Month: November 2022

The future is urban, apparently

One of my areas of interest is how science fiction movies do exposition. So I took a screenshot from Elysium just to save, though I’m only watching this for fun (it’s not on my exam list). I’ve seen it before.

I’m sure this isn’t new to anyone who hasn’t been paying attnetion, but so many dystopian visions of the future are just slight exaggerations of contemporary fear mongering about city livin’.

EVERYONE WILL LIVE IN A CITY, WILL YOU SURVIVE??!?!?!?! Weird.

The real trouble is rural, since I just heard a loud boom coming from the “new” neighbors. They like to make noise. Lots of ratatatatat or bang bang bang.

Five, Seven, Five

The winning haiku at the top of the article is a cold, hard comment on our current American political environment, yet Sanki’s poems, written on one year after the bombing in Hiroshima, produce a different, deeper chill.

Sanki was imprisoned by Japan’s Special Higher Police for writing haiku like the first one. The second was published in a magazine but was omitted from Sanki’s second collection for fear that the book would be censored by American Occupation officials, who suppressed information about the atomic bomb.

By Clark Strand, “Poems of Protest and Political Conscience”

How am I supposed to perform academia if I don’t have time to Tweet?!?

One of the problems with committing to a new public-facing medium is that you get busy and overwhelmed and it suddenly feels abandoned. Two days since I posted here and my instinct is to just quit. The endless scroll is the problem. It’s always hungry and it’s never sated. As meager contributor, even I’m susceptible. When the dust settles and the archaeologists of the future dig through the radioactive waste, our archive will be nothing but “sorry I haven’t posted” posts and Tumblr.