Pop Semiotics:An Inconvenient Truth About the Unchained Goddess
You might assume that An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning PowerPoint presentation, was the first alarmist documentary on global warming by a celebrity. But that distinction actually goes to...
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Pop Semiotics:Conservatism’s Most Influential Media
What media has had the most influence on the conservative movement over the past forty years? Various factions within conservatism will give widely differing responses. The old school intellectuals...
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Pop Semiotics:Cat Macros as Communication
Not long after Al Gore invented the internet, his wife Tipper uploaded a picture of the family cat launching one of the most ubiquitous trends in web culture. But over the past year, a strange subgenre...
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Pop Semiotics (v. 10):Obama and the Post-Authentic Condition
Hanging on the walls of my office at work are several variations of Jasper Johns’s paintings of the American flag. Few people ever comment, but I’m always curious how my colleagues perceive the...
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LOLCat Comm:Cat Macros as Communication
[Note: I'm on semi-hiatus this week so original blogging will be light. I'm reposting stale old material that I hoped you missed, so that it will appear fresh and new.] Not long after Al Gore invented...
View ArticleVexatious Versification: Why Reading Poetry is Worth the Effort
Recently, I participated in a discussion of T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Amid our close reading, hesitant commentary, and prolonged silences, one of my peers interjected, “This is...
View ArticleEmot-iconoclasm: Deconstruction and the Devolution of Language
I suppose this begins with my mother. She has recently tasked herself with learning how to more effectively communicate via text messaging. A recent advance in her acumen is the adept manipulation of...
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