Pop Culture And Media Studies

Favicons for personal blogs

You didn’t notice I was gone, did you? It’s the first time since 2013 that this blog receives what blogs should get as often as possible – a post.

Before I started writing this post-about-posts (sorry ’bout that), I spent a lot of time looking for possible favicon, as a (albeit very subtle) way to wake up this sleeping creature. (Agreed: the best way would have been to just write, but looking for favicons are so much more fun!).

 
The “Before”
This was my favicon before: 

And this was my header before: 

I didn’t like either, not at all. Possibly, I didn’t even like them […]

Ozymandias

I’ve been busy, which is a good thing. Zygmunt Bauman would remind us that not being busy is a potential symptom of something truly awful. It would be a fun (because sad) post to write some time.

And also, I’ve caught the Breaking Bad virus. Three more episodes. Only just saw this trailer – what a wonderful show with such paratexts.

On not “just doing it” – procrastination

Procrastination is something most students suffer from at one point or another. It is sitting at your desk and feeling your heart pump – without actually doing anything. It is having all sorts of emotions, many of them positive, about the new book on your favorite topic – without actually reading it. It is getting a rush from creating the ultimate semester plan, complete with a perfect calendar – without actually using it. It is sensing something is wrong with you because you neglect that painful Nike slogan: you don’t “just do it”. But you want to. And so it […]

Go To Class

Do you know Coursera yet? It’s a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) company that provides a huge amount of online courses to a huge amount of students worldwide, all free. Sort of like iTunes University but with some brilliant advantages: it is interactive, with weekly quizzes, sometimes peer-reviews, exams. Students who successfully complete a class will in most cases receive a certificate signed by the instructor.

And it’s growing fast – as of February 2013 Coursera already cooperated with 62 different universities.

I have enrolled in a ridicoulessly huge amount of classes. The structure and schedule is helpful to make sure you […]

Top 10 Enlightened Resources

My suggestion for a Enlightened-fan’s survival kit on the internet. (HBO’s TV show Enlightened, that is). It really is a remarkable show, as has been said many times. Most often, unique, different and dreamy things tend to get downtrodden very quickly in the current media industry. But “Enlightened” is still fighting, it is still alive and could really be saved, for just a short time longer.

So where to go after watching Season 2’s brilliant finale? How to hold on to that strange, hopeful, magical feeling just a bit longer? Here are 10 suggestions how Enlightened-fans can enjoy the show with […]

New WordPress Theme

I changed the WordPress Theme. Now I’m using “Avada” from ThemeFusion (link will follow). The old theme was nice but I wanted more functions to experiment with, which allows me to mess up more of my website – and waste more time.

These screenshots are what the website looked like before. I really loved the custom post option “Quote” which made my quotes pretty ;-) I hope I’ll figure that out for this new theme also.

What do you think – about the current look and the ‘old’ one?

Return Of The Fiscal Cliff!

There was much, much, much talk about it – the Fiscal Cliff. And then it disappeared, to be replaced by less catchy self-made crisis like the sequester.

I’m currently doing a research project on just that: how much talk there really was about it. I was curious as to how the cuts and tax increases behind the term became the name “Fiscal Cliff”. Who decided what to call it? The most puzzling to me was the large amount of media coverage about the term itself. It was constantly being called “the so-called fiscal cliff”, discussed and called into question. In […]

May The Hummingbirds Stay With Us

What would be kind of the opposite to Walter White from Breaking Bad? Well, Amy Jellicoe from HBO’s Enlightened would be a very good guess.

She is what Emily Nussbaum introduces as one of a new television archetype: The Hummingbird. Nussmbaum describes this fairly new character (the ‘Ur-Hummingbird’ being Diane from Cheers) with Sue Heck from “The Middle” as an example:
“With her braces and lank hair, Sue is a geek, but not in a cute way. In science class, she designs an experiment to prove that smiles are contagious. Instead, people shy away from her deranged, over-enthusiastic grin—only when she messes […]

Oscar Wilde

“Most people are other people.”

Top ten current TV shows

As I wrote yesterday, no blog about TV shows without a personal top ten list on current TV shows. Before I start, a disclaimer: I’m freakishly interested in a loooot of different shows, worrysome is how many of them I feel passionately about. That means that even a top fifty list would be very difficult for me to write – and more importantly, it is nothing more than a ‘snapshot’ of what I think right now. If I start rewatching The Wire, for instance, it will imediately go up to number one. And if I then return to Breaking Bad […]

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