Author Archives

Appropriate Technology

TweetI wonder what history will call this part of our age, this crumbling disaster movie played over and over before us? Will there be a history as we know it? Or will I live on as nothing more than a background character in the epics that wandering bards will tell of the fall of mankind? [...]

The Strange Things That The Web Takes Away From Us

TweetI prostrate my mind before you tonight after hours upon hours of television-watching with the dog, which has given me a headache that could kill the pope and still have enough left over to take down a couple of those fancy Swiss guards of his. And I do this for your amusement. At least try [...]

The Monoculture and its Discontents. Part 2: Subculture Killed The Counter-Culture Star

TweetThe speakeasy exists in American culture as a wonderful relic of the Prohibition era, when gathering together under the same roof as a bunch of other people in order to get sauced was completely illegal unless you all happened to be drinking wine and having little crackers to go with it. It’s a relic of [...]

Mob Rule: Twitter and Fame

TweetTrent Reznor is a big, scary dude. Best known as the man behind Nine Inch Nails, as well as having tackled a major addiction to drugs and alcohol in the mid-’90s, he decided to set up, in late 2008, a twitter account. “Hanging on the bus,” he announced. He started using the short-message service seriously [...]

New Music Reviews — Los Campesinos!/Romance is Boring//Spoon/Transference

TweetLos Campesinos! – Romance is Boring Wales hipsters trade in clever optimism for clever heartbreak. Los Campesinos! made their high-energy debut two years ago with a pair of albums about six months apart: Hold on Now, Youngster… and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed. These immediately made them critical darlings of the indie press, showing [...]

The Monoculture and its Discontents. Part 1: Whose Monoculture Is It, Anyway?

Tweet“Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” – Hassan i Sabbah, through the pen of William S. Burroughs. To begin, a story: Two 20-somethings walked up to the customer service desk at work a few days ago. They were both dressed all in black, the guy in what I’d call ‘casual gothic’, black jeans and a [...]

Miserabilia

TweetThis is the way the world ends: rain, pouring down, sitting in a McDonald’s reading the New Yorker eating chicken nuggets and wondering why you didn’t call your parents and wish them “Happy Anniversary.”

Things I Have Forgotten

TweetWhich side of my car my gas cap is on. The names of every single one of my teachers from middle school. (I do still recall the name of one elementary school teacher and one high school teacher.) The name of that cute girl who spilled a glass of water on my autobiography of Emma [...]

Denver, through the trees

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An Atheist’s Thoughts On Christmas

Tweet“I love Christmas.” “I thought you were an atheist.” “I am. I still love Christmas.”