hapax's New Writeups

Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Postcolonialism, Deconstruction (essay)

2009-12-15T22:07:47Z

The very idea of trying to define postmodernism is profoundly unpostmodern (which is to say modern). Postmodernity, by "definition," resists definition and categorization. However, the various manifestations of postmodernity -- whether it is as a literary-critical technique, a writing style, or a "way of life" -- does have some common elements that I will try to summarize briefly in this node.

The way I see it, postmodernity is a broad term that covers several other ideas, in literary criticism and in society more generally. There are some subtle differences between these movements that I will discuss here, with the awareness that these are flawed attempts to write about a notoriously slippery subject.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism, the most general of the terms, draws attention to the problems of modernity. The "post-" here means "after" -- it's the same prefix we use in words like "postpone," "postmortem," "postdated," and so on. The idea is…

Can evangelists count? (essay)

2009-11-30T19:24:03Z

In the opening verses of the Gospel of Matthew, the evangelist provides a genealogy of Jesus, beginning with the patriarch Abraham. When he's done, he tells the reader that

all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

However, as it turns out, the "generations from Abraham to David" in the gospel only include thirteen names. Go ahead, count them yourself. I'll be right here.

The fourteenth generation is missing in every surviving manuscript of Matthew's gospel. It's one of the strangest glitches in the Bible, but it almost never turns up on the typical "Bible Contradictions" list: my suspicion is that so many readers' eyes glaze over when they see yet another…

sugar scrub (recipe)

2009-11-24T16:37:39Z

Sugar to exfoliate the skin; oil to moisturize it; maybe a bit of scent to make you feel divine. It's the simplest thing in the world.

You've got two options. You can pay a fortune for this stuff at Lush or Bath & Body Works or some other bourge emporium, or you can make your own two-month supply for about a dollar. The homemade stuff is at least as good as you get in the store, particularly if you add a bit of your favourite scent. But perfume is scarcely necessary -- what this is really about is sloughing off dead skin and softening what's underneath.

It's so easy that it barely qualifies as a "recipe," but this is what I do:

1 part white sugar. White sugar is grittier than brown. It's also cheaper, though this scrub is so cheap already that you probably don't need to worry about it unless you're a grad student or something.

1 part brown sugar. Brown sugar is moister/"mushier" than white. I like a bit of graininess to…

lolcats (person)

2009-11-23T21:29:51Z

LOLcats: a field guide

Any picture of a cat can be captioned to create a lolcat, but certain lolcats have achieved legendary status and are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent more than ten or fifteen minutes on the Internet. The following cats have been made into memes of their own, which I list below in roughly descending order of popularity.

Ceiling cat. A wide-eyed orange cat peeking through a hole in the ceiling, originally captioned with "CEILING CAT IS WATCHING YOU MASTURBATE," Ceiling Cat has achieved (literally) religious significance among dorks on the Internet. Ceiling Cat represents omnipotence and omniscience, his Godlike powers endlessly parodied and reimagined through shoops and fics. There is a church of Ceiling Cat on Facebook, and he is the central character in the mostly unfunny lolcat Bible. The existence of Basement Cat, an evil counterpart to Ceiling Cat, has been

…

The Hazards of Love (review)

2009-11-19T15:33:23Z

For years, The Decemberists were a band for whom I didn't have much patience. They wrote sweet, catchy, folksy songs that my hipster friends adored. They were fronted by an earnest, bespectacled guy with a huge vocabulary. There was nothing particularly offensive about them, but I found it annoying that reviews of their albums were all fixated on how Colin Meloy used big words like "palanquin" correctly. I always figured that a music fan that could be impressed by the word "palanquin" really needed to get out more.

But then, in the summer of this year, I encountered this album and I became a reluctant but total convert. The Hazards of Love is the greatest concept album since The Wall and the greatest riff on classic fairy tales since Tam Lin. Musically, it is folk-bordering-on-prog; it has much more richness and subtlety than I ever detected in earlier Decemberists, which I liked well enough but always found a bit twee…

You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective (review)

2009-11-17T18:42:31Z

In September of 2004, the horror writer Anne Rice logged on to amazon.com to respond to criticisms of Blood Canticle, her newest book. Her 1,200-word screed swiftly became legendary for its screechingly defensive tone, its bizarre attempt to adopt an informal, populist diction ("And Yo, you dude, the slang police! Lestat talks like I do"), and its horrific tl;dr affliction.

First off, let me say that this is addressed only to some of you, who have posted outrageously negative comments here, and not to all. You are interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. Indeed, you aren't even reading it. You are projecting your own limitations on it. And you are giving a whole new meaning to the words "wide readership." And you have strained my Dickensean principles to the max. I'm justifiably proud of being read by intellectual giants and waitresses in trailer parks,in fact, I love it, but who in the world are you?

"You…