My first salient memory of the news or current events is the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I was too young to understand specifics but I could already pick up that it was just a lazy, cynical exercise. All the eye-rolling and bloviating and posturing, carried out by senators and pundits who obviously didn’t believe in any of the words coming out of their mouths, and also constantly twisting themselves in knots to keep polite language standards on television. I couldn’t tell what it all actually meant, but I could definitely tell that I was being condescended to.

Around this time…

I don’t really listen to metal anymore.

Sure, I’ll put on some Blind Guardian, or Cynic, or Fen, or Incantation, or Devin Townsend Project once in a while. I’ll occasionally lose myself in Candlemass’s King of the Grey Islands or check out whatever mind-bending mysteries Toby Driver is up to these days. I’ll put on some vintage Agalloch every fall, and still find myself humming the iconic vocal theme to Lost Horizon’s “Highlander (The One)” like, twice a week. …

Lots of things are coming to an end these days. The Avengers films. Game of Thrones. The world. As can be predicted, nobody’s taking it particularly well.

Certain sectors of the Internet have predictably melted down about the dumbest, silliest shit imaginable, reminding us once again that the greatest currency is not money or clicks or uniqueness, but rage. Your takes must be hot: designed to rile up your audience. The madder you make them, the more they respond. It’s a cycle. Every Youtuber knows it. It could be trying to remake a season of TV or redesign a movie…

One day in middle school, I was in detention. The room was surrounded by rows of isolated cubicles circling the room, with a large gap towards the center. I was seated at the last cube near the center. Even though we were nominally being punished for various transgressions, we still mostly sat and amused ourselves while the gym coach pretended to keep an eye on us.

Just to my right, in the open space, a girl was pacing back and forth. She was looking out the window, bored out of her mind. The boy to my left and I were…

Whenever a tragedy happens in 2018’s America, there are usually three extremely rapid responses anyone has to it. They are as follows:

1. There are those who politicize it immediately, calling for action or rapid change on this or that issue, to prevent it from happening again;
2. There are those who pre-emptively try to stop people from politicizing it only in ways they don’t want it politicized, thus politicizing it themselves in their defense of the status quo that allowed the tragedy to happen;
3. There are those who politically weaponize it, immediately speaking over those actively impacted by the tragedy and…

In the summer of 2007, a friend of mine introduced me to Pick Up Artistry. He had a whole stack of books and bookmarkedwebsites about it; and I’m sure you could guess why a couple of dumb 16-year-olds about to enter senior year in high school were entranced by the idea of being able to seduce any and all women. There was a whole method to it; if you just followed their simple steps you were guaranteed to get laid. Not even “get a girl”, just to have success in your sexual prowess.

They had all sorts of strategies: have…

This post contains spoilers for Black Panther.

With those words uttered in solemn reverence, the most sacred of all Wakanda’s rituals begins. After being crowned King (or Queen), or deemed otherwise worthy to bear the title of Black Panther, he (or she) is fed the juices of the heart-shaped herb, and then they are completely buried underneath the Earth.

This particular aspect of the ritual is fascinating: as shown in the film, it doesn’t matter where or with what material they are buried. The most important part is to make sure they are wholly covered, even for just a few…

What Comes After The Trump Era™?

Perhaps the most striking aspect of The Trump Era™ has been the way we’ve collectively, as a nation, been borne to the edge of our wits by the rambling, vulgar man technically occupying the White House. 2017 was a hell of a year, and so was 2016 before it. And rather than things looking bright, we’re barely two weeks into this year and we’re already hearing racist rants. This isn’t just a shift in status quo, this is the status quo. It’s a whole era.

So when did The Trump Era™ begin for you? Was it on January 20th, 2017…