The Wake

“Fuck shit! Fuck shit ass!”

A very juicy salmon I ate
smoked, toppled with balsam and yellow
cut-up tidbits unfamiliar to me (they were mangoes).

Sliced cucumber crunched amidst my teeth, it was
sipped up by coffee milky with soy
“I don’t know if I like beets,” he said, uncertain.

“Try the borscht anyway,”
He would cave eventually, but
just not that afternoon.

A Recipe For Those Who Cook Shitty Food Out Of Boxes But Still Want To Feel Like They’re Making Real Food

Instructions:

Make a boxed mac’n'cheese dinner of your choice (I prefer Kraft’s 3-cheese shells).

Cook the noodles like normal, but when the time comes to add the sauce mix, milk, butter, and whatever, also mix in:

1 small dollop of Mrs. Renfro’s habañero salsa (you can substitute for the super-spicy salsa of your choice, but Mrs. Renfro’s is the fucking best and you should have it in your home if you like spicy food (and if you don’t like spicy food get the fuck out, leave, now), her green jalapeño salsa is the best thing you will ever dip a chip in, so spicy but also so flavorful!)

2-3 little splurches of Tabasco (again, you could use a substitute, …

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[this post is part 3 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

Synopsis:

This episode begins in the American west, the old-time west of the Western. We meet the town drunk, Al Denton, a man who has no money and must live on the charity of the men of the town, who will buy him drinks if he amuses them with a song.

Denton used to be a champion gunman, but some traumatic event in his past shifted him from that path to the one he follows now. He does not sing very well, but sexy ladies feel bad for him anyway.

One day, Denton finds a gun in the dirt, and, drunk out of his mind, he picks it up and begins to carry it with him. One of his tormentors, a tall thin man in black …

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A Hurried and Last-Minute but Hopefully Coherent, Readable, and Informative—but I’ll Settle for just Tolerable—Dispatch from a Guy who reads both Books With Pictures, and Books Without

[in november '08, in the corporeal paper-bound wake, ali jaafar and i published an article about the literariness of comics, which we were both very excited about. we thought it would be awesome to make the thing itself into a comic, but though the idea was cool, it came out somewhat illegible. this is the original document which i sent to ali some 70 minutes after we decided we wanted to co-write a thing about comics and literature, already after the deadline for that issue of the wake. it is something of a reissue of that printed article, something of an artifact of the wake's production process, something of …

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After abstaining from coffee for a few weeks, yesterday’s caffeine craving was well overdue. So I got my sugary fix at Mapps over on West Bank and soon afterwards I knew it would be a good day. In addition to a wakeful buzz, though, I also experienced an enlightening moment. I was sitting down on plump leather couch cushions, reclined and relaxed, enjoying what was probably Putumayo Latin American Dance Party. There weren’t very many people at the coffee shop, so tuning into the background music was inevitable. Merry mandolins were trickling in synch with other acoustics against beating Conga and bongo drums. The vocalist sang away foreign verses that I couldn’t understand, but I hoped the serenade was chronicling some romantic fiasco.

In this midst, I contemplated more and more. Or could it be …

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Background information: I have a small scar along the right side of my face. It begins somewhere along the lower part of my cheek and extends down to the front right side of my mandible.

After my senior year of high school I headed to South America to visit a former tennis teammate and good friend. I will refer to this friend as Diego. Diego and I had grown very close during his stay in the States. My family had hosted him under a strange set of circumstances that involved his former host family selling their house, moving to another state and refusing to return $50 of Diego’s change from a department store purchase. But I digress. My flight arrives late in the night to Asunción - under more interesting circumstances which involved an underage …

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In 1979 Gur & Sackheim developed a questionnaire to test how much people lie to themselves. The questions follow (in their study they asked participants to rank their responses on a scale of one to seven, which is bullshit because the questions are phrased yes or no, and deal with words like “ever” which it is impossible to respond to with gradients).

