By Isaac Handelman

The reason Sanders should be the Democratic nominee is this: The USA, for all that’s irrevocably fucked up about it, is the most dominant country in the world. Barely, sure, but still tops (by most of the innately flawed measures we have). That means that the President of the United States is certainly among, and probably is, the most prominent of Earth’s individual humans. So, whoever is President of the United States is automatically a very, very famous, public figure. Right now, that’s Donald Trump, which has led many Democrats to run away from the chance to select a steadfast progressive as their party’s nominee. The reasons for this running-away vary, and are largely influenced by our assumptions about how society must function based on the blip-in-eternity precedent that is modern political history. The following is, in my eyes, and dramatically oversimplified because I am not nearly articulate enough to type out an entire treatise on the Sanders cause, why Bernie Sanders is ...

Hidalgo licked the envelope lid, sealing it shut. He liked using envelopes; he still liked sending and receiving paper mail. He imagined the letter being picked up by a post carrier first thing in the morning as he strolled down the street to the post office. Hidalgo wondered how long it would be before he heard anything back. He wondered if he’d hear anything back at all. He betted, though, that he would. *** On Saturday, Theresa Hawkins decided to open the preceding week’s mail, which had been piling up on the countertop next to her bowl of pens. A few items in, she found herself grasping a manila business envelope from a company called Lipno Insurance. She had no dealings with this Lipno Insurance, so she threw the letter aside into her recycling bin, thinking it to be an advertisement or some such nonsense. Several weeks later, Theresa received a telephone call on her private cell. “Hello, is this Ms. Hawkins?” said a vaguely bored voice on the other end of the line. T...

As is often said, “The Children may grow old and die, but the Names stay the same.” A more accurate truism has never existed in popular discourse, and I proclaim that with the utmost pride. It was My first day on the Board, but I knew I needn’t be nervous. My many Grandfathers’ years of Accumulation had been in the service of My possession of this seat, and, My father perished, here I was at last. I was a Boardmember. I was now an Issuer of Decisions, not just a Beneficiary. Nor, of course, a helpless receiver of consequences. But need that even be said? I smiled softly to Myself as I burst through the Boardroom doors with a sudden and necessary confidence about Me. The other Boardmembers had already arrived. They sat on Their elevated seats, comfortably above the podium that marked the position of the coming Proctor. From the moment I entered They stared down at me. Their gazes were soft and unthreatening, for I was, of course, One of Them. Still, They were curious about thi...

Simultaneously the epitome of Marvel's hypercapitalist formula and a thrilling iteration of it, "Spider-Man: Far From Home" is, by and large, a highly enjoyable viewing experience. This entry finds Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and pals venturing to Europe for a school vacation. They end up lilypad-hopping across the continent in tandem with Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), inadvertently nicknamed Mysterio, who's presented as an extra-dimensional crusader attempting to combat some apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo. For good measure, Beck has pulled old friends Nick