Concise Mission Statement:
By exploring all of pool's multi-faceted interdynamics, I intend to prove that this pastime is a deeply saturated ground for studying folklore.
~ Wayne S.
I hope you enjoy your visit here and find at least a few things that are entertaining and intellectually stimulating. Many thanks to all my pool comrades who generously gave of their time, stories, opinions, and assistance.
This Site, By Origin Is...
One student's final project for a university course entitled "American Folklore." The main requirement of the assignment was for the student to produce a thorough (if relatively experimental) exploration of a certain type of folkloric material. The student was to pick a folkloric subject matter that was relatively familiar to him/her, and/or one that was easily accessible. To understand why I chose pool as my subject matter, please visit the
"Why Explore Pool Here" page.
This Site, By Purpose Is...
meant to explore and prove how the ornate and elaborate ritual of pool can be understood as folklore. This study will not be limited to anything, including different rules, different ideas, different opinions, etc.; it is feasibly open to any expansive idea within reason.
In My Wider Hopes...
Anyone finding and exploring this site... be they greatly familiar with or contrastingly, very new to either pool or folklore... might gain a deep appreciation of both of these themes.
In other words...
I hope that visitors mostly interested in pool might:
- Gain an interest in folklore, which subsequently might...
- Deepen their understanding of why people play pool.
- Deepen their firsthand enjoyment of playing the game.
- And dare I say it? Deepen their quality of life.
I hope that visitors mostly interested in folklore might:
- See how pool is a deeply saturated ground for looking at folklore.
- Thereby, understand how pool is intertwined with other folkloric cultures, or matters.
- Thereby, improving their understanding of the discipline of folklore, overall.
- Gain a deeper understanding of the game of pool.
- Thereby, influence a truer appreciation of the game of pool.
There are just a few things one should know, while visiting this site:
1. All of the videos are currently posted at YouTube.com. This means that any number of problems might occur. The traffic at YouTube is so heavy, at times, that videos might not always be accessible. Some of the videos that I had chosen and hoped to include in my playlists may not have legal permissions allowing them to appear (be embedded) on another website or server. Thus, some of the videos I hoped to place in my project may never appear here, unless I am able to someday gain permission to upload them here (or on YouTube) myself.
2. The adult rating I have chosen to give the website is due to a few instances of adult themes present in my content, but mostly just a very few instances of adult language in some of the popular media videos that my playlists reference (access and play).
3. Any number of the playlists, or "video/image player embeds," that exist on this site, at times, may have content that appears in them that doesn't belong here; I assure you that this is totally unintentional. This problem would likely be due to the "keyword" access technique that they use to search for content to play. I apologize if this ever causes any confusion.
4. Though this project has been placed on this blogspot server, it is meant to appear just as a regular website. Thus, I have manipulated all of the dates of my posts so that the project appears as such. One should therefore, ignore all the dates on the pages and posts.
5. Finally, this project, I hope, is going to continually evolve over time. Thus, I intend to update and improve this content throughout the future, and whenever I get the opportunity to put my time and energy towards that end.
