I’m going to start using this blog for something different.
As some of you know, I’m writing a novel. From now on, commas.tumblr.com will be primarily for snippets of writing that I’m working on and progress as I trudge toward completion.
Camp — Childish Gambino
7.5 out of 10
Click here to listen on Spotify.
Television writer, comedian, rapper, and apparent polymath Donald Glover brings a taste of his unique personality in his debut album, Camp. Once an English major at New York University, he’s become known after releasing a half-dozen EPs and mixtapes as his rapper alter-ego Childish Gambino for his nerdy, hipster-savvy similes and commentary. His excessive use of puns and literary allusions heralded by yours truly as the “rapper for English majors”.
This album lives up to the hype generated by last year’s EP and delivers a strong, albeit unbalanced, showing from the internet’s hero. He leans heavily on awkward and simplistic choruses between his oft-brilliant verses, an issue that’s developed into a growing problem since his early mixtapes. It’s not his singing voice which detracts from potentially-strong tracks, it’s the uncomfortable downshift into swooning which renders a few songs less than average.
Themes are the most inconsistent element, switching from songs about his childhood and his worry for his cousin’s future to hedonistic tracks about getting laid featuring lines like “I love pussy, I love bitches, dude I should be running PETA”. Nowhere is this more evident than between tracks “Kids” — a sentimental and nostalgic ballad about his youth — to “You See Me” — which is primarily about sex with Asian girls. Furthermore, the album’s final track ends with an extended monologue about an embarrassing childhood rejection — something completely unexpected from an album which discusses how much he loves Asian girls in nearly every song.
All in all, the cleverness throughout is enough to redeem a number of tracks, namely “Bonfire” and “Outside”, and keep one’s interest for the course of the album. Childish Gambino is unique in that one actually needs to pay attention to his lyrics (even occasionally consult Wikipedia) in order to get the full experience, and for this reason I couldn’t recommend him enough — to English majors with no aversion to vulgarity.
Should I be embarrassed that 99% of my posts are pictures of Thom Yorke?
I might start using Tumblr again, mostly for notes and snippets from my writing. I figure it might keep me honest and force me to keep moving forward with drafts.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
I’m expecting nothing less.
Windows 8, Now Without Windows
I have many thoughts about their new “Metro” style. Commentary to follow.
The Masoni Review: Circles, Lists, and the Fate of Diaspora
Similar to the updated privacy features I discussed in last month’s post, today Facebook announced a revamp of their Lists product with deeper integration into the News Feed and sharing as well as new automated lists for different groups of people.
Facebook Lists have been around for years,…
"Indeed! What regiment?"
What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.
Distressingly, and tragically, true.
The Masoni Review: Facebook+
Yesterday Facebook announced some sweeping privacy and control settings to its web interface, allowing users to better understand and manage the content they share or have shared about them. Among the additions:
You can choose to use the new tool to approve or reject any photo or post you…
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