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	<title>the avant guardian &#187; avant garde</title>
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	<link>http://theavantguardian.org</link>
	<description>the rabbit hole, with special sauce</description>
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		<title>video games as a scholarly study \/\/ or, &#8220;ugh, it&#8217;s a thin excuse, but what the hell&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/24/video-games-as-a-scholarly-study-or-ugh-its-a-thin-excuse-but-what-the-hell/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/24/video-games-as-a-scholarly-study-or-ugh-its-a-thin-excuse-but-what-the-hell/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:31:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>g.a. pantagruel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pop cult]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[academia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mass Effect 2]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video game studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video games]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=10946</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hello dear readers (even if you are hypothetical), I am a bad scholar. I am a slacker&#8230;Wait&#8230;maybe I&#8217;m  a forward thinking hemi-visionary? NO!! A SLACKER! But perhaps&#8230;(shifty eyes direct shifty hands to type in the web page for Dragon Age: Origins) *link not provided because, dammit, they have enough publicity, and i&#8217;m not being payed* Okay, what&#8217;s going on? That&#8217;s a perfectly reasonable question for anyone to ask. What&#8217;s going on here is a representation, albeit a somewhat poor one, of a real academic debate being played out in one poor soul&#8217;s actual, that is &#8216;real&#8217;, everyday life. It&#8217;s a pet-peeve/deadly-fear of mine, this persistently arising suspicion that my chosen profession has no relevance to the world and peoples lives. (I mean, does it &#8216;matter&#8217; in slightest that there are people that know that Dream Theater are quoting The Dead (from Dubliners) at the beginning of the first track on their 1994 album, Awake? Okay, no it doesn&#8217;t, that&#8217;s a simple one&#8230;let me think of something better&#8230;) Myself and some others of my profession that were probably also raised by socially conscientious parents have a bug up our butts about doing a job that will make some kind of difference [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/24/video-games-as-a-scholarly-study-or-ugh-its-a-thin-excuse-but-what-the-hell/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>blockbuster\/\/neon enthusiast</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/05/blockbusterneon-enthusiast/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/05/blockbusterneon-enthusiast/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:00:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>krupnick krupnick</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[impermanence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pop cult]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blockbuster]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[craigslist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[desperate times desperate measures]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jacob krupnick]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[long island]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[real estate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sad commerce]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sever the cucumber from the vine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=9520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I called the 800-number to inquire about the signage for sale. Could I purchase the letter K in exchange for a story? No, said the woman on the phone. They were all about to be sold. What kind of person was the buyer? Did he own a Blockbuster? What were his intentions with the light-up letters? After an uncomfortable pause, she said she that was all she knew about it. Could I speak to someone who knew about the matter more fully? She didn’t think that would be possible, and put me on hold. The same voice picked up a few seconds later and greeted me. I said: Oh hello, we just spoke. She said: No we didn’t. She blew her cover by making reference to something I’d just talked about with the previous woman. With caution and hesitation, she shared these facts: Her name was Andrea, and she worked for a national real estate agency which she would not reveal the name of. The Blockbuster in question was located somewhere on Long Island. The store had gone out of business months before, and the agency was selling the letters off “since times were tough.” The buyer was a neon enthusiast. [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/07/05/blockbusterneon-enthusiast/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>hooray! new pronouns!\/\/no, not that spivak</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/18/hooray-new-pronouns-no-not-that-spivak/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/18/hooray-new-pronouns-no-not-that-spivak/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:31:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>g.a. pantagruel</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pop cult]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[feminism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gender]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LambdaMOO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MOO/MUD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nick cave]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spivak pronouns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the creative life]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=4992</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“An artist&#8217;s duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.” Nick Cave Hello theoretical readers, I&#8217;m back after a loooong delay, apologies to those teeming masses of you that were waiting with baited breath, you can un-bait it now. I&#8217;m not sure what you were trying to catch with that, but you don&#8217;t need it anymore. So&#8230;Mr. Cave, what are the consequences of your statement for those of us that might take it seriously? I&#8217;m not talking about pop-music here; I generally end up talking &#8216;out of my ass&#8217; when I try to profess on pop music. What I do want to talk about is Cave&#8217;s suggestion that we attend to our creative, dreamy impulses. What does this mean for someone trying to be serious about using their intellectual work to &#8216;make a difference&#8217;, whatever that means&#8230; Case in point, an intriguing linguistic invention by the mathematician Michael Spivak. My personal introduction to the, perhaps erroneously named, Spivak pronouns was through the LambdaMoo online &#8216;game&#8217;. LambdaMOO allows players to select from a variety of genders when creating their avatars. There [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/18/hooray-new-pronouns-no-not-that-spivak/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>take the corporate option and shove it\/\/the 2010 vision festival unleashes the creative option</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/05/take-the-corporate-option-and-shove-itthe-2010-vision-festival-unleashes-the-creative-option/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/05/take-the-corporate-option-and-shove-itthe-2010-vision-festival-unleashes-the-creative-option/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>allography</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jazz]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=7490</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muhal Richard Abrams is to jazz like Ché Guevera was to revolution.  