The story begins as it always begins. A girl—with a social media account, of course—wakes. She showers, puts on her makeup, and selects an outfit of the day. Perhaps today’s is a little more thematic than most. There’s somewhere special to go, something special to do.
Today is, of course, election day.
“tell me something I don’t know”
Next comes, a perfectly photographed spread of fruit or a food-styled smoothie bowl. Maybe she drinks a smoothie with a scoop of matcha and some kale. A celebratory brunch with friends. Whatever.
Now is today’s big event: a trip to the polls, where she can vote—but more importantly, beg the attendant to give her a couple extra “I voted stickers” just in case her first one ruins the shot.
She has planned this moment for days. The outfit, the styling, how to set off that sticker in just the right way. The vibe must fit with the rest of her feed. Aesthetics first, anything else second. After all, we vote because it’s the cause du jour, not because we genuinely want to.
The caption must be non-partisan, as to not alienate her followers, but with enough of an undertone that everyone knows who she voted for anyway. A blue heart emoji will do.
A check on the social media account to match the check on her ballot. Just like every other instagirl, she has voted and told the world about it.
Call it Mad Libs ™. Call it a story generator. Whatever you call it, I got a laff.
Sometimes you just got no stories in you, and that’s okay, even though you’ve committed to posting every day on a blog and don’t want to let yourself down after so many posts in a row. That’s when you call upon the internet to help you cheat. (Thanks, internet!)
For the record, I chose a “financial” plot that ended “violently.” I like fill-in-the-blank stories like these because they reveal the word salad that fiction writing so often is.
Without further ado, friends, I give you….
The Ephemeral Bass Guitar
Frankie Gideon looked at the ephemeral bass guitar in her hands and felt shy.
She walked over to the window and reflected on her old surroundings. She had always loved creaky Miss Trumpet’s Earworm Academy with its colossal, clear creaky old practice room. It was a place that encouraged her tendency to feel shy.
Then she saw something in the distance, or rather someone. It was the figure of Violet Beauchamp. Violet was a disciplined grifter with dark eyes and muscular toes.
Frankie gulped. She glanced at her own reflection. She was a stoic, honest, coffee drinker with tall eyes and lanky toes. Her friends saw her as a wild, wooden wrecking ball. Once, she had even helped a huge stock market cross the road.
But not even a stoic person who had once helped a huge stock market cross the road, was prepared for what Violet had in store today.
The sleet rained like rocking out kittens, making Frankie bored.
As Frankie stepped outside and Violet came closer, she could see the depressed glint in her eye.
“Look Frankie,” growled Violet, with a flighty glare that reminded Frankie of disciplined hyenas. “It’s not that I don’t love you, but I want respect. You owe me 6934 dollars.”
Frankie looked back, even more bored and still fingering the ephemeral bass guitar. “Violet, go away, you little punk,” she replied.
They looked at each other with downtrodden feelings, like two prickly, perfect pandas thrashing at a very low-key study hall, which had punk rock music playing in the background and two imaginative uncles swinging to the beat.
Suddenly, Violet lunged forward and tried to punch Frankie in the face. Quickly, Frankie grabbed the ephemeral bass guitar and brought it down on Violet’s skull.
Violet’s dark eyes trembled and her muscular toes wobbled. She looked elated, her wallet raw like a colossal, concerned checkbook.
Then she let out an agonising groan and collapsed onto the ground. Moments later Violet Beauchamp was dead.
Frankie Gideon went back inside and made herself a nice cup of coffee.
Like many fans around the world, I had November 2 marked on my calendar—finally, an EXO comeback. It had been over a year since the last full album release.
With that immense and quietly building space of expectation, new music would be 1. immediately welcomed by EXO-Ls worldwide, but 2. with a group at the top of its game, eventually there will be a below-average release. No pressure.
With Don’t Mess Up My Tempo, EXO pulled it off…mostly.
