More things, May 9, 2011
There is No Explicit Meaning by Reynard Seifert (journalism):
I have a theory that writers are a little like dictators and artists are a little like terrorists; this itself is a dialectic, but what I mean is, writers really want to control people and lead them to an idea, whereas artists want to create a spectacle. The terms are not mutually exclusive — like I said before, there are no dialectics and there is no explicit meaning — teardrops don’t flow two ways, but as many as the paths across one’s skin allow (as in Jeff Goldblum running his hand over Sam Neill’s wife’s hand in Jurassic Park). Plus, they all splash eventually. When asked if he felt art was a crime, Stockhausen replied with a muddled response that the audience did not buy tickets to the concert. His remarks were crude and insensitive, but so is American black propaganda. His ideas of intelligence are exclusionary and elitist, but so is our intelligence community.
In Which I Make No Apologies for Calling Bullshit on Ridiculous eBook Pricing by Nik Fletcher (opinion):
Right now, publishers are stinging - or as Fraser more succinctly puts it gouging - eBook customers. I completely understand that there’s costs involved to produce an eBook version of a work. However, when you’re no longer smashing together some (entirely physical) pulp, pressing ink onto it, and shipping it some place, the idea that a premium should apply simply fails logic. The idea of paying substantially more for a digital copy of the exact same text can only be one set up by a publishing house who’ll next year announce stagnant eBook sales - most likely as a result of people looking to buy digital texts thinking “Screw this, I’ll buy the paperback cheap” or resorts to nefarious means.
The Last of the Slow Burn by Ava Longfellow (fiction):
Newly lit, the first high is the first kiss. The first touch of poison, the chemical imbalance, leaving me heady and feeling dangerous. The toxic chemicals permeating through the buds on my tongue, through the pores down my throat. Tonight, when no one else is watching, when I am not trying just to be next to someone in the cold and borrowing their cigarette as an excuse for company, I sit, I smoke, and I feel it.
How I learnt to stop worrying about the bomb, and went Zumba™ dancing instead by Charles Pitter (journalism):
But the bigger point is that I stopped worrying about how some people (i.e. small-minded folk) will perceive me for engagement in something that is seen as an almost exclusively female activity. Maybe it’s subversive where I live but this boy just loves to dance and it’s a whole lot more sexy than a knitting class. Rise-up heteros.
Ridiculous Tips For a Miserable Sex Life: April 2011 by Ben Reininga (humour):
The gist of this might be pretty accurate, but the spirit seems a bit off. I can’t think of a single woman who’d be excited to have her vagina compared to George Foreman — the boxer or the sandwich press.