PA Primary

The Oppression Games!

M.I.A.

I've been M.I.A., but let's be honest: I wish I'd been hanging with M.I.A.

I'm back! Rah!
(No one cares: Golf Clap.)

Islands in the Stream

A cover of the classic "Islands in the Stream" by Constantines + Feist
(Who else loves the Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers version?)
(Also: I love that the Bee Gees wrote it! Exclamations! Yes!)

More Bookshelves that Rock!

Um. How can you not smile when you see a robot-themed bookcase?
I think these sculptures/furniture are pretty darn amazing.
I like how some of the robots seem to dance.
Maybe the bots have some Lucille Clifton plugged into their heads.

The bots' artist is Kazmierz Szmauz. You can buy the pieces here.

Source

Paid Vacations

Um, I'm kind of in love with Hotel Fox. They have the coolest rooms. Too bad Hotel Fox is located in Copenhagen. OH WAIT: This means I have an EXCUSE to travel there! YES. Now: I just have to decide which of the rooms to choose (and to spend a fortune on).

As seen on Ohdeedoh

Lupe Fiasco

I like hip hop, and I am a feminist. WHAT. No. Seriously. I love it. I see it as a language of rebellion, a language of hope. My friends have come to expect and hate my hip hop rants. I like socially conscious hip hop, but I also like some of the mainstream stuff. I like a good beat, a nice flow, and some linguistic acrobatics. It's hard to find the whole package. Sometimes I'll love the beats, but the lyrics will be lame, or I'll like the lyrics, but the beats are lame.

Yeah, there's some misogyny (women hatin') in hip hop, but that's present in many genres (even the self-labeled political business has a covert parade beneath the image). Anyway. I like Lupe Fiasco. He's a young bird associated with Kanye West and Jay Z. He's got some great lyrics, stellar beats, and a B Boy flow (a throwback to the sing-songy 80s bits). Still, there are parts that kind of remind me of spoken word night (not slam poetry exactly but people who'd sing parts of their poems: did you all have that?). His lyrics have a way of sticking with me: it's something to do with his rhymes and his flow (delivery, cadence, matching the words with the beats, etc.).

Anyway, two videos of two tracks I love:



"Daydreamin'" featuring my girl Jill Scott



"Hip Hop Saved My Life" featuring Nikki Jean

Recylced Rolodex

Remember the Rolodex? Yeah, before you had your Blackberry or IPhone or newest gadget, people had a Rolodex. Well, this cool crafter makes recycled ones from those annoying magazine subscription cards.

Folk Take on the NY Times Book Review: It's a Ringer!

Well, I review books. I do. I review for both blogs (Great American Pin-Up, Feminist Review, and CutBank Reviews) and for print magazines/journals (I won't be an ass). I list the names because I hope you check some of the places out: they're pretty darn awesome. Before I begin, you should know that I both like and dislike reviewing.

Likes include: working with some awesome editors (I'm not sucking up: it's the truth); I'm sent free books (come on y'all: I'm a freelance writer working in her pajamas; this is very much needed); and I discover some really great writers (i.e. Edward Palvic!!! Janet Holmes!!! Selah Saterstrom!!!). I like how reviews can pique a reader's interest and push them into new work. I like the various literary communities.

Dislikes include: striking a balance that isn't too nice or too mean; how the literary community is pretty incestuous (the more I wade into its waters, the more I see how everyone knows everyone and people review their friends' books all of the time); reviews at "top dawg" publications are all about networking and politics and ridiculousness (no, I do not want to drop Foucault's name while drinking wine; no, I do not want to talk about writers who are "overrated").

Now, as I said, I work in my pajamas and hate name-dropping: do I look like the type who networks? Yeah: I tried it once and had to excuse myself so I could throw up in my mouth. So anyway, I love it when reviewing (or literary criticism) is thrown into the ring and the boxing gloves come out. The following are some recent left and right punches thrown towards the reviewing community.

Here we go: RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE!!!

Bitch Magazine enters the ring:

Sarah Seltzer's "Hard Times: At the New York Times Book Review, all the misogyny is fit to print"

"The New York Times Book Review has never exactly embraced passionate advocacy—unless it was promoting Pynchon’s and DeLillo’s place in the postmodernist canon. Even worse, it has become the place where serious feminist books come to die— or more accurately, to be dismissed with the flick of a well-manicured postfeminist wrist.
"

***

And then we have, The Literary Saloon:

Michael Orthofer takes on the NY Times Book Review for focusing on English-only titles
(i.e. taking a dump on translations)*

"We recently discussed the New York Times Book Review's coverage (or rather: lack thereof) of translated titles, and note that the streak continues with the 6 April issue, in which 15 titles are reviewed (all in full-length reviews) and not a one was originally written in a foreign language.
That makes three of the past four issues in which there hasn't been a single review of any title originally written in a foreign language. So much for Douglas Kibbee's observation that: "Now it's rare to go a single issue without having a translated work in it."

*Note: the blog has been covering this for some time. Poke around if you want to read all of the pieces.

***

Literary Kicks weighs in too, and they take on specific reviews (the crowd goes OOOOH!)
(and they provided me with the links listed above, though I had already read the Bitch piece).

"I hate intellectually lazy and self-satisfied critics, and I hate a book review that reads like a blurb.

There are no prime offenders this week, but there are a few minor examples. Terrence Rafferty's cover piece on The Journey Home, a novel about disaffected young Dubliners by Dermot Bolger, is a rave, but I feel an undercurrent of yawns throughout. The book's big conflict is that the young suburban characters 'can't get a grip on what it means to be Irish anymore'. Okay, but that's hardly a riveting plot, and in fact somebody already made a halfway decent movie about something like that called The Commitments. Dermot Bolger's novel sounds fine, maybe even a book I'd try to read, but Terrence Rafferty completely fails to convince me here that the book is seminal or unique enough to deserve an NYTBR rave cover review."

***

I guess the NYBR is now "da man" of book reviewing.
Interessant (do you care that I'm relearning Deutsch?).

Here, Bullet
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.
--Brian Turner

Source (Note: the poem was originally printed in The Washington Post and is said to be "A poem currently being passed around among American soldiers in Iraq.")

I Love the World.

This video is amazing. It's a spot for The Discovery Channel! It's a cute lil' take on the world. My favorite part? The bit about Egyptian Kings and arachnids.



Source = Gem Sty