(Your soundtrack: "The Old Days" by Dr. Dog, free from Amazon.)

Remember the debate over what steampunk is doing if it's not offering a critique? Well, today Nostalgia: a Sport for the Privileged appeared at Racialicious. As someone who enjoys pulp and films noirs, this is something I've been grappling with quite a bit recently. (I also just read my first Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and there are still skid marks where my brain screeched to a halt after one of the characters said, so casually, n*****.) There's a supplement regarding the interwar period's racism, sexism, and homophobia in the works for Spirit of the Century, the pulp pickup role-playing game I like so much, but it is inescapably a privilege that my thinking beyond "More zeppelins! Gorilla piloting a biplane!" is, well, supplementary. (And on that note, I just bought the bitchingest straw fedora. Center crease with a front pinch, and none of that skinny brim nonsense.)

RM demonstrating business up top, party down below during the 06/09/09 show:

From Media Matters: ( 641×463 image ) And people ask me why I want to teach Intro.¹ Which I won't be any closer to doing unless I head back into the Stata mines. *sigh*

1. "By exposing the arbitrary character of the principles by which we unwittingly construct social life, we gain some measure of possibly shaping sociology, the university, society, and ultimately ourselves in ways that permit a greater space for human freedom." — David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, 254

Haven't done one of these in ages! It's no fun without inateacup. ( Reviews of three pumpkin ales )