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A FISH HEAD MORTUARY Publication
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AND D E T N .Y PRI R YOUNG I . D E USIV L M FO C R N O I F L T L KERS A A N L I P N H A T A INE IS ERVING AS ATIVE TH ONE Z E R L L C I S HR ER WI BUZZT UBLICATION D ANY OTH LABORATE MISSION AN EP S L’S N COL T I L I L S D I R N N T H O A R INAL T A Z K G I , Z R S R U O R O B N OF WRITE RE THEIR W AL LEVEL. O IONS I T T A C V E R B A L E OBS TO SH R ON A GLO ECTIC COL D N UN). A F L S E E T C H E H M T G O ES T AN ANO HOU V N T A E , H S Y E R O R A T IS TO P , COMMENT JUST HERE E ESS RK R R ’ O P E W Y T W R AR TUA ALLY R E R O M T (BU HEAD H ISSUU S I Y F B Y E HED B HED ONLIN QUEZ Z S I A L V B . T S PU PUBLI ELIZABETH D BY E T I D , U.S.A E A I N R LIFO A C , S MONS E L M E O G C N IVE T A LOS A NAL E O R I C T A A DER TERN N N I U 0 . D 4 CENSE MMERCIAL I L S I -CO ORK N W O S N I TH ENSE ION C T I L A T U ATTRIB
Awkward Cafe Moments 4 For Midas 6 Juan 8 Who Am I 10 What If 16 The Hours Before Midnight 18 The Raft 23 The Family Tree of Clownfish
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Black Boots Broke 28 Mister and Mister 28 valleyRealism 32 Meanwhile 40 Untitled Karen Black Meditation
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$ 46 When? 56 Reflections On My iPhone
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U.K.
dge, urbri
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Natha
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/ Sto / t t acke
awkward Cafe Moments Observations from the coffee house by Robin katz in Orlando, FL
day 12: A couple at the table next to me is breaking up, but my laptop hasn’t finished charging... make that a flat white to go
day 31: a loud patron describes every detail of the symptoms and treatment of her bladder infection.
one irish coffee please
day 09: The person in front of me in line ordered a Tall Java chip Frappacino, forgetting we’re in an actual cafe and not a starbucks I’ll have what she’s having
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6 Story: Danie l Mehrian // Brooklyn, NY
on,U.K. nd Lo // d il ch od Go Illustrations: Ruby
“got kicked out of his building for keeping piss jars.”
for Midas thing about him was you could always tell his victims apart. if he didn't scorch 'em he'd bring 'em back cleaner than ever, exfoliated after g-d knows wut else. not much history on him either. got booked once for bribing a gas station attendant for tips on discount bbq. got kicked out of his building for keeping piss jars. finally lip serviced a moderator enough to get a lifetime ban from a message board for artificial intelligence enthusiasts. moderator cited him for “repeated abusive comments and excessive references to something user refers to as ‘spirit intelligence.’" two days later he gets an email from a sympathetic lurker with an article she thinks he might enjoy. now, it's either a study or a film review, i haven’t read the full report yet, but he doesn’t mention it in the journal, and he doesn't mention the jars, either. in fact it doesn't seem like a journal of what he's done so much as what he'd like to do. last entry's got him yappin bout a son with a list names, all of em crossed out cept for Midas.
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''I did a pretty good drawing joke the other day cos they've got this xbox one out now and Kibbey was all like 'someone should draw an xbox Juan' so I drew an xbox Juan''
Josep
h Joh nston // Bo urnem outh, U.K.
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CAPTCHAS by Joseph Johnston CAPTCHA is an acronym for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart'. But seeing as they've started emoting, that's going to be a much harder distinction to make.
"Fuck, even in the future nothing works." Darth Helmet, Spaceballs I mean it was never really a piece or anything that has an idea behind it, I just thought it was a laugh. I have art though. I think. (Looks at art with quiet resentment.) (Art continues to drink beer whilst watching TV in its underwear.)
