the alicia dk reader

I WANT TO SHAVE MY HEAD. NOW.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:04:00 -0500

I’m too edgy for all this mothafucking hair anywayssss.

Overpriced basics, you are so beautiful to me. (I’ve...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:39:00 -0500

Overpriced basics, you are so beautiful to me.

(I’ve never had an opinion about model casting until I was just like, “What’s with these porny-looking models?”)

The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, Edited by Mark...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:11:47 -0500

The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, Edited by Mark Weiss

Presented in a beautiful Spanish-English en face edition, The Whole Island makes available the astonishing achievement of a wide range of Cuban poets, including such well-known figures as Nicolás Guillén, José Lezama Lima, and Nancy Morejón, but also poets widely read in Spanish who remain almost unknown to the English-speaking world-among them Fina García Marruz, José Kozer, Raúl Hernández Novás, and çngel Escobar-and poets born since the Revolution, like Rogelio Saunders, Omar Pérez, Alessandra Molina, and Javier Marimón.

"Once you’re in this kind of debt—and by “kind” I’m talking less about numbers than about my..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:08:00 -0500

“Once you’re in this kind of debt—and by “kind” I’m talking less about numbers than about my particular brand of debt—all those bills start not to matter anymore. If I allowed them to matter, I would become so panicked that I wouldn’t be able to work, which would only set me back further.”

- From an abstract of a piece I clicked on to only because the writer’s name, Meghan Daum, is one letter off from my friend’s girlfriend’s name and I thought she was judging a contest I might enter. Anyway, it made me feel better. I guess.

"Dynamite" is a bad word.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:40:00 -0500

Doesn’t make me wanna read that book. Makes my lips pucker like I just ate something non-deliciously sour.

I, myself, am trying to keep from describing anything as “human.”

Why would Gael Garcia Bernal play Roberto Bolano and not Diego...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:24:00 -0500

Roberto Bolano

Gael Garcia Bernal

Diego Luna

Why would Gael Garcia Bernal play Roberto Bolano and not Diego Luna? I am sincerely confused. And I’m not just saying this because in our play world, Kerry is Gael and I am Diego. The fact is, Diego truly resembles him.

PS: O M G DID I TELL YOU ABOUT WHEN WE SAW THEM DO A Q&A AFTER RUDO Y CURSI AND THEY WERE SO AMAZING O M G.

"Albert Fianelli, an Italian fellow journalist, parodies a quote often attributed to Herman Goering..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:51:04 -0500

“Albert Fianelli, an Italian fellow journalist, parodies a quote often attributed to Herman Goering and says that every time someone mentions the word “market,” he reaches for his revolver. I’m not so extreme, but neither do I believe the story that the market is some kind of deity that moves on its own according to mysterious laws. The market has its landlords, like everything on this infected planet, and it’s the landlords of the market who decide the mambo that you dance, whether it’s selling cheap condoms or Latin American novels in the U.S.”

- Guernica / Bolaño Inc.

Horacio Castellanos Moya. Fuuuuuuuuck. This essay, it’s just. It’s so fucking ON POINT. He is SUCH A GENIUS. Official top 5 writers, for real, now that I see how he works the nonfiction front.

(I’m far more concerned with the market as deity than I am with mythological ones. FUUUUUUUUCK.)

John Frusciante, from Invisible Movement OK, yeah, I need Me and...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:25:00 -0500

John Frusciante, from Invisible Movement

OK, yeah, I need Me and My Friends. I was a huge RHCP hater for most of my life (Anthony Kiedis in the “Under the Bridge” video seriously annoyed my 6-year-old self) until I discovered Frusciante’s solo work, and I’ve been making up for lost time ever since (2001).

SHUT UP. My job involves looking at some shoes and wedding...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:00:00 -0500

SHUT UP.

My job involves looking at some shoes and wedding dresses today. Despite my vehement anti-wedding stance (I’m not really against “marriage” because I’m not against partnership, though obviously the institutionalization is problematic, etc., etc.), I find myself thinking, “Yes, I’d go short and off-white with a little edgy detail.” Pervasive shit, but at this point it’s a joke to me. At this point, most political things are a joke to me (call it the cynicism of the uninsured!). I’m always down for slutty, ridiculous shoes, though. They really take my jeans and white tees to the next level.

A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith’s nonfiction over the...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:10:00 -0500

A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith’s nonfiction over the past decade.

Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.

Split into four sections—“Reading,” “Being,” “Seeing,” and “Feeling”—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith’s unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays—some published here for the first time—on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani.

So excited about this one. And Douglas Coupland has a new novel out this month, which I am required to read as I fell for him at such a young age. Frankly, though, I don’t have high hopes. This makes me feel quite bad, this having grown up and read more thing…

Baionarena, live Manu Chao album. Were I expecting birthday...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:19:00 -0500

Baionarena, live Manu Chao album. Were I expecting birthday gifts, I’d expect this. Among the millions of other things I’m drooling over and can’t afford.

