McCain has chosen Sarah Palin, governess from Alaska. CCO
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| You might as well face it, David Duchovny's addicted to love. SA |
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| At the Democratic National Convention yesterday, NBA star and analyst Charles Barkley reiterated his desire to run for the governor of Alabama. Among the issues on his campaign platform are obsesity, male pattern baldness and chronic buffoonery. CCO |
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Michael Keaton will be the voice of a Ken doll in Toy Story 3.
That is all. SA
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| A new poll conducted jointly by Gallup, Zogby and Rasmussen suggests that 74% of all polls are completely made up. CCO |
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Some further thoughts on David Foster Wallace, esp. regarding the last few weeks of John McCain’s increasingly bizarre presidential campaign with respect to his previously differently bizarre campaign in 2000.
Or why John McCain has decided to go Negative.
Caveat: I am writing this article not because I understand politics better than most or because I know David Foster Wallace better than most but because I am shocked that no one else has done more with Wallace’s “Up, Simba” other than refer to it even though it is a) brilliant b) fascinating and c) amazingly timely considering that both DFW and McCain are in the public eye now more than either had ever been before and “Up, Simba” is where they actually converge.
Keeping in mind that I am neither an expert in politics nor David Foster Wallace (that is, I’m not an expert in David Foster Wallace not not David Foster Wallace, though it should be said that I’m also not David Foster Wallace), I’m just going to lay a theory out there as to why McCain looks so negative compared to his previous campaign manifestation and why it probably won’t work.
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Gov.Palin Asks an Important Question
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Musings on Cyberpoetry and the Tradition of Innovation
by Michael Mulligan
At the end of the hefty anthology, Poems for the Millennium The chapter title, “Toward a Cyberpoetics”, hints at the emergence of a new category of poetry: the cyberpoem. Cyberpoems push the limits of poetics, challenging the conceptions of what a poem is and what a poem accomplishes. (volume two), Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (the editors) conclude with a beginning.
Of course, cyberpoetry is only the ...[more]
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iphone Offers Americans the Perfect Way to Relate to a Hurting World
by Erin Dunigan
I've changed my mind. Call me a flip-flopper if you will, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I've had a change of heart when it comes to my feelings about the recent consumer frenzy regarding the coveted iPhone.
You see, I have been conflicted about jumping on the bandwagon, not because of the iPhone itself, but because I'm not a fan of bandwagons. Call me a rebel if you will (though if you knew me this thought would make you chuckle), when something becomes what you must have or do or be, then I'm out. No thanks. I'm just not interested anymore. Sure, I want to be 'cool' (I'll refrain from using a more bandwagon term) like anyone else, but somehow the resister just takes over and, well, too bad...[more]
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A Brief Review of Sanity & the Arts
by Rebecca Stull
“If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art. And a country where art is not understood is a country of slaves and robots…” Lonesco
I was a bit shocked when my brother-in-law stated that the newly released movie The Dark Knight (2 hours worth of entertainment) wasn’t worth Heath Ledger’s life. I can’t begin ...[more]
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Some Preliminary Thoughts on Biblical Genocide and Poop-Smearing
This is the latest installment of my crappy Bible passages series. I do hope that you, the reader, are at least as entertained as you are offended. A good balance of these is important for any proper exegesis of the Bible.
As I am between academic appointments, I’ve recently returned to a job that I had while writing my dissertation. I work an all-night shift at a home for emotionally disturbed boys. This job has three virtues. 1) It puts a little money in my pocket—a very little. 2) It allows me ample time to research and write while the little buggers are sleeping. 3) It allows me to feel like I’m doing some good in the world and win sympathy from hot chicks...[more]
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The Great Name Swap
In the English-speaking world we mark epochs in swaps. We swapped scrolls for books; horses for automobiles; tape for digital, etc. But such swaps aren’t always technology driven. We swapped monarchy for democracy; book-burning for bra-burning; free water for expensive water (still trying to figure that one out).