Tempo
Tempo feels comfortably EXO. It’s fun in the vein of “Call Me Baby.” The chorus is singable. The sound engineering and f(x) are incredible. The harmonies are on point—specifically the bit where Xiumin and Sehum sing and rap octaves over each other, and of course the a capella section. This is a song that knows the best of EXO and how to present it to its fullest, morphing and reprising itself through funky descending bass lines and soaring vocals.
As the members grow as artists/performers and head into their late 20s (Sehun, the youngest member, is currently 24 years old), they’ve transitioned from a young group in search of a sound to a self-assured group who knows their strengths. If you were wondering which group reigns as the VOCAL KINGS of k-pop, this is your receipt.
I will not be surprised when a bunch of other acts come out with a capella tracks next year.
The music video isn’t super-innovative but the glitchy light effects are really cool, like the boys are holograms. Chanyeol shines with his blue contacts (I picked a good bias).
Sign
I don’t recall grotty bass lines (reminiscent of NCT 127’s “Limitless”) being a popular back then, but this song reminds me of an alternate-universe Korean version of an early 2000s boy band song. (Maybe it’s the “bye bye bye” part?) We don’t deserve Baekhyun and his vocals.
Fun fact: I keep mishearing one of the lyrics as “Honestly, pikachu”
Ooh-La-La-La
This is a song that makes you really appreciate SM’s sound engineers. It’s such ear candy—from the subtle pop of a record-player effect to the way that the layers of sound are so airily pieced together. The guitar riff is beautiful, almost “island feeling,” like you could play it on a ukelele and sing on a beach and it would sound just as good. Otherwise it’s a simple song; I want to hate it because it verges on saccharine but I also kind of love it. Like a popsicle on a hot summer day, but that’s French themed with a big whiff of fresh island air.
Gravity
“Gravity” is the song that “Power” wanted to be. I’m loving 80s club feel to this one, with the sample from “Power” in the intro, and the powerful yet funky bass line (SM is really good at those). Lyrically, I love the interplay between Korean and English; the chorus creates a rhyming pattern in Korean that begs for a declarative singing of “GRAVITY” to round it out—but instead of giving us the relief in the first round, they build anticipation through a full seven lines before finally giving us the payoff. It’s great—I haven’t had a song keep me on the edge of my seat lyrically like this before. Especially since most of the lyrics are in another language!
With You
EXO would like to float over fluffy white clouds with you. It’s ballad with undertones of traditional Korean music. Sweet, but not particularly memorable.
24/7
Love it or hate it, this song builds from a distinctive whistle to a very Motown-ish throwback (disclaimer: I’m not a Motown expert). I’m not a fan of full-on falsetto songs (with the exception of Big Bang’s “Cafe“), but this one is really well executed. The call-and-response structure is interesting, and the vocals are on point.
Bad Dream
If any of the songs on this album grew on me, it’s this one. I went from “okay I kind of like this one” to “obsessively listening on repeat” in less than an hour. This song is all over the place musically, somehow combining a bouncy synth, gorgeous guitar riffs (but not enough of them!), a dolphin-like pealing sound, and an absolutely beautiful-yet-rough moving bass line that reminds me of something that I can’t quite place. The vocals shine on this one, with more technical acrobatics a la “Stay” from last year’s winter album.
Damage
HYPE.
Sehun’s E-X-O is back.
It’s a jam.
Smile On My Face
One of EXO’s b-side staples is the R&B ballad. Most fans love them. This incarnation is very soothing, and Chen’s harmonies are heavenly. Moving on.
Oasis
Like “Been Through” from last year’s winter album, I bet that “Oasis” will be a popular track on the album with American fans. To me, it sounds more like Western pop than k-pop. It’s not a bad song at all–the melody is gorgeous–it just feels like anthemic indie pop.
Overall: Don’t mess up a good thing
This album feels sonically cohesive, and darker than The War (which would make sense, considering that this is an autumn album). SM is good at matching album “tones” to the season, as you can see in the differences between Red Velvet’s summer vs fall releases.
With this album, there are no surprises. EXO has dialed in their sound. It’s like they’re now a “middle aged” group instead of a hungry young wolfpack. I’m glad they’re making cohesive albums now instead of random collections of singles, but on the flip side there were no songs that catch me by surprise, no “Forever” or “El Dorado.”
