The Mainly Annual EastWesterly Review / Postmodern Village Conference 2009

American Idyll: Reality TV as the New Pastoralism, a Primer in Six Screeching Mediocrities
by Pedro Ritchie

Among the things I long ago stopped believing in is TV. Ritchie also kills my confidence in Pastoralism as a literary type (no matter how charming Montana looked out the windows) and quashes any intact bit of hope in the intellectual capacities of the American people I might still have retained. But then today's farms with their GPS-equipped quarter-million-dollar harvesting machines, have long ago leaped that shark right into the realms of the hyper-real.

The Message is the Massage: Subductive Transducers, the Kindle, and the Therapeutic Novel, a Thunderation in 300 Pages
by Marshall McClustax

McClustax, a licensed massage-therapist as well as a bass player, proved that mere cyber-convergence is so 2008. Literary license can be translated into good vibrations, and now curling up with a good book will take on a whole new meaning. With the passing of John Joseph Houghtaling, the inventor of the Magic Fingers, we're reminded that even the simplest of functions—reading, shaking, humming—can be made needlessly complex by the application of technology.

Origami Orgasms: Bibliophiles Enter the Phetish Phold, a NSA Hook-Up
by Stan Wankey

Stan Wankey has given a whore new meaning to the "pop-up" book.

Pie Can't Weight: the Obesity Epidemic and the Sizing of Nu Shooz, a Three-Part Harmonization in Intertextual Sartorialism(s)
by Waylene Jennie-Gregg

As if May Trixie Kaiser hadn't shown the arbitrary nature of numbers enough, Jennie-Gregg pops it up a notch, showing how Fashionistas, unable to actually get real people to narrow their bodies down to the designers' unreal specifications of waif-level emaciation, have just accepted things and fudged the numbers. If you'd ever wondered when 6 would become 9, now you know. It was also nice to have the paper sung, but the parade of heels was a bit distracting, especially for recovering legmen unused to the Paradigm of the Pulchritude of Pork.

Geekonomics: Get Rich if You're Square, or Self-Help for the Terminal Dork, a "Let's Do It!" Checklisp
By Huey Louis Gates, Jr.

Just when I'd stopped believing in Steve Urkel too, along comes Huey Louis Gates, Jr. to reinforce what we'd always suspected: staying in Calculus would yield great benefits after all. From Microsoft Bill to Apple Jobs, the career path for the hopelessly nerdy is still relatively obstacle-free, and Louis isn't afraid to tell us all how it's done—algorithmically, and therefore still impossible to you and me.