Consider the cultural exchange ...[more]
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The Decline of Western Civilization
Costco. Sweet, glorious Costco. You house what I’m looking for and allow me to acquire mass quantities of that which I lust after. Big blocks of cheese, cases of beer, and enough toilet paper to quench the effects of the aforementioned. I need you, and I will leap through whatever hoops you command of me in order to get inside you. You want me to get a membership card? No problem. You want me to stand in long checkout lines because you never have more than half of your checkers working? Will do. I will even wait the obligatory extra ten minutes while someone pretends to take inventory of my cart ...[more]
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5 Years of Alraqi Freedom
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Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq-American war. On March 17th 2003, U.S. troops invaded – or was it the 19th? – it might have been the 20th. Well that’s not important. The important thing is that on that day, allied forces, including England, Australia, Canada and – wait, was Canada involved? I think they were and then changed their minds… crap. Well, what is really important to remember is that ...[more]
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Plane Thoughts
by Stephen Ausburne
I don’t like to fly any more than I like to be a part of a time share presentation. At the close of the journey, you might say that the end justified the means, but during, all you want to do is go back home. In either case I feel like at any moment something could go horribly wrong. In one scenario, that would mean plummeting 30,000 feet to the hard earth in a fiery comet of hysterical death. In the other, I might inadvertently sign up for a ten year contract to some hillside gated community populated by retired insurance salesmen and members of the Witness Protection Program. Either way ...[more]
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by Dagmar Schröter
J.R.R. Tolkien left his son mere outlines of his Middle-earth epic, of which Christopher Tolkien found his life’s work. With luck, a few of the stories had been detailed enough to warrant fuller treatment. Such warrant was found in the story of Túrin Turambar. It took him almost forty years of judicious revision, but Christopher finally published this story in 2007 under the title The Children of Húrin. Thus reframed, the story proves worthy of his father’s promise. The Children of Húrin rivals the greatest Greek Tragedy complete with shades of ...[more]
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The Missing Sock:
A fable for creative survival in corporate America
by Christin M. Rice
Photo:Blue Socks, ©Laura Shafer, LineDry.com
Imagine large font. And here is where we introduce a clever, but really simple fable. Were this book-length, I would then use this fable to talk down to you for the next 80 pages. The sole purpose of this fable is to have something to hang all of my pithy one-liners (which you are meant to take to heart and I will repeat, using PowerPoint, when you bring me in for a 20,000 dollar speaking engagement at your conference. I will be sure to have very white teeth and many anecdotes for this). The fable is this: You have a favorite pair of socks. There’s just something about them: the look, the feel, the story behind how they came to be in your possession. But there’s something inevitable about favorite socks—one half of the pair always ...[more]
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Confessions of a Str8-Dude w/Man-Crush
by Miguel Noonan
I’m not gay. But when he’s around the world is a better place. Birds sing a little bit more sweetly. The snow crackles beneath my feet more crisply. Think Snow White meets Monday night football. I have a man-crush.
A month or so ago Steve invited me to a poker game. There was Steve and Andy and Mark and Nathan and Matt, all great guys. Lots of laughs, a vigorous argument or two over God, politics and Star Wars. Good clean fun. But of all the guys present, there was just something special about Jason. Steve is funny in a good friend kind of way. Mark is funny in a lack-of-self-awareness kind of way. Andy and Matt brought the general testosterone necessary for the occasion. But none of them were, are or will ever be Jason.
Jason made me giggle with silly glee. He could ...[more]
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The Dark Knight (a Review)
Breaking box office records, achieving critical acclaim, receiving Oscar buzz, what more could Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight possibly do in terms of garnering the attention of the world? Answer: get a review from Culture Voice’s own Stephen Ausburne, that’s what. While my take on TDK (for all the fan boys out there) might not amount to a hill of guano, I have to talk about this movie. It’s got everything you want in a superhero movie; scratch that, everything you want in any kind of movie. I’ll try to break it down on just those two levels: as a movie derived from comic book origins and as a film dealing with complicated morality issues that ...[more]
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One Page
One Page features a single page of text from a book currently being read by one of our regulars. This week's page is torn from "Up, Simba: seven days on the trail of an anticandidate” in David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and other essays (Back Bay Books, 2006).
But if you, like poor old Rolling Stone, have come to a point on the Trail where you’ve started fearing your own cynicism almost as much as you fear your own credulity and the salesmen who feed on it, you may find your thoughts returning again and again to a certain dark and box-sized cell in a certain Hilton half a world and three careers away, to the torture and fear and offer of release and a certain Young Voter named McCain’s refusal to violate a Code. There were no techs’ cameras in that box, no aides or consultants, no paradoxes or gray areas; nothing to sell. There was just one guy and whatever in his character sustained him. This is a huge deal. In your mind, that Hoa Lo box becomes sort of a special dressing room with a star on the door, the private place behind the stage where one imagines “the real John McCain” still lives. And but now the paradox here is that this box that makes McCain “real” is, by definition, locked. Impenetrable. Nobody gets in or out. This is huge, too; you should keep it in mind. It is why, however many behind-the-scenes pencils get put on the case, a “profile” of John McCain is going to be just that: one side, exterior, split and diffracted by so many lenses there’s way more than one man to see. Salesman or leader or neither or both, the final paradox—the really tiny central one, way down deep inside all the other campaign puzzles’ spinning boxes and squares that layer McCain—is that whether he’s truly “for real” now depends less on what is in his heart than on what might be in yours. Try to stay awake.
2000
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