We want you. Yeah, you, the one in the jersey. I couldn’t figure out why, but every fall, as financial institutions flock to campuses across the country for recruitment, emails filled the inboxes of student-athletes requesting their physically fit presences. The dozens of emails I received all started the same way: “Hi Bob,” the informality suggesting years of previous correspondence with...

  Before there were hipsters in faded t-shirts digging through garage sales for vintage tube amps, before kids swiped their grandparents record players to spin vinyl they bought at Urban Outfitters, before there was an Internet on which to have pissing contests about obscure bands, there was R. Stevie Moore. R. Stevie Moore has been writing and recording music since 1968....

  MISSING BRAINS!! PLEASE READ!! Missing: 200 human brains. Where: The University of Texas, Austin, TX. When: Sometime between the year 1987, when the brains were given to the university for research purposes, and this week, when it was announced that the brains were missing. How did the brains go missing? Unknown at this time. Whose brains? Dead inmates from the...

  When I was little, I was afraid of the woods and outer space. My still-forming suburban consciousness might have already known that my survival skills would be better suited to handling a long abandonment in the mall than 10 minutes alone in nature, or, god forbid, on a spaceship with Lance Bass. But space and the woods were also lumped...

“The word is now a virus” —William S. Burroughs Something deeply radical is pulsating under poet Christian Bök’s seemingly normal exterior, something that is belied by his blonde crew cut and crisp button-down shirt. With his mind-shattering Xenotext Experiment, Bök is set to catapult the esoteric realm of experimental poetry firmly into the minds of anyone with an interest in science,...

The earth can seem impenetrable, unexplainable, whether you are flipping through the pages of an earth science textbook or staring up at the face of the cliff you are about to climb. That cliff was once completely covered by the sea.The footholds you seek have been carved from the remnants of molten rock risen from deep inside the earth. I learned...

  To have been delighted by a jumpsuit. An unusual circumstance in which to find oneself, granted, and perhaps even an uncomfortable one, but not, as you can see, or rather as we can agree to be shown, an altogether unreasonable position. It’s not that the jumpsuit has any inherent advantages in respect to other garments. Indeed, having entered and then...

On November 1, Venezuelan electronic musician Arca released his debut album Xen, named for Arca’s alter ego, a genderless—though feminine—figure whom he first developed while a closeted child in Caracas. The album is unlike any of the vocal-heavy material Arca produced before, eschewing that familiar territory in favor of letting his machines speak for themselves. The album’s single, “Thievery,” is a...