(Sometimes, of course, you get a blogger to post on your story by publishing an awful story.) →

Pretty sure Alex Pareene has the Parenthetical Aside Of The Year, here.

critickittens:

92-Year-Old Cat Reviews Classic Public Enemy Album: “I Like Flopping My Ancient Body Across Chuck D’s Face”

The last meow on this topic, I hope. 

I have never been remotely interested in looking like or being in any way a real girl. I don’t like the real girl thing. I believe in idealization for publications. People want to see aspirational images, read about aspirational lives. I don’t care about acceptance. I don’t want to project anything real. I want people to look at my beauty section and want to look like me, to buy the things I like. I want them to want to smell like me even though they can’t smell me through the computer. That’s the point. It’s beauty, babe! But always remember—I’m a total sicko.

— Cat Marnell, guiding light for all those people who aspire to be sociopathic drug addicts sorely in need of an editor, or at least someone resembling an adult. 

Raise your hand if XOJane’s “Anonymous Single Bro” makes you feel bad about yourself

This self-doubt can come through the reader projecting his descriptions of the women he’s with onto their own flaws, or from the deep fiery “god will someone please serve him a comeuppance of some sort” hatred he incites in the reader’s soul.

And I know that XOJane (WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT SASSY MAGAZINE HI MATT EALER I KNOW) is basically Teen Girl Squad (“the ex-addict!” “the fat one!” “the sports fan!” “the current addict, who—whoops it’s not so cute that she’s that much of an addict anymore so let’s send her to rehab!” and so on) as a “professional” media outlet, but Jesus Christ. If you’re going to hire men to chronicle bad sex and the depths of their blackened souls, at least get writers who are as skilled with the material as Greg Dulli? The insulting way the subject matter is dealt with—turning people into letters and characteristics, thus simplifying any narrative that might exist—is made far worse by the workmanlike prose. 

i am listening to the train record btw

it’s the katie roiphe cover story of midtempo pop-rock albums i think

the trollgaze index: not just about music!  →

thanks, megan, for bringing it into the legit press. i’m flattered! and thanks of course to katie roiphe for being an OG TROLLGAZER

Relentless and cynical traffic-trawling is bad for the soul.

— mm hmm.

What would it be like, I wondered while reading this, to have Rebecca Black and Salem interview each other. →

Right?