He never stops moving and he never stops imagining and striving towards the impossible.  It&#8217;s no wonder then that Abrams life work will be celebrated at this years Vision Festival.  For the last 15 years the Vision Festival has celebrated jazz greats while at the same time creating a venue that encourages pushing the boundaries of what is possible in jazz performance.  Over the course of his life, Abrams has worked as a performer, educator, composer and advocate for jazz music. For me, jazz stands as the paradigm for revolutionary performance.  As Terry Eagleton notes, &#8220;though each performer contributes to the greater good of the whole, [one] does so not by some grim-lipped self sacrifice, but simply by expressing [themselves].&#8221;  By becoming better at the thing [they] love, the jazz artist learns from and enhances the abilities of [their] co-performers.  If this isn&#8217;t a model for revolutionary activity, I don&#8217;t know what is!  A revolution occurs not because one person decides a revolution should occur, but because a group of people are driven to see the world as it might be, and not as it is.  One person [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/06/05/take-the-corporate-option-and-shove-itthe-2010-vision-festival-unleashes-the-creative-option/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>trains of thought</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/26/7291/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/26/7291/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 19:00:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ari gratch</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[caesar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[count basie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dresden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[einstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performative writing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[phoenix]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=7291</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The train of thought moves recklessly down the tracks.  It’s no wonder Einstein used a train to describe his theory of relativity.  By the time you get to the point you want to examine, the entire thing has found a new space and the present is no longer what is present. I’ll spend hours chasing a thought, wandering back through my head to figure out where what I’m thinking began to be thought. This began at Pfaff’s bar.  It moved quickly through the Harlem Renaissance stopping just a moment to remember Count Basie.  Say it ain’t so by Weezer creeps in there and for a moment I think that it doesn’t belong.  Then the Count comes back.  No, not that one, ah, ah, ah.  And I think of the man who gave him his name, or so it goes. Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin&#8217; daddies, Knock me your lobes, I came to lay Caesar out, Not to hip you to him. The bad jazz that a cat blows, Wails long after he&#8217;s cut out. Adaptation and adjustment.  It all brings to mind the fire bombing of Dresden.  So it goes, right?  We’ll send the damn place back to the Enlightenment.  Like [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/26/7291/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>bill hicks\/\/a t.a.g. obituary*</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/12/bill-hicksa-t-a-g-obituary/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/12/bill-hicksa-t-a-g-obituary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 May 2010 12:28:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>ari gratch</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bill hicks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[david letterman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pick up the gun]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=7013</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Look into his eyes.  He often called himself a little dark poet, but what he did with words was not exactly poetry.  The theme this week, Pick up the gun, was taken from one of Hicks&#8217; performances.  Every time Hicks got on stage, he knew he was picking up the gun, the gun that would give his enemy the justification he needed to kill the man in black.  Hicks knew it would happen, but he also knew that he had no other choice but to pick up the gun. So, what do you do in such a situation?  The poor shephard, worried for his life, tried to pick it up with enough time to at least get a shot off, but there&#8217;s never enough time.  If you have to pick up the gun, the only weapon you have is your words; you make the bastard who is going to shoot you regret the fact that they waited as long as they did.  That&#8217;s what Bill Hicks did every time he got on stage.  Well, every time but once. Living as he did on the cusp of popularity but always being just too risque, it was no surprise that Hicks was [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/05/12/bill-hicksa-t-a-g-obituary/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ rainbows and triangles, chelsea</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/10/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-rainbows-and-triangles-chelsea/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/10/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-rainbows-and-triangles-chelsea/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Apr 2010 03:53:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>rachel simhon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[photography]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poetry/ lit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pop cult]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chelsea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new york]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rainbow Pilgrimage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rainbows and Triangles]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=6511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Earlier this week on April 7 marked the one-year anniversary of a landmark moment: the City of New York announced that it would host the Rainbow Pilgrimage, a year-long celebration of the impact of the LGBT community on the history and culture of the city. Gay and lesbian travelers were urged to consider New York as an essential destination on their itinerary, and residents were equally encouraged to open their arms to the potential &#8220;pilgrims.