When I first listened to The War last summer I was immediately and utterly obsessed with “Forever.” It grabbed me in a way that few songs do. None of the songs on DMWMT have grabbed me in that way, with the possible exception of “Bad Dream.”
I like this album, but I don’t LOVE it. Like…there’s nothing wrong with this album but I’m also not obsessed with it. It’s clean. It’s well balanced. It shows off EXO’s skills in a variety of ways. But I honestly can’t see myself listening to it much, other than picking off a few favorites to add to my epic EXO playlist.
It says something that I listened to NCT 127’s Regular-Irregular again before I settled down to write this review.
[Update: I’ve been listening to this album on repeat. Oops! It’s great, the end.]
It may be relevant to note that I’ve always preferred the young, exploratory phase of a musician’s existence over the polished and complete work that tends to be produced later on.
When I came up with the idea of #storyvember, I didn’t think about this series that I’ve started to feature on the weekends. Because this format doesn’t lend itself well to story, I’m not going to worry about smashing it into the “story” format just yet. I’ll chew on it for a while, and maybe by the end of the month I’ll modulate this list into a story of its own.
» IRB doesn’t apply in research online by social media companies, and now it’s starting to fail in real life. I don’t know if this is a win for dismantling outdated institutions, or a loss for humanity. Please be alert and aware in any medical setting.
The point is to create public revulsion for Julian Assange, thereby killing sympathy for his unconscionable persecution and dampening the impact of any future WikiLeaks releases. The point is to marry Assange’s name with the idea of bad smells, so that the public will begin to find themselves increasingly disgusted by him and everything he stands for without quite remembering exactly why they feel such disdain for him.
» Socialite Magazine is an interesting read, for those of us who struggle with social skills. I find that for myself, it’s not the actual skills involved (I can get along with anybody if I have to), rather it’s the realization that I need to deploy those social skills and that I could, in fact, make a new friend at any given point in time. Perhaps that’s the difference between Extraverted Feeling (me, even though it’s weak) and Introverted Feeling (the ISTJ who writes Socialite Mag)
» A little birdie told me that Colourpop’s Boss Brow Gel is a dupe for Glossier’s Boy Brow. Ordering some now, I’ll report back when I have an opinion.
“Visual Culture” studies recognizes the predominance of visual forms of media, communication, and information in the postmodern world.
Has there been a social and cultural shift to the visual, over against the verbal and textual, in the past 50 years, and has it been accelerating in the past 10 or 20 years?
Or are our written, textual, and visual systems continuing an ongoing reconfiguration in a new (recognizable) phase?
Study of visual culture merges popular and “low” cultural forms, media and communications, and the study of “high” cultural forms or fine art, design, and architecture.
When I was 23, I moved to a very liberal city. It’s not the most liberal city on the West Coast, but it’s famous for its, shall we say, really enthusiastic prayer rallies.
At the time, I was fresh out of undergrad—bright eyed and hella libertarian. I hadn’t yet discovered the difference between a state and a nation, and thought that borders were stupid since as far as I knew they were basically arbitrary.
In my new city, I settled into my new life. I walked to the grocery store and cooked myself dinners. I hung out with my roommate and watched the Westminster dog show on TV as I studied. Eventually, I went through the requisite mental breakdown as a graduate student, and spent too much money on coffee (because I was flat broke).
Amidst this backdrop of normalcy, a steady drip-drip-drip of leftism dropped against my forehead. You can’t escape it in this city—in most cities. It’s everywhere, softly emanating from the newsstands and whispered by the rustle of umbrellas (which are mostly wielded by out-of-staters). It’s implicit in nearly every conversation and behind every knowing glance over a glib reference to capitalism or the patriarchy.
Many people would go along with this—and I didn’t appear to resist on the outside. But inside my head I started to notice, to wonder. I had questions.
Eventually I searched the internet for answers to some of my questions, and found that other people were asking them too. I read their answers. I read everything I could find. I was offended—some of the mental scars are still with me to this day.
