December 2011
4 posts
The Day of the Triffids
“Three blokes go into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.” -Bill Bailey
There’s this sci-fi novel from the ‘50s by John Wyndham, called The Day of the Triffids. Oh man, you say. Got to be hokey. It concerns a Londoner named Masen, who, thanks to his association with the occupational hazard of working with “triffids,” (smart,...
"La Duda" by Forastero + Mixtape
“La Duda” came out of the process of discovering new musical mediums. The trumpet and saxophone were always my instruments, but as my tastes shifted away from acoustic and ska towards electronica, I was no longer able to play and create the music I liked. About a year ago I started playing with Garageband and ever since, my saxophone has sat forgotten in my closet. “La Duda” began as an exercise...
A Fire Burning on the Tips of Our Fingers: A...
People used to say that the 1960s were a total awakening of social consciousness. We were breaking away from old-fashioned traditions. We were experimenting with sexual desire, expanding our minds with drugs, looking toward gaining more freedom of expression. In my mind, it was the time where we were becoming more in tune with our human instincts, traits, and ideals. And then the 1970s were...
September 2011
1 post
8 tags
Chirp Radio
This past Sunday I had my first exposure to the Chicago Independent Radio Project (or CHIRP Radio). We were making our way out of some early September drizzle into the Congress Theater in Bucktown, and CHIRP was both tabling in the atrium and making its DJs visible on the main stage. I have been reading about community media and especially community radio as bastions of democracy, and...
August 2011
1 post
3 tags
Transhumanism: It’s Not About You, Bitch (and the...
Transhumanism is one of those world-changing, conscious-altering Big Ideas that comes in a colossal, normally opaque package that offers ostensibly only two choices: 1) ignore it and keep doing what you’re doing, or 2) accept it, and it turn, your own limited ability to fully understand what the hell is going on with it, particularly from this side of whatever transfer/transcendence gradient it...
June 2011
2 posts
7 tags
Grains of Sand: Photos of the War Dead
There are three currently prevailing opinions regarding media images of dead soldiers that run along a continuum. One group feels that the images should not be published, particularly without the express permission of the families involved. This group asserts that the dead individual’s prior consent should be required for their image to be made public. I will refer to this group as the...
5 tags
Convo: The Living Earth Show
The Living Earth Show’s first major feat was to formally change the Urban Dictionary definition of “Ballsagna”. The second was their inaugural show as a group at the Community Music Center in San Francisco, where they presided deftly over five new works for percussion and guitar. And their third and perhaps mightiest feat is this very interview with Super Fine Magazine—the group’s first...
April 2011
1 post
6 tags
It’s a Miracle Things Don’t Fall Apart When...
We must Remember the Titans! The Greatest Game Ever Played was won by Shia LaBouef. The movie called simply Real is about the soccer team of the same name. Miracle refers to the time the US beat the Commies at hockey. With all the posturing in their titles, one might ask – what do sports movies feel like they have to prove? With the trailer for Things Fall Apart, however, one also wonders –...
March 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Nuclear Emo: World Media Gets in a Big Reactionary...
Before you get your panties all up in a bunch about nuclear power, remember that the cause of this accident was human corruption, selfishness, and neglect, like all industrial accidents. Not that I’m here to defend nuclear power. I’m here to lay out the bastards who put this on everyone, to the tune of 14.6 trillion yen (the estimated cost to merely recover economically). They...
6 tags
Pac Man, Flow, and Erving Goffman
“You don’t play the ghosts, you play the pattern.” -Renee Shane-Boyd The best advice I received on Pac Man strategy, even in two years of working in an arcade in high school, came from my band instructor. She also once claimed that she majored in Music Education in college, but minored in Pac Man. And on that rare, once-a-year occasion when the whole...
6 tags
Musicology as Gonzo journalism or Giving credit...
This is not a scholarly journal. Therefore, instead of leaving you to guess, I feel it’s important to state outright that I am writing this piece while under the influence of some fine New England ale. I find myself pleased that both that confession and the content of this article would likely insult and infuriate at least seven or eight of my former professors while amusing maybe one...
5 tags
Libraries & Technology: The Digital Divide and the...
The popularity of eBooks and eReaders like Kindle and Nook, accessing library websites from mobile devices, and the few insane library directors who have completely gotten rid of their books are fueling the debate about the future of libraries and library space. What often gets overlooked is that many Americans don’t have access to this technology, either because of their economic...
February 2011
9 posts
4 tags
New Feature! Introducing TABLE OF CONTENTS!
Every time I sat down to write my first article for the food section of SUPER FINE MAGAZINE it turned into a manifesto. Frankly, I don’t know enough about food yet to be qualified to write a meaningful manifesto. My writing cannot compete with the works of my mentors who have so strongly influenced my views. If a manifesto is what you’re looking for, be sure to read Mark Bittman,...
