YOU DON’T DESERVE KRAFTWERK TICKETS
If you have a job where you make enough money to blow over a grand on a concert ticket, I hate you. If your parents give you that kind of cash to spend on concerts, I hate you even more. You don’t deserve to see Kraftwerk. Here’s why.
It’s kind of an expressionist critique of writing that less holds the authors’ flaws up to a mirror than creates a grotesque sock puppet caricature of the work; mimicking the tone while throwing the voice.
Everyone knows that the first World War set the stage for the second. You probably know all about the horrible terms set at Versailles. But people are rarely able to name an individual German loss in the war. Allow me to introduce you to Albert Weisgerber.
Ancient Ice vs. Emotionally-Crippling Irony
Lake Vostok hasn’t felt wind in over 20 million years. For the last 20 of those years, a Russian team of scientists and engineers have been drilling through the 2.2 miles of hardened Antarctic ice in conditions so harsh that machines frequently stop working and air traffic is halted.
We’ll Let You Know If You’re Crazy
Meet the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It can change your sentencing. It can change our laws. And, of course, it’s written by an unelected group of specialists who are or recently were on the payrolls of major pharmaceutical companies.
Traveling On Your Desert Island
Traveling can feel something like a desert island experience. The isolation of being so physically close to a bunch of strangers. The monotony of manufactured seats and two-dimensional landscapes going past the window. The waiting.
Just imagine the greatest works of Western Literature, only twice as good. Huck Finn has a raft twice as large, double the amount of rocket attacks in Pynchon, the Great White Whale with skin so perfect an alabaster that two entire chapters are devoted to its description.
Qamar Hashim’s photos, especially the images of throngs twisting through the outdoor markets on al-Mutanabi street, are deftly composed and almost always evoke some just-out-of-your-fingertips sense of loss and fragility. Also he’s only eight years old.
This particular year is special, because we have, not just any primary, but a Republican primary. It’s a year-long parade of racist, crypto-fascist delusions. A media-saturated reminder of why we did drugs in high school.
The End of Iraq and Innerlichkeit
There won’t be as much Liberal or Radical reexaminations of the sociological guts of this war. Nope. No Catch-22s or All Quiet on the Western Fronts. Instead, I think there will be a profound collapse into oneself.