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Baffler Archives: Odds and Ends

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Goblins’ List
January 13, 2013
The following list is a menu of proposed and completed projects that The Goblins, a masked musical group, provides to record labels interested in working with them. The superiority of this method, as opposed to the traditional “demo tape,” should be clear. The Goblins ...

Extreme Spreadsheet, Dude!
January 13, 2013
Excerpts from the prospectus for an initial public stock offering for VANS, a shoe and apparel company that caters to alienated suburban youth. As a result of [its] reputation, the Company has developed a strong brand image which the Company believes represents the ...

sucky.investment.com
January 13, 2013
Highlights from the prospectus for Wired’s (first, failed) IPO, filed May 30, 1996. Brought from the SEC’s website to Baffler readers courtesy of Doug Henwood. THE COMPANY Wired Ventures, Inc. (the “Company”) is a new kind of global, diversified media company engaged ...

Crazy Times Call for Repressive Organizations
January 13, 2013
Excerpts from Laborwatch, a monthly newsletter published by the Barens-Tate Consulting Group in Omaha, Nebraska: Read the Signs: Unusual Activity Portends Union Organizing Union organizing efforts come in all shapes, sizes—and degrees of stealth. Because unions vary ...

Strike City, Miss.
January 12, 2013
It’s not that far from Midnight, Mississippi or Panther Burn. All it’s got is a street sign that says Strike City Road. You would miss it if you weren’t headed to a wedding deep in the Delta and knew to turn off Highway 82 on a road flanked by bonfires. You ...

Music Lesson
January 10, 2013
On a Wednesday evening in June, 1935, a new radio series, “Robert Neal Presents Albie Snow and his Orchestra,” made its debut on the CBS network. Featuring a small jazz band combined with a classical woodwind quintet—flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and French horn—the ...

Semiotics Mailbag
September 23, 2012
  Dear Théophile: I went to the trade show with one of each of Magnus Bredenbek’s 41 classic types of business leader: a Facilitor, a Blamer, a Denier, an Opportunist, a Passive-Prevaricator, an Aggressive-Prevaricator, a Terroristic-Truculent, a Terroristic ...

Aeroflot ’93: Dispatch from Moscow
August 29, 2012
Aside from their obvious political consequences, the events of October 3 and 4 in Moscow also contained important meaning for students of pop culture. The primary target of the neo-Bolsheviks’ assault was the Ostankino complex, a television tower and revolving restaurant, from ...

Eulogy: Sun Ra
It would be nice to know that Sun Ra rests comfortably under the ground in North Philly, or wherever it is he’s buried. After all, on one steamed summer of ‘89 day in Lexington, Virginia, this definitive grand old man fixed my car, healed the crotchety engine of my ...

Semiotics Mailbag
August 22, 2012
Dear Théophile: A number of books of deconstructive literary criticism, which I very recently borrowed from the Regenstein Library, were recalled. As I never check my mail more than once every two weeks for fear of the inherently terroristic authority of the unexpected ...