Author: collageaslit

Categories
Tenets

Classtegorification

Classtegorification is a tenant of collage. It is pivotal to classify things, categorize them and then, to cross-categorize them. It is through the surprising connections that come about in this cross categorization process that create the juxtapositions in collage that make it interesting and true to life. This is a fluid, and continuous process. It is like a surrealist math problem: the connection and juxtaposition can be completely impossible but will be essentially and crucially true if the justification is valid. Show your work, people! 

The tenant laid bare: Classtegorification, being a perpetual process, creates the necessary conditions for connections to be made that surprise and reveal glimpses of the absolute, spiritual truth. Through continual cross-classification, categorization and recategorization processes these surprising and insightful truths come about via juxtaposition. This is how the mind works, through associations it enlarges and enriches itself. Art is thus continuing in its long tradition of imitating life. 

It is the expressed goal of collage as literature to recreate the truths not as they are or as they appear, but as they manifest themselves in the human experience. All three of these are different and it would take too much time to explore them all properly. Through intensive, hyper-focused portrayals of the human experience the successful literary collage creates juxtaposing realities that are so true that they cannot not exist - thus, reflecting the essential fractured nature of alienation in this unprecedentedly connected age. Ha! How's that for arrogant?

I will never use the term, Classtegorification anywhere else or ever again. The common tongue is sufficient for my purposes. I will use classification and categorization interchangeably. It would be cleaner if I didn't; but, I am a realist. Just remember that within collage as literature, classifying, classification and classified, category, categorized and catogorizing are all the same tense. It is perpetual and constant. 

This story appears elsewhere. At the risk of going to the well one too many times I will endeavor to share it here in bare bones fashion. Whether or not I tear it out from this blogpost to put into some other form of writing is my right. It does not diminish its value; it only proves my aesthetic idea. That's a bit of a logical error, but I will show my work throughout to give it the necessary grounding in truth. Besides, the story seems to have had a fundamental impact on my life, creating and fostering an obsessive need to classify and sort the collected things in my life. This in turn has become a foundational piece of the type of literature I'm trying to write. Ha! How's that for arrogant?

The year, 1988. The place, Friendly's Restaurant & Ice Cream. Crofton, MD. Given that I haven't lived in Maryland for a quarter of a century I wanted to check that I spelled, "Crofton" correctly. I did. In the process of unnecessarily spell-checking myself Google informed me that the Friendly's Restaurant & Ice Cream in Crofton, MD is permanently closed. The last Foursquare review (that should tell you something already) was from 2015. My heart is broken. Still I crave a Fishamajig Sandwich and a Banana Split. 

I received my first baseball cards with a kid's meal at the now closed Friendly's in Crofton, MD. My God! Is Red, Hot and Blue in Laurel still open? Thank God! It is. I live 1,287 miles from this restaurant. Why do I feel such a relief? Baseball cards were my everything for a few years. From 1987 (the cards I got in 1988 were 1987 Topps) to 1994 Series One, I couldn't get enough of them. Quantity over quality at times, verging on the insane. I would sort them all by team. Then, I would sort them all by last name. Then, I would put them back into teams, but by name. Then, I would keep them sorted by team, but then subsort them by year. Every categorization was glorious to me. The act of classification was fulfilling, enriching and enlarging. I found connections I wouldn't have ever known. There were an astonishing number of baseball players born in 1961 when I was in the middle of my collecting. 

I have stopped collecting baseball cards. The first time because of the strike. I switched to basketball cards for a bit. It helped that Joe Smith had just been drafted number one overall out of Maryland. Then, I outgrew them. They stopped being important. The obsessive categorization and recategorization, the perpetual classification continued to this day. I have a vinyl collection - occasionally quantity over quality, but I'm working on that. It keeps me sane. Without it, this perpetual habit would invade all kinds of inconvenient areas in my life. It is safe with the records and will keep me occupied when I have nothing to write about.
Categories
Jazz

Tutankhamun

Tutankhamun: Art Ensemble of Chicago

Classification: Jazz
Release: 1969

Another jazz album, another stab at poetry. This might not be a tenant, but there's a strong connection between jazz and poetry. I think it has something to do with the endorphins associated with absolute freedom. Fear reduces us to staccato speech. Excitement moves us to speech fast. The push and the pull of this reaction to a world with no rules is exhilarating. Have you ever heard an exhilarated goose? The sound it produces stretches the definition of music to a breaking point, pushes it beyond the pale and leaves its carcass buried in the desert. Out of this snuffed out definition of music comes Art Ensemble of Chicago's Tutankhamun and the four poems I have written in response to listening to this album. Next to the definition of music you will find the remains of the term, "poetry". I buried it there last week.