Still, I was intrigued. There was Truth here. And gradually I found myself drifting farther and farther to the right, even as I was surrounded in a softly smothering sea of leftism.
Now as an older, hopefully-wiser woman, I see graphics like “Moving to the Extreme,” and I understand. It’s terrifying to think about, but I myself am one of those tiny red dots that has moved away from the center toward one of the opposing poles.
Even though (or maybe especially because) many of our differences are fake, entirely-engineered scams cooked up by a media that is incentivized by an unholy combination of money, clicks, and hidden special interests, the divide is very real and very much growing.
It was just a little slip of a blog, but it was growing. Slowly but surely, it grew bigger with new posts ever day. People found the blog, from search results and social media links. Traffic grew from a tiny trickle to a steady, if small, stream.
Like most blogs, this blog had a writer. She had challenged herself to put time and effort into the blog, to see what might happen. Emboldened by the steady, small stream of success, she began to think of ways to make the blog even better. She wanted to make it a digital space where people wanted to spend their time, where they could learn new things and think about the world in new ways.
One day in October, as she saw an email about NaNoWriMo—National Novel-Writing Month—the blog writer thought to herself “Boy, I don’t want to write a novel during the month of November, but I sure do want to become a better storyteller.”
In that moment, #storyvember was born.
During the month of November, the blog writer decided, every single blog post would be in the form of a story. Some might be true, others might be fiction. Some might be parables, and others might be weird or practical. There were no rules, other than she had to write a blog post every day, and it had to be in the form of a story.
She knew this would be a difficult challenge—something that she had never done before. All her best writing had been non-fiction, something that was story-tinged but not story-focused.
Still, she was ready. It was time for a new challenge, one that would force her to grow and change and learn.
On the first day of November, our blog writer took a deep breath and wrote a story. You’re reading it now. It’s not particularly polished or insightful, and it certainly isn’t a thing of great beauty, but it conveyed the message of #storyvember and that’s what counts.
It’s a potpourri post since I can’t hold one coherent thought in my head tonight. It’s Halloween. I drank a Gin Pellegrino and talked with a Baptist preacher. There are precisely zero trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood.
» October went so quickly that I’m kind of reeling in shock—especially because it doesn’t feel like I did anything. That’s not strictly true (I unpacked most of my new house and had minor oral surgery done) but it feels that way and that is the worst part.
» I’m frustrated that I can’t find a good source of historical “day book” syntax and prompts that can scaffold posts like these when I am scraping the bottom of the barrel for content. That’s probably silly of me, since our modern propensity toward journaling is made possible, in part, because of our limitless (perceptually-speaking) resources, so most early-modern daybookery was probably things like “The accounts for my estate” and “Birth records of the Hockney family tree.”
» I’m ALSO frustrated that some days I have ideas for 20 different blog posts in my head, and other day’s it’s like a flock of butterflies in there. Nothing. One of my greatest strengths is my Extraverted Intuition, but it’s also one of my greatest weaknesses. It rains hard, but the aqueducts that could translate that rain into long-term stability don’t always function well.
» In other news, I started thinking about promoting this blog today. Terrifying.
» The manager of the meat department at my local food co-op and I had a talk today about custom sausages. Considering that I added sausages back to my diet last weekend to a delicious outcome, I’m interested.
As you may NOT know, I like dressing up on Halloween. I especially like wearing weird costumes that are mostly inside jokes with myself.
One Halloween, I wore a blonde wig and dressed up like old-school Taylor Swift, with a country dress and shoes that didn’t quite go. I hacked my work badge so that my name was No, it’s Becky.
Another Halloween, when I was working with a bunch science PhDs, I decided to dress as one of them. I scavenged a lab coat and a pipette and lab goggles. From afar, people assumed I was a student.
This Halloween, we’re going deep into “Nobody will get this” territory. So deep, in fact, that my costume is of something that doesn’t actually exist.
It doesn’t exist, but perhaps it should.
Yay, duct tape
Behold, the FERPA Compliance Officer.
