Jacob Bender's Blog, page 6

Teaching with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has figured prominently in my Rhet. Comp. courses ever since I first started teaching college in 2010.  Chapters 15, 16, 17, and 19 in particular, featuring the narrator's adventures teaching college freshmen English, have felt especially apropos of my students.  I delighted in demonstrating through these chapters that my students already know when their writing is good or bad, even if they can't quite yet articulate why--tha...

that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been

"Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." (Mormon 9:31)

The scriptures are typically trotted out as examplars of how to live, how to behave, how to be.  Of course, one does not have to read these texts all that closely to be quickly confronted with horrific...

Inside The Iowa Caucus: A First-Timer's Account

Let's bracket for now the fact that it's frankly kinda weird that Iowa always gets to vote first in the Primaries and thus wields such an outsized influence on the election, particularly since they are literally less than a hundredth the total population of the Union--and it's even an easy issue to fix, just program some computer to completely randomize which states go in which order every 4 years, and thus give some other states a chance to wield an outsized influence on the election.

Nevert...

The Intrinsic Ambivalence of Rodeo Songs

The Rodeo inhabits a strange liminal space in Americana.  Much like Pizza, Hamburgers, and other "quintessential" pieces of America, the Rodeo is totally an import from another country; really, the Rodeo is about as American as tacos, burritos, and quesadillas--that is, it is still somehow totally and completely North American now, even as it is simultaneously totally and completely a product of Latin America.

But we didn't exactly make it ours, no--we made some of ours. It is within a ve...

On Hillary, for what it's worth

At the risk of alienating what few friends I have on either the Right or the Left, I just wanted to get off my chest my planned vote for Hillary Clinton next week in the Iowa Democratic Primaries--cause hey, if we can't stay friends after arguing viciously about politics, then what can we stay friends over?

This will primarily be an argument from the Left, inasmuch as I still self-identify as a filthy hippie liberal; to my friends on the Right, my sincerest condolences, cause that current crop...

The Anti-Radio Songs

I quit listening to any sort of Pop or Modern Rock radio somewhere around 10 years ago (some occasional public access Classical on short trips is about all I allow myself anymore).  I had gotten one of those new-fangled ipods for Christmas, and was playing it through the cassette-tape adapter in my car at college.  When I then promptly lost said ipod and was forced to return to the radio, it was with a sort of revulsion that I realized how utterly irritating it is to have someone el...

The Familiar Vol. 1: One Rainy Day in May

Mark Z. Danielewski may never be able to top his stunning debut House of Leaves in terms of sheer inventiveness and pathos--but boy is it sure fun to watch him try!  Supposedly this massive 800+ page tome, wherein each of the 9 interweaving characters are rendered not only in a unique font but in their own typographical layout, is but the first in a staggering 27 volumes (3 cubed, which will likely have some sort of numerological significance or other). 

On a certain meta level,...

New Years in Times Square: New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

The general steps towards celebrating New Years in Times Square consist of:
1. Don't.
2. Do something else.

But let's say your fiancee specifically has a midnight kiss on New Years as the ball drops on Times Square on her bucket list, firmly and irrevocably; well, you can't exactly let some other guy give her that kiss, now can you!  Plus, she works in the airline industry and so can fly you into JFK for dirt cheap, and it's just churlish to turn you nose up at a deal like that.  In wh...

On The Force Awakens, and a Timely Reminder that Star Wars Episode III Really Did Suck

Amidst all the rejoicing that Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn't suck (even if it did feel more like a Star Wars highlight real than a stand-alone film, but more on that later), it may be helpful to remember what caused that palpable sense of relief to build up in the first place.

Last summer marked 10 years since some friends and I, on a lark, decided to attend a Monday midnight viewing of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith at the dollar theater; all of us had already seen it, we ful...

On The Force Awakens, and a Timely Reminder that Star Wars Episode III Really Did Stuck

Amidst all the rejoicing that Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn't suck (even if it did feel more like a Star Wars highlight real than a stand-alone film, but more on that later), it may be helpful to remember what caused that palpable sense of relief to build up in the first place.

Last summer marked 10 years since some friends and I, on a lark, decided to attend a Monday midnight viewing of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith at the dollar theater; all of us had already seen it, we ful...