What can I say? Impenetrable jazz gets impenetrable poetry. To collage is to recreate life as it is experienced, not as it appears. For eight hours a day, nine on this particular day I sat at a computer doing the work of a salesman. Erin & I were going golfing at 6:00 - an exciting first for us. At 5:59 a zipper tab was pulled violently by a passing wind. The clouds relieved themselves in a torrential downpour and we went home. A collage of today would rightly emphasis the one minute that defined it rather than the nine that constituted its majority. I say it again, to collage is to recreate life as it is experienced, not as it is. 

Confession is good for the soul. I confess that I am a bit of a history nerd. I purchased this album because I am going through a bit of a jazz phase and I liked the cover. Confession is good for the soul. I confess that I really struggled with this album. In fact, while the album was playing I walked into the other room where Erin was - behind a closed door. Her look told me all I needed to know about her take on Art Ensemble of Chicago's definition of poetry. Incredibly, it sounded better and more like music from behind the heavy wooden doors. I also bought the album because of the track lengths. The titular song clocks in at an astounding 18:10. It makes the 15:35 The Ninth Room seem mercifully short. The Ninth Room is easily the best song and my worst poem. 

Because I am not a sadist, I have included a digital collage I made while relistening to the record, twice. Once from behind the heavy wooden doors. Once at 45 rpms instead of the suggested 33. The heavy doors improved the experience; the other, did not. Because I want you to read these admittedly terrible poems, I have placed the picture at the bottom of this page. This is a digital version of ears of corn on the side of the road with a box for you to throw money into. On your honor, read the poems. Then look at the collage. (You'll notice that my poetry suffers for being too literal in its response to the album. It would appear that literalism is becoming a threat.)

Tutankhamun

tasked to put words to music:
                       who tasked?
tell me,
        tell me.
                       i'll kill em...

cacophony. caw caw. cacophonous. caw.
                                 caw. ?

sounds.    toot.    toot.             ?
                       who tasked?
tell me,
        tell me.
                       i'd like a word...

thinitthedalen part one

i couldn't do it.
kill-kill him,
            i mean.

The Ninth Room

geesesgoosesgoslingoose
groove/ya dig?
quackedquackquackery
groove/ya dig?

you want impenetrable? i'll give it to you.
impentrabley igpe atinlay 
groove/ya dig?

impentrabley?
impossible/impassable/impassabley 
                                    [read lei]
impenetrable impervious imperil
improv imperdimproved impassabley 
                                    [red. lay]

impenetrable jazz gets impenetrable poetry
we are divided/divisible
groove/ya dig?
cant even agree to disagree
groove/ya dig?
quackedquackquackery
ya dig?

geesesgoosesgoslingoose
groove.

thinitthedalen part two

rush to the volume knob:
what's wrong with the bumble bees?
nada
    nada
        nada 
            the geeses fly south
            fed up with the bees
        nada
    nada
     
Til we meet again, King Tut.
Categories
Tundra

another study of melting snow, another metaphor

meditations on pink floyd

(understood in time)

meditations on ecclesiastes

(understoodeath in time)

understood death?
                in time.



what profiteth man?
miss that starting gun
what profiteth man
to win his race 
to win his run?


understand death?
                in time.


all melt like snow
aching to reach the mississippi 
all melt like snow
the darkening (twilife's glow)
aching to reach the mississippi
goeth/goes/go 
the melting snow



twilife's glow:
dimmed/once bright
give meaning to us, mississipi 
grant our brief lives meaning
forget us not

- we melting snow


what profiteth man?


understood
in time



all melt like snow
twilight
twilight
twilife, benight.