East Asian Rap Beef 2010
“Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?” -Old Irish Saying December of last year I was jamming to Foxfire’s (狐火[kitsunebi]) lyrics on YouTube, clicking through the “related videos”, when suddenly I got hit with this URL in the middle of the lyrics. A link to a news article. I’ve never been hit with a hip-hop hyperlink before, but I got on it: Rappers in Japan...
5 tags
Why it's Okay to Like (or Love) Glee
There are surely going to be those of you out there who roll your eyes as soon as you see Glee in the title of this article. And that’s okay. Roll away, my friends. I’m just here to ease the guilt for those of us who are embarrassed of our Tuesday-night indulgence.
People who know me wouldn’t necessarily describe me as a serious person, and that’s because I try to keep...
2 tags
Words to Live By: Guiding Principles in Songs (and...
I recently noticed how much of my prosaic philosophy corresponds to innocuous song titles and lyrics (and a Movie quote). Although the implications of this are deep, in this article, I will not expound on how our identities are formed by the constant buffeting of structural variables. Instead, I will lay out a couple examples of this phenomenon for your perusal, and allow you to draw your own...
[PARLEY] "On activism and outrage: The importance...
[This is a response to “It’s Not Pro-Democracy – It’s Anti-Expert” by NHN]
Not long ago I had lunch with a friend, and the TSA came up as a topic. Now, if a topic has ever been hashed over by the internet hype machine echo chamber, it is the Transportation Security Administration. There is a reason for this, of course— most of the time, internet users are firmly ensconced...
4 tags
[PARLEY] It’s Not Pro-Democracy – It’s Anti-Expert
[This is a response to “On activism and outrage: The importance of recognizing the Man” by Don Everhart]
Not long ago a story came out describing the events surrounding a woman held at airport security. Apparently one Stacey Armato had refused to forfeit breastmilk to the x-ray, and as a result she was held in contempt of terminal. It was on this subject that a friend and I found...
New Feature! Introducing PARLEY!
PARLEY will be a new (and hopefully very regular) feature that will focus on a new topic each time and its subsequent oppositional arguments presented by two or three of the Super Fine writers. We aim to cover a wide range of topics and explore a variety of perspectives, aiming not to be limited to one field of interest or another. Eventually, we would also like to showcase arguments and replies...
4 tags
Libraries & Technology: Information Literacy
There has been a lot of talk by some outside the librarianship field about how, as technology and access to information improves, libraries are becoming obsolete. As anyone within the field knows, this is an unfounded claim. If anything, the improvements in technology that have allowed greater access to information makes libraries more important then ever before, as the majority of...
3 tags
Is "Modern Dance" Still Modern?
In the early ’60s when Merce Cunningham started up his now-world-famous dance company, people would sneak into rehearsals, much to his displeasure, because they were so fascinated by the novelty of his choreography. Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Merce Cunningham at one point or another, even if you weren’t paying attention: He was and still...
January 2011
6 posts
5 tags
Regional Accents in 140 Characters or Less
Worried that technological saturation is turning us into a homogeneous, monotone nation? “Never fear!” say researchers at Carnegie Mellon. Jacob Eisenstein, a post-doctoral fellow of computer science in Carnegie Mellon’s Machine Learning Department, and his colleagues analyzed 380,000 Twitter messages (in all, they looked at 4.5 million words) during a week in March 2010 and found regional...
2 tags
The Living Symphony
The world of classical music is kind of an esoteric one. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whom you ask. What is probably more accurately called “art” music as an idiom has rarely been one with pop music: this goes all the way back to its roots in worship and, later, the private gatherings of wealthy patrons (where the work of a fashionable composer was more of a status...
3 tags
Cosmo-Consumption: Liking “Everything” and Meaning...
You will have noticed how counterproductive it has become to ask, “So, what kind of music are you into?” Invariably the respondent – as sick with this question as you are – answers, “You know, like, everything.” And they’re ingenuously and more or less correctly representing their preferences. There’s nothing wrong with this answer; the inanity is in the query itself. Allow me to...
4 tags
Emotional Framing by Public Figures
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had a very good friend ask me about hypocrisy in public life. She was wondering how it could be that large groups of people could continue to follow public figures who were caught making contradictory statements or engaging in deceptive actions. Her examples were about modern conservative politicians who support continued deregulation of industry and...
4 tags
4 tags
Tea Party Death Culture Has No Place In Our...
It was no surprise when discussion of the massacre in Tucson gave way to the assertion that the extremist elements in the Tea Party were culpable and that the more vociferous of its elites – namely Sarah Palin – should be held accountable. Although Palin herself is entirely innocent of any explicit call to violence in the name of her rural pseudo-revolution, prominent pundits and bloggers alike...