Broken landscape film set. Ragged concrete fog machines. I am going to put on a show for a small audience. I find a dead body with interesting clothes. A shining gold trenchcoat and a long gas mask that looks like the muzzle of a greyhound dog. A machinegun made of bubblegum plastic. I undress the…
Lovemask
It started as a tremor; a vibration in the fabric of events. Tenuous at first, a blur of speculation, it fast developed definite form. A virus was spreading. Ghostly videos of nighttime China. Street screaming. Politicians broke one way, then another. Speeches were given, proclamations made, programs fast-tracked. Cole Laurier’s small and steady life, like…
Notes On Midcore
Am I the smartest man in the world? Based on the fact that I can sometimes read the sex sounds in hentai without consulting a Japanese-English dictionary, the answer is “maybe.” But based on the fact that I’m intensely in debt for a degree I use to write internet shitposts and have the future earning…
An Interview with Damon Munkus, Originator of the Snoozecore Aesthetic
There is a problem with the table. I have been sitting outside at Bar Pitti, in the Village, for twenty-five minutes, politely telling the waiters that I’m waiting on someone as they refill my water. The situation is becoming increasingly strained. The crowds on sixth avenue are almost back to where they were before the…
I Wish I Could Write You a Simple Love Song, but the World Keeps Falling Apart
My subject today is omnipresent and elusive: a spirit. I have seen flashes of it in the firehose torrent of noises-words-pictures under which I live. My firehose is not your firehose, however, so it is possible that the spirit I hope to investigate is a more of a hologram projected by my tastes than a…
Gliding Near with Soft Feet
Can’t sleep or won’t. Either way, I’m tired. So much to do these days. Long papers, difficult tests. Appointments to be bored. Codes to memorize. How did I end up like this? I spent twenty years at the street corner college. No degree, just disassociated credits. A+ in betting on slow horses. D- in drinking…
The B.I.T.C.H. System
If you’re reading this then I know a few things about you. First off, you’re a man — or some cunt looking for ammunition. Second, if you are a man, you’re a “man” in fucking quotation marks because only someone with the heart of a bitch would read a goddamn BOOK about being unable to…
The Superhero In American Commercial Mythology
There is a wrenching feeling that comes with writing on this topic; a natural revulsion. The sources of this anxiety, I believe, are twofold: first, bombastic treatments of the superhero as “American mythology” produce a second-hand teeth-gritting embarrassment. The open praise and acceptance of commercial culture never ages well and almost always makes the author…
What They Say About Old Dogs
He became himself in a series of slow dissolves. A little more hair, a darkened nose, a bursting shirt. He met the full moon full of expectation, hoping to howl. He sighed instead. Overcome by gloomy thoughts, the Wolf Man skulked through the rainy backstreets until he arrived at the bar with no posted signage….
Numbers Station
Melody was doing better. Earlier that day, while she was out shopping, she’d run into David — David from school, turtleneck David, pretentious David with his John Gielgud obsession. Oh he was faded, faded and fat, enthusiastic for his job “in tech” and his little wife, Sarah or something, ten years his junior. He’d asked…