WE HAVE OFFICIALLY BEEN BAFFLED

Issue # 15 of The Baffler is on discriminating newsstands here and there across the continent. It's just one of the many cool things that come out of Chicago (City of the Big Shoulders! Hog Butcher to the World!), along with Daniel Clowes, Mimi Smartypants, Baffler editor Thomas Frank and that small woman with the high voice who shows up on NPR. She wrote that book, Take the Cannoli (you know: "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli"), which was kind of like David Sedaris with a bit of the funny removed and historical depth applied to fill the funny hole. Sarah... Sarah... something. Damn. I refuse to google up her information. Vowell! Sarah Vowell! Hold on while I check... yup. I'm cool.

What's more interesting is what's not there: no contents, no slogan, absolutely no hint of what's inside. Just that photo and the magazine title (as well as issue number and price). This is clearly not meant to appeal to a wide audience; issue # 15 is meant for a small group of people who know what The Baffler is in the first place and know what to expect when they buy a copy. The cover reminds me of the McSweeney's aesthetic, which focuses on the sorts of images that can be found in a suburban household: bland Polaroid portraiture, ugly postcards, children's drawings, all the strange discarded waste images that drain their subjects of personality. McSweeney's # 4 was a box with fourteen or so stapled pamphlets, each one of which was a separate essay or story. The authors were given the opportunity to select the cover art for their piece, which McSweeney's faithfully reproduced in as ungainly a fashion as possible. The only exception was Haruki Murakami's story "Dabchick"; he didn't choose his own cover art, so the editors found somebody's family portrait, a blurry photo of people smiling at the camera at an old woman's birthday. The image had absolutely nothing to do with the story.

There's a weird resonance about these kinds of images, a remnant of their former meaning that makes us feel like we're intruding on other people's lives, as if we've broken into our neighbour's house to go through the junk in their attic. I'm not quite sure of how I feel about this aesthetic of camp ugliness. There's a smugness that I find difficult to like, a sense that the editors are putting something over on us. We look at the images and try to figure out what they could possibly mean. "Nothing to declare," they say, and we wave them through, wearily aware that they are laughing at us as they pass.

FROM VOLUME XI OF 'VERY SERIOUS COMPLAINTS TO THE DEPARTMENT OF POP MUSIC SUBVERSION'

Dear Mr. President:

I've listened carefully to the lyrics of Space Oddity, and I must confess to feelings of outrage. I demand that Mr. Bowie be removed immediately from the Space Program and given a 'safe' position behind a desk, where there's 'something he can do,' like wasting taxpayer money while writing ditties that disparage the awesome resources of our administration. Perhaps he can send emails on his 'tin can' of a workstation, and insult the government that way. 'Tin can,' indeed.

To Whom It May Concern:

On behalf of National Security I demand the immediate arrest of pop singer Rod Stewart. "Broken arrow," as military experts know, is the term for a nuclear missile that has landed in the hands of an enemy. Mr. Stewart's thinly veiled dramatization of selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists can only be met with the strongest possible response. I say that we should reunite Mr. Stewart with his close friends at Guantanamo Bay.

Dear Sirs:

Are you still allowing those singing Oompa-Loompas to run around with impugnity? When was the last time the State Department even attempted diplomatic relations with Oompa-Loompa Land? Every time I see them I feel like I'm going to wig out, man. I don't know. I'm gonna do something but I don't know what is, and the thing is, you gotta stop me before I do it. I'm just, I get pugnacious where those freaks are concerned.

parode - exode