Oscar Nods

Nominations were released today for the 78th Annual Academy Awards which will be presented on March 5th. One exciting note for the Oscars this year; they will be hosted by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. This is sure to encourage the award recipients to even more ill-fated, and ill-informed political statements, but we can rest assured that Stewart will be quick to make fun of them for it afterwards. It’s no huge surprise that “Brokeback Mountain” was nominated for Best Picture, however I was somewhat surprised that it took the lead with 8 nominations. However, I have not seen the film, so I cannot comment on whether the nominations were actually deserved, or it’s just another case of Hollywood being Hollywood. My instinct is toward the latter. Also taking in numerous nominations are “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Capote,” “Walk the Line,” “Crash,” and “Munich.” So far, the only ones of those that I have seen are Walk the Line, and Munich. Hopefully I’ll be able to see a few more of them prior to the awards, and I might be so bold as to throw out some predictions. One thing’s for sure… Between all the “Brokeback Mountain” and “Transamerica” nominations, and Stewart’s hosting… this will be an interesting show.

Beautiful Friday.

I go to a school where at four o’clock on Friday afternoon, when there are almost no classes left for the week, I cannot play rock music from my laptop speakers because it’s too loud for the girls in the apartment next door who are trying to study. You might say to me: Taylor, surely you’re exaggerating a little bit here. I would say to you, no, no I am not. Granted, I do not mean the speakers built into the laptop but something I have since acquired called the Phillips Shoqbox. It is a very small set of portable powered speakers that have a battery so I don’t have to have them plugged in all the time. Basically they’re those little desktop speakers that you’ve gotten with your PC since before anyone thought it would be a good idea to actually play music off the computer and might want a little volume and quality out of it. What I really wanted to do was plug my laptop into my soundsystem and make use of all 600 watts that I have at my disposal… but then I don’t need to be pissing people off already. Well, anyone else at least. I might have hurt myself in a class today by challenging the position of my COM 301 professor. While I might not agree with everything that Plato said, I do agree with his ideas that there is an absolute truth (though I’m sure the Greek philosopher and myself would disagree on the foundation of that absolute truth) and that rhetoric should be founded in it or otherwise be seeking to find it, and I do have a problem with rhetoricians that hold that truth is completely relative and that as rhetoricians they are justified in making good choices look like bad choices and vice versa. That is inherently wrong, misleading, unethical, amoral and it should be counted as an evil practice. So to the extend that rhetoricians disregard the truth in the pursuit of their own personal power, well being, or advancement then I agree that rhetoric is indeed evil. Anyway, my professor didn’t like the idea that his students didn’t just sit there and listen to him berate the classical argument against mere rhetoric, but actually had an established opposing point of view and challenged him with it. Oh well, I wasn’t attacking him personally, and I was never disrespectful of him, but he didn’t come off looking like he actually knew what he was teaching. I just hope I didn’t offend him, cause that would make a boring class even worse for me.

Other than that, it’s an absolutely beautiful Friday… wish I could play some loud music.