Slaminatrix

by Lisa Martinovic´

Now that the various Abu Ghriab commissions have finished their unseemly tap dance around the assignation of blame, it’s time to explore some of the subtler, far-reaching implications of the “scandal.”

Before Abu Ghraib, before Fallujah, in fact just weeks before the whole shock and awe campaign was to launch, came news of a preemptive strike–on memory. The stealth attack was initiated by clever scientists who thought not of a cure for infectious greed, or a vaccine against the plague of moral relativism, but instead prepared to market a pill that will help us forget what we cannot

Read more…

by Lisa Martinovic´

[Note to Readers:  I wrote this piece in the aftermath of the Bush v Gore election.  The names have changed, but the principles are true as ever.]

Normally, I keep my habit under control. I don’t start using till after noon; I never pull all-nighters any more. And I don’t touch the hard stuff at all, don’t even own a TV. Nothing stronger than NPR for me, no, sir. Except in the face of extraordinary circumstances, of course. Though I have strong ascetic tendencies, I’m still an American–an urban American in the 21st century where Information is King, Celebrity

Read more…

by Lisa Martinovic

If you haven’t leapt off your barstool cheering along with a couple hundred other poetry fans lately, well then you probably haven’t been to a Poetry Slam. The hippest and hottest new form of live entertainment has rejuvenated this ancient art, fused it with other genres such as hip-hop, stand-up comedy and dramatic monologue, and inspired vigorous debate—and some condemnation—in academic circles.

So what is a Poetry Slam? Described most simply, it is competitive performance poetry. Here’s how it works. First you write a poem. It could be an intense political rant against dot-com culture, a tender

Read more…

When an ACLU email directs you to a Stephen Colbert take on torture, you know it’s time to reassess the news-as-entertainment phenomenon. 

Colbert was riffing on the Justice Department memo advising the CIA that its agents could legally use waterboarding and other so-called harsh interrogation techniques if they had an “honest belief” that their actions did not cause severe pain—even if that belief was “unreasonable.”  Colbert has a gift for spinning conscience-shockers like this into satiric gold.  But is that a good thing?

At the level of our media saturated group-mind, political jibes, by their very ubiquity, make familiar

Read more…

by Lisa Martinovic

Like so many before me
losers and drunks
high-rollers, mobsters
actors and whores, like all of them
I am leaving Las Vegas today
and I thought I’d take the scenic route
see the desert, Joshua trees
but now it’s high noon
in Hellhole Gulch
and I’m sweating high caliber ammo
the heat is assaulting me
up from the pavement
down through the sunroof
but the hottest blaze of all is my internal
combustion — this

Read more…