Woah, buddy -- you're going off the deep end with my argument and beating the poor straw man into a puff of dried grass. I'm not saying that everyone is a darn automaton following the whims of popular culture. I'm merely saying that there is a heavy pressure to do things because of culture. And because of Japanese kawaii culture, she gains a lot of social credit for performing in such a way.

Relax. Just beca

I took a Joyce Major Authors class in college (about 15 yrs ago). We read Dubliners and Portrait in their entirety, and probably about 40% of Ulysses and excerpts from Finnegan's Wake.

For some literature, you really need to do homework to appreciate fully. You'll miss a ton if you don't know history and current events that people were generally aware of at the time. And, even when you do that work, sometimes you still won't get it all - which is how I see Finnegan's Wake.

My experience reading (some) Ulysses was great, but it depended on the professor who would assign a chapter for homework and then spend the entire class going through it with us. We were Lit majors, so we knew The Odyssey, but some references were completely over our heads. Like, Bloom is humming advertising jingles throughout the book - and these weave together with other literature references, sometimes making a joke about popular culture, sometimes taking a swipe at literature/history. I got maybe 10% of the significance during my initial, solo reading.

My mid-term paper was a super close reading of one small section (I think it is in chapter 4) where Bloom is in the tub, contemplating how his dick and balls look like a lily pad as they are floating in front of him in the tub.

My opinion is any natural "drug" should be legal. Any substance that is found in nature, with minimal processing should be absolutely 100% legal, no doubt about it.

The irony of this is that there are still great legal natural "drugs" out there. They still allow San Pedro (mescaline), you can still easily buy Morning Glory (LSA similar to LSD), you can still buy plants to create ayahuasca and extract DMT, you can still buy Yopo seeds and snort that shit (5 MEO DMT) and obviously everyone knows about Salvia.

The only reason I can think of that these haven't been scheduled is due to the fact that they never became very popular/rampant in popular culture.

And now they have more to deal with - due to the banning of weed and stuff people want like MDMA - everyday dangerous new analogs (far more dangerous than the real stuff) come out which are "legal" until banned. They ought to just let people do what they want to do and let the "free market" sort it out like the capitalist bullshit they propagate everywhere else. There are successful working models out there to guide the little boy blue.

I think you overestimate the knowledge base of the general public. I don't believe the average person (especially in America) knows that this device is completely without credibility.
So much so that it continues to have a giant influence in our legal system and popular culture (e.g. TV crime drama).
Even if this is something that has been debunked a couple decades ago doesn't mean the information has been properly distributed to the general public.
I still find value to a video like this because of it's nature to inform those who didn't know.
I'm only arguing against your initial point that this "should never have been made". The truth has to continually fight the lies.

Too articulate, clean and aware of popular culture to be real Tennessee hillbillies.

That's so fascinating to me. You're clearly only looking at all the couples from one perspective: American males are shit and Chinese males are wonderful.

Try considering it from both points of view in both couples. The Chinese girl forces her boyfriend to hand over all his money even though he clearly doesn't want to. In order to appease his ball-and-chain, the Chinese guy has to bribe her with a purse. The Chinese girl forces her guy to hold her purse and suffer through shopping with her. The Chinese father-in-law is overtly overbearing and controlling. Chinese couples dump off their babies with in-laws to live free of their burden.

It's not racist to joke about American males being infamously fearful of commitment. In America there are endless references in popular culture to that aspect of American society all the time. Does that make racist the producers of such content?

It's also very commonplace for couples in America to get divorced. Would it have been racist if they'd joked about Americans divorcing versus Chinese staying together despite being miserable?

It's a matter of facts, and pointing out facts in a humorous (to some) way is not a racist act.

And the whole "fucking bitch" line was mostly an over-exaggeration for comedic effect, and it worked. But the fact remains that it's not uncommon for Americans to really feel that way about their SO picking off their plate. (Like I said, I've seen worse than a verbal insult in the form of a physical attack.) Whereas it's ostensibly more uncommon in China.

