Emo Nemo

Mily

Sarah

Shaidrian Rios

Jimmy Beans

miCCwatreSSop

Julie Wynne - videos

Kapuster

Nicky Tallon

Harini Sen

Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.This reissue of Understanding Media marks the thirtieth anniversary (1964-1994) of Marshall McLuhan's classic expose on the state of the then emerging phenomenon of mass media. Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against philistinism and against ethical shallowness and indifference.

 Benjamin’s famous 'Work of Art' essay sets out his boldest thoughts--on media and on culture in general--in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought. This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin's explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.  This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the 'Work of Art' essay the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin's observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin's best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays--some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin's media theory can be fully appreciated. 

Benjamin, Walter Jennings, Michael W. Doherty, Brigid Levin, Thomas Y. - 2008

One of the world’s most celebrated art writers, John Berger takes us through centuries of art in this distinctive history that will enlighten and inspire. In Portraits, Berger connects art and history in revolutionary ways, from the prehistoric paintings of the Chauvet caves to Randa Mdah’s work about contemporary Palestine. In his penetrating and singular prose, Berger presents entirely new ways of thinking about art history, and artists both canonized and obscure, from Rembrandt to Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock to Picasso. Throughout, Berger maintains the essential connection between politics, art and the wider study of culture. A beautifully illustrated walk through many centuries of visual culture from one of the contemporary world's most incisive critical voices.

From one of the most esteemed American poets of the twenty-first century comes a celebration of poetry and an invitation for anyone to experience its beauty and wonder.Full of fresh and exciting insights, Making Your Own Days illuminates the somewhat mysterious subject of poetry for those who read it and for those who write it—as well as for those who would like to read and write it better. By treating poetry not as a special use of language but as a distinct language—unlike the one used in prose and conversation—Koch clarifies the nature of poetic inspiration, how poems are written and revised, and what happens to the heart and mind while reading a poem. Koch also provides a rich anthology of more than ninety works from poets past and present. Lyric poems, excerpts from long poems and poetic plays, poems in English, and poems in translation from Homer and Sappho to Lorca, Snyder, and Ashbery; each selection is accompanied by an explanatory note designed to complement and clarify the text and to put pleasure back into the experience of poetry.

An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with “reality” precisely because we experience hardly any.Most artistic movements are attempts to figure out a way to smuggle more of what the artist thinks is reality into the work of art. So, too, every artistic movement or moment needs a credo, from Horace’s Ars Poetica to Lars von Trier’s “Vow of Chastity.” Shields has written the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media who, living in an unbearably manufactured and artificial world, are striving to stay open to the possibility of randomness, accident, serendipity, spontaneity; actively courting reader/listener/viewer participation, artistic risk, emotional urgency; breaking larger and larger chunks of “reality” into their work; and, above all, seeking to erase any distinction between fiction and nonfiction.The questions Reality Hunger explores—the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real—play out constantly all around us. Think of the now endless controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the “real”: A Million Little Pieces, the Obama “Hope” poster, the sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, Robert Capa’s “The Falling Soldier” photograph, the boy who wasn’t in the balloon. Reality Hunger is a rigorous and radical attempt to reframe how we think about “truthiness,” literary license, quotation, appropriation.Drawing on myriad sources, Shields takes an audacious stance on issues that are being fought over now and will be fought over far into the future. People will either love or hate this book. Its converts will see it as a rallying cry; its detractors will view it as an occasion for defending the status quo. It is certain to be one of the most controversial and talked-about books of the year.

In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.Contains: "Big Red Son," "Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think," "Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed," "Authority and American Usage," "The View from Mrs. Thompson's," "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart," "Up, Simba," "Consider the Lobster," "Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky" and "Host."

The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"—not to mention an official Genius—a trade paperback original and his first nonfiction collection ever. George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is composed of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.

One of David Foster Wallace's most famous essays, now available as an eBook short.Beloved for his keen eye, sharp wit, and relentless self-mockery, David Foster Wallace has been celebrated by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. In this hilarious essay, originally published in the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, he chronicles seven days in the Caribbean aboard the m.v. Zenith. As he partakes in supposedly fun activities offered on the luxury tour, he offers riotous anecdotes and unparalleled insight into contemporary American culture.

In her lecture at M.I.T. in 1991, Camille Paglia remarked at the outset that she faced a dilemma on the occasion of that appearance. She was unsure about whether she should conduct herself as a lady or just be herself, since she undoubtedly had both friends and enemies in the audience. She reckoned that nobody came to see her perform as a lady so she would just be herself, as she put it, "...which is, you know, abrasive, strident, and obnoxious. So then you all can go outside and say, 'What a bitch!'"To which I would add, "What an erudite, mordacious, sexy and wonderful bitch; I am totally smitten." There are some mystic elements to her view of life but they pale in comparison to the complete intellectual package she so effectively presents to the culture.Like all truly serious intellectuals she has a historical perspective which she applies to her particular interests in art, sex and culture. She abhors, as many of us do, the degraded system of education in the United States from public school to the ivory towers of career academia. Paglia earned her chops by spending her time in libraries rather than schmoozing in faculty lounges or "sucking up" to the already tenured radicals and administrators.Camille Paglia makes a case for reform in education which would in the long run improve the field of aesthetics, which I personally find appealing. With a call to personal responsibility and ethics she also smacks down modern feminists with several deftly applied blows.There is much more in this collection of essays. If you are a fan of Madonna or Elizabeth Taylor this book will interest you. If you like rock music or remain confused about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy during the former's confirmation hearings you will appreciate Paglia's scathing comments. Her discussions of rape and the so-called "date-rape" issue, which so infuriated the feminist establishment, are so practical and tied to the reality of a sexually charged species that you may wonder why more writers do not have the guts to say it.I recommend this book of essays for the pleasure of erudition.

