Women Can Kick Major Ass

I’ve recently been reading a marvelous book by Mike Madrid entitled The Supergirls: Fashion, feminism, fantasy, and the history of comic book heroines. If you have even a passing interest in the subjects of feminism or comic books, you owe it to yourself to read this book as soon as possible. It includes a ton of historical anecdotes and facts that I, as a lifelong comic book fanatic, was completely unaware of. For instance, did you know that Wonder Woman was created by a psychologist who wanted to teach young girls that it was okay to be a powerful woman in society? Neither did I. That is the type of stuff this book is filled with.

However, while reading the book, it got me to thinking about the concept of the super heroine and why they get such a bum rap from the nerd community, which is, as most of society, predominantly male.

Being Anonymous Only Matters If You Are Too Scared To Say It Out Loud

You know what, guys? When I write something, I sign my name. Here, I’ll show you.-Sam Seaborn The West Wing

As pop culture fans who frequent the internet, we’ve all seen what anonymity can cause. Whether it is the usually sweet, calm mother of 4 who curses like a sailor when debating the merits of one Star Trek captain over another on some internet forum or the nerdy 12-year old boy who is too timid to speak in front of his class, but is willing to assert that he is the most knowledgeable X-Phile out there, being behind a keyboard allows for people to unleash a part of themselves that is usually kept hidden. Have you ever stopped to wonder why it is that the church deacon who chastises people for cursing around him in public will let fly with a profanity-laced tirade on the merits of his Luke/Leia slash fiction?(And let me be the first to say that I’m pissed at myself for putting that mental image in my head.)

Easy, the reason that people feel the freedom to be absolutely horrible to one another on the internet is because it allows for total anonymity. You have no way to know if the person you are talking to is truly a 21 year old Swedish model with a fetish for gamers or if it is a 40 year old truck driver from Baton Rouge with too much time on his hands. This anonymity is what appeals to a great many people about the internet. However, in an age of social networking tools out the whazoo, a great deal of that anonymity is being stripped away.

Or is it?

Defining A Movement(If A Movement Is One Guy Rambling On The Internet)

I’ve recently begun a campaign to have a new adjective introduced into the American lexicon. In the tradition of people who have made a great contribution to their particular field having their names converted into an adjective, i.e. Charles Dickens begat Dickensian and Thomas Jefferson led to Jeffersonian, I have decided that a certain style of criticism of culture, in particular culture of the popular variety, should be referred to as Willbanksian.

Why Willbanksian, you ask? Well, because my name is Tanner Willbanks and I am that self important.

I started this campaign recently in a Facebook status message, but was quickly met with a response of “What does it mean?” To this, I was left with no answer. While I am self important enough to feel that my name should become an adjective, I had not actually given any thought to what it should actually mean. I shall do that presently.

I Know A Change Gonna Come, Oh Yes It Will

As some of you may have noticed, I have not been the most active blogger in recent weeks. While part of this is due to the fact that I am crazy-busy(and yes, that is the technical term) with school work as we head towards finals, that is not the only reason that I have seemed to have forsaken my duties here at Mainlining Pop Culture. In fact, I have been having a bit of an internal debate over the direction of my brainchild here. However, I have finally come to a decision. Some of you may hate it, but if you want to know what it is, keep reading.

In the coming days, you will notice that the posts on this blog will be different than they have been before. I will no longer be giving daily ratings breakdowns(as I haven’t been doing them very consistently anyway) because they are amazingly boring to write and, therefore, I assume to read.

Monday Night Ratings

It is Tuesday. The World Series ended last Wednesday, so that means that last night was the start of the first week of November sweeps that does not include the aberrant behavior caused by the Fall Classic. What could have happened? Did the ratings get turned upside down? Did Jay Leno draw 50 million viewers?

Well, I’m guessing you already know the answer if you’ve read this blog at all, but I will tell you that if you want a full rundown go here, but if you want me to continue to ramble on, you should read past the jump.

Ratings Recap

I had intended to ignore the fact that I have been completely out of touch since mid-October and just make a Friday ratings post as if I had covered all the other days. However, I quickly realized that if I did that I would miss out on a whole bunch of chances to mock Jeff Zucker and NBC for the Jay Leno debacle.

Side note, if you think I’m the only one that is noticing that the Jay Leno experiment is ruining NBC then you aren’t paying attention. Check out this, this, or this(in which even Leno seems to see that the end of this experiment is both needed and wanted by most sane humans).

So, without further ado, let me talk ratings for the past week.

Britney Offended People Who Think Paul Hogan Is A National Treasure

Britney Spears is rather famous for her lip-synching ways. In fairness to Brit, most of the modern pop stars are famous for it, as they keep getting caught in the most televised of ways(I’m looking at you, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz!). However, most of those disasters lead to the untalented hack’s fans rallying to their support. Unfortunately for Britney Spears, it appears that other than the one creepy fan(yes, Chris Crocker, you are creepy) who cries everytime somebody attacks her, her fans seem to be sick of her crazy ass.

Wow, That Was A Longer Break Than I Expected

I know that I said I’d be posting sporadically until after the first week of November due to other obligations, but who knew that I actually meant not at all? I sincerely apologize for my complete and total disappearing act for the better part of a month, but I can report that both the GRE, which I took on Halloween, and the first ever Domestic Violence Awareness Week at the University of Kansas, which I coordinated last week, were roaring successes. And I’m not talking success in the way that NBC continues to insist that the Jay Leno experiment is a success. I am talking about the sneak up on you and get monster ratings success of NCIS. Anyway, I am back now and will hopefully be back to my normal schedule of updates(I know that I’m going to need frequent breaks from the pair of papers I’m writing today). So, since I have been gone for so long, check after the jump for something special for all my loyal readers.

Inconsistency Is My Trademark

If you’ve ever been a college student, then you know that, at times, a semester’s workload can begin to bury you. You reach a point where you realize that you’ve bitten off a bit more than you probably should have and you find yourself struggling just to keep from going under. This sensation is only increased when you are in your final year of undergraduate work and are in the process of researching grad schools, studying for the GRE, writing personal essays for the previously mentioned grad schools, and attempting to have some much-needed relaxation time whenever you can find it.

All of this is my way of saying that I will be sporadic, at best, in my updates from now until after the first week of November, when my life should begin to resemble a normal human beings life again. Thanks for understanding.

A Quick Catch-up

As has probably been noticed, I again have been off the interwebs for the last few days. This has been caused by a combination of my busy midterm week and the burn out that it caused. In fact, my weekend was spent watching Blu-Ray discs(The Soloist, Gran Torino, and some of the first season of Fringe), watching football(both college and pro), seeing the touring company of Spring Awakening with friends, and reading Supreme Court cases about religious issues. So, as you can see, I was not in the mood to jump on here and bang out a quick post.

Instead, I will now do my best to catch you, my dear readers, up with the ratings from Thursday and Friday of last week. I hope you will forgive me.