1. Have you ever felt hatred toward either of your parents?
2. Do you ever feel guilty?
3. Does every attractive person of the opposite sex turn you on?
4. Have you ever felt like you wanted to kill somebody?
5. Do you ever get angry?
6. Do you ever have thoughts that you don’t want other people to know that you have?
7. Do you ever feel attracted to people of the same sex?
8. Have you ever made a …

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For those of you who “get it Daily” (read: pick up the competition instead of us) yesterday’s top story on the reorganization of the Graduate School into the Office of Graduate Education was a shock for everyone involved. Yet, the competition failed to expand on the impact this reorganization will have on graduate students themselves. According to a press release by Senior Vice Provost Tom Sullivan, this change is meant to reduce costs, among other things. Yet it was just last week when the Emaciated Gopher, a group of graduate students who want to make a few changes in the U’s thinking, protested student fees. Loyal Wake readers will remember we profiled the Emaciated Gopher last semester, ahead of the current graduate school news. Who knows what’ll happen next, but it’d be nice to see …

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It was a trend that kept popping up in conversation; podcasts that had the power to make you do things. It was more than persuasion, it was hypnotism. At first she brushed it off as another fad that preyed on the simpletons, like dieting pills and shamWOW. She resisted it when people told her of the merits. One person claimed his looserness was cured; he was getting booty left and right, any time of the day. But Marnie wouldn’t buy it, she couldn’t buy it. If Susie found out about this, then there was nothing to stop her from trying it; and it was Marnie’s mission to keep her friend out of such absurd shams.

That was until Julia, Marnie’s older and much admired friend, spoke several very harrowing words.

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Marnie …

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I am not qualified to review this album. This becomes clear almost immediately as I begin listening to it. It simply is not made for me. I know how to listen to death metal, I know how to listen to rock and roll, I know how to listen to hip-hop and I know how to listen to post-rock, but while I listen to Antony and the Johnsons it makes me tense how vocal-centric the whole thing is. I think, “Where is the drumbeat? When are the instrumentals going to do something interesting? Where is the rhythm?” Which if that kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable while listening to this record, clearly you don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Because it’s all about Antony’s voice.

Which brings me to the …

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[this post is part 2 of a 6-part series called "A Critical Investigation of Cattle Decapitation’s Six Full-Length Albums"]

Label: Three-One-G
Runtime: 21:39
Tracks: 16

The sound:

This album sounds pretty much like the last one, just better-produced. Though the guitar tone is the same, you can hear it much clearer, and the same goes for the drums and vocals. The low-end vocals are a little higher in the mix this time, and you can hear pretty much every bump in Travis Ryan’s throat. I liked it better when everything was muddy, because when you can hear everything clearly it stands out a lot more how sloppy they play. The drummer especially. I don’t know who was drumming for Cattle Decap on this record, but if he ever asks you to join your band, don’t let him. The first …

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[this post is part 2 of a 156-part series, "The Twilight Zone"]

The metaphysics of death:

It turns out death is a man, and he either has no name or his name is “Mr. Death,” it is not clear. He wears a suit, his hair is slicked back, and he carries a little book around with him which though it is the size of a small notepad contains pretty much all the information about everybody. He can teleport around a room all creepy so that during a conversation whenever you turn your back on him when you turn around he’s sitting somewhere else. He refers to death as “departure.” Only people who are gonna die soon can see him. He forewarns people who are going to die of natural causes, but he can’t warn people who …

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The 2008 election ended in what was considered a landslide victory for the Democratic Party. With the widespread popularity of Barack Obama and them being just shy of 60 senate seats, most Republicans had finally come to terms with the fact that the party was in dire need of a makeover (I’m looking at you Chambliss!). While the GOP is in the midst of a political panic, analysts and other voices in the media continue to speculate on who’ll save the party from spiraling into political irrelevance. Perhaps former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee? There were even whispers about former Speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich running in 2012. Seeing that there’s been endless discussion surrounding the future of the party, quite a few names have been taken into consideration. Among the suggestions, the most bewildering …

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I was riding the 16 back from St. Paul with a friend today, and thought to myself, “Whoa, it’s already February 2009.” Normally I am analytical about this sort of thing, and sometimes even nostalgic about the past year. Perhaps I’ve grown out of this habit, or perhaps I realized missing things I can no longer have is lame. Regardless, there were some great things I enjoyed, and will truly miss:

1. Using concerts as an excuse to protest anything Republican. The end of the Bush dynasty was moments from being over, and we couldn’t wait. In the meantime, this gave way to frequent cheap shows, swearing rappers, and lot of dancing.

2. This New Year’s Eve was the last time those cool glasses with two O’s in the middle could be worn. No matter how hard anybody tries …

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