But, as Edgar has been saying forever, and said in that prior piece, there’s a problem looking at clothes as a vanity: the way that you dress is the only way that you can influence others’ perceptions of you without actually having to talk to them. Given my conversation skills, I quickly did an about-face and began to work on my wardrobe and hygiene.
Read MoreLook, the assumption that public-facing jobs inherently suck is an outgrowth of the idea that your job should be the locus of personal fulfillment in your life. Americans don’t have hobbies; they have jobs — call it a “calling,” call it a “passion,” call it what the fuck you want, but at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking job.
Read MoreThis is a reference to the Nietzschean idea of the eternal return, which is originally used as a part of a vital and life-affirming philosophy, but when considering that not all of us have agency at all times, it hints at something darker: if you're going to relive every part of your life, you need to make decisions you're comfortable making again – but you're also doomed to re-experience the worst things that happened to you innumerable times.
Read MoreThe problem with railing against nostalgia as a cultural phenomenon is that when you experience it yourself, you feel like a phony.
Read MoreIt was V. that brought me to Thrice, actually, and not the other way around. I distinctly remember having read V. already, and then, not that long after, being in a Wal-Mart in Bedford, PA and seeing Vheissu, their then-most recent album. I was stunned to see such an obvious reference to a novel I had first heard about from my father, who basically only remembered chapter 3, in which a character named Stencil does several “impressions” of not-himself, with each section of the chapter narrated by the person he’s pretending to be at the time. Also there’s like, robot secret agents or something, and everyone’s in Cairo in the late 19th century.
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