Ask me about how to tire of undertakings of your own creation. Installment 9.

In text:

• I finished TIME IS THE THING A BODY MOVES THROUGH, logged it to my uneventful and quiet and new Goodreads account, where I found the top review, a weirdly offensive take on how bad the book is because the author seems traumatized and unsure of themself. I suppose this review made me like the book more, retroactively; and it does locate a truth about the narrator (not necessarily author) as fundamentally unsure, moving through time and space without a sense of resolution about the future. My opinion diverges from the reviewer here, obviously, as I found this a working function of the book, and totally intentional. The narrator moves through discussions of art and lovers and friends, making yet another case (queer/gay writing tends to make this case, in my experienc...

I'm drifting on a cloud, I'm drifting on a cloud, I'm drifting on a cloud: Installment 8.

In text:

• I'm reading T Fleischmann's TIME IS THE THING A BODY MOVES THROUGH: AN ESSAY, which is an extremely gay book, and which, like many gay books I love and read, prompts within me the question of how it is that I come upon and closely read and love so many gay books. This one melds personal narrative and art critique and poetry in a way that's beautiful and genuinely exciting to me.
• I spent probably nine total hours this week picking away at a research project I started in the spring of 2022 about the history of the Arizona Snowbowl, the ski resort a few minutes outside of Flagstaff. I say this not because it's interesting, necessarily (though I think it is), but because that was most of my reading and ed...

Slowly returning to planet Earth for ...... Installment 7.

In text:

• I edited AIR CONDITIONING by Hsuan L. Hsu, perhaps my favorite edit of the summer, and am in process with PENCIL by Carol Beggy. I can't stop gaining random knowledge from all of these books, knowledge which has very few places to go when I spend all day in my house on my couch. Alas.
• I am a recommendation taker through and through, and so for the past two weeks it's been Cesar Aira's ARTFORUM, translated from Spanish. It's a short book, short enough that two weeks to read it is too long, but my hope was that by taking my time I might retain some grander knowledge from it. I don't know if I did; it's a book about a narrator who is obsessed with ARTFORUM but never quite gets it on time or when/how he expects, as he's in South Am...

Moving week: eaten as well as eater. Installment 6.

In text:

• By way of AIR CONDITIONING, the fourth (yes, fourth) Object Lesson I'm editing this summer, I learned about an essay called "Being Prey" written by philosopher and scholar Val Plumwood, which tells the story of her attack by crocodile and subsequent feelings towards life. It's a strange essay in part because it turns, by the end, to a vaguely vegan, pacifist view, which comes only after a lengthy description of the truly gruesome attack this woman faced while completely alone in the wild. If nothing else it is an interesting read, and short enough to be worthwhile, though perhaps too short to be truly persuasive in a particular way; perhaps in 1996, when it was first published, that wasn't the case, but we are so firmly entrenched in a facto...

Installment 5: Wanna disco? Wanna see me disco?

In text:

• I finally finished BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, which I now consider to be my primary summer read since it took so long. As previously stated, I found this a nearly impossible read for several reasons: a) because it is written in a collage-style stream-of-consciousness-adjacent mishmash, which includes verse and prose and drawings, and is frequently written in the style of a young girl speaking fast; b) because the subject matter is frequently pornographic or violent, usually simultaneously (if it's one, it's likely both); and c) because, wrongly assuming that it was a "normal" novel, I purchased it on Kindle, which is certainly the wrong format to read this book. I suspect this book is enjoyable only when one understands the ...THE PARIS REVIEW wrote that it proves autofiction can't b...

No. 4. In which I turn 26 and fix my sleep schedule....

In text:

• THE DRIFT published a handful of stuff on Monday; I read Mitch Therieau's "Dream of Antonoffication" first. It tracks what the whole deal is with Jack Antonoff's success as a pop producer in tandem with pop trends in general as Spotify rose to prominence. I'm amazed by the breakdown of Antonoff's multiple production styles as they relate to content, e.g. in the way we're all "content creators," not necessarily the "content" of his songs in particular. "Jack’s maximalist productions strain so hard for emotional impact that they suspend their status as individual songs and reach the listener as bits of cinematic soundtrack ... if not part of a film soundtrack, as part of the generic soundtrack of your life — in other words, according to the logic of the mood playlist, a tool to enhance or modulate your emotional state." Thou..._commoditized_ music industry. It brought to mind Malco..._all_ of us play that role, but I think the po...called it "an insanely definitive piece of writing...

ALL ABOARD THE TOXIC GOSSIP TRAIN! Installment 3.

This week is all about screens, baby.

In video format:

• I watched Colleen Ballinger's (AKA/FKA Miranda Sings) horrible ukulele apology video. It was worth almost nothing but the header of this week's post and the discourse that came out of it, including this take about how millennials infantilize themselves and have trouble taking responsibility for things that they should as adults. Chelsea's (the creator's) point is that "adulting" marketing, which trivialized everything about an adult experience primarily for millennial audiences (e.g. I never learned how to do my taxes :( ?! Why didn't they teach this in school!!) served mostly to make millennials into adult babies; especially since she's been a YouTuber forever, and she grew up and released a book in peak "adulting" culture, I think her take is decent, and really smart. ...

Welcome back. This is installment 2 of good consumer::

If the text feels a little small, click the title, which will open the post on its own page. From there, you can zoom in without shifting everything around too much.

If you want to give me free practice reviewing or thinking critically about something you've written or read and enjoyed, shoot me a message with a link on Twitter and it'll appear in one of these. In general I love to know what everyone's reading/listening to/watching <3 Thanks 4 reading~

I am actively:

• finishing McKenzie Wark's LOVE AND MONEY, SEX AND DEATH. (More on this later.)
• editing Ed Simon's RELIC, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. It connects nicely with something else I watched this week, Broey Deschanel's "Immersive Van Gogh: Why Art is...

This is installment 1 of good consumer:: my apparent response to everyone having a Substack which is also a weekly roundup of what I am consuming online and not. (I am considering this sort of a vertical of my twitter feed.) Installments will always appear in the form of lists, and I'll upload a new one every Friday. Thanks for reading.

I am actively

• reading McKenzie Wark's forthcoming LOVE AND MONEY, SEX AND DEATH from Verso. I will write about it soon.
• editing Jonathan Maskit's forthcoming BICYCLE from Bloomsbury.
• caught up on and reading BOY ISLAND, a sweet and beautiful comic about gender that's released in parts on Twitter by Leo Fox.
• suddenly really into book binding again, mostly on account of a very successful trip to the local art store. I stupidly took to heart the Google reviews which calle...

Or: good consumer as unsolvable problem

I used to know someone who I privately regarded as "the perfect consumer." This, because they were susceptible to all manner of advertising with practically no pushing—after one or two views of an advertisement brought to them by the cookie-driven algorithm, a package appeared: the latest cool sneakers, a vintage something-or-other, a set of trendy cocktail glasses. I found all of this embarrassing. How could someone be so comfortable filling their home with the stuff of Instagram ads? Their home acted as a sort of showroom for what money spent on the internet yields—plasticky, cheap things, things designed for brief use, dust collecting, and photographing.

It is mean-spirited to think of anyone this way, and also obtuse, since, as it turns out, anyone on social media, watching television or movies, or online shopping—...