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Joseph
Johnston
//
Bournemouth,
U.K.
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Joseph
Johnston
//
Bournemouth,
U.K.
Laurie
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Ramsell
//
Stourbridge,
U.K.
Mary
Senyoga
//
Los
Angeles,
CA
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The Hours Before Midnight
by David Smart // Oxford, U.K.
Ten in the morning and I’d already made my way down into a daydream, which during term would be a luxury, but
anonymous autumn roads to the Natural History museum. had already become something to take for granted. It was None of the streets seemed to have names. Perhaps they Tim who eventually woke me. would again in the spring, but by early November most roads
“You must be thinking how bad it is of me to keep you
have already coalesced, lost beneath the grey-brown of flat waiting,” he said, taking a seat and adding, “Don’t write that wet leaves. The university buildings would soon go the same down.” way, but shaded grey-white from the snow, meaning late De-
cember.
“How’s it going?” I asked. “Rather well, rather well. I was thinking we might have
Term ended that week and students went home. brunch after the museum. Art always puts me in the mood
Christmas vacation always stripped the student population for food,” he said, probably intending to rhyme. down to a residential few, and now, as every year, the absence
“I thought this was the museum of Natural History.”
of so many left the town mute, like an after-after-party. It was
“Yes, but everyone over the age of ten comes for the
the same silence that, in a more optimistic mode, might be pictures in that back room. There’s some exhibition of Flordarling on the 24th which now washed over doorposts like entines on down the street, if we get bored.” He said it as though it were likely. “Then we could have brunch at the café
white spirit.
Why one would venture into town, late autumn, with beneath the University church.”
no students and no street names, was an uninvestigated phe-
“Depending on how you look at it,” he carried on, “I’ve
nomenon perhaps fit for an undergraduate sociology disser- had brunch either every day this term or not at all. I didn’t tation. All but a few acquaintances had gone away. My flat was have breakfast once before eleven. Today, this will be what mine and the remoteness of it was at least my remoteness. you would probably call lunch,” and he laughed. And it was this benign seclusion that at last drove me out into a remoteness I knew wasn’t mine.
I had no idea what this meant and stopped listening
until Tim got taken by the urge to stand and lead us in.
I was hungover. Tim, who I was now meeting at the
We turned the latch on the large oak doors of the
bench outside the museum, was one of the remaining few. museum front and stepped inside. The big glass skylights let But I was thinking of the deserters, the ‘friends’, the sacrificati, in dim natural light, the dusty smell of high pH levels settled getting their home-cooked meals, breakfast, lunch, ‘supper’, all my stomach. On another day I might have seen the room brought to them in bed. I realised, noting the date, that they as four cold walls, but for me, now, it was a sacred space of had put out their shoes before bed for St. Nick, indulging hangover cure. Also I spotted a water fountain in the coragain in the kitsch paganism of family Christmas.
ner of the room.
Out of term-time habit, I’d unthinkingly
Tim looked at me, wanting me to say ‘where
taken out my diary, to plan and review my day’s meetings. I are the pictures?’ as I walked toward the shining metal waconsidered writing to my parents. Thinking of them sent me ter fountain. It was one of those fountains that you see in
museums or cinemas that has a long bar instead of a but-
There was a twenty-something blonde inside, waiting for
ton or knob for getting the water out. I closed my eyes and
someone, probably us. She sat facing the window, sipping her
leaned in, pressing down from the shoulders on the plastic
whatever, now looking at us unblinkingly. Here I would have
bar. Taking in fresh water as gulps between breaths of woody just taken my leave as planned, but between the perceivable museum air, I decided this one was perfect. I rested there
rudeness of this and knowing my flat was only a 2 minute-
for nearly a minute, wondering why I’d ever drank anything
walk away, I forfeited my chance to cut out. I knew at that
else.
point I would have to passively go with.
