XplosionOflaver's guide to the galaxy

Monday, March 1, 2010

my upcoming paper on dreadlocks

Justin Dunlap
2/13/10
Paper #1
Dreadlocks
What are dreadlocks? Also referred to as dreads or locks, are matted coils of hair. This is a hair style grow popular through the Rasta movement and professional athletes. It has become stereotyped over the years to be associated most closely with drugs (pot), rap music (reggae), and hippies, and other behavior not in line with the rest of society. Along with these stereotypes comes a whole plethora of myths that people have about this hair style. I personal have been assaulted with questions pertaining to my hygiene (“Do you wash your hair or my favorite, “Doesn’t it start to smell bad?”). Everything you thought before was lies or myths. The first part of my paper will introduce the subject of dreadlocks but not just how to dread or methods, but culture behind them. Hopefully all the myths that creep into your head when you think of dreadlocks will be quelled as well. Also include A little history into dreads tracing the origins to Africa, the Caribbean, and even India.
What is so important about Dreadlocks? They are a very misunderstood hair style choice for anyone trying to live and work in corporate America. The amount of prejudice against you is bigger than one may think. Good luck with those jobs interviews, some places won’t even hire you dreads. I know this is a world where we are supposed to be used standing of people’s choices (religion, tastes, style, race, etc…) but as the saying goes don’t judge a book by its cover. But we as Americans do it all the time. We do buy a book for the cover and not the writing. This paper is important to me because I do have a personal stake in it. I have invested myself into the topic and am part of the culture. I bring this subject up because sometimes the stereotyping is too much for me to handle.
What sides are there? Well not to seem biased being that I am part of the subject I will tend to side with a more friendly-tone toward the dreading community. But there is an argument to be made with this topic. What about Americas views toward dreadlocks. There are prejudices views that people have wither it be that it stems from their appearance or the culture. In TV or media in general dreadlocks are stereotypes by the black Caribbean man with a Rasta accent. That isn’t what dreads are about, many other different cultures than Rasta hold dreadlocks with high esteem. Also it isn’t just a male dominated phenom either; plenty of women hold dreadlocks with high regard. For some reason it has been determined that corporate America does not support dreadlocks and they must be silently shunned.
Who is my target audience? Anyone who will listen… of course. Seriously my target audience will be those who don’t know much about dreadlocks. These people are important to target so myths to dreadlocks can end. With the end of the myths the bad baggage will go with it.
Sources: A lot of my sources are online where a steady stream of info is available to anyone who would like to know more.
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:GZkXfV8Td7wJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks+dreaded+locks+of+hair&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3
http://www.howtodread.com/dreadlock.html
http://www.howtodread.com/dreds.html
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Religions/Avatars/Shiva.html
http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/judges/judges16.htm
Online sources are not my only data on the issue I got a lot of articles too.
"Whether Beast or Human": The Cultural Legacies of Dread, Locks, and Dystopia. Frank, Kevin1Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism; Jun2007, Issue 23, p46-62, 17p
Rooted in the Written Word Houser, Pat Black Issues Book Review; May/Jun2007, Vol. 9 Issue 3, p12-13, 2p
"SHE'S GROWN Dreadlocks" Johnson, Dianne1 World Literature Today; Sep-Dec2004, Vol. 78 Issue 3/4, p75-78, 4p, 3 color, 2 bw

Monday, February 1, 2010

The Dumbest Thing I'll ever heard

The comedian Lewis Black once had a joke about people saying stupid things that make no sense. He heard someone say, "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." I know right sounds stupid... am I right? Well this only reminds me of party I went to this weekend. It was a friends 22nd birthday party and there were a lot of people there that I didn't know. While hanging out at the beer pong table I met one of these people. When I say "met" I mean she was whining about something until someone inquired to her condition. I asked her if she was alright ... her response was to tell me that she can't drink too much more. I asked her, "why's that?" She said that she had surgery on her stomach to fix something. I then proceeded to ask her if she was alright... hopefully thinking that it wasn't something serious. She responded by saying it was an abortion.....wait...What? Here's a girl drunk complaining about how she can't drink that much and she had an abortion 3 days ago...and she's at a birthday party at 2 a.m. with her boyfriend playing beer pong. I haven't even introduced myself yet...what do you say to that....? Literally my mind went black and my only response was to say I was going going outside to smoke a cig. Am i the only person that sees that this person is incapable of sound judgement? And where was her boyfriend in all this? Some people are just dumb.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Does the Internet weaken mass media?

This short online article starts with a diagram and continues to branch off trying to connect the dots to mass media and the effect the internet has off of it. Well that’s all fine and dandy if it was a black and white world. Other than that the article was very well written though I have problems understanding why they explained the article in this manner. I start my response to this article by disagreeing with the diagram in the first place. It starts with a circle. This circle separates the sphere of legitimate (inside) with the sphere of deviance (outside). The line of this circle separates what the mass media defines as the legitimate issues that are important and what stories are to be told. In all honesty the media sometimes can’t agree day to day on the issues they flip flop back and forth changing their minds constantly. This shouldn’t be represented by a circle…circles are supposed to be perfect. I think this first divide is drawn more like an amoeba…constantly able to change the shape around its nucleus (which would be the sphere of consensus). It makes more sense to be being able to see mass media as a living, breathing, and growing single organism than as a black and white “doughnut”. This mass media amoeba makes more sense with the second part of the article as well. I have no problem agreeing with the article about the internet taking apart this large entity (mass media). Upon a time ago where people challenged the issues with outside the sphere thinking (deviance) they were for the most shunned or ignored. And it wasn’t just one or two people it was thousands of people with thousands of different mindsets (opinions). The dawn of the computer age started a “shift in the wind” per se…and after the training wheels were off social networking started. The internet came alive the same way media is. With social networking came the ability to find anyone, anywhere in the world that shared the same opinions and issues with you. Suddenly tens of millions of people could group together for a single cause. Back to my amoeba analogy/ chart … back before social networking people ideas and issues were specks of dust they may be let in or out of the “sphere “of legitimate controversy. They do not have any effect on changing it to include them. Now all of a sudden there are viruses, bacteria, and parasites (all groups of people) try to get in. When they do the amoeba will try and fight it off… but with so many different and bountiful groups trying to infect this amoeba it stands no chance and starts to break down. As complex as this all may sound the world can’t be all black and white. The media does have a grey area, and a blue area, and a red one too. The world, politics, news, media, and everything else aren’t so simple so don’t try and make it simple.

http://journalism.nvu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/01/12/atomization.html