October 2011
“The fact that so much of this language did take shape in arguments about debt...”
– David Graeber, from his book Debt. This sort of situation frames basically all forms of dissent, and shows why it’s so hard in words to properly harangue or even critique a system of oppression (or just “system”, in general), and as a corollary, well elucidates why it’s...
you guys the internet had a crisis break when those two indie olds got divorced or whatever; i think adult contemporary is an acceptable reading of the way we live now.
1 tag
“It sounds Persian or something. It just sounds not from the first world. It...”
– Natasha Leggero — on Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” — is just as terrible out of character as she is in it. (If this sounds weird on the page it’s because I nicely edited out when she said “like” a bunch of times….)
5 tags
“This is all part of the cruelty of depression. If the rambling seems senseless,...”
– Rookie » Two Blocks Over
I’ve been kind of reluctant to throw my full support behind Rookie, mostly because I’m (perhaps unreasonably?) squicked out by the bizarre personality cult that shrouds Tavi and I haven’t yet figured out how to express my appreciation of her obvious talent in a way...
4 tags
6 tags
“Taking the wrong dining companion to Le Bernardin can be like taking a fan of...”
– THE PRICE HIKE: Le Bernardin’s Subtleties Amid The Momofuku Era
I have literally no idea what any of the words in this entire post means except for “Momofuku” and “sriracha”, maybe. But this chestnut excerpted above makes a lot of sense to me. I know I forget to...
2 tags
Social Inequality and the New Elite - NYTimes.com →
robot-heart-politics:
This article’s basic premise is that while inclusiveness has increased in the US, economic inequality has gone up, and that part of why the degree of economic inequality in our country is tolerated is because of the appearance of having a meritocracy—if there is a huge gap in wealth, it’s because it’s “deserved.”
My big question, though, is, “Are we really that inclusive?”...
I don’t think it would be immodest to say Kanye West, today, is someone like a combination of Mozart, Sappho, Richard Wright, Shakrspeare, and Fatboy Slim.
1 tag
7 tags
“There are a few songs with children talking. I know that ‘youth’ is a buzzworthy...”
– Carles spits some serious truth about a troubling trend in alt music while discussing the new M83 album (via andrewmcclain)
I think part of M83’s thing is the language barrier Anthony Gonzalez faces in writing songs in English. (Have you actually heard some of his lyrics?) Everyone else...
6 tags
Bethlehem Says: You Don't Matter. →
bethlehemshoals:
I’m not really concerned with who first started humoring the voice of the fan, or why. We all started as fans; presumably, most of us working somewhere in the business still are. However, it has absolutely no place in this lockout. The knee-jerk reaction to cancelations, of which there will be more today, is “I want my NBA!” or “Come on, let’s save the NBA!”
The problem is...
1 tag
"Workshopping Memes on Gchat"
A. The title of Tao Lin’s latest project.
B. Surpassingly good band I saw at a CMJ showcase.
C. 200-level writing class at The New School.
D. Something… that just happens throughout the day.
Hershey, The One That's The Chocolate Candy Bar...
NYT:
“Pleas hellp,” wrote the student, Tudor Ureche. He told them about “the miserable situation in which I’ve found myself cought” since starting a job under the program in a plant packing Hershey’s chocolates near the company’s namesake town in Pennsylvania.
Students like Mr. Ureche, who had paid as much as $6,000 to take part in the program, expected a chance to see the best of this...
“To make another comparison to popular culture, imagine that all of the iPhones...”
– I was going to cite this Huffington Post article for something until I got to this sentence. So wrong is the sentiment that the author of this sentence simply cannot be considered as a reasonable, rational, or generally reliable sort of thinker on this, or any, subject.
4 tags
Can J. Cole Escape The Gravity Of His Own Cole... →
I sorta tried to figure out why J. Cole — who’s super capable and seems pretty excellent for the most part — is such a boring person on record. I think it’s because he works too hard.
One of Cole’s major storylines is that he grew up poor and never made money until he made it in rap. Cole was working crap jobs in college, just like everyone else in college. Being young and poor in...
The New York Times Reports A Nation Out Of Sync
Topeka repeals domestic violence law:
By a vote of 7 to 3, the City Council repealed the local law that makes domestic violence a crime. […]
Though Kansas and its capital city have fared better than much of the country in this struggling economy, they are not immune to fiscal strains. The district attorney’s budget of $3.5 million was cut by 10 percent, which would force about a...
WatchEMA “California”
Does anyone get the idea that a lot of slacker rock bands that were heavily influenced by equal parts Nirvana, noise-metal, and weed wished they sound like this? (Or maybe worse — think they do sound like this?)
5 tags
Kanye West and Class Warfare
Even though Kanye’s definitely part of the 1%, it’s good to see him at Occupy Wall Street, because class warfare — defined quite sensibly as the rich waging war on the poor — is a major theme of Kanye’s work.
I was quick to grab a photo from a website and slap some Cooper Std on it, so I got a lot of notes and such. But I’ve been a writer-abouter of Kanye West for a bit....
1 tag
“Even if you’re a big fan of capitalism, you’ll at least concede that its...”
– A, for me, personally-affecting, brief essay on Emily Books in response to something a member of Le Tigre wrote, which I have not read in full.
Now, this is something I’ve seen a bit of today, and even went so far as to make a passive aggressive, blind item tweet on. So you know it’s...
2 tags
Three Things to Read Over Lunch
Lenore Beadsman on David Foster Wallace and the living and the dead:
When I start talking about how disgusted I feel by Franzen’s habit of bringing Wallace up all the time to say nasty things I’m not intending to defend or protect Wallace’s memory; I simply mean that it is vile behavior to pick the bones of the dead for personal gain and it is even more repugnant to do it while claiming to...
“But if you had more jazz samples in your stuff that was thought of to be...”
– Boots Riley, transcribed and blogged about by Andrew Nosnitsky.
I read this when ‘Erb posted it a few days ago. Missed it the first time around. But it’s been rolling around my mind all week because it’s an insanely apt indictment of the cultural apparatus.
It’s like,...
7 tags
Wallace, Franzen, and the Truth in Non-Fiction
Jonathan Franzen said at the New Yorker Festival that David Foster Wallace made stuff up in “Shipping Out”, which is better known as the titular essay in the non-fiction collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Now, an initial read on the situation is that, because he’s a quantifiably worse writer than Wallace (by -97.333%), Franzen seems intent on subtly...
“In fact, by the time I’d left for Chile, seeing new bird species was the...”
– This line is such a telling and irreducible part of Jonathan Franzen.
2 tags
2 tags
4 tags
“And how it feels to feel that feeling you’re feeling when you be drilling...”
– J. Cole is basically the 21st century Shakespeare.