Welcome one and all to this little experiment in shared ranting.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am currently a 5th year undergraduate student at the University of Kentucky aiming for a B.A. in Anthropology and a second B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Japan Studies. I like my music as my music, and you can check out my post-rock show on WRFL (http://www.wrfl.fm).
The idea for this blog came to me after I took a class taught by a certain Dr. Coutain in International Organization. I was required to keep up with the daily news and so I happened upon the wonderful and dangerous world of news blogs. I read quite a few daily and eventually this nagging feeling burst forth into what you're reading now.
Now, these are my rants about what I'm frustrated with in life. Specifically, I'm going to try and keep this blog from being overtly political and more focused on what I am trying to study: culture. Anthropology (and by extension the humanities and social sciences) is a wonderful thing to study. It's very deep and it encourages you to not just timidly test the waters out with your foot, but to say "fuck it" and jump in and immerse yourself in it. Social sciences are by their nature multi-faceted beasts, each one displaying a different face to all and the same to none. It's what I find so fascinating--and so frustrating--about them. There are no clear lines, as there are no clear lines to the human experience. After all, Anthropology, and specifically social/cultural anthropology is about trying to document and make sense of what it means to be human. What it means to actually experience this thing called life, as a human. I mean, it's in the name for [insert deity here]'s sake.
Now, a few formalities on this blog:
1) I do not shy away from the language of the commoner. I swear worse than a sailor, and well damnit, sometimes a good swear word goes miles in emphasizing a certain point. If you can't handle it, well grow up kiddo; there are much worse things in the world.
2) As I said before, I will try and keep specific politics out of this blog. That's going to be hard, because I believe that humans are an overtly political species. And if I could have a dime for each and every time politics is trying to give someone a reach-around whilst stabbing them in the back, well I could solve the world's financial crisis. Politics is part of my life, whether I like it or not, and it will come out through this blog.
3) This is MY blog. These are MY opinions. Don't like them, don't read them. Simple. I do welcome debate and criticism, but I can and will delete comments that I find stupid, racist, etc. Don't give me that free speech bullshit; I control this little space of digital life (as much as Google will let me), and you'll play by my rules.
4) To give you a perspective of where I come from, I'll give you a short profile of my life. I'm an American, middle-class, and had a relatively lucky (stable) adolescent life. That means I had awesome parents and siblings, though we were not without conflict. I think way too fast to talk, so I tend to ramble. And I think a lot.
5) Guest bloggers will be people who I respect. That means they'll usually have similar outlooks to me, but I'm not above having someone that disagrees with me completely post here. It just won't happen as much.
I think this post is getting too long, so I'll leave you with a quote I discovered in reading for one of my Anthropology classes. It reiterates something I feel is recurring throughout my life, and in my generation. That growing up is somehow giving up.
"By then I had come face to face with the painful realities of knowledge. One who understands is freer in the head but sadder in the heart."
- Tepilit Ole Saitoti,
The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior: An Autobiography
