It has now been 13 years since Christopher Hitchens got to discover at last whether hell is real.
"The Ghosts of New Atheism Still Haunt Us", Erik Baker for Defector
Submitted by Rusty.
Back before my body became my own, I had always hated the summer, the way the heat and humidity could only serve as a constant reminder about the physicality I avoided like a stressful email I didn’t want to read.
That Little Creature: A Note From Jane Schoenbrun
On Thursday I saw I Saw The TV Glow a second time in theaters. Still pretty sure it's the best movie I'll see this year.
One day I'll pay for this, for now just let me in
"Lucifer Rising", John Vanderslice
Moon Colony Bloodbath is a 2009 concept EP by The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice. It was released online and as a limited vinyl record (only 666 copies, LOL). The "concept" is, basically, that there's a secret colony on the dark side of the moon harvesting organs from cloned human bodies for the black market. The protagonist of the album, a technician at the colony, goes insane from bearing the secret of this bizarre job. He maybe starts eating people? Almost certainly kills some people. Probably eats cloned organs. I think it would make for a great A24 movie.
In 2009 I was 22 and an absolute mess, more or less living in a perpetual brownout. (The fact that since 2002 my favorite band had been The Mountain Goats probably was an early warning sign I'd end up like this.) Moon Colony Bloodbath came out around the same time, I'm pretty sure the same week, that I tried to kill myself. It's trite to claim a record or an artist saved one's life and I don't think this one did (practically speaking my old roommate Kate did, thanks Kate). But, at the time, a new album by two of my all-time favorite artists seemed if not a great reason to stick around at least some consolation for having to keep living. And while the core narrative of scifi cannibalism doesn't sound especially relatable to being an alcoholic, I read a lot into the songs' broader themes—dissociation, keeping what seems like an awful shameful secret, feeling inexorably compelled to do terrible destructive things over and over again.
This would make it sound like this isn't an easy album for me to come back to but it's stayed in regular rotation for years. If it's possible to treat MP3s like heirlooms, that's how I treated Moon Colony Bloodbath. John Darnielle announced a new vinyl edition of the EP this week, which I immediately bought since I didn't snag a copy of the original the first time around and it goes for way too much money secondhand. Anyway, having a physical copy of this weird scifi concept EP feels like a good commemoration of the fact that 15 years later I'm still alive.
Solidarity is the kind of presence that costs you something.
Black Liturgies, Cole Arthur Riley
The experience of sublimity therefore depends on the delicate equipoise of conflicting emotions.
Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination, Rosalind Williams
A part of me has been formed and released and set upon the earth to wail.
"A Woman's Work", Louise Erdrich for Harper's