By Jim Miller
Her Heart Stopped for 6 hours. Now She’s Ready to go Back to Work
Fractured Forests Are Endangering Wildlife, Scientists Find
Killer Heat: US Cities’ Plans for Coming Heatwaves Fail to Protect the Vulnerable
Eight-Year-Old Girl Strip-Searched Before Visiting Father at Prison
No Sex in the Bunkbeds!: Tales from the Most Intimate Sharing Economy Start Up Yet
Google’s Anti-Worker Actions Evoke IBM’s Racist Past
This Has Been the Warmest Decade in Earth’s History
“I Feel So Bad for the Children”: N.C. Town Cancels Christmas Parades After Demands to Remove Confederate Groups
What Happens When Hermit Crabs Confuse Plastic Trash for Shells? An Avalanche of Death.
Advent Teaches Us that Hope Is Not a Cruel Joke
The NFL East Is Embarrassing Itself
Parenting in the Age of “Eco-Anxiety”: Wildfires, Fears, and a Deep Dread
Airbnb Rolls Out New Guest Standards in the Wake of Killings at Mansion
500 Homeless Families Go to the Head of Line for L.A. Housing Vouchers
San Francisco Travel Deal: Save on Rooms, Splurge on Puppy Cuddling
Is Sleeping on the Sidewalk a Constitutionally Protected Right?
UN Chief Warns of “Point of No Return” on Climate Change
No One Should Want Their Children to Live in This “Bleak” Future
Cool Showers Could Affect Balboa Park December Nights Celebration
Mother of Army Officer to be Deported After Request for Protection is Denied
Asylum-Seekers Who Crossed in Arizona Returned to Juarez
Flesh-Eating Bacteria Linked to Black Tar Heroin Kills 7 in San Diego County
California Woman Punches Mountain Lion in Attempt to Save Her Dog
Group Condemns “Soldier Santa” for Holding “God Bless America” Sign
Twitter Wants to Be the Town Square, It’s Also Grappling with Being a Cemetery
Rules of the Game: No Impeachment or political news. Scroll through news feeds from top to bottom picking stories that catch your eye, skipping at least several stories in between picks. Like Dos Passos’s montages in The Big Money which illustrated the tragic and trivial in random news clippings during the Depression era in a way that defamiliarized the dominant narratives of the day, a quick search beneath the current monofocus of the present corporate press captures the violence, absurdity, noir, and banal aspects of the world we live in — teetering on the brink of extinction as we futilely try to save our schnauzers from mountain lions.
Savage juxtapositions and unintentionally ironic threads emerge before your eyes.
God help us.
**In addition to Dos Passos, this bit of whimsy is also influenced by other avant-garde moments such as Dadaism, etc. that can be found in places such as A Book of Surrealist Games. Why engage? Perhaps in an era of institutionalized insanity, the best defense can sometimes be to playfully take a bit of poison as a kind of inoculation and spit it back out in the form of subversive mimicry. It might not change anything, but it can be useful as a survival tool.
Note: headlines taken from the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Fox News.
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