I turned back toward Tim, who was now impatiently
pretending to look at the nearest case of non-passerine
We walked inside the café; it had no name for Tim
because he’d probably been there too many times and no
birds. Before I was nearer him than the fountain he began to name for me because I didn’t plan on going again. It looked like most cafés in the area except less of its food was
speak:
“Alright, let’s make a beeline for these pictures.You’re
cooked and every dish had a foreign name which probably
going to like them, they’re really something. I managed to
didn’t mean anything in the language it was meant to be. I
see them in a special tour put on for students in the Histo-
walked in the direction of the blonde. Tim seemed hesitant.
ry of Art department.” I reached him and we started walk-
ing. “We should get going though. We didn’t come to see
preference for window-facing?”
Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
‘Tim’s a fucking idiot,’ I thought. Dinosaurs are great.
in the window isn’t your girl then?”
I was ready to say my goodbyes after seeing some-
“I thought we’d sit in this direction. Do you have a “Wherever you want.” I paused. “I take it the blonde “No, no,” he said and brought me over to where he
thing to do with the plans for a recent extension to the mu- wanted to sit. seum and ‘artistic’ profiles of the builders who they couldn’t have done it without. We left.
There was nothing drawing me back to my flat. It was
clean.
I journeyed
on with Tim. He received a phone call. A female voice invited first, then convinced him to come to a new café, a Greek place unmistakably in the direction I would have already been headed.
The change to
Greek food visibly upset Tim. I hadn’t yet told him I wouldn’t be joining. We came into sight of the café.
19
“But she was giving you quite the visual exam, wasn’t she?”
came into the café.
he continued. “You should talk to her. I like to think I do
Tim perked up. He knew one of them, the blonder
quite well with blondes myself, but a different sort of blonde of the two. They were an odd couple, the blonde with a though. The ones with a bit more colour, perhaps a West
‘healthy glow’ and the other looking like Adams Family
Coast look...”
meets Crystal Castles. “Clarissa, what a lovely surprise. I had
no idea you were still in town.” He knew her from the hunt-
Tim talked about that until it was time to go up and
to order. I ordered coffee and Tim asked why I wasn’t eating. ing club or something. “I thought you’d be off minding the
“I’m not very hungry.”
dogs by now.”
He explained that he was ‘famished’. Embarrassed to
“I’ll actually be here for the vac” she said. The second
eat in front of someone who was ‘clearly starving himself’,
girl was mute with cropped black hair. Already she was star-
he offered to buy me a crêpe. “We’ll have to start you off
ing off into the distance, in an uncaring fashion, almost rude-
slowly. I take it you’ve heard of how many Holocaust refu-
ly. After two minutes of greeting and two more exchanging
gees died from eating normal food after being rescued by
platitudes, Clarissa got up to order and I excused myself to
the Allies….” I assured him I wasn’t as hungry as that.
smoke outside.
I stood there by the street and looked in. I looked at Tim
After some time sipping my coffee and watching Tim
spread yogurt mayonnaise on a piece of baguette, two girls
and Clarissa talking. He’d gone up to order more food leav-
ing the quiet one alone at our table. She gazed
ken agreement that this girl would go unnamed. Clarissa di-
off at the wall, which made it easy to look at
rected her words back to Tim, talking about her impromptu
her. I wanted to know why I hadn’t seen her
‘time-off’ in 2008. Tim’s laughter, at most, sounded ‘feigned’.
before and what her ‘deal’ was.
I was staring at the unnamed girl’s long neck and the
My coffee arrived and I went back in. This cropped hair at the base of her skull when she turned it in
was what I needed. I drank it and felt like talk-
my direction:
ing more and figuring out my life. Clarissa was
going to India after Christmas, and she mostly
the directness with which she said the words didn’t feel real.
said things about how she’d been there before
It was like how you’re spoken to in a dream.
when she was eighteen. She talked about it a
“Only if you smoke it with me,” I responded.
lot and the closest she came to a punch-line
We stepped out onto the pavement. I took one, lit it
was something she said about a man she met
and gave her the pack Drawing deep, I lit hers.
in Karala who claimed to have never experi-
enced the sensation of ‘cold’. I laughed at this.
to stare at her. She took out her phone, as though she had a
lot of things to check. I could see she wasn’t inhaling.