&#8221; While the city certainly has a reputation for milking any opportunity for potential tourism, the Rainbow Pilgrimage was meant to commemorate another far less savory anniversary in the city: 40 years had passed since the infamous Stonewall Riots of 1969, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a popular West Village gay nightlife venue, revolted against the police who stormed in to arrest them. And amid the commotion of bottles breaking, sirens, and the mob of neighbors who joined against the police, the gay community sent the resonant, long-overdue message that if they couldn&#8217;t move heaven, they were going to raise hell. Decades later, the heart of the gay community has moved north to Chelsea, current home to most of the city&#8217;s galleries. Like most art lovers in the city, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/10/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-rainbows-and-triangles-chelsea/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>blutopia \/\/ wandering warriors?</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/08/blutopia-wandering-warriors/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/08/blutopia-wandering-warriors/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:00:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mfsandler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poetry/ lit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bessie smith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[black arts movement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[son house]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sonia sanchez]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=6508</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here in these dawning days of spring, one sometimes gets an itch to wander. Or to unwind reflecting on dark wintry days. So, blues poems for this week. To start things off, Sonia Sanchez, with &#8220;Blues&#8221;: &#8220;in the night in my half hour negro dreams i hear voices knocking at the door i see walls dripping screams up and down the halls won&#8217;t someone open the door for me? won&#8217;t some one schedule my sleep and don&#8217;t ask no questions? noise. like when he took me to his home away from home place and I died the long sought after death he&#8217;d planned for me. Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon and it overflowed the pot. and two days later when I was talking I started to grin. as everyone knows i am still grinning.&#8221; Sanchez is a poet of the Black Arts Movement, a sixties and seventies multimedia avant garde*, and she now teaches at Temple. The word &#8220;blues&#8221; names a style, form, practice, attitude, experience, and feeling. Funny now we think of it as a sort of nostalgic idiom, redolent of fields mostly all of us have never seen. &#8220;Blues&#8221; though are constantly new: hearing the whistle, [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/08/blutopia-wandering-warriors/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ miami poetry collective, miami</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/07/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-miami-poetry-collective-miami-2/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/07/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-miami-poetry-collective-miami-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:13:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>rachel simhon</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poetry/ lit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campbell mcgrath]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[josé martí]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[miami]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[miami poetry collective]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wynwood art walk]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=6480</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  What I love most about poetry is that it can happen anywhere. José Martí wrote poetry in exile from New York, Paris, Mexico City, and even from the battlefield on which he was killed. And while his oeuvre spans three continents, Cuba is the theme that winds through all of it like a never-ending thread, so much so that the first stanza of Marti&#8217;s love poem to &#8220;the land where palm trees grow&#8221; seasons the verse of the  classic &#8220;Guantanamera,&#8221; composed decades after his death. Poetry can happen anywhere. But what better a muse than the place a writer came of age? I am no Martí. Not even close. Even so, how could I help but feel a certain special kinship with a fellow writer, Cuban, expat, and political junkie who was even more obsessed with his birthplace than I am?  In the spirit of Martí, I&#8217;ll wax poetic about my own hometown. Miami makes the sun set in a mango sky, then brings a hurricane to blow away your house. Miami cleans up nicely enough to meet your grandparents for an early bird special, only to get car-jacked by crackheads in Carol City and cat-called over a cortadito on Calle Ocho. And after hitting every club on South [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/07/commodity-fetishism-gone-right-miami-poetry-collective-miami-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>why everyone loves josé martí \/\/ or are those the first accent aigues on theavantguardian?</title>
		<link>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/01/why-everyone-loves-jose-marti-or-are-those-the-first-accent-aigues-on-theavantguardian/</link>
		<comments>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/01/why-everyone-loves-jose-marti-or-are-those-the-first-accent-aigues-on-theavantguardian/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:11:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>mfsandler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[avant garde]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commodities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poetry/ lit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[josé martí]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[karl marx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[m.i.a.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ralph waldo emerson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[walt whitman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wyclef jean]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://theavantguardian.org/?p=6320</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Everyone likes Jose Martí. It&#8217;s taken me a long time to figure out why. You would think it would be easy, growing up in Miami, where you can find Martí tchotchkes, parks, monuments, etc., galore. But the thing is, Cuban exiles in Miami are pretty partisan, and so I couldn&#8217;t quite get my head around how they could claim Martí as a hero, at the same time as he&#8217;s claimed as a hero of the revolution by communists in Cuba proper. You see, he lived in the nineteenth century. The proletarian dictatorships of the twentieth century have not been sympathetic to the ideals of democracy. So carving out a life of advocacy for a democracy of the people looks much more like a hard contradiction now than it did then. But Martí reminds us that such a view was once possible, so Cuban-exile Republicans and Castro&#8217;s communists fight over his legacy. At any rate. There&#8217;s now a fine edition of Martí&#8217;s selected writings in English.  It offers a glimpse of his massive life (in a mere 42 years) as a journalist, activist, poet, and intellectual on several continents. It&#8217;s a judicious selection, since his collected works run to 27 volumes [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://theavantguardian.org/2010/04/01/why-everyone-loves-jose-marti-or-are-those-the-first-accent-aigues-on-theavantguardian/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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