The Mainly Annual EastWesterly Review / Postmodern Village Conference 2009

Notes on the 16th Annual Postmodern Village Conference and Hobo-Hagiography

By E.W. Wilder

Dolly DrosophilusThe Spectrumtaters: Genetic Engineering and the Coloration of Food, a Wheel of Confusion
by Dolly Drosophilus

Drosophilus's great triumph was the way her color-wheel visual aid electrolysized itself into being before our very eyes. Her attempt to write the whole paper using only the letters A, C, T, and G was a bit less of a success and wheeled us off to a place of puzzlement, but maybe that was her point.

Kurt Z. "Pappy" WeilThe Speculumtaters: Web Convergence, Sedentary Lifestyles, and Hardcore Porn, a Gynecological Exploration for Beginners
by Kurt Z. "Pappy" Weil

We were, amazingly for a family train, allowed to let the presentation of this paper proceed as planned. With high-speed Internet and HDTV quickly becoming one and the same, and old habits dying very hard indeed, Weil asserts the living room, like our conference room, will eventually become just as smut-filled as our offices are today. For anyone who has taken a basic biology class, this stuff is wholly old hat—but it'll never let us just lounge on the couch. Peering deep inside the womb of tomorrow reveals a reproduction of today, only with a glossier glisten of juicy detail.

P.T. LohanBiz and Teen: the Complexities of Marketing to Today's Young Person, a Complaint in Two Thousand Facebook Updates
by P.T. Lo-Han

Lo-Han tackles the problem of actually reaching an audience with an attention span of--. Wait. Wha? No, I'm totally writing this; I just need to answer this text real quick.

Wink W. FriedmanThe Signing Shitty on a Heel: Body Language as Subtle Sedition or Massaging the Market Into a Muddled Mess, a Therapy Session
by Wink W. Friedman

Sure, George W. Bush said all the right things about feeling bad for the dead soldiers and all that blah, blah, blah, but his fratboy posturing at the podium said otherwise. Likewise, Obama's rolled-sleeves evince a subtle, mocking unwillingness to do anything other than throw money at the collapsing economy. Friedman is able to point out what the sound-bite era refuses to acknowledge: wondrous words wimple in the wind blown off the slopes of the slouching shoulders of the set-for-life.

Lady UkukaUsage Errors as an Indication of the Looming Schwa Hegemony, an Extrapolation in 20 Edits
by Lada Ukuka

Just as our language has become over apostrophe'd, our speech has melted into basically one, single consonant, as written confusion between "then" and "than" evinces time and again. By projecting actual student errors on a SmartBoard and correcting them along with us, Ukaka turned us all into Holy Warriors of the Diction Brigade. The only thing lacking was a rousing rendition of "Kumbaya."

 

Papers from Train 5: Sunset Limited