Here’s the TOP 10:
10. They enter a British-owned pub near campus and ask for Miller Lite
9. A few U.S. history profs get together like in days of yore and play with their muskets by loading them with gun powder, salt, and cayenne pepper, then inserting a piece of flint, ramming everything down, and finally dropping in a musket ball, which would pop out because there was no space (this usually took 2–3 days during yore, which delayed the Revolutionary War)
8. Physics profs go to a park and explode cherry bombs under Jaguar and Rover hubcaps to see if they can blow off tree limbs on the way up
7. They have a GIANT family cook-out with som’mores and monster blood-sucking mosquitoes, gather around their 52-inch flat screens, wave sparklers, and sing catchy, upbeat, patriotic tunes like “The Burning of Charleston” or “Siege of Savannah,” accompanied by Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops
6. Ex-Marine profs who traced their roots to the Continental Marines in Philadelphia dedicate the day to watching the NCIS “Dear Abby” marathon on USA
5. They Google “macaroni” to figure out why anyone without a frontal lobotomy would stick “a feather in his cap and call it ‘you know what’ [without cheese]”!
4. Profs in Boston gather at Paul Revere’s Old North Church to polish their antique silverware and Rachael Ray cookware, which incites Emeril Lagasse to riot
3. At deep Southern institutions, profs, dressed in knee pants, tight stockings, and white wigs with ribbons, dust off the campus cannon, load it with accreditation self-studies and annual reports, aim it at the president’s mansion, light the fuse, and pray it doesn’t blow up in their faces
2. Touristy profs in Bermuda shorts and T-shirts dig out their ole’ fife-and-drum and march in the Williamsburg, VA, parade alongside the soldiers who are sweating like pigs in their period costumes in 95ยบ heat and dropping on the cobblestones like sweaty pigs
AND THE NO. 1 “FUN” WAY:
1. Washington, DC-based profs enter the Starbucks® in Georgetown and then, dressed as Washington Redskins, ceremoniously toss 2 grande cups of Monkey-Pod Decaf Italian-Arab Roast coffee into the Potomac River (NOTE: There’s also a New England Patriot version of this way.)
HAVE A GREAT 4TH!!!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
What better way to start off the week on Easter Monday then blog on profanity and vulgarity with a sarcastic rhetorical question? Talk about blogger’s license! Instead of an Easter Egg Hunt, we’re going on an Expletive Hunt. However, before we start bleeping out bad words, there is one additional bad news thought I want to add on the previous sexually explicit topic.
SEXUAL CONTENT AND INNUENDO (Addendum)
One addition to my previous blog is sexting, a combination of “sex” and “texting,” I think. Downloading and texting sexually explicit material from the Internet at large, YouTube, and personal videos in class or in the workplace presents another new set of problems. If it’s out there to abuse, the technology enables evil minds to find it and disseminate it. Stop it before it starts if it’s within your power to do so.
PROFANITY
You hear expletives just about everywhere. What the “&!%#” is going on? It’s pervasive in our culture and workplace. There are no boundaries or profanity ceiling. In water-cooler jokes and conversations with students and colleagues, usually their first or second sentence or fragment will set the profanity tone for the dialogue, hopefully not the barrage of filthy, Tarantino-type language. (NOTE: Quinton Tarantino’s Motto—“No Profanity Left Behind.”)
EXAMPLES: This "blue material" appears in all forms of media. What used to be considered the language of police officers, soldiers, athletes, and stand-up comedians is now used regularly by most comedians, foulmouthed TV cops and perpetrators (Law & Order: SVU, CSI: NY, NCIS, The Closer, Reno 911!), lawyers (The Good Wife), doctors (House, Grey’s Anatomy), and school kids (South Park). Movies rated PG-13 and worse are larded with gratuitous profanity. YouTube videos run the gamut.
LEVEL OF DISCOURSE: This coarsening of media in our culture suggests that nothing is sacrosanct. However, despite the increasing frequency of profane language around us, its use in the classroom is unnecessary and inappropriate. It cannot be bleeped out of your lecture or conversation with students. Whenever it occurs, its crudity debases the level of discourse and the “discourser.”
Please consider what you say and how you say it. Your students are always listening. Be creative in your use of our language and stretch your vocabulary, and, maybe even, encourage your students to do the same. Consider the plethora of unusual words you can use to express your elation or discontent. Don’t stoop to the lowest common denominator.
