Face Off

This essay I wrote about race and identity and hipsters and other stuff went live on The Nervous Breakdown today. It's interesting because I wrote the essay before this other piece (authored by another Garfield High School alum, Lindy West) caused a minor Internet shit storm the other day. The aims (and tones) of the two essays are very different, but it's an interesting kind of synchronicity nonetheless...

Precarious But Gratifying

"Real change needs creativity and action! Using a black marker write suggestive notes on your 'garbage.' Littering in wealthy neighborhoods is precarious but gratifying! Just IMAGINE them reading your used tampon marked US WAR! and puzzling over the message. Make the rich THINK. Or at least make their children think. OIL OIL EVERYWHERE! Write on old shoes, sandwich wrappers, cans, bags, snotty tissues, used condoms, THIS OIL WAR! On an empty bottle of hand lotion OIL THIS WAR! On a cereal box THIS FAGGOT WORLD VICTORIOUS! On a soda bottle YOUR SISSY CHILDREN SAVE THE WORLD FROM YOU! As citizens it is our duty to communicate the temperature of suffering!"

This guy CAConrad is a nut. Watch him read poetry at a laundromat here. Check out his new book from Wave here, which includes nutty, wonderful poetry exercises as well as his own original poems. The above, for example, asks you to litter in wealthy neighborhoods, take notes, and then write stream-of-consciousness for thirty minutes. The result for him was called, "Duck Call for Dead Ducks."