Jess Nevins, on Yellow Peril Thrillers

The Yellow Peril figure has, without question, been a negative one in Western culture. As recent events involving American spy planes have shown, anti-Asian & anti-Chinese bias continues to remain close to the surface of the American psyche, over 80 years after the introduction of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. One of the most interesting [...]

Can the I Ching fix your sex life? Philip K. Dick has some insights…

It’s time to take another look at Philip K. Dick’s agonized coming-to-terms with the I Ching. He wrote his essay, Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes in 1965. It’s a forgotten classic of imaginative non-fiction. The essay we’re discussing below is available in the book The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick available from Vintage [...]

Reading by Numbers, Fiction by Aidan Doyle

Documentary evidence submitted during the trial of Michael Walker. Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 04:44 PM From: michaelwalker1260@pimail.com To: yuki_yamamoto@suuji.co.jp Subject: Reading By Numbers 1 – I met your mother in a number garden in Hokkaido. 2 – When I was 5830 days old I saw a news report about Professor Sujimoto. He had made [...]

Summer Wars: Review

The story concerns a boy whose summer job is in low level IT for the social networking system Oz, which handles absolutely everything in the entire world. The military uses it, every business uses it, and in its stunning, rainbow-riffic interface, we can see that it is ruled by two digitized whales, one pink and [...]

Video Game Music

Jeriaska’s tireless study of video game music has paid off–a series of clips from his documentary work covering the ins and outs of video game music can be experienced on http://www.jeriaska.com/blog/. Collapsed Desires DVD Trailer from Jeriaska on Vimeo.

Durian: You Say Disgusting, I Say Delicious?

The first time we ever encounter umami is in breast milk–for many of us, that’s the last direct encounter we have with this most obscure of the “five basic tastes”–its siblings are sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. It has the power to stimulate the reward centers of the brain–it triggers the release of serotonin–but still, [...]

Fashion Mongolia: Tsolmandakh Munkhuu

Queen Amidala’s attire has been the only recognizably Mongolian fashion icon for a decade, but Minkhuu’s startling black-skinned showing of her winter collection has people talking–usually about the ethics of the makeup, and not so much about the incorporation of the nomadic propensity for layers upon layers into high fashion. Most Mongolian designers have honored [...]

Art: Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

LGM: Are we heading toward a post-partisan world? Kenneth Tin Kin Hung: Compare the two US parties to Sweden’s “Pirate Party,” which won 7% of Swedish votes in the 2009 elections. I do hope one day we will live in a post-partisan world and that only works if the religious fundamentalism is completely detached from [...]

Besu-Boru: The Royale With Cheese of Baseball

By Eno Sarris. Eno Sarris is the creator and editor of enosarris.com, a site dedicated to exploring the anthropology of sports. [VINCENT] I know, baby, you’d dig it the most.. But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is? [JULES] What? [VINCENT] It’s the little differences. A lotta the same sh*# we got here, [...]

Travel: Vietnam (People of the Eye)

My prayers have been answered, Darling, and the time is approaching when you will accept the Religion of the Eye. You will see, just to the left of this writing, that the faith of Cao Dai has much in common with the unnecessarily surreal films I have always begged you to make with me. Do [...]