Clarissa carried on. The quiet one lis-
“Do you have a cigarette for me?” I saw her say it, but
As she smoked she mostly looked away, inviting me
tened less and less as her large eyes went
from Clarissa’s mouth to her face to her head,
distance, pushing what I believe was her baby in a pram. The
until she could only have been examining the
church bell rang once meaning one in the afternoon.
speaker’s hair for split ends. By extension, I
realized who this girl looks like: the statue
smoke.” And she looked at me and almost smiled when she
head from Barbara Kruger’s ‘Your Gaze Hits
said “Tim and Clarissa are just shit company.”
the Side of My Face’. Eventually her large eyes
closed as if to say ‘Oh God’.
went in.Tim was talking about what his father was going to
give him for a ‘first’ at Finals.“I wish I was cocky enough to
Tim became the focus of Clarissa’s talk-
The street was deserted except for a woman in the
“If you must know,” she began, “I don’t normally
I smiled, took a last drag, flicked away the end and
ing which can only be described as prattle.
ask for the car in advance.”
I asked the quiet one why she was still here--“I mean,
The other one came back in and at last I excused
in town, not this restaurant.”
myself:
“I’ve come down for the week,” she said. Her voice
“I’m off. I have to call my mother. Money issues.You
was placid and low-pitched. “I live in the city.” She sounded
know what I’m talking about,” I said, knowing full well he
older. ‘London girl,’ I thought, though I know now she isn’t
and Clarissa didn’t. The part about my mother and the
exactly that. Probably student-age but not at university.
money was true though, sort of—she’d agreed to give me
Maybe an artist.
the cost of a flight back for Christmas in cash. But also I
knew then (as I do now) that I wasn’t going to call her. It’s
Clarissa could feel that she wasn’t filling all the verbal
room at the table so she spoke up and started trying to en-
less strenuous to just wait. (The cheque arrived the next
gage me and the girl. “This one is terrible for me!” she said,
week).
gesturing at her. “In my first term, college had me rusticated
after I missed my fourth consecutive essay. When the princi-
the third in misery. I could feel her looking at me as I went.
I got up and walked out, leaving the two to talk and
pal rang me to ‘express her concern’ I was in a K-HOLE at this one’s parents’ flat.”
I began to wonder if they hadn’t made some unspo-
*
* * * *
21
I walked home. No people. No street names. My bike
“Drop everything. I have something for us to do
was there at the back, flat tyre, chain literally shining with
tonight, and better yet, the most horrendously good text
filth, like the once white window lintel above the back door.
you’ll’ve seen in ages.”
Living room. Alcohol. Records. Thought of writing
“I’m afraid I can’t afford to go out tonight, Tim. I’m still
grandma. Deciding against it. I thought about my parents in-
waiting for this cheque my parents are sending in place of a
stead and glazed over pretty quick after that.First staring at
plane ticket—“
the rug, then a long way through it, I knew I still didn’t want
to understand them or their love.
now. From Clarissa. It’s about you. It’s about life, strife, the
aesthetic moment—“
This was the first Christmas I’d spent away. And it
“This text is going to blow your mind. I got it just
gave me a pleasure which even then I knew was perverse,
“What are you talking about?” I cut off Tim for the
to imagine the quiet homely living-room, even lonelier than
first time in our short history of acquaintance.
where I was now, my mother, desperately imitating a parent,
“Well, technically it’s not about you. Where are you?”
holding the box of clay trinkets and
“Tim, I really can’t do anything
dusty orbs used to decorate that old
tonight, whatever it is.”
plastic Christmas tree. The little boy
“I’ll send you the text. Or the
who had incorrectly coloured the
highlights at least. This is a hot-
pre-school paper cut outs of purple
iron-striking type of situation.” Tim
Santa and orange bells was no longer
paused.