The Wall in My Head The Wall in My Head, an exciting anthology...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:37:40 -0400

The Wall in My Head

The Wall in My Head, an exciting anthology that features fiction, essays, images, and original documents to pick up where most popular accounts of the Cold War end, and trace the path of the revolutionary spirit of 1989 from its origins to the present day.

This is me dressed as a “sexy murderous clown” last...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:51:00 -0400

This is me dressed as a “sexy murderous clown” last week for a Halloween party. Unfortunately, there are no full-body shots available yet, so you can’t understand the ridiculous extent of the “sexy” aspect. I don’t know why I’m smiling; I should look extremely deranged. I hadn’t even really begun to hit the bottle of coconut Bacardi I was also brandishing.

Don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow to hand out candy to the kids, as clown makeup and a wig are a big commitment. Maybe just a mustache and a pair of my brother’s pants.

The Emotional Rollercoaster That Ensues When "Starman" Comes on Shuffle

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:56:14 -0400

YES. This is my favorite song in the whole wide world!

but what if David Bowie dies before I see him live again? [for what would be the third time.]

*tears*

PS:

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:37:03 -0400

Anyone else get icky feelings when “American” is used to refer to the United States? It should only be applied to the hemisphere. Whenever I might use the word to describe someone or something from the US, in my head I use the Spanish “estadounidense.” I wish we had an English equivalent, something less clunky than “US citizen” and all the baggage that contains.

American Literature: Words Without Borders

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:33:50 -0400

American Literature: Words Without Borders :

I’ll be working on my brilliant literary criticism and fiction tomorrow and Friday, and this insane piece is certainly going to be beaten to a bloody fucking pulp. *Spits*

"a hobbit came to mind, but you do that every day"

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:57:02 -0400

“a hobbit came to mind, but you do that every day”

- Kerry, on what I should be for Halloween. Burn!

FUNNY WOMEN #5: What We Were Really Saying

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:55:00 -0400

FUNNY WOMEN #5: What We Were Really Saying:

studentloansforbeermoney:

luapula:

aliciadk:

I will never find this heterosexual “men and women are so different!” thing amusing. I will never even understand it. Fuck yeah, same boy since age 16 who was never a big stupid idiot (despite NEVER SAYING HE IS SORRY)*. Grateful to have been saved this inane bullshit; still get sucked into romantic comedies.

* inside joke that he doesn’t think is funny anymore.

This may be the most painfully unfunny thing I have ever read. OMG MEN ARE SUCH ASSHOLES LOL! Fuck that. Women are assholes too. I can tell you from personal experience. I guess my point is, everybody is equally capable of being an asshole. But like, somehow this is supposed to be cute and funny? Uh, no.

Christopher Hitchens has a TERRIFIC piece and video reaction to the idea that women aren’t funny. He uses evolution to explain that women aren’t as funny as men because nature and society have never needed them to be. When I summarize it, it sounds pretty chauvinistic, but if you really truly think women are as funny as men it’s definitely worth a watch.

It’s interesting in the very least.

Now I feel like I have to clear up my perspective, which is that I am simply disappointed that a really good series on a really great site would publish this level of discourse which only retreads the kind of stuff you see in a basic Hollywood romantic comedy. I wasn’t saying anything about gender, aside from my own personal inability to understand this approach to male/female hetero romantic relations because of my own personal experience. To get all, “haha, women suck too, sometimes!” with it is extremely simplistic, because though, yeah, we all suck sometimes regardless of our gender, you can’t ignore history/male privilege/etc., let’s all go feminism 101 here, and thus, such critique is obvious and not really very helpful.

I read the Christopher Hitchens piece and the female follow-up to it when they came out long ago, and I think the point of the former was to say not that women aren’t funny, but to question why women so often (and successfully) use masculinity to do their comedy. The follow-up seemed like a reactionist mis-read of it, though Hitchens was, of course, characteristically unconcerned with political correctness and theoretical discussions of the phallus and whatnot aren’t really Vanity Fair’s bag.

OK, I feel better now.

FUNNY WOMEN #5: What We Were Really Saying

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:42:00 -0400

FUNNY WOMEN #5: What We Were Really Saying:

I will never find this heterosexual “men and women are so different!” thing amusing. I will never even understand it. Fuck yeah, same boy since age 16 who was never a big stupid idiot (despite NEVER SAYING HE IS SORRY)*. Grateful to have been saved this inane bullshit; still get sucked into romantic comedies.

* inside joke that he doesn’t think is funny anymore.

One day I want to have the security and peace of mind to luxuriously re-watch my favorite HBO shows.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:33:00 -0400

I just edited a post that mentioned Six Feet Under, The Wire, and The Sopranos. Just the names make me lustful for exceptional television. Thankfully, I still have Big Love to look forward to.

(Though I enjoy both Dexter and Californication [the former much, much more, of course], Showtime programming is mad weak. Weeds is bullshit; I don’t know how anyone has let that go on for so long.)