Not that this reporter had any doubt, but Snicklfritz and Tiesonn put into the trashbin of history the idea that the nerds and hippies were two different camps. Consider the fact that Carl Sagan thought it was a cool idea to blast a couple of gold records into space so the aliens would know who we are, an idea that just had to be hatched under chemical enhancement, and, even crazier, the supposed squares at NASA actually did it! Back to the past, the authors' presentation spanned from pan-Odinism to Spinal Tap, tying the shockingly accurate cosmological calculations of the ancients to the ongoing associations between cairn and cool. |
The often amplified #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter are offset, Graham contends, by #Feminazi and Pepe the Frog. But it was his comprehensive blocks of dance that, unlike most logic models, make us feel it. #ThinkPiece. |
Ms. Walsh was no mere presenter. Running us all through her patented program helped us declutter in a woke-ass way: rather than getting rid of anything that doesn't spark joy, she got us all to speak truth to and then throw out anything we bought to please a man. The real message: the clutter in your life, gurl, is the patriarchy telling you what to want. |
Dyck couldn't actually show us about 50% of the paper, according to the feds, but what wasn't there told the story: investigative journalism and speculative fiction tell deeper truths than the official record is allowed to show. Indeed, we came to resemble the Evil Empire in our over-the-top efforts to defeat her. |
Only the most deeply geeky among us could stand to watch a man code for an hour, but for those of us who stuck it out, we are told, this session was both hypnotic and meaningful—and just a bit nauseating. The presentation was cut slightly short, though, for, as we shall see, it's gonna rain. |
Lemech's point was not lost on those among us who have lectureships and other part-time academic appointments, non-tenure-track gigs, hustling in clapped-out Corollas between five different campuses to try to put food on the table and get the rent paid. And, as if even discussing the subject angered the neoliberal gods of austere departmental budgets, halfway through the presentation the Kansas skies opened up and with tent-rending wind, torrential rain, and dangerously close lightning that had us all scrambling toward the toolshed, hastily closing laptops, soaked agendas clutched against the vertical flood. |
As those of us who are still digging out of the economic hole of 2007-2008 put in our pensions and 401(k)s, Robinson's revue seemed a celebration of all that cannot stand. But that was really the point: it was not Wall Street being critiqued but the fact of the musical itself; turning the serious into serious fun elides harsh realities and acts out a memory hole into which history can be safely flushed. |
To be on Varie's wavelength here is to see contemporary fiction for what it is: bored men and women who are tired of academia signaling their real or imagined infidelities through highly-praised yet often mediocre work. Yet the nodes are all around us; pick up any journal, and connection is strong—no key required, no passwords, instant access. |
Haüsenpfeffer's paper, while well within the norms for such a critique in the age of cultural criticism, at least went out of its way in terms of audience participation, with this correspondent pulling out all of the stops for her patented glazed carrots. Bottle gas and tents do not always get along, with PB Wombat's attempt at a Dutch baby burning up half of the structure before the paper's author could even cover Rabbit at Rest. |
StonedHenge: Paganism, MaryJane, and the Significance of Archaic Astronomy in the Popular Imagination
Harshtag: Reading Snark Into Internet Metatags, a Logic Model in Modern Dance
Dirty Looks: Messes, the Male Gaze, and KonMari, a Cleanup Plan for Post-Post-Feminist World
The Man in Jim Hightower: Treason, Unreason, and Popular Treatments of Pre-Post-Soviet Speculative Fiction, a Congressional Report in 500 Redactions
OneNote: Microsoft, Minimalism, and the Art of Repetition, an Exercise in Formal Coding 
AdJunkts: Marketing and Misery in the Contingent Academic Workforce, a Lamentation 
HedgeFunned! Revisioning Risk on Wall Street Through the Theoretical Lensing of Broadway, a Musical of Junk Bond Proportions 
Wife-Fi: the Telemetry of Adultery as Thematic Frequency, a MetaLiterary Motif 
Philip Broth: Rabbit Stew and the Culinary Necessities of Late 20th Century Fiction, a Not-So-Great Cooking Competition