there to ritually hang them up as,
“Tim?”
even in early adulthood, he had per-
“Yeah yeah yeah, actually I’m at
ennially done. All that had been sweet
that bar up the road from yours.
before about that box, the pastoral
Or I think it’s up the road from
charm which grew in nostalgia each
yours. The former Catholic chapel
year, now took on a blank sadness. I
that’s been turned into a bar. How
could see my mother, solitary, putting
far is it from yours?”
up the decorations, stifling tears as
“It was Orthodox. ...Two minutes.
she thinks of the sound of her little
Maybe less. But, Tim, seriously—”
ones fighting over who puts them up
“You’re going to love this. It’s more
and which one places the angel on
about Celia. But also about you.”
top at the end. The sound becomes
“Who’s Celia.”
more and more distant from her: the indistinct noises of
daughter and sons crying or laughing beneath the tall green
one. She’s also rich, incidentally. It’s last orders here. I’m
tree, dying down until once again it’s just her in a dim room,
coming now. Put some clothes on,” and he hung up.
silent except for perhaps her own sobbing, alone except for
her own remoteness.
sers.
*
* * * *
“Celia’s Clarissa’s friend from today. The mute, pretty
He was strangely right about me not wearing trouThe bells rang twelve times as Tim, I imagined, came
I woke to a phone call from Tim. “Timothy.” I was groggy.
walking down the nameless road to my flat, grinning to him-
“How’s it going?”
self and gleeful, beneath a wet December sky.
way.
He spoke more quickly than usual or it seemed that
U.K. , h t emou
Finn
Ma
Bourn / / e rgri
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T h e F a m i l y T r e e o f C l o w n f i s h From the notebook
Clownfish, or Anemonefish, are born as males first and can later mature into females.
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When the clownfish mother dies, the father becomes the mother and the son becomes the father.
Mother
Father Father/Brother
of George Bills
Son
Second Son Mother
Father Mother
Father Mother Son
MIND BOGGLING!!
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Black Boots Broke Marissa Carter San
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Francisco,
CA
drowning
in
collecting
bed
along our
the
shells bed
and
socks
line
shore
on
fresh
knees
kiss collide like bed
the
as
fuzz
tide
if
collects
mocking
disrupts
can
the
in
sandcastle
belly
buttons
sand
anything
cold toes shelter we
a
search
stay
the
perimeter
for
here
for a long time drowning
in
bed
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Li
li
an
Go
od
ch
il
d
//
Lo
nd
on
,
U.
K.
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VALLEY 32
photographs by austin rosenberg
YREALISM
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Austin
Rosenberg
//
Los
Angeles,
CA
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Austin
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Rosenberg
//
Los
Angeles,
CA
BuzzThrill: Hey Austin, what made you want to start taking such bleak photos of the Valley? Austin: Well, I decided to take some photos of local stuff one day, and the interesting subjects were bleak. And everyone loved it, so I decided to make more albums. BuzzThrill: Was that also why you continued shooting black and white for the majority of it? Austin: Yeah, I always liked taking photographs in black and white, even as a kid. I love film. My camera is the one my mom gave me when I was 7 or 8--a simple Nikon 35mm from the 80s. It’s a fantastic camera, really sharp lens.
“this is the fakeout badge I’m gonna wear while shooting the next valley realism.”
BuzzThrill: Aside from your own personal taste, how would you justify your use of black and white film? Austin: The best way to justify shooting in black in white is by telling people that nothing else looks like the real thing. Digital hasn’t rendered film obsolete.You gotta tell people that, if they understand that it’s a complementary art form then they’ll be more comfortable with it.
experience the splendor 39
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K. . U on, d n o L / / len l A r Pete
Meanwhile...