[ashes to ashes
dust to dust
water to water]




vanity of vanities
everything, vanity

everything,
           vanity.




melting into the mississippi
we go
Categories
Tundra

ouroboros

ouroboros never could outrun his own 
                                    teeth.
ouroboros never could outrun his own
nor can i
    nor can i
     or can i?

ouroboros never could outrun his own
                                    teeth.
                                          can i?
Categories
Tundra

now what? (iii)

you say: 
you are a nostalgic
a hopeless romantic
full of fascination
with a bygone age.

it is one thing to bang the night away on a typewriter in faux candlelight 

[the sound of exasperation]

it is another to accept the chinese (faux) buffet as the height of exotica 

[the sound of exasperation]

now what?
tone, morbidly curious
Categories
Tundra

gone

my mind a puddle 
melted snow pooled into potholes 
one misstep - i'm gone
Categories
Minnesota Folks, Facts & Happenings

No. 5

Diana & Paul

We should not be surprised to find that the old world gods beat us old world folk to the new world - they are gods after all. They came here looking for peace and quiet. They did not bother the new world folk. The new world folk had their own gods and religions. The new world folk were so pious that they honored the old gods in their midst by completing ignoring them. Thus, the gods of the old world enjoyed a peaceful and obscure retirement. That is, until the old world folk came to the new world. 

For untold millennia the gods of the old world grew their religious empires. In this respect, an individual man and an individual god only differ in scale. A man's career, even the most distinguished and brilliant ends in retirement after a short few decades. He retires to write his memoirs, with the firm belief that his memoirs will be worth reading. It is how he will live forever. He dedicates his retirement to it. The gods already have eternal life. So, at the end of their significantly longer careers, they can devote their retirement to other things. But you can bet your last dollar that they keep up with the contemporary news concerning themselves. I have a good source who says Circe was rather pleased with Madeline Miller's book. I know that is four-year old news, but this type of news travels at the pace of the gods. They are retired and move like retired people do. 

At the end of three or four decades of being a novelist II hope to find myself at some, remote South American beachtown or at an ancient cafe in Montmartre. I hope my memoirs will be worth reading. Then I will go home and travel no more. But what does Odin do? What can Zeus or Jupiter do at the end of a storied career of decades of centuries? Where does Aphrodite go when she hangs up her divine uniform for the last time? I will count myself blessed if I end up editing my memoirs along the sea or in the haunts of my idols. I will count myself doubly best if I can split my time between two places in retirement. When retirement lasts forever one can sample everywhere on earth to find the most suitable spot for your infinite twilight years. That can be the only reason that the beautiful goddess of the hunt chose central Minnesota for a portion of that infinitude.

There is a pool of water, flanked on three sides by pristine, green wilderness. The colors and reflected light that dance upon the lily pads are so vibrant and changing Monet would have had a seizure. At the far end of the lovely little pond is a small cave, a natural grotto that gives the place a look of the sacred. The stillness of the air that hangs heavily in the presence of that pool gives one the feeling of the sacred. At my first visit to the pool I was afraid I would profane the place with my presence. I turned to leave, lest I incur some god's wrath for trespassing on holy ground. I turned, but I could not walk. I had a vision. 

Erin and I were walking along the Paul Bunyan trail when we happened upon this natural shrine. The trail stands a little elevated over the impressionistic water and ancient grotto. There was no way to easily step down off the trail and into the Edenic temple. A bench in front of the pool invited us to sit. You may look but you cannot touch, it said. We sat. Immediately, Diana granted me the divine sight. As a mystic who regular has strange visions and a duty to somehow relate them I find myself in some strange and bewildering positions. This was the most unpleasant vision I have seen to date. The vision came to a conclusion as a thick swarm of Minnesotan mosquitoes chased us off of the bench. As we ran for our lives I told Erin my vision.

I saw Diana in all her terrible glory, basking and bathing in that tranquil pool. Unlike in her long and illustrious career, may the huntress be praised forever, she was unattended for her bath. The minor deities, demigodesses and nymphs had also gone into retirement centuries ago. Where they had retired to the goddess did not care to share and I did not think it polite to ask. I saw only what she wanted me to see. I saw her naked, bathing herself in that idyllic pool. I saw the mighty Paul Bunyan striding through the virgin forest with great big steps. His broad axe and unironic lumberjack beard were a pretty obvious clue. His status as a giant confirmed my suspicions. As he was hollering out, "Babe," in search of the giant blue ox I achieved a Cartesian foundationalism, cogito. He too stumbled upon the bathing goddess. 

