Even erudite flies get smashed now and then for sounding too ‘school smart’. As one of many AU students not immersed in an academic social sphere, Jason’s ‘Fly on the Wall’ column seeks to aid and abet the success of others in his cohort. We won’t always be understood when we speak of what we are learning in school but we can rest assured that our education still has value.
His lighthearted approach to sociological philosophy stems from conducting field research at bush parties and working his day job reforesting the mountains of BC. Born in the city of Vancouver and raised on a farm in the Fraser Valley and an orchard in the Okanagan, he attained a diploma in Horticulture in the Creston Valley and then returned to school as a Sociology major. Today’s he’s an AU Master’s of Integrated Studies student who spends his spare time enjoying nature walks, snorkeling and reading whatever philosophical and sociological tracts capture his fancy.
Jason is fascinated with the micro-sociological thoughts and interactions that frame and demarcate our experience of daily life as well as the philosophical realm considering essential questions about what it is to be a human. It’s dense brush but Jason seeks answers where murkiness holds sway.
A Few Theoretical Influences: Louis Althusser, Isaac Asimov, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Aime Cesaire, Carol Clover, John Cummings, Kurt Cobain, Jacques Derrida, Emile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Antonio Gramsci, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Hobbes, Agnes Martin, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Max Weber
Being a bit contrarian is in the nature of studying at AU—we’re unique attendees at a unique university. Off-campus, as it were, oxymorons such as adult student pervade our cultural atmosphere. We’ve aged out of youth but aren’t quite willing to be normal, hoi polloi, mass culture consumers of life as labouring for wages and… Read more »
A human sneeze can explode out from our humble maw at 200 miles an hour (Bardi, online). So it’s no surprise that buffets from High River to Honolulu have for decades utilized ubiquitous sneezeguards as a relative failsafe against an impromptu achoo (Smith, online). And just as hunger gnaws at the tummies of mammals worldwide,… Read more »
We’ve all stepped in a puddle of spring rainwater. It’s like a dark and stormy night, and “once upon a time” implies repetition of a series of attendant expectations. An inadvertent puddle splash connotes an oopsie-doodle moment and then, insidiously and almost imperceptibly, water wicks its way up our pantleg inducing uncomfortable sensations as our… Read more »
“There is no subdivision of desire into homosexuality and heterosexuality”, claimed queer theorist Guy Hocquenghem (49). By this view, gayness does not represent a repressed minority within the hegemonic pantheon of tough men with trucks and despicable “no fat chicks” bumper stickers because, ironically, desire itself is queer. Everything else is, well, just an old… Read more »
As a young party animal who moonlighted as an AU student the werewolf battle was real for a younger version of this Fly on the Wall. Would I snarl and shred my way right out of my shot at a higher education degree? Or would I find a better balance between madness and civilized discourse,… Read more »
Delusions of grandeur go with higher education like helium balloons go with funny voices and imagined flight. To rise above the vulgar norms of existence is what AU is all about; we become more than the sum of our parts when inspiration enters our view. Distance education implies a desire on the part of students… Read more »
On Mother’s Day we appreciate those adults who nurtured our howling and screeching primate selves out of the precognitive underbrush of infancy. The splendours of a Mother’s love knows no bounds, to be sure, and to this we can attest when we see or experience the labours required for child-rearing. We all began life with… Read more »
“Going somewhere?” Intoned as a mocking phrase, maybe when an adult has quietly confiscated a teenager’s car keys only to dangle them perspicaciously at a crucial moment, or when a friend appraises the sudden donning of hat and jacket by an erstwhile interlocutor after an especially barbed rejoinder, the notion of going somewhere carries a… Read more »
At last it is Canadian spring, when finally we burst into action. Pens and paper, laptops and textbooks, they are all thrust to the wayside as we celebrate what there is to do outdoors. But wait, there’s work waiting for us in the yard! If we’re privileged enough to have some outdoors of our own… Read more »
Whatever we put into our bodies goes into the makeup of our being. Years ago I attended a restaurant in Nelson, BC, specializing in delicious garlic dishes. The glory of that mighty plant was on full display and for months after I enjoyed roasting garlic cloves with a little salt and olive oil. Garlic, like… Read more »