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When I saw Easy Rider in revival at a theatre I was 15 and so nervous I could barely sit still without pitching into a violent hilarity at the very presence and energy of Jack Nicholson or what I found most hysterical: any degree of incoherence or confusion because I was not so much a person as a porous bag. I saw the film with my friend Mike and understood it as the satirical Thermopylae of several layers of potentiality and becoming, focusing the aspects of the male and sexual personae invoked even before the magisterial/apocalyptic orgy scene at the end featuring, of course, Karen Black. I had just begun to appreciate films as a sorcerer’s apprentice in the mimetic garden of pre-political immanence. Before I encountered the nowheres of Five Easy Pieces and Nashville I was in the nowhere of freshman year of high school and Karen Black was on the top of a list of fugitives I never found again along with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and the ballistics of a reclaimed dream whose splinters cover the road.
Drew B oston
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// Bro okly
n, NY
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CA , s e l e g os An L / / z que Liz Vaz
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$ “"On March 20th 2012, I flew into Brooklyn, NY, bought a van and tried to drive it with Daniel Mehrian to Los Angeles. We made it 2400 miles to Austin, TX where it tore a radiator hose and blew a gasket."�
jules suzdaltsev San francisco, CA 47
“
Hey Jules, if you could go on a roa "Nancy Reagan, TAKE THAT CORPORATE AMERICA. RIGHT
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ad trip with anyone who would it be?” GHT IN THE TENDERLOINS. 420 Smoke Weed Everyday"
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"Daniel wouldn’t let me see the porn stars and I had to fake like half an hour in the bathroom until they were supposed to show up but they were late and we had to get to Nashville. Saddest Day. But at least I captured this untouched original photo of black Jesus in Memphis."�
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"Then our van got stuck somewhere in Tennessee and some really nice southern gents pulled us out of the mud. AND BROUGHT US PLATES OF FOOD. WHAT?!"
"Basically, I was hoping I would have interesting experiences and I definitely did. Now, there’s no way that I could say that those experiences were necessarily worth the amount of money they took to create. It’s like buying a flat screen TV when you can’'t really afford one. Although that probably applies more to my euro trip where I got to gain information about the world and also information about myself but I don'’t know, I can’t say I'’m happy those experiences cost what they did either.”" -J.S.
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When I can be what you aren’t
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y
Ga b Di Zi
tt
i
//
Lo
s
An
ge
le
s,
CA
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Reflections On My iPhone James Draney // Los Angeles, CA
of stimulation, she argued. I believe that she was trying to tell me that true boredom has no object: in the 21st user always has something to be bored with. Another friend of mine once said that smoking weed ‘makes being bored so easy’. Perhaps one could say the same thing about the iPhone.
My Oxford American Dictionary contains several different
Smartphones and portable technology offer us a kind of
entries for the noun ‘Buzz’, two of which stand out to me. The
buzz wherever we go. This thesis is nothing new. There have
first entry defines the word as ‘an atmosphere of excitement and activity’, the second as ‘a feeling of excitement or euphoria’. The most common usage of the word seems to fall somewhere in between these two definitions. I, personally, associate a ‘buzz’ with a kind of excitement, with something active. The word is ineluctably bound up with a certain image: that of a bee, the very symbol of hyperactivity and productivity. Yet bees, in the words of David Foster Wallace, ‘have to move very fast in order to stay still’. So the first thing we realize about the noun ‘buzz’ is that is full of contradictions. When I think of getting a ‘buzz’ I think of that feeling that occurs somewhere between the second and third drinks: it is, in a way, a mixture of excitement and relaxation, of anticipation and stimulation, i.e. it is a feeling of craving. To be buzzed is to want more of whatever gave you that sensation in the first place. An old professor once made a sweeping generalization about my generation during a lecture. ‘You don’t know what it means to be bored’ she said to the group of us, all in our early twenties, born between the years 1985 and 1990. ‘Of course I know how it feels to be bored,’ I replied. I cited my almost daily retreat into the world of the internet, the place where I go when I feel like I have nothing to do (or when I have something that I need to do that I want to avoid). I accused her of having never lost herself in the abyss of social media, of spending hours clicking on pictures and links, of browsing Wikipedia or watching the first three seconds of dozens of different YouTube videos. Is this not the very picture of boredom?