Paul's gaze lasted a bit longer than it should have. He became sheepish after he realized that his gaze had lasted much too long for propriety's sake. I saw him turn his back to her so rapidly that he knocked over a dozen or more trees with his careless spin. As the trees came tumbling down he begged her pardon in an astonishing array of colloquial Americanism. In her fury, Diana could not translate the words. She could not force them into a comprehensible context. Having long accustomed herself to a life of solitude she was mildly stunned by the encounter. She found she could do nothing but speak Latin in her apoplectic rage. The embarrassed giant apologized again before walking away. He may not have spoke a lick of Latin, but the tones of the goddess' voice negated any need for translation. 

She was not assuaged by his mea culpa. Though she was out of practice, she tried to summon her powers. Paul Bunyan's gait was so great that by the time she focused her mind on the blood vengeance necessary for atonement he was beyond her reach. The powers were already summoned and she figured she must do something to let off some steam. Her vengeance came forth as the ugliest and nastiest brood of mosquitoes who had spent generations upon generations in the darkest depths of Hades. She commanded them to go forth and atone for the great iniquity done in this place.

The mosquitoes went forth and multiplied. Diana saw it was good and then hightailed it out of there. She sent a postcard from Buenos Aires a few months ago, but I haven't heard from her since. To be fair to her, I haven't been back to the pool for a while either.
Categories
Classic Rock

The Dark Side of The Moon, Part One

The Dark Side of the Moon: Pink Floyd

Classification: Rock
Subclassification: Classic Rock
Release: 1973

It is interesting, potentially a sign of cosmic interference that my first two entries on my album collection, as dissimilar as they are, come from the year 1973. If I am to fully adopt the belief that mysticism is our only hope to reclaiming truth and the ability to communicate with one another then I must stop being surprised by these odd coincidences. I need not embrace wild fantasies. The road to the dark side, that is. Anger, fear, jealousy, conspiracy theories. There is only darkness. But, the road to the light is fraught with many incidents when the path to enlightenment lies within touching distance of the most horrific and stupid Internet theory. If I were to come home with a rust bucket that once claimed to be 1973 Pontiac Catalina Safari Wagon based on this mystical experience I would have given into the darkness inside of me. This would be funny if it weren't a real possibility. The way to enlightenment is to sit and ponder how I can feel nostalgic for a time that preexisted me. I am timesick and I must know the cure.

Pink Floyd Albums hit differently at different ages. They are less celebrations and more laments in my middle age. I listen to a lot Pink Floyd these days. Pink Floyd is one of those bands that you should always listen to the whole album through. No shuffling, no skipping. The album is a whole, and a song in isolation is deprived of its encapsulating riches. I will be visiting Pink Floyd on many occasions on this blog. In order to keep this post at a readable word count it will focus on a single line in a single track. We will strip the lyric and deprive it of its encapsulating riches. We will turn in it into a mania!

"And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. 
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun." One day I was listening to this album, cooking a curry. I remember it vividly. For a few months, in my early twenties, I lived in an apartment complex that was predominately Indian immigrant families. I was a recluse at that point in my life, but that is unimportant. The overwhelming aromas in that building brought me an unspeakable joy and light that brought me, ever so momentarily out of the unspeakable darkness I was living in. Turns out the reclusive bit was important after all. It was a sweet potato and carrot curry, I was going vegetarian for Erin's sake.

I was free-handing the spices and herbs when Time spun round the table. Had I missed the starting gun? The thought gnawed away at me and became obsessive. It consumed me. I made the curry so spicy that I struggled to eat it. Erin couldn't touch it. Thankfully, I had made a side dish. It was an Afghani recipe called lubya. A curried kidney dish that I cooked some eggs with. I came to know of this dish from reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. One of the character's favorite dish is beans and eggs. I cooked some eggs on the lubya and it has become a staple in the Linehan household. Never exactly the same, but bearing a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. I determined later that evening that I had missed the starting gun. I must have been lost in deep thought over something as trivial and important as the Pythagoras' religious scruples over beans. How can one abstain from beans?

I'm chasing the sun and it's sinking. I'd probably catch up to it in a 1973 Pontiac Catalina Safari Wagon. 1973 is important. I'm going to put the breaks on buying another station wagon. That dream hurt me too recently to be reconsidered and welcomed back into the aspirational fold.
Categories
Jazz

Head Hunters

Head Hunters: Herbie Hancock

Classification: Jazz
Release: 1973

The second of the powerful first triumvirate of my record reviews who by chance happened to have first been released in 1973. I don't believe in coincidences. My beliefs are also not beholden to your credulity. That sounded much more aggressive than necessary. Time travel can make me a bit jumpy. 

