Food for Thought With Sasha Grey

Sasha Grey at the First Thanksgiving
DD: Do you think it can be a really positive thing to do so much so young because you learn so much.
SG: Yeah, over the past few years my learning curve has been huge and sometimes people say, ‘Don’t you just want to be a normal 21-year-old and go party and have fun?’ No, I mean why do you think great artists of our time have always said youth is wasted on the young? I don’t want to be an old a person in regret and think I should have done this but I was off being lazy. There are enough mistakes we make as human beings anyway, so let the mistakes be real mistakes not chosen mistakes.
You know what? I think this is great advice. The rest of the interview isn’t bad either. (via Jezebel.)
Speaking of Sci-Fi
Today’s Hipsters, Tomorrow’s Asshats

Is Adbusters the single most obnoxious magazine on the face of the earth? If their articles matched their headlines, and their execution matched their ethics, they’d be a valuable cultural resource, as well as a kickass read. I would be willing to bet that on a checklist of political positions and beliefs, Adbusters and I would agree about 98% of the time. It’s not their politics I object to. It’s their holier-than-everything-all-the-time posturing, combined with the fact that their articles read like the diary entries of intelligent but under-achieving 8th graders. Also, their high-gloss “I went to design school but I’m still punkasfuck aren’t I please tell me I am oh tell me please” aesthetics. It’s Disneypunk, and I just can’t figure out how the people who produce it live with themselves, or why they don’t use all their energy to do something useful for the causes they champion, instead of striving to be the vapid polyanna incitement-jockeys of the blinders-on knees-jerking nobody-likes-you-and-there’s-a-good-reason-for-that Left.
When Tao lived here he had a free subscription, I think because he was in it once, and the issues still show up. I usually just let them pass me by, but I flipped through the most recent one because there was a cover story about the ubiquity of what we’ll call porno-culture, and I thought that might be worth reading (it’s also online). Boy was I ever wrong. See if you can get through the whole thing. I’ll wait here…
Tao Lin reveals American Apparel sponsorship a hoax

Tao lin reveals today that American Apparel has not actually sponsored Reader of Depressing Books:
1/22/2009
just kidding re 1/19/2009 post
*a rare opportunity to display your career management skills* in terms of my career as an author of literary fiction should i have put american apparel ads on my blog without getting paid by american apparel and then made a blog post saying american apparel had sponsored me and then changed my facebook status to ‘american apparel sponsored me: [link to the 1/19/2009 post]‘? answer yes or no then elaborate using 120 words or less in the comments section *a rare opportunity to display your career management skills*