been hundreds of books, essays, articles, editorials and films that express this very critique of the internet and technology. We are all painfully aware of our infantile relationship to these portable stimulation machines. What other function can Angry Birds possibly serve other than to distract, to take one out of the world, out of oneself and into a world of passive stimulation. We turn to the iPhone in times of need, yes, but
Her reply was a resounding and definite NO. This was not
we also reach in our pockets at the first sign of a few empty
true boredom because the computer provided one with a kind
seconds, at the prospect of terrifying boredom.
I want to offer up my own definition of ‘buzz’ here.
for grabbing our attention and holding onto it. The single
Let’s call it a kind of short, subtle and, most importantly,
most interesting aspect of Buzzfeed’s lists, for me, is their
addictive stimulation. A buzz begs for its own recreation,
ability to be so relatable.
which is exactly the kind of stimulation that the iPhone
“You don’t know what it means to be bored.”
and its apps give us.
Perhaps the most typical association that a member
Many of them are often addressed to a universal ‘You, the reader’ (e.g. ’14 Things You Can Say to Bisexual People that are Guaranteed to Annoy them’ or ’19 Reasons Kim Kelly is the High School Bad Girl You Wanted to Be’), which creates a false feeling of intimacy between the consumer and the computer. But its ingeniousness lies in its addictiveness. The
Byng
ability of a Buzzfeed list to make one keep going, to click on
Louise
//
Halesowen,
U.K.
of the millennial generation would make to the word ‘buzz’
enough combinations of .gif and text, could go on for hours.
more links, to crave more, is the hallmark of its success. This consumption of bite size bits of information, these just funny
This is a buzzing that prolongs our idleness. We have to move very fast in order to stay still.
This kind of buzz we get from Buzzfeed is a
paradoxical one. It creates a kind of active stillness in us, gives our boredom an object of attention. We are not quite is to the website that bears the word in its name. Buzzfeed
moving, not quite still. The name itself, Buzz-Feed, conveys
receives five and a half million unique visits every single
this idea of a constant stream, a feed, an endless pile of these
day. The website has attracted such attention because it has
nuggets of entertainment and distraction. Maybe what we
done the best possible job at distilling cocktails of interesting
need now is a different, better kind of buzz. Something that
facts, funny pictures and novelistic insights in the best, easiest
not only stimulates but enriches. Is such a thing possible?
possible format for quick digital digestion: the list.
Perhaps. But if it is, one certainly won’t find it with an app.
Buzzfeed’s lists are designed not only to entertain us,
but also to tap into a kind of ‘funny because it’s true’ recipe
! L L A C L L
RO
BUZZTH
RILL WO ULD
LIKE TO THANK CONTRI ALL IT’ BUTORS ’S , READE RS AND TOLERA TORS.
PETER ALLEN (P. 40) GEORGE BILLS (P. 26) DREW BOSTON (P. 44)) LOUISE BYNG (P. 60) MARISSA CARTER (P. 28) GABY DI ZITTI (P. 56) JAMES DRANEY (P.60) LILLIAN GOODCHILD (P. 30, 31) RUBY GOODCHILD (P. 6) NATHAN HACKETT (P. 4) JOSEPH JOHNSTON (P. 10) ROBIN KATZ (P. 5) FINN MARGRIE (P. 23) DANIEL MEHRIAN (P. 6) SAMUEL OSMOND (P. 8) LAURIE RAMSELL (P. 16) AUSTIN ROSENBERG (P. 32 - 39) MARY SENYONGA (P. 17) DAVID SMART (P. 18 - 22) JULES SUZDALTSEV (P. 46 - 55) ELIZABETH T. VAZQUEZ (P.2,3, 24, 25, 42, 43, 45, 58, 59)
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