Some little boys want to grow up to be firemen.Some little boys want to grow up to be astronauts.This little boy wanted to grow up to be a hippie faggot freak.Growing up in 1950s and early 60s America, Dale Michell was an outsider from the start. He learned at an early age the price one paid for being different. Bullied and harassed, Dale started seeking an escape even before puberty revealed just how dangerous his predicament was. By fifteen, taunts ...

This edited volume explores the intersection between the coded realm of the video game and the equally codified space of law through an insightful collection of critical readings.Law is the ultimate multiplayer role-playing game. Involving a process of world-creation, law presents and codifies the parameters of licit and permitted behaviour, requiring individuals to engage their roles as a legal subject – the player-avatar of law – in order to be recognised, perform legal actions, ...

Shirley and I were invited as special guests of the Pacific American Lines to cruise aboard their cruiseship, the Experience. On January 9, 2012, we embarked from the port of San Diego. That afternoon, we took a walk about the ship and attended a mandatory lifeboat drill. Later we enjoyed predinner cocktails at the Ocean View Bar and dined at 5:45 p.m. Finally, we returned to our suite, retiring at 9:00 p.m. Thus began our journey, a much expected routine. It had lulled us into anticipatin...

“An entertaining rant…The only thing missing is the sound of a drumroll and cymbals to feel as though one is sitting in a nightclub watching a live comedy marathon…A raucous, biting look at life.”—Kirkus Reviews“Nobody, but nobody, can hate like Joan Rivers. It is a gift. It is also shocking, the things she makes us laugh at…Joan Rivers is extraordinary, but she's not for the easily offended—or for anyone who gets offended at all.”—People

Rue McClanahan, best known for her portrayal of Blanche Devereaux on the Emmy-award winning series The Golden Girls reveals her life in and out of the spotlight in a laugh-out-loud funny memoir about love, marriage, men, and getting older that is every bit as colorful as the characters she played.Raised in small-town Oklahoma in a house “thirteen telephone poles past the standpipe north of town,” Rue developed her two great passions—theater and men—at an e...

-Delta Force romance story #10-Ramiro dreams a simple dream: become a great chef to capture the heart of the best cook he ever met. Now, in just-next-door restaurants in their old neighborhood—the barrios of Medellín, Colombia—he brings a modern twist to catch her attention.Estela’s worries center on the last gasp of the drug cartels that still haunt her neighborhood. When a pair of American Delta operators start a card game in Ramiro’s res...

NATIONAL BESTSELLERPeople make a mess.Marc Maron was a parent-scarred, angst-filled, drug-dabbling, love-starved comedian who dreamed of a simple life: a wife, a home, a sitcom to call his own. But instead he woke up one day to find himself fired from his radio job, surrounded by feral cats, and emotionally and financially annihilated by a divorce from a woman he thought he loved. He tried to heal his broken heart through whatever means he could fi...

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication...

All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history,” which claimed the lives of thirty-two passengers, including twenty-eight Mexican citizens—farmworkers who were being deported by the U.S. government. Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the twentieth century, “Plane Wreck at...

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and their histories, and offers a sense of the new frontiers and questions emerging in the field of media studiesKeywords for Media Studies introduces and aims to advance the field of critical media studies by tracing, defining, and problematizing its established and emergent terminology. The book historicizes thinking about media and society, whether that means noting a long history of “new media,” or tracing how...

**The author of Straw Men continues his Memory Series with "a terrific read for lovers of political suspense" (Rebecca Forster, USA Today–bestselling author).Two men stand out in a crowd overlooking the Ohio River. A plane is being removed from the water where it crashed decades before. Both men helped put it there.Jim Christensen's adopted daughter, Melissa, has been troubled of late. She has dreams that feel like memories, unsettling images perc...

Mediatization has emerged as a key concept to reconsider old, yet fundamental questions about the role and influence of media in culture and society. In particular the theory of mediatization has proved fruitful for the analysis of how media spread to, become intertwined with, and influence other social institutions and cultural phenomena like politics, play and religion.This book presents a major contribution to the theoretical understanding of the mediatization of culture and soc...