Hi Engels,

I just wanted to address what is a common misconception about the teachings of Jesus Christ, which is that He taught the oneness of mankind, or that we could all achieve some kind of evolutionary process of consciousness expansion. This is simply false; Jesus Christ taught that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that there is no other way to reach God except through Him. He taught that we are all sinners, alienated from God, and that His suffering and death on the cross and resurrection from death was the universal atonement for our sins and the hope of all mankind, which we receive by putting our faith and trust in Him.

The popular culture has distorted our understanding of Jesus, but this distortion is easily remedied by studying the scriptures. A reading of the gospel of John, for instance, will show you that the Jesus you have heard about and the Jesus of the bible couldn't be more different. I would challenge you to do so and learn more about Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who He truly was and was not, and what He taught about Himself. It is a question He posed to His disciples:

Matthew 16:13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
Matthew 16:14 And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
Matthew 16:15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

Now it's just funny to make homophobic jokes ironically. Like pretending to be Eric Cartman or similar sentiments. But actually witnessing childish homophobia... that's pretty weird to me nowadays, even among the people I know who don't necessarily approve of the lifestyle.

I wonder when/if our generation of offensive, abusive irony will dissipate? I don't mind it, but it seems like a natural progression for popular culture. For example, do you really hear "retard" jokes any longer? Was In Living Color the last mainstream sketch comedy with mentally challenged jokes?

I could be wrong on this, but I don't recall recent stuff along those lines -- except South Park, but they're very, very special.

I think some of the comments are missing Rostad's point, which is that Cho Chang symbolizes the systemic invisibility of Asian characters--especially females--in popular culture. If the only popular images of certain bodies--like Asian women, in her example--are stereotypes, then many will never understand other people as being anything other than what someone like J.K. Rowling depicts in her fiction.

All my endless banter in the body of this post to simply say, I am sorry if offended the skewed sensibilities of some of the more virulent from my sullied past.
Everyone is not as capable as others to simply "be" and accept folks for who they are. I wear my anal-orality on my sleeve to a fault, and would that the entire world do the kum-ba-ya someday, even those with sticks larger than my own implanted firmly in-anus.

The real point of this post being, I tire of news-sound-bites concerning current politics garnering most of the votes considering the stuff is designed to distract and confuse those who think they have a clue.

As well I feel that active members should invigorate the place creatively rather than trumpet the popular culture's demise with endless rhetoric, or flavors-of-the-week commentary. The fact is, a small core of regular users keep this place interesting not the passing fancies.

Those I have called out here have used their status and skills to promulgate agendas or espouse clap-trap in the past and their popularity and stellar rises means only to me that humanity is still the most gullible of mammals on the planet.

Wake up and live and point me in the direction of the shills so I can build a rail with which to run them outta town upon.

Peace to all, Merry Xmas, Happy Hanuka , and Salami Like-em with with sourdough bread and stone ground mustard.

The mediocre characters played by the Cracked cast let me pretend that I too could weave an endless sequence of riffs on popular culture into social criticism so witty that the entire Internet would want to hear it.

Walt Disney and his Imagineers are legend.

All things being transitory, ideas decay. Most ideas from popular culture leave few traces of their existence behind, but some fossilize.

Society embraced it, creating the sediment, and then the oxygen of originality was removed. Over many, many years, the parts of it that were inspiring and innovating were replaced by money deposits.

The bloated corporate entity may appear to be alive but it is not. It doesn't create life, just consumes. Consumes your wallet. Consumes your wallet so that it can be a more preserved fossil.

You could also blame books and homing pigeons -- Encyclopedia sets? Libraries? I spent many hours of my time as a child reading in these original information databases. I feel like the internet just brought a bunch of base fucks into a spectrum of reality that has always existed. Fucks that normally wouldn't spend their time consuming information in a database. Fucks that would market the shit out of every aspect of it. The perception of this video is a direct result of our internet being ground into dust.