I'm sitting here in my little apartment, listening to jazz on vinyl, typing my thoughts out on a typewriter. The rhythmic hammering of the keys enriches, envelopes and experiences the oneness of peak hipsterdom. I have reached the summit to discover that the embracing and acceptance of the label is to truly become one with irony. By accepting it without shame, without irony one becomes irony itself.  

Sly embodies the Dionysian chaos that is so alluring to me in Jazz. I embrace the embodiment. I am writing poetry, on a typewriter, listening to jazz on a turntable. I can feel the mid-century mod flowing through my veins. The crystal ash tray on the teak side table has my favorite cigarette in it. My feet are up on the coffee table. It's from etsy, hairpin legs with a painted atomic age starburst on it. More mid-century than real mid-century. The ostentatious fluting on Watermelon Man overwhelms me. I am one with the vision. I write poetry on typewriter listening to jazz record smoking imaginary cigarette in imaginary room with feet up on imaginary table and newspaper in hand. This is what the vision says:

it begins with the irresistible bass
the the guitar oozes sex
the horns are a'comin
the horns,
i'm a comin

I pick up the cigarette, cinematically. The seventies, as constructed by secondary experiences hangs in the air, giving everything a hazy glow. I smoke the cigarette, cinematically because this is what cinema is. Vein Melter is playing in the background and I am sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette after a hard day's work. The record ends and my imagination is purged by the Apollonian reactionaries. It is tough to breath at the peaks of mountains. I have had my taste of vision. Remember the good book says, give us our daily bread; key word - daily. Let us end with a prayer: may the good Lord find gluttony to be a far greater sin than lighthearted syncretism.
Categories
World

Gençlik İle Elele

Gençlik İle Elele: Mustafa Özkent

Classification: World
Subclassification: Europe
Subsubclassification: Turkey
[subject to review]
Release: 1973
Reissue: 2006

Question: Should Mustafa Özkent's masterpiece be reclassified to Hipster status?

Argument for: As much as we claim to be a citizen of the world, and we think that claim to be justifiable to a certain extant - we admit that we aggrandize from time to time. We are at the very least a pledge to the world citizen's brigade (which if actually exists, please forgive me for any bad press this may bring, and does membership include sponsorships to live in various countries?). Yes, we have traveled a bit. But, we have not been to Turkey. We have this album because we picked it up in a hispterish and trendy area of London. 

Argument against: We also acknowledge padding our resume a bit, but damn it! The Vatican is its own sovereign nation and we think that it counts. It a baker's dozen does make. Sure, sure. We also acknowledge a humble brag feels good now and again. That market in London was hella cool, hipster Mecca during the peak of millenialism. We had the pick of fifteen different food trucks inside some industrial era warehouse, repurposed and upscaled with such meticulous perfection it felt authentic. Think late 19th Century Steam Punk Victorians with iPods. Do you remember how we picked the Cachorro Quente? Delicious? Yes. However, when you put a hot dog in a thick ketchup sauce, slap it on a brioche bun and top it with potato sticks it tends to pop the exoticism of travel. We bought the record at that market. It was in the Turkish section. 

Verdict: I am not convinced either way. It is true that it is a living anecdote of our hipster journey: denial, fierce denial, secret acceptance with public denial, open acceptance, absolute immersion, oneness, to meta fracturing (kaleidoscopic hipsterism: looking at the era of the hipster with a nostalgic bent, thus completing the circle and returning hipsterdom to its rightful place, irony). We are trying to be a voice of that return to whimsical irony, inside jokes to ourselves that somehow make sense to like-minded souls. It was in the Turkish section, but it was reissued by British Hipsters. Would it be out of place in the Classification: World. Subclassification: Europe. Subsubclassification: United Kingdom? I don't think that is the logical place for it, but an argument can be made for it. As such, we will leave it in the listed classification, subclassification and subsubclassification while reserving the right to revisit. God knows there are other hipster issues forthcoming.    

