Occupy Wall Street & Creative Commons
by Hope Bordeaux Here is a great image of the Occupy Wall Street protests from earlier this month. In some ways, it represents the convergence of the two topics I’ve been writing about here–American economics and alternative ideas for these dominant cultural systems–in the form of this photograph. The photographer is David Shankbone, who licenses [...]
Ol’ Dirty Bastard: Still No Father to His Aesthetic
by Zack Rearick From the beginning, the three pillars of rap-music-subject-material have been the following: getting money, getting women, and keeping it real. Naturally, when talking about an art form which has as diverse a history as rap, one must recognize that three subjects have been approached from a million different angles. When [...]
The Paper Fetish
The Paper Fetish by Claire Bateman Who knows how many murdered trees I have known postmortem, piece by pulverized piece of chemically whitened flesh, & milled surfaces, some smooth, some ragged with small teeth, some deckle-edged & fancy, others plain, cut & rolled with a curled lip, & the dry scent of tree death.
Occupy Wall Street & Creative Commons
by Hope Bordeaux Here is a great image of the Occupy Wall Street protests from earlier this month. In some ways, it represents the convergence of the two topics I’ve been writing about here–American economics and alternative ideas for these dominant cultural systems–in the form of this photograph. The photographer is David Shankbone, who licenses [...]
Video Review: Stepped on My J’z by Nelly
by Zack Rearick Sometimes you see something so profoundly disturbing that you have to share it with other people, if only to make sure that they see it too. Such is the case with the video to Nelly’s 2008 not-at-all-hit single “Stepped on My J’z.” The racial implications in this song are so multi-layered-ly disturbing [...]
On Missing Home, But Never Returning
by Meghan K. Barnes I come from the first city known for legalized gambling in the United States, which is also known for its abundance of addicts, prostitution, and criminal origins— Atlantic City, New Jersey. I would be lying if I said this city didn’t seem magical when I was a child. That I didn’t love the [...]
BohemiaNotes: UnSchooled?
by Hope Bordeaux I stumbled across the most interesting links tonight, in between writing sessions. Currently, Netflix is streaming a film called Examined Life, a documentary about philosophy. It caught my eye because Cornel West is one of the film’s subjects/contributors. But what really captured my imagination was this article about the film’s director, Astra [...]
Death & Taxes: Matt Taibbi on Wall Street’s Cheaters
by Hope Bordeaux I have a confession: I’ve got a bit of a crush on Rolling Stone financial columnist Matt Taibbi. You can keep Brad Pitt and all those sparkly vampires–I prefer the guy who coined the term “giant vampire squid” about Goldman-Sachs to any movie star. Here’s Matt blasting Wall St.’s current crop of [...]
“Otis” and Its Remixes
by Zack Rearick Here are the three things you need to know before we watch the video for Kanye West/Jay-Z’s single “Otis”: The first single Kanye West and Jay-Z released after they had announced they would be making an album together was “H.A.M.” Though it had a substantial impact on America’s lexicon, the song wasn’t [...]
Alan Seeger vs Video Games? Well…kinda!
by Jason Mott The big business of marketing video games has become, well, big business. Twenty years ago all you really had to advertise was the fact that you’d actually made a game. Throw up a few screen shots, maybe a decent catchphrase or, perhaps, a blue hedgehog or charming Italian plumber and you had [...]
Death & Taxes: the Oakland Edition
by Hope Bordeaux When I came up with the title for this ‘in brief’ column, I thought it was just a cute metaphor. Not so much, as it turns out. From the Occupy Oakland protests, a video of police throwing flash grenades into a group of protestors trying to move an injured fellow protestor. I [...]
Death & Taxes: Signing the Check
by Hope Bordeaux A friend posted this to her Facebook feed tonight: Obama Has Written Personal Checks to Struggling Americans. Yes, you read that correctly. Two thoughts occur immediately: a.) this is an ‘hey, it’s almost-election year’ leak designed to appeal to sympathetic voters, or b.) things are that bad. And all the president can [...]
Becoming One With the Game: A Short Post
by Jason Mott It’s been said that the only difference between Science Fiction and Science Fact is timing, and as video games impose themselves, more and more, in the realm of established forms of Science Fiction, it becomes only inevitable that not only the themes and ideas of modern video games should become a reality, [...]
Go Forth & Play: A Beginner’s List
by Jason Mott As promised in my “Press START to Join In…” article, I’ve put together a brief listing of titles I feel are good introductions to the world of modern gaming. My goal here was not to represent everything the gaming landscape has to offer but, rather, to pretend I was the supreme [...]
The Failed Gas Station Pickup
The Failed Gas Station Pickup by Claire Bateman I was on the road. I was seventeen and I was sick. I stopped at a gas station to get medicine. On my way out, baggie in hand, a mullet man, complete with poor hygiene and missing teeth, probably twice my age, swaggered up [...]
Press START to Join In…
By Jason Mott The problem of how to get into playing video games is much like the problem of erectile dysfunction: if we don’t talk about it or, worse yet, pretend it doesn’t exist, none of us will be left happy. (And don’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to spice up [...]
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