At its mid-range potential, the internet is not much different than a library. I recall a lot of book-learned facts which are plain WRONG, including false and biased information, and unlabeled, incorrectly scaled maps being fairly constant. Yay Christopher Columbus! Yay happy natives! Yay dropping nuclear bombs on people! Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy

The internet brings ourselves closer and closer to instant, multi-perspective, peer-reviewed information, because we no longer need to thumb through catalogs, shelves, and pages, and everyone can contribute in a trusted, merit-based environment. Identify the fuckers of the internet. They pollute us with their bullshit. (I posit that I am not a fucker, I am merely disgruntled.)

One of my best friends is a librarian and the major difference he sees between Wikipedia and published books is that published books require new editions to replace outdated and incorrect information, potentially screwing over human memory for as long as that book isn't burned. (Sorry, rofl, I thought it was a funny way to phrase that. Plz don't burn books.)

The key is to avoid nonstop popular culture and focus on the vast educational potential of the internet.

And don't use social media.

And keep your mobile device's sound and vibration OFF. I love technology but don't let it reverse your human potential, let it augment. Focus on augmentation and factual checks & balances of the information you take in.

No to the conclusions from this video. No. No. NO! The net doesn't make us more superficial, we do and we always have.

>> ^spoco2:

Does no one else find it a little sad that people find smoking weed so central to their lives that they feel compelled to cheer on people doing it in movies?
Surely once it gets to the point where one of the things you identify yourself as is a smoker of weed, you are letting it take up too much of your life?
Do people who drink really watching someone else on screen drink and go 'Fuck yeah man, he's drinking! I drink too! Fuck yeah, I LOVE him!'


I agree with the guy below you in that it has to do with the legality and the social perception of it. Look at any group that partakes in something that straddles the line of socially acceptable or legal and you'll find a group that feels a kinship toward each other. Particularly so if the person identifies themself as such outwardly.

I'd imagine people that say "yeah man smoke it up famous people" are people who willingly identify themselves as regular smokers or "pot heads" or "stoners." For such people this is popular culture and iconic scenes saying "yo man smoking is fine or fun or at least not some horribly illegal activity" to which they say "hell yeah I agree!"

Also for me I like the fact that it brings into question the perception that many people who are more radically against it hold. For many weed is just a lighter drug thats a step or two further than alcohol but for many it's a social cancer and the beginnings of harder crimes and drugs.

For me the common use of it in popular culture and on shows that tend to be on FX, Showtime, HBO, etc. just goes to show it for what it is...a fairly benign form of intoxication that is as close to large scale acceptability as anything besides alcohol has been. It shows it's not that different from people whom get intoxicated from alcohol on a semi-common basis. I would argue that many of my professional friends and colleagues have just as damaging results from their social drinking as I do from smoking and I'd be the first to say that my personal use is greater than theirs.

As a stoner, I'd be surprised to see these same attitudes and emotions surrounding it's use persist if it was legalized or decriminalized as that would take away the social aspect of "we chose to dismiss the law/society and partake in this activity we both enjoy" but it would take many years if not a generation or two for the old ideas to fall off.

I liked the overall look and feel of the unaired pilot. The apartment that Lenard and Sheldon share is an academic's dream in my opinion; dark, cluttered with books and papers, a compact and sparsely furnished social area, a fireplace that adds character to the room and walls adorned with numerous thought structuring white boards. The apartment in the ongoing show struck me as very bright and open; I generally don’t like bright and open, though it does provide more room for physical comedy. The character development was touch and go but in the end I believe Lenard needs no improvement in either the unaired pilot or the ongoing show. I believe that Sheldon's character would benefit from a combination of traits from both the unaired pilot and the current show, most notably the social openness balanced by his high levels of humorous narcissism. I don't believe there is a way to improve on the lead female role, I don't particularly care for either Katie or Penny and find the presence of a female character that is so overly ditzy insulting. What is needed is a smart (PhD level) female character that possesses a keen knowledge of both her field (possibly Anthropology, History or Psychology) and popular culture. This would serve to distinguish her from both the Katie/Penny character and also Amy and Bernadette; both characters that have seemingly no knowledge or an air of condescension concerning popular culture.