Flavors of alt-right douchebag at hellish birthday bash
Category: essays
TOOL suck | but I still love them
Tool lyrics do read a bit like Maynard's therapy notes: "I've been wallowing in my own confused / and insecure delusions." And that's what most people need, therapy. But Maynard was the kind of rockstar who put you on a walkabout, stepping through your shadow and prying open your third eye. In the same lyric, he continues: "I wanna feel the change consume me / feel the outside turning in / I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured." It's 'Break on Through' for the post-grunge generation, candid about the breaking, too, eventually: "[I choose to] kill and die and to be / paranoid and to lie / hate and fear and to do / what it takes to move through[5]"
REPOST: Odysseus Butthurt
This humor piece was originally published on the excellent Vanity Projection, in late 2018, just as I went back to writing. VP is sadly defunct, so I’m reproducing the piece here, even though almost two years later I’m not entirely happy with its opening, or its butthurt. Nevertheless, even though I’m not opposed to linking people … Continue reading REPOST: Odysseus Butthurt
REPOST: Living Wall of Cray-Cray
Another essay I put on Medium back in '18. Worldbuilding gone awry; or, when the world is building the author: Not that your crazy wall would look like this. But then there’s maintenance. So you collaged clippings, notes, and printouts and used pins and color-coded threads to fully materialize your mind map. Everything is stuck on with … Continue reading REPOST: Living Wall of Cray-Cray
REPOST: Frida, BODY, and the body
Put this on Medium back in '18. Blockbuster embalmed corpses face off with Frida Kahlo viscera in the arena of brunchtime entertainment: I am devouring a Camembert souffle while my girlfriend, looking to buy tickets from her phone, stumbles upon one of these pesky bits of controversy that seem to crop up more and more … Continue reading REPOST: Frida, BODY, and the body
Crashing through in Corona Time
Working on my essay on the pandemic blues. Big ups to J, as always, for helping with the editing: Corona Time is as weirdly social as it is intensely technological. When we can’t turn it into quality time, a lot of it seems to be about managing the contraflow of the Internet coming back at … Continue reading Crashing through in Corona Time
Nocturne | abstract horror
The ceiling of the chapel house is adorned with a grid of gargoyles. In the floor beneath each sculpture they have put a photograph of it with an explanation. Winged lion for Mark the Evangelist. Two generic quadrupeds with human faces displaying their posteriors for Lust. And two winged monsters whose meaning is not known. … Continue reading Nocturne | abstract horror
in Modern Mythologies, a rant on 5G and the future of narrative
A bit past our cultural moment here, with some wild speculation that popped out when I finally sat down to wrap my head around 5G basics a few months back, when the topic was Late Night-hot. Published and edited by James Curcio, who has my humble thanks. Old SF would showcase “the terminal”, Dave speaking … Continue reading in Modern Mythologies, a rant on 5G and the future of narrative
on Medium: How come US works?
But enough second-hand Zizek. It doesn’t matter so much, in the end, that you don’t know the specifics (well, the generics, even) of the Tethered project (chief question: what’s the Donald’s Tethered like?). As “the movies”, you’ve seen it all elaborated, somewhere, sometime (somewhat). You’re willing to concede that because, on one hand, the branching … Continue reading on Medium: How come US works?
Book takeaway: THE BYZANTINE ECONOMY, by Angeliki E. Laiou and Cecile Morisson
Laiou and Morrison's The Byzantine Economy is a study, not a story. I read it as an outsider struggling to keep up with the endless silks, vineyards, pottery, glassware, legislation, special taxes and shipwrecks so the conclusions make sense and there is gist to take away. The book covers almost the entirety of the empire's … Continue reading Book takeaway: THE BYZANTINE ECONOMY, by Angeliki E. Laiou and Cecile Morisson