Gaming, rape culture, and how I stopped reading Penny Arcade

Lifestyle Features

To winter

Lines upon the death of the year

By JAMES PARKER | December 16, 2008

Lines upon the death of the year

Disreputable old man of the streets,
whose blackouts have corrupted all the clocks,
now is the heyday of your impropriety.
These hissing slums of ice about our feet
are yours — where wobblingly, in dampened socks,
we tread like drunks, though harrowed by sobriety.

Imagination shrinks. Who will remember
high autumn, in low-ceilinged mid December?
I curse this early dose of your abuse. It’s
winter already? Damn it, Massachusetts!

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[ 02/16 ] Chamberlin + Tan Vampires + Worried Well @ Empire Dine And Dance

[ 02/16 ] "Guyland: the Perilous World Where Boys Become Men" @ Bowdoin College

[ 02/16 ] Mary Halvorson + Chris Weisman @ Buoy Gallery

ARTICLES BY JAMES PARKER

BLACK SABBATH ARE BACK — IN PRINT AND ON FILM | November 14, 2011
The literature on Black Sabbath — already extensive — will continue to grow, as we try, try, try again to wrap our poor noggins around the irreducibly cosmic fact of this band.

REDISCOVERING METALLICA WITH A NEW BIO | August 26, 2011
Write the Lightning

REDISCOVERING METALLICA WITH A NEW BIO | August 24, 2011
That the biggest metal band in metal history should be called METALLICA — it's just so frigging metal .

REMEMBERING HÜSKER DÜ WITH TWO NEW BOOKS | June 09, 2011
"Readers of this book will be disappointed," declares Andrew Earles, rather sternly, in the introduction to his Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock (Voyageur Press), "if they hope to be rewarded with the gritty details of any band member's drug use."

A POET FACES THE ABYSS | June 08, 2011
Depression: the mind grapples — the culture grapples — to frame it. Serotonin hiccup? Existential banana-skin? Anger blow-back? Fall from grace?