On white tears and aggressive Indians.
Our own Jade Sylvan on Facebook’s real name policy and why it jacks up queers like herself:
It’s that second part that I have trouble with. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.” This, to me, sounds like the words of someone who has absolutely no concept of what it’s like to exist outside of mainstream culture. I’m not saying you’re a bad person – most of what I know about you is from a biopic I watched half-drunk a few years ago mostly because Trent Reznor did the soundtrack for it. I’m saying you and your personal social network view having more than one named identity as sketchy because you generally have not experienced discrimination and/or violence because of one or more of your identities.
This is not really about Justin Timberlake, but it’s FASCINATINGLY how-sausage-gets-made about songwriting:
The ninth rule of hit songwriting is silence. Why? Because most people who are listening to music are actually doing something else, he explains. They are driving a car, or working out, or dancing, or flirting. Silence gives you time to catch up with the lyrics if you are drunk or stoned. If you are singing along, silence gives you time to breathe. “Michael Jackson, his quote was ‘Silence is the greatest thing an entertainer has,’” Caren continues. “‘I got a feeling,’ space-space-space, ‘Do you believe in life after love,’ space-space-space-space-space.”
“Death to the Fascist Insect,” a look back on covering Patty Hearst and the SLA, forty years on (I agree that the SLA had zero idea what they wanted and were Grade-A losers as revolutionaries, but I didn’t love the “Vietnam was winding down and everything was getting better, so not clear why anyone was making a fuss” parts):
When Patty Hearst was kidnapped on the night of February 4, 1974, it threw the newsroom into convulsions. This wasn’t just any kidnapping. Patty, enrolled as a sophomore at Berkeley, was the daughter of Randolph Hearst, then editor and president of the San Francisco Examiner. TheExaminer, an afternoon paper, was ostensibly in competition with the higher-circulation morning paper (the Chronicle), but in fact the two papers shared profits in a joint operating agreement. The newsrooms were separate, but we all worked in the same cluster of buildings. And when it came to the Patty Hearst story, the Chronicle was hesitant to publish anything without first checking with its bedmates. Bill Workman, an ace Chronicle police reporter in the Oakland bureau at the time, had the kidnapping story within an hour of the heiress being snatched from her home, and phoned it in to rewrite. There was plenty of time to get it into late editions, but the paper embargoed the story and didn’t run anything until February 6, a day and a half after the event.
no everyone has to love me or i will die trying oh god if one person hates me i cannot go on
Here is an excerpt from John Darnielle’s novel!
If you live in NYC, I would start planning to go see this exhibit at MoMA now, because it looks incredible, and also sent me on a Wiki binge for Bert Williams-related information.
Well, I guess I DID wonder how things like that happen.