Third album review (typewriter edition). Third album from 1973. Three in a row to begin the whole exercise! As a mystic, I must stop being surprised by these things. Here's how to express the inexpressable, the spirit of the music says to me, Herbie Hancock came to me by Chris Farley (God rest his soul). Pink Floyd came to me by my father. The irony came to me from above, whatever that may mean. It was my destiny to come of age in such heady, heady times to be served a hot dog for twelve quid by a Carioca. Upscaled and exoticized basic food stuff? Check. Overpriced? Check. Served on biodegradable flatware? Check. Food truck? Check. Bonus points: food truck in old upscaled warehouse. Vintage music? Check. Need I go on? It was the draw of hipsterism that led me to that market. It was the hubris of that hipsterism that led me to eating a hot dog. It was the joyous and jubilant madness of that hipsterism that allowed me to believe that the emperor's clothes were indeed beautiful and the Cachorro Quente was something completely new. Mystics are not prophets. I don't want that kind of responsibility. The British Hipster, subsubclassification: Neo-Mod. had the album in the Turkish section. That's good enough for me.

A prophet speaks truths that are to come to pass. A mystic speaks truths as well as he is able given both their skill and the ineffability of the truth experienced. The false prophets (visionaries) must be killed - their evil must be purged. Mystical truths are easily lost in translation by nature of the ineffability of the truth; and, at least at this stage in my life, the lack of transmission skills. For example, this paragraph seems to have all the qualities of a sledgehammer when I'm trying to offer a whimsical panegyric on hispterdom in general. We shall move on, try and catch back up with the crazy vibe swings of the record.  

Vibes began with a Surf Rock, the mystical truth of Scooby Doo comes to me. Vibes kind of waned as the second song started. I glanced down at the track list on the record sleeve. Seated at my typewriter pondering the insane number of diacritics amongst the individual songs, how can I explain this? How can I express the inexpressible? Close your eyes for a moment. Actually, don't do that. 

Imagine that you are closing your eyes. Imagine that you are young and watching Scooby Doo. It is past your bedtime and your mother has been warning you for at least ten minutes that she will come turn the television off. Her threats increase in intensity with each and every twist and turn of the episode. The final commercial break comes at the worst opportunity ever. You can hear your mother's footsteps above you. They are walking slowly, ominously above you. Pacing. 

You don't want that new nerf gun on the commercial. You already have the Nickelodeon Magazine subscription. You do not care what Mork and Mindy or Happy Days are doing on Nick at Nite in five minutes. No, all you want to know who is behind the mystery at the abandoned amusement park, the recently haunted park, coinciding with some developer trying to buy it. You are understanding the odious and evil nature of the world. You must know the why behind the world's fall from grace that this particular episode encapsulates so well. Isn't that right, Shaggy?

You hear the door between the basement and the kitchen opening as Fred announces that the spook has been snagged by some simple contraption, even though the contraption (physical or metaphorical - take your pick) didn't work the way it was planned to. Just as you are about to see the why, to make sense of the evil and chaos your mother presses the power button on the remote control just as Fred unmasks the villain - who would have gotten away with it if not for those darn kids, by the way. You raise your voice to the sky, cast your protestations and pleadings at the ceiling fan, they are as likely to grant your petition as your mother. 

Who was the spook? You will forever think about it, but through the fog of time you will assume that you know, you will have seen all of the Scooby Doo episodes there are (of the original run), will you not? Surely you have seen them all? Thus, you must know who that particular spook is. But can you prove it? Can you put this question to bed? No. You cannot. You are now left with the choice of obtaining and rewatching every single episode of the original Scooby Doo knowing that you will have to watch from a scientific standpoint that will rob you of all enjoyment or to live with the gnawing doubt. That was the feeling I had when I had begun to review Gençlik İle Elele by Mustafa Özkent only to discover the graves, umlauts, palatal hooks, O My! That was the decision I faced. I am, in essence, scientifically rewatching Scooby Doo. 

As I was sitting in contemplation of the logistics associated with the diacritical madness the third song came on. I was immediately whisked away to Speed Racer. A smile stretched on my face as I felt the wind, sitting shotgun aside the titular character in his Mach 5. We were speeding through the record, digging the grooves together. Suddenly we saw a sign that said fork in the road. One way led to the eternal pastures of Saturday Morning cartoons. The other way led to the hairy Seventies' porno scene. We looked at the sign; then at each other. All I could say was, "Go, Speed Racer, go!" I'm still not sure which way I wanted him to take. Moral of the story, don't be so diactrical on the diacritics. Embrace the hipsterdom. Push the hipsterdom into dadjoke territory. You may lose a little shock value in reclaiming the irony.