Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Ngaire E. Genge
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307560937
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Urban Legends is a remarkably complete collection of the modern myths that make the rounds in offices, college dorms, and every other place where people tell the stories that spring from our deepest fears and fascinations. Every culture has its folktales including ours. Except, instead of involving gods and goddesses or princes and princesses, ours involve "some guy my sister's best friend knows" or "someone who woke up in a motel room." They happened, supposedly, to real people, usually recently, in a particular place. And they touch the most sensitive nerves of our psyches with ironic twists, gross-out shocks, and moral lessons learned the hard way. From the classic tale "The Mexican Pet" in which the "dog" turns out to be no Chihuahua to the more unappetizing story of condoms as fast-food burger garnish, from surgically skilled kidney thieves to sexual experiments that end in the emergency room, Urban Legends relates more 300 of the most enticing, macabre, and unforgettable tales. Expertly told, they are arranged in such chapters as "Crazy Little Thang Called Sex," "Oh, Scare Me," "Campus Capers," "Corporate Convolutions," and "So Much For Comfort Food." Fascinating, chilling, and occasionally repulsive, Urban Legends has all your favorites and hundreds more.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Ngaire E. Genge
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307560937
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Urban Legends is a remarkably complete collection of the modern myths that make the rounds in offices, college dorms, and every other place where people tell the stories that spring from our deepest fears and fascinations. Every culture has its folktales including ours. Except, instead of involving gods and goddesses or princes and princesses, ours involve "some guy my sister's best friend knows" or "someone who woke up in a motel room." They happened, supposedly, to real people, usually recently, in a particular place. And they touch the most sensitive nerves of our psyches with ironic twists, gross-out shocks, and moral lessons learned the hard way. From the classic tale "The Mexican Pet" in which the "dog" turns out to be no Chihuahua to the more unappetizing story of condoms as fast-food burger garnish, from surgically skilled kidney thieves to sexual experiments that end in the emergency room, Urban Legends relates more 300 of the most enticing, macabre, and unforgettable tales. Expertly told, they are arranged in such chapters as "Crazy Little Thang Called Sex," "Oh, Scare Me," "Campus Capers," "Corporate Convolutions," and "So Much For Comfort Food." Fascinating, chilling, and occasionally repulsive, Urban Legends has all your favorites and hundreds more.

Creepy Urban Legends

Creepy Urban Legends PDF Author: Tim O'Shei
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1429645725
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 18

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Book Description
"Describes scary urban legends, including The Vanishing Hitchhiker and The Babysitter on the Phone"--Provided by publisher.

Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends

Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends PDF Author: Jan Harold Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393320886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
A collection of oft-repeated urban legends brings together the best of modern myths, from the stoned baby sitter who mistook a baby for a turkey to the fabulously expensive recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Peter L'Official
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238079
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.

Urban Legends

Urban Legends PDF Author: Thomas J. Craughwell
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 1603762639
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description
A fascinating, creepy, frightening, disgusting, and hilarious collection of some of the world's most popular and enduring tall tales. With themes that run the gamut from funny to sick, risqué to informative, and frightening to disgusting, Urban Legends features fantastic yarns that are remarkable for their uncanny ability to travel the world by word of mouth. We've all heard the one about the alligators that roam New York City's sewers, or how "Mikey" of Life Cereal fame died from eating Pop Rocks mixed with Coke. And what about the flustered parents who left their baby on the car roof, or the scuba diver who was found in the middle of a forest after a fire? These classic tall tales are featured here in all of their creepy glory along with hundreds of others, and they're guaranteed to amuse, enlighten, and intrigue, but be careful: they may stick in your mind forever.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends PDF Author: Jan Harold Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393323580
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
Presents descriptions of hundreds of urban legends and their variations, themes, and scholarly approaches to the genre, including such tales as disappearing hitchhikers and hypodermic needles left in the coin slots of pay telephones.

Creepy Urban Legends

Creepy Urban Legends PDF Author: B. A. Hoena
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 1543541925
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Book Description
Modern ghost stories are created from truly creepy myths and rumors. Read this book to discover some urban legends that will make your skin crawl.

Be Afraid Be Very Afraid

Be Afraid Be Very Afraid PDF Author: Harold Jan Brunvand
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393326130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A collection of over ninety frightening urban legends, arranged by theme.

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends

Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends PDF Author: Mikel J. Koven
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810860254
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
From Alien to When a Stranger Calls, many films are based on folklore or employ an urban legend element to propel the narrative. Films, Folklore and Urban Legends explores the convergence of folklore with popular cinema studies and focuses on the study of urban legends and how these narratives are used as inspiration for a number of films. Beginning with a general survey of the existing literature on folklore/film, this book addresses discourses of belief, how urban legends provide the organizing principle of some films, and how certain films "act out" or perform a legend.

Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends

Statistical and Methodological Myths and Urban Legends PDF Author: Charles E. Lance
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135269653
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This book provides an up-to-date review of commonly undertaken methodological and statistical practices that are sustained, in part, upon sound rationale and justification and, in part, upon unfounded lore. Some examples of these "methodological urban legends", as we refer to them in this book, are characterized by manuscript critiques such as: (a) "your self-report measures suffer from common method bias"; (b) "your item-to-subject ratios are too low"; (c) "you can’t generalize these findings to the real world"; or (d) "your effect sizes are too low". Historically, there is a kernel of truth to most of these legends, but in many cases that truth has been long forgotten, ignored or embellished beyond recognition. This book examines several such legends. Each chapter is organized to address: (a) what the legend is that "we (almost) all know to be true"; (b) what the "kernel of truth" is to each legend; (c) what the myths are that have developed around this kernel of truth; and (d) what the state of the practice should be. This book meets an important need for the accumulation and integration of these methodological and statistical practices.