Next up is vulgarity. We’re coming to the end of this series on offensive humor and media. WHEW!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
FACULTY ALERT: There doesn’t seem to be a ceiling on offensive material in our culture. As I plod through the muck and mire of the different categories of this material, please do not lose sight of the perspective on these issues. The decision of not to use offensive jokes, music, videos, and other media in the classroom does not hinge on your preferences about this material; it’s all about the effects of that material on your students and classroom atmosphere. It’s about them, not you. Your classroom should facilitate learning, not shut it down. These categories of offensiveness apply to everyone in the class.
SARCASM
Welcome to sarcasm-land! What a delightful way to begin this week: A blog on sarcasm with an opening sarcastic statement!
BLOGGER CONFESSION: Yup, I’m guilty of the transgression of sarcasm in my classroom, workplace, and home. I regret every time I used it under the guise of humor. The consequences were not worth it. Further, sarcastic remarks to students are a surefire recipe for disaster in their ratings of teaching at the end of semester. I can’t think of one reason to justify the use of sarcasm. DON’T DO IT!
DESCRIPTION: A sarcastic remark is frequently just another form of the ever popular put-down. Some people often perceive sarcasm as a sign of intellectual wit or as an elite verbal art form, even when the comment is directed at them as a put-down. Sarcasm “always has an edge; it sometimes has a sting.” It is usually cutting, caustic, biting, derisive, sneering, harsh, sardonic, or bitter. In sports, coaches use it to taunt, deflate, scold, ridicule, and push athletes to perform.
What makes sarcasm so dangerous is that it is spontaneous. It’s highly risky, because it’s difficult to control comments that come out of our mouths so quickly. If the result is negative and directed at one of your students, your administrative assistant or another staff member, or a colleague, the consequences can be so hurtful and damaging that the victim may not recover from the wound for a long time. You could lose a student or colleague for the entire semester or eternity.
RESEARCH: Research on sarcasm in the college classroom indicates that its intent is almost always negative and it is used most frequently by male professors. A few faculty members who regularly use negative sarcasm have asked me whether there is any way to justify or rationalize its use in the classroom. Read my letters: N O!
If you’re not sure of its effect, check out the sarcasm (and other put-downs) on House, Two and a Half Men, Modern Family, NCIS, and Law & Order: SVU.
My next blog kicks up the nastiness notch to ridicule, designed to humiliate students and others in the workplace. Most of these forms of humor are at someone’s expense, but not our own. We protect ourselves at all costs.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
For you CSI-NCIS-Law & Order fans out there, if you autopsy a conference presentation, you will discover 2 organs: (1) the content or WHAT is presented, and (2) the method/style or HOW it is presented. Both of these organs must be fully functional for a presentation to be successful. If you find any bodily fluids, you might want to consult your nearest physician for an anti-hallucinogen.
How does this lame metaphor translate into YOUR presentation?
1. WHAT: Prepare content that is understandable, meaningful, and useful to the target audience, and
2. HOW: Adopt an empathetic mindset on how the material will be delivered—imagine yourself sitting in your audience; what would you like to see and hear?
Think of these 2 components as stages in the preparation of your presentation. Let’s start with the 1st stage.
Stage 1
A few hints on preparation of the content:
1. Prepare the content that you want to present on your slides
2. Organize the content into sections or major heads
3. Type the head slides—they provide a structure for everything else
4. Type the content on each slide (You know the PowerPoint rules)
a. Limit the amount of content per slide
b. Emphasize main points, not lots of detail
c. Use lists of up to 6 lines with numbers, letters, or bullets
d. Use the largest font possible to fill the slide
5. Insert the content slides in their respective sections in order
6. Examine each slide for content to answer:
a. What’s the point of this slide?
b. Visually, do the important words pop off the slide at a glance?
c. How quickly can you summarize the info on the slide without reading it?
d. Make believe someone keeps screaming: Get to the point! Get to the Point!
e. Will you get bogged down in details or distracted from content?
Those steps prepare you for a super-deadly presentation, but you have a draft of the substance. Now, how do you transform that boring content into something special that your audience will never forget or, at least, remember until they get in their cars?
That’s Stage 2, the fun stage that will set you apart from the rest of the pack. You don’t want to miss the next blogorino.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
