One of my favorite cultural critics is Slavoj Žižek, from Slovenia. He’s sassy, has an inimitable style and is really witty; kind of like the Oscar Wilde of postmodern Marxist philosophers. Here’s a Žižek linkdump for everyone.
First of all, he’s on Twitter. Or it may be him, at any rate. It’s not listed as a “verified account,” [...]
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“The Universe has expanded so enormously,” he [Kilgore Trout] said, “with the exception of the minor glitch it put us through, that light is no longer fast enough to make any trips worth taking in even the most unreasonable lengths of time. Once the fastest thing possible, they say, light now belongs in the graveyard [...]
Oh do I have a chance?
You’re such a pretty girl
I’ll stay till you’re convinced -
there’s evil in this world.
Eef Barzelay (of Clem Snide), “Fight Song Melodies,” from the Rocket Science soundtrack.
“I like boring things. I like things to be exactly the same over and over again.” [Andy Warhol]
I’m in San Francisco at the moment visiting Casey. So far, the cultural highlight of the trip (aside from drinking in the Castro; my friend gingerbeer and I went out and had a couple of drinks on Monday, [...]
I also think that women are excellent social critics, basically because we have nothing to lose, anyway. It’s like we’re not in a position of power, so we don’t risk a lot by being critical of it. [Laurie Anderson, 1983]
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, “an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling [...]
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The scene evokes an abbreviated pastoral—but the birds are shackled to their perch, which is in turn connected to the hand crank.
Somewhere between nature and the mechanical, between the comic and the tragic, his birds “twitter” with a music that expresses how frail and vulnerable existence is, especially in the post-WWI modern world.
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“Birdhouse In Your [...]
The whole point of this post is to make people cry. (I’m pretty sure Casey will do so first.)
The Giving Tree (1973), animated short based on Shel Silverstein’s 1964 children’s story and narrated by the author:
This was the first book I ever read, at age 4 or so, thus giving me an unassailable excuse for [...]
This past Monday was the 50th anniversary of the first recording sessions for Miles Davis’s masterpiece Kind of Blue.
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There is a Japanese art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a special parchment, with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or [...]
Ah, the 80s. Our hair was big, our guitar solos were shredding (and usually played by people with big hair), and our drug war was shiny and new. D.A.R.E. was the hip approach to schoolin’ the kids about the reefer madness; my school participated in it during the program’s inaugural year. Unfortunately, studies have since [...]