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Author Archives: Esmé Pestel

Art That Most People Think Sucks, Part I

Christian Humber Reloaded is a dreadfully written incoherent mess of a story. The plot is essentially non-existent and does nothing beyond provide a thread connecting the various slaughters of its protagonist, which as Kriegsaffe notes in his lengthy deconstruction of the story, is “the most powerful self-insertion character” that he (or anyone, probably) had ever [...]

On Investing Horrible Ideas with Legitimacy By Claiming the Moral High Ground

Nothing can provide as much intellectual security as the conviction that one’s position is not only factually warranted but morally imperative. This position is evident in the writings of activist (I hesitate to actually confer on him the honor of being referred to as a “scholar”) Ward Churchill. His “history” is more polemic than anything [...]

Workers and Peasants of Brooklyn!

In the inter-war period, an American communist organizer decided for some reason to open his speech with the above. It’s a line so preposterous that if someone told me the speaker was actually a free market fundamentalist in disguise out to make Communism look ridiculous, I would have no trouble believing them. Such is the [...]

The United States is Merely One Asshole Among Many, or: The Power of Conspiratorial Thinking (Part I)

The paranoid theories that have proliferated on the American Right recently speculate about Obama’s “true nature.” He’s a a communist, a Nazi, a Muslim, and who knows what other anti-American things. It’s easy to laugh these ideas off, especially when they are being promoted by the motley crew of libertarians, 9/11 truthers, militia types and [...]

Review: The Box (2009)

Where to begin. “The Box” doesn’t really make any sense, the acting is inconsistent (with the notable exception of Frank Langella), the score is abominable and Richard Kelly doesn’t seem to understand how unintentionally funny some of the images he puts on the screen are. That being said, there’s a certain charm to such a [...]

Nauru: The Gary Coleman of Sovereign Nations

Only a few decades ago, Nauru, a small pacific island nation, had one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world. Birds of the sea had flown around Nauru crapping on it for thousands of years, leaving the island with rich phosphate deposits. Their small population (under 14,000) ensured that the country’s few citizens [...]

Review: Dead Snow [Død snø] (2009) and Inglourious Basterds (2009)

If, like me, you grew up in the early 1990s, Nazis were probably not the bad guys you shot your imaginary guns at when you defended the playground jungle gym.  All the same, there are few people who don’t enjoy seeing anyone (and it literally seems like it could be anyone; Americans treat communists like [...]

GeoCities Gets Taken Out Back and Old Yeller’d

The fast connections and proliferation of well-made websites that characterize the internet today feels so natural they are all almost synonymous. Maybe this is because using the internet has become routine in the ways we get information, conduct commerce, socialize or spend our leisure time. The internet of the 1990s, though not that [...]

Fuck Yeah

Play all these at once or go to hell.