Dustin Kidd

dustinkidd.blogspot.com (videos will not appear in facebook, so click on the blog for the full post) Like my reason posts on popular culture, this is focused on Glee.  In last week's episode, Kurt came out to his dad, after joining the football team and scoring the winning field goal.  It's striking that the usual story of a painful coming out followed by endless abuse and mocking is here replaced with coming out as an inner torment that is greeted with support by surrounding characters.  In other words, the focus is less on presenting gay characters who can serve as role models to gay youth, and more on presenting positive straight characters who can offer a welcoming environment to the kid coming out.  These characters present new role models for straight people. In the first clip below (advance to the .55 second mark), Kurt pulls Finn aside to ask a question. Finn, not realizing that Kurt is asking for help with football, intercedes and says: "Thanks, but I already hav...

dustinkidd.blogspot.com What is it? Readily available funds that you can use to pay for unexpected needs in life. One of the biggest things to plan for now is the possibility of being unemployed. When to do it? Right away, if you don't have any emergency funds at all. Once you have $1000 set aside, go back to working on your high interest debts (esp. credit cards). After those are paid off, then built the fund up. How much do I need? Advice ranges from $1000 to 8 months of expenses. I'd aim for 6 months. How do I calculate 6 months of expenses? It's not half of your annual salary. Don't calculate your emergency needs based on your salary, calculate them based on your expenses. If you have a budget, you can do this quickly (and if you don't have a budget, you'll be able to make one quickly after planning for your emergency fund). Start with your fixed expenses like rent, cell phone bill, loan payments, etc. Then, estimate your variable expenses like f...

dustinkidd.blogspot.com CNN on Glee's pilot strategy: Glee banks on risky strategy LA Times on last week's episode: Glee: Ah, fellas! Calgary Herald on best fall bets: Fall Season Survival Fresh Air interviews the director and producer Ryan Murphy: From Nip/Tuck to High School Glee NYTimes on last week's episode: Glee, Brought to you by the letter C TV Guide on Fox's Use of Tweet-peats: Fox to Air Twee-Peats of Glee and Fringe TV Guide on the director's cut: Glee Director's Cut: What's to Come? And yes, you guessed it: The Gleeblog

dustinkidd.blogspot.com Glee feels like it was written by a graduate from my course on popular culture. I tell my students to look for the racial and ethnic minorities, look for the women, look for the disabled people, look for the gays and lesbians. On a many shows on television, these characters are not present or they appear very infrequently. A lot of hype surrounds the occasional exceptions, but they really are exceptions. Glee is one more of those exceptions, but it's striking for its inclusiveness. The initial Glee club--New Directions!--includes one kid in a wheelchair, one kid who is probably gay, one Black woman and one Asian woman (who is probably lesbian), along with the perfect straight White male and female leads. This isn't a show that argues that we're really all part of the mainstream. The key moment in the pilot episode is when Finn, the male lead who has been recruited from the football teams, declares that "we're all losers!" The show...

dustinkidd.blogspot.com The New York Times has a nice front page article today, September 9th, on the dangers of debit cards. The problem? Overdrafts. I got into this problem a few years with Wachovia. A deposit that I made didn't clear for a few days, even though the deposit was recorded. In the meantime, I made 4 small purchases, each for less than $3. But because the bank argued that the money wasn't available, I incurred FOUR overdraft fees of $34 each. I was mortified. I called to complain and the bank refused to help. On a graduate student budget, it took me a long time to recover. To prevent that from happening again, I signed up for overdraft protection. Under this service, any overdrafts would come from my Wachovia credit card. What wasn't explained to me was that there was a $30 service charge every time this kicks in. In addition, the bank then collected finance charges as well, unless I paid if off by the end of the month. Since I was carrying a lar...

dustinkidd.blogspot.com This is a summary of my 2007 article "Harry Potter and the Functions of Popular Culture" from The Journal of Popular Culture . I argue that the basic functions of popular culture today are the same basic functions of crime, as described by Emile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Method in 1895. Briefly, these social functions are to: produce social norms, establish social boundaries, create rituals that generate social solidarity, generate innovation, and pave the way for social change. It's tempting to give specific examples from film, television or music for each, but that would be misleading. Popular culture accomplishes these functions through blunt ubiquitous force, not through acute specificity. We don't turn to one TV show for our norms and another for our innovations. What Not to Wear may in fact tell us what to wear, but we also figure out how to dress ourselves from all of the other media we consume. Most people will never wa...

I was teaching CW Mills's "The Sociological Imagination" this week, to kick off my seminar on Sociological Theory.  This is a little primer that Mills (pictured) wrote on how to think about the world from the sociological perspective.  Most issues can be thought about from multiple perspectives, including the sociological imagination, but for some reason the sociological imagination is much harder to embrace than other perspectives.  Comte anticipated this by suggesting that human things would be the last aspects of the world to be taken up by science.  The current housing issue (it takes a lot for me to say crisis about anything) offers a nice example.  The main competitor to the sociological imagination on this topic (and many others) is American individualism.  American individualism argues that you make your own reality through your work and through your choices.  People who do well are presumed to work hard and make good decisions.  With regard to homes and mortgages...

In order to keep my finances on the up and up, and to make sure I can save what I need to save, I set a monthly budget and I adhere to it by tracking every penny I spend.  To do this, I developed an excel spreadsheet with multiple worksheets.  I have 7 tabs in my spreadsheet: Checking, Cash, Savings, Fidelity, TIAA-Cref, Budget, and Income. At the start of the month, I outline my anticipated spending in the budget, and my anticipated income in the income tab.  Whenever possible I get very specific in my budget.  For instance, I don't know how much I will spend on groceries, so I estimate, but I do know that I spend $4.95 every Monday at the bakery for my loaf of bread.  So Bread has it's own budget line ($4.95 X # of Mondays in the month). Then, I open this document every day to record every purchase made with my checking account, or with cash.  ATM transactions are debits in the "Checking" tab that align with credits in the "Cash" tab.  The tally in the cas...