Interrobang Literary Magazine

It turns out, Kanye West likes to rant like a teenage girl on myspace.

Poor Kanye, with your sore knees and your expensive sets. We get it, you’re doing this all for us. Right…

Singer/Songwriter Andrew Bird has been blogging about writing, recording, and producing his next album on the New York Time’s Blog, Measure for Measure

If you click on the blog link, you’ll be able to listen to a new song off of the album entitled “Oh, No.” I warn you, reader, it will be stuck in your head for the next week.

This blog post is particularly interesting because Bird discusses the unsettling feeling of being happy with the album. He writes that typically, at this stage in the game, he scraps his whole album. This time, he feels happy with it…so what’s the problem?

Well, anyone who’s produced anything–term paper, painting, building, etc.–knows how strange it feels to actually feel satisfied in the work.

The grand question: Must the creator suffer in order to produce a quality piece? Or, instead, is satisfaction a sign of mastery? Perhaps mastery is what is pushing Bird into the experimental realm he describes in the blog?

I’ve always said that if I ever were to get a tattoo, it would be a semicolon on the inside of my wrist. For quite some time now, as geeky as this may sound, I have had a deep fascination with the mysterious and elusive semicolon. Needless to say (but apparently I am about to express it anyways), this article in Slate Magazine beckoned to me:
Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?

The article presents a brief history and interpretation of the semicolon’s existence, but the last paragraph really drives a point home which many, if not most, writers wish to ignore.

When grading undergrad final papers recently, I found a near-absence of semicolons, save for one paper with cadenced pauses and carefully cantilevered clauses that gracefully stacked upon one another, Jenga-like, without ever quite toppling. Yet English was not this student’s first language.

He was an exchange student—from France.

I will own up to some lazy sentences in my lifetime. Hell, this entry is probably riddled with poor word choices (WC) and choppy phrases. Earlier today, I discussed taking a grammar course at the college level, and the first trouble area to surface was the proper usage of the semicolon. The fact that I have never quite fully understood the semicolon’s full potential and possibility, and further, that I use it sparingly as if it were some sort of rare imported spice sprinkled as a garnish, has pushed it into the realm of sexy punctuation.

The Big Questions: should the semicolon be eliminated or revived? Do you love them or hate them? Can they improve one’s writing? Does this even matter? Who are we? Where do we come from? Do I even exist?

grammar jokesters, lolz

On my drive home this evening, I was listening to 101.9 WDET’s world mix. This song made it very difficult to drive home. It’s just too funny.

I am currently listening to the latest All Song’s Considered podcast entitled “The Sound of a Generation.” All of the podcasts are great, with guest DJs and Bob Boilen’s soothing voice, but this one just strikes a certain chord (err no pun intended).

All Songs Considered–”Sound of a Generation”

What the hell is the sound of our generation, known as Generation Y or the Millennials? The podcast has some great discussion while also playing some tunes that will really throw you back.

“Anything you listen to at the point of your life when you’re coming of age is going to become iconic”–this, Stephen Thompson insists, is true regardless of how good the music actually is. So, my question to you is, what songs or bands or artists have become iconic of “coming of age” for your lives?

“Yeah, everyone listened to Michael Bolton, but not everyone talked about Michael Bolton”–Are the boy bands of the late 90s our Michael Bolton?

Sorry for such a serious/endless post, but this is such a Kool Thing.

If you’ve been any where near a television in the past year, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the boisterous and brassy Rachael Ray babbling on about sammies and EVOO.  She has lent herself to numerous ad campaigns as well, trying to sell us crackers and donuts with that creepy smile plastered across her face.

Besides her roles in the kooky, simplistic food world and the American capitalist system, Ray has also placed a stake in the hipster realm.  During this years SXSW, Ray hosted her own party, with the Ravonettes and Holy Fuck performing.  Ray even boasted she was “America’s favorite indie music lover.”  Who knew?

Now Ray’s hipsterdom has run her into trouble.  In a recent ad for Dunkin Donuts, Ray donned a scarf probably straight off the shelves at Urban Outfitters.  Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin took this scarf to mean something else.  Referred to by Malkin as a hate mongering “jihad chic keffiyah,” Ray’s scarf has spurred Dunkin Donuts to remove the commerical from its campaign.

Apparently, this is the new face of terrorism:

Next time you’re at American Apparel, you best watch your back.

Miracle fruit: A tiny berry that tricks the tongue.

“Carrie Dashow dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.”

Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!”

They were among 40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.”

Miracle fruit for our next release party, anyone?

Britain’s Daily Mail recently published an article about one of the world’s last uncontacted tribes in the Envira region of Brazil. To document the existence of the tribe, anthropologists flew over the region to take photographs. The tribes people, perhaps thinking the plane was some sort of bird or spirit, fired bows and arrows at the plane.

“It is extraordinary to think that, in 2008, there remain about a hundred groups of people, scattered over the Earth, who know nothing of our world and we nothing of theirs, save a handful of brief encounters.”

To see the photographs and read the full article, go here.

For the past few years, Haley Bonar has been touring small venues solo while also making appearances with whistling, violin slinging Andrew Bird. She appeared on his last album, Armchair Apocrypha, as that cutting voice able to sing along side and compliment the always formidable Bird. Well, Bonar is about to release her latest solo project Big Star on June 12th. After listening to the album several times through, I’ve realized that it is a carefully crafted folk album which traverses into the realm of noise. All the ambient noise of recording is amazingly preserved on this album to the point where I felt myself sitting in the recording studio, staring at the production of it all like some crazed, twelve year old fan. In the vein of neo-folk singer Josh Ritter, these are quiet songs with lyrics that get under your skin.

Here is the title MP3 from the new album:

http://www.afternoonrecords.com/haleybonar_bigstar.mp3

To stream more music, go to

http://www.haleybonar.com/

One of my favorite publishers, Kenning Editions, is putting out a new chapbook by Pamela Lu called Ambient Parking Lot . The premise of her writings?

“a band of musicians wander the parking structures of urban downtown and greater suburbia in quest of the ultimate ambient noise–one that promises to embody their historical moment and deliver them up to the heights of their self-important artistry.”

Here is a short, but high impact piece from the chapbook which describes the performance of a dancer as trapped under one of the cement pillars of a parking structure:

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~poetry/Assets-Holloway%202003/Poems-Holloway%202003/lupoem.html