By: A.J. Serrano When I was just eleven years old, I became an addict. I blame my parents for introducing me to the stuff. I was young and all those bright lights and sounds and colors blended together to create an intoxicatingly electrifying experience. Though the specifics are a bit hazy for me to recollect today, I can say this with clear-eyed assurance: after my parents … [Read more...] about Trailer Trash: When Soldiers Become Movie Stars
Trailer Trash: Why I Hate to Love the Oscars
By A.J. Serrano Last Tuesday morning, I choked on a spoonful of Quaker Oats Oatmeal Squares cereal. The culprit of my balanced breakfast-induced asphyxiation? The list of new nominees for the 2012 Academy Awards. The horrifyingly mediocre list of nominees plunged me into an immediate state of shock, so much so that, after clearing my wind pipe from its temporary discomfort, … [Read more...] about Trailer Trash: Why I Hate to Love the Oscars
Casual Labor
“Social participation is the oil of the digital economy.” – Trebor Scholz[1] “The consumer is sovereign in a jungle of ugliness, where the freedom of choice is imposed on him.” – Jean Baudrillard[2] Histories of Play and Labor In his short essay “Money for Nothing: Virtual Worlds and Virtual Economies,” Steven Shaviro traces what he sees as the historical trajectory … [Read more...] about Casual Labor
Gambling With Luck
“What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” - Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men In our daily lives, the most we bet on a coin toss is a couple of dollars or an embarrassing public act. We think it is a fair way to make an arbitrary decision: the coin has an equal probability of landing on heads or tails so we leave it up to chance to decide. Consequently, we associate … [Read more...] about Gambling With Luck
Trailer Trash: Train Wreck
A lonely night sky looms over a sleeping suburban town when, suddenly, a high-speed train interrupts the serene moment as it screams down the tracks. From the opposite direction, a pick-up truck smashes through a railroad-crossing gate and accelerates onto the tracks towards the oncoming train. What follows next is the most visually dazzling movie train wreck since Cecil B. … [Read more...] about Trailer Trash: Train Wreck