Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

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On and off over the years I have heard rumors that John Joseph was in the process of writing a book about his life. When I have had the pleasure of talking to him in person, he has always sworn it was coming soon. Finally, last year it came out and I have to say it was one of the best books I read last year.

Joseph, the singer of the infamous New York City hardcore band the Cro-Mags, tells a tale of an awful, seriously heart breaking, childhood. By far this was the most compelling portion of the book; his stories of growing up bouncing from foster home to foster home and the abuse and alienation involved are both troubling and inspiring. I listened to Joseph’s audio book adaptation of this while running a lot last summer and it made me want to really push harder and harder and harder…

Many readers will want to skip ahead to his involvement with the eighties hardcore scene, and there is plenty of that. Stories about Bad Brains, trying to turn Ian Mackaye onto vegetarianism (people always forget Mackaye was pretty late on that…1985 I believe?), and hanging around people like Mackaye, Henry Rollins, and others are told well and offer some new insights plus a lot of material I already had heard before.

Joseph’s time in the Cro-Mags only takes up the end portion of the book. There have been so many conflicting stories/hearsay/etc about this band that it is hard to take anything without a large grain of salt. That said, I trust Joseph’s stories of being screwed over by managers, band members, and venues a lot more than, let’s say, other members of this band.

I listened to the audio version and according to others there is a lot more material in the printed version. Well worth your time.

Signifying Nothing is pretty much on hiatus, but I have been adding new content about once a month or so in the past year. A few show reviews and the story of how I came to embrace vegetarianism are among what I have uploaded recently. Hopefully I will continue to add content on occasion.

• Christy Dena’s insightful response to Jane McGonigal’s essay The Puppet Master Problem: Design For Real World, Mission-Based Gaming from the Second Person anthology.

• Michael Filas review of N. Katherine Hayles’ My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects & Literary Texts.

• Daniel Green reviews the new James Wood book in the new issue of Open Letters Monthly.

Meanwhile…

• The New Yorker piece on Obama’s early years in Chicago politics is another indicator he is just as scummy and slimy as the next politician. Making the right friends, the right votes, the right influences; you might counter by saying “that’s politics” but I say that if you take part in that crap, I blame you. I’d rather have no government than one filled with slimeballs. None of the above…yet again…in 2008.

• Alexander Solzhenitsyn recently passed away. When we moved to Manahawkin, I remember the first friend I made was reading The Gulag Archipelago at the time. We started to bond while discussing that and other books.

• Io9 offers a guide for fans of the modern Doctor Who series who wish to get into the classic series.

• Scott Esposito comments on the amazing ending of The Mill On The Floss and links to a review of the novel from a 1860 issue of The Atlantic.

• PETA still sucks as much as I remember.

Read in 2004: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.

There is yet another report out this weekend that the western meat eating diet cannot be sustained. Again I must implore humanity to consider veganism and a cruelty free lifestyle, not only for your own health but for the sake of our future.