Ah, ma bon Camille...I stumbled across this title when I was reading other reviews on this site and I was charmed to find that I could glimpse, grunt a bit, and quietly murmur in that way known to the freakishly bookish "I read that."It was in undergrad. Such an undergrad type of book. Her style is all meathooks and dynamite. Not to say it wasn't salient- I still shudder and remove myself from engaging with the more dense and sci-fi sterile tomes of Frenchified Filosophy- "gunk" was the fun and bracing and refreshingly colloqial term she used. I have always enjoyed her insouciance. She's a whip-smart cultural critic when she's not trying to be uber edgy, provacative, obsterperously outrageous. It was exciting to read back when I was 18 or so, on a very radical, if solicitous and self-righteous campus, just coming into some buildungsroman awareness of the political myself, after painfully shedding religious terpitude. Paglia was the jolting breath of life to me, at that tender age when sex is more in the head than anywhere else. And it was a lot of fun, energizing indeed, to read her one woman kulturkampf against the squares and the prudes and the persnickities. She gave me a jolt of sugary, near-lucidating brain energy, maybe a really cold fanta for the burgeoning belletrist. It made me want to at least dream of being a provocative intellectual myself one day (one day! one day!) and stun the moneyed, literate booboise by talking about orgasms, Balzac, Bergman, and Led Zeppelin on a daytime talk show. I used to have a crush on her. Now she's more like a kooky old aunt I remember hanging out with before I left for summer camp. When I found out she was in Yale in the 70's in Bloom's class I asked a teacher I knew could be placed in the same milieu if he knew of her at all and he said with a certain kind of poky nonchalance that he did- he sat next to her in class, in fact. Wow. What was she like?"Wimpy little kissass."

During a vacation in Dinosaur Land, Princess Toadstool gets kidnapped, and a spell is cast on the inhabitants of the island. When they stumble upon Yoshi, a you...

Super Mario Galaxy 2, the sequel to the galaxy-hopping original game, includes the gravity-defying, physics-based exploration from the first game, but is loaded...

Rebirth is a randomly generated action RPG shooter with emphatic Roguelike elements. Following Isaac on his journey gamers discover bizarre treasures that chang...

Spelunky is a platformer with randomized levels that offer a unique and challenging experience each time you engage it. Journey deep underground and explore fan...

When Isaacs mother starts hearing the voice of God demanding a sacrifice be made to prove her faith, Isaac escapes into the basement facing droves of deranged e...

Super Meat Boy is a tough as nails platformer where you play as an animated cube of meat who's trying to save his girlfriend (who happens to be made of bandages...

Valve is working on a full-length sequel to its award-winning, mind-bending puzzle action game for the Xbox 360 and PC....

The game involves players creating and destroying various types of blocks in a three dimensional environment. The player takes an avatar that can destroy or cre...

Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox. Unlike regular games there aren't any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play. You spawn obje...

Team Fortress 2 (TF2) is the sequel to the game that put class-based, multiplayer team warfare on the map. TF2 delivers new gametypes, a signature art style pow...

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes

Documents Joaquin Phoenix's transition from the acting world to a career as an aspiring rapper.

A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them.

2012 romantic comedy-drama film by Wes Anderson

A man with short-term memory loss attempts to track down his wife's murderer.

In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.

An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actually a reality TV show.

A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.

An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.

A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich.

When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories.

Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

A writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel's glorious years under an exceptional concierge.

A man afraid to fly must ensure that a plane lands safely after the pilots become sick.

After awakening from a four-year coma, a former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins who betrayed her.

The Bride continues her quest of vengeance against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Budd, and the treacherous, one-eyed Elle.

The extracurricular king of Rushmore Preparatory School is put on academic probation.

A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.

1963 Italian comedy-drama film by Federico Fellini

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

After discovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, mankind sets off on a quest to find its origins with help from intelligent supercomputer H.A.L. 9000.

Yi Yi is a 2000 Taiwanese drama film written and directed by Edward Yang centering around the struggles of an engineer named NJ and three generations of his middle-class Taiwanese family in Taipei.

American musician, songwriter and producer

American musician, recording artist, singer-songwriter (1942-2013)

Thomas Weston Segura (born April 16, 1979) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, author, actor, and podcaster. Segura co-hosts the Your Mom's House podcast with his wife, fellow comedian Christina Pazsitzky.Segura was born on April 16, 1979, in Cincinnati. His mother, Rosario "Charo" Segura, is originally from Peru. His father, Thomas Nadeau Segura (1947–2021), was an American of Spanish, Cajun, and French-Canadian ancestry. Thomas Nadeau served as an officer in the Marine Corps and saw action during the Vietnam War, and later worked as a wealth manager and vice president at Merrill Lynch.Tom grew up speaking Spanish and spent his summers in Lima, Peru. He graduated from Saint Edward's School in Vero Beach, Florida, and from Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. At age 19, he overdosed on GHB and fell into a short coma.

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