I also have a matching cop hat, aviator sunglasses, and badge. I was going to wear a fake mustache but honestly at this point I think it would be overkill.
For those of you who don’t work in academia, FERPA is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. It “protects” the privacy of student records. If you’ve ever tried to call a university on behalf of a family member, it’s why you can’t do anything for them without a signed release.
Unlike HIPAA, which has a robust policing mechanism and serious consequences if it’s breached, FERPA is basically just a piece of paper. I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for failing to follow FERPA law. FERPA is one of those things that’s used to keep outsiders out (like a mom calling to check on her kid’s grade when she’s paying the tuition bill) but to forge relationships with people who can exploit data in the name of “university business.” Because if it’s need-to-know, it’s not a breach.
If FERPA had an Office of Compliance, it would focus on low-level customer service mistakes and faculty screw ups. Like all Federal agencies, it would turn a blind eye to the systemic privacy violations that go along with things like data mining.
Because a FERPA Compliance Officer is such an absurd idea, I figured this mythical branch of law enforcement would make a great Halloween costume. Basically if a Halloween costume idea doesn’t make me laugh until I can’t breathe, I’m not interested.
I’ve been hanging on to this idea for years, and its about to make its debut.
There was an article posted on Politico today: Trump’s Culture Warriors Go Home. It’s the same article we’ve all read a million times before: a seemingly-even toned piece of writing that simply describesa phenomenon, and never ever ever tries to influence you not even a little bit of how to feel about it.
Factually, it’s mostly true:
Loosely lumped together as the celebrities of the “alt-right”—a label most of them have since disavowed—they hailed from different corners of the web and professed different views, but they were united by a shared disdain for progressives and establishment Republicans, and a shared faith that the disruptive outsider named Donald Trump could usher in the change they believed America needed.
Sure. If you’re going to lump Milo and Mike Cernovich together with Richard Spencer, this is how you would describe the group. It’s clear later in the article that the author understands the animosity between the two factions, but doesn’t care. They’re all equally bad, equally alt-right.
There’s been a lot of kerfuffle lately about how words matter. But you know what else matters? Word choice. Words and phrases that color how you experience the story in your mind.
Words like these:
Cernovich was there to vent
Cernovich complained
Cernovich griped
Fringe web firebrands
Fake news and conspiracy theories
Plotting a move to an undisclosed location
He tweeted glumly
Riding the president’s coattails into a hostile capital with dreams of revolution
Culture warriors
Motley band of online fans
A livestream rant
Grandiose vision of cultural revolution
There’s more, but I’m bored. Another disingenuous media piece that is entirely wrong even though it is mostly factually correct. It’s designed to paint its subject in the worst possible light without actually saying anything untrue.
For instance, take this choice paragraph, dropped after a passage that is clearly designed to make Milo look desperate.
In response to questions from Politico Magazine for this story, Yiannopoulos responded only, “Go fuck yourself,” via text message.
I’d wager to guess that Milo’s response has more to do with DON’T TALK TO THE MEDIA than anything (it’s a common occurrence on his Instagram), and yet it’s used as evidence for the narrative that “Milo is out of control.”
This is most evidence in the illustrations that were commissioned to accompany the article. What’s the best way to portray patriotism, yet make it weird and threatening? Go with a red, white, and blue color palette but change the white to yellow. That gives both the in-your-face punch of a the primary triad while also subverting a familiar trope into something that makes human beings look like sick, IRL versions of The Simpsons.
The opening illustration basically portrays an apocalypse. Perhaps this is what leftists envision when they think back to election day? If they were even aware of any of these people back then. I feel like they’ve been “elevated” by the media to the status of post-hoc boogeymen more than anything. If they were serious about talking about people who were active during the campaign, the would also mention people like Baked Alaska and Pax Dickinson.
Anyway, the illustration. Richard Spencer has been given a briefcase with a cross on it, despite him being about the farthest thing from Christian as I can think of. Milo is given a Napoleon complex. Chuck C Johnson is…having a heart attack? And Mike, of course, has been given pizza in reference to #pizzagate—the media’s favorite conspiracy to debunk because their version of it was designed to be ridiculous and completely debunkable. I also note the inclusion of a “Trump that Bitch” campaign sign, which was never a thing.
Even if you don’t read the article, this illustration shows you what you’re supposed to see, the WASTELAND of TRUMP SUPPORTERS in a SEA OF TRASH. This is not the type of illustration you give to a balanced, nuanced piece of writing.
The portraits don’t get any better. Here’s the one of Mike Cernovich.
This illustration kinda makes you sick when you look at it, and that is the whole point. The blue/yellow gradient is an inspired touch, as are the tattered campaign flags. And there’s more pizza. Stacks of MAGA hats crossed out tryin to make him look like some kind of obsessive who hates MAGA with a passion. For the record, Mike Cernovich has responded to this article with love.
These kinds of articles (hitpieces, really) are tiring. They’re really not worth it to respond to the way that I have with this post, but sometimes the bald, mean-spirited rhetoric of the media just gets to me. I feel compelled to point out all of the ways that they color the facts, literally and figuratively.
There is no possible way to read the original article and give any one of the subjects in it the benefit of the doubt. All the room that a good journalist might have left in for the reader’s objective consideration of the facts has been squeezed out by rhetorical tricks and malice.
I can see exactly what they’re doing, and I hope that this post will help you to see it, too.
I love the end of October; in my part of the world, it’s finally starting to feel like fall. This weekend I’ve been raking leaves and curled up in front of my fireplace. I’ve discovered a renewed interest in practical wisdom—that only comes from doing something—so as I do an activity I ask myself “what am I teaching myself with this?” Am I teaching myself to be passive and accept something that someone else is offering to me? Or am I pushing myself to do and to accomplish things for myself?
It’s a revealing question.
» Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way? Phonics, as it turns out, teaches kids how words are an physical manifestation of an abstract system. Teaching “whole language” is the equivalent of “do what I tell you and don’t ask questions,” rather than giving children the tools to think and discover for themselves.
while you’re likely to find some phonics lessons in a balanced-literacy classroom, you’re also likely to find a lot of other practices rooted in the idea that children learn to read by reading rather than by direct instruction in the relationship between sounds and letters. For example, teachers will give young children books that contain words with letter patterns the children haven’t yet been taught. You’ll see alphabetical “word walls” that rest on the idea that learning to read is a visual memory process rather than a process of understanding how letters represent sounds. You’ll hear teachers telling kids to guess at words they don’t know based on context and pictures rather than systematically teaching children how to decode.
» Someone is already looking at MBTI type and personal style, and I love it. The site is more more sales-oriented than a thorough examination, but it’s still something to go off rather than simply expanding through first principles.
» In grantland, the wrong font can mean certain death. This PI’s grant got rejected because of byzantine font rules in the VA’s grant review system. Given the sheer volume of grant submissions to go through, I can understand why something as arbitrary as formatting is used to disqualify applications—just to narrow down the field.
But Instagram’s current reporting pathway doesn’t allow users to explain exactly why something is offensive, leaving moderators to guess.
“There could be all sorts of things that the user understands that the moderator doesn’t,” Andy said. “So many of my co-workers are old, people who did not grow up thinking like anything like this would ever happen. They got hired because their résumé says, ‘I have a Facebook account,’ but you need a Ph.D. in 4chan slang sometimes, and stuff that’s specific to Instagram, in order to understand what someone means when they post something. We just have no context about the stuff that we get related to harassment, and it makes it a lot harder to interpret who is attacking.”
» Everything I knew about reading was wrong—a recap of Naval Ravikant’s approach to reading. I’ve heard a lot about this guy on Twitter, so I listened to the podcast that was the origin of this list. He had some interesting things to say, but he’s not the luminary I was expecting. I will continue to be mildly interested.
I want to escape into a misty forest at dawn and run toward the light that spills through the trees. I want to cloak myself in velvet and swim into a glittering nebula. I want to discover the truth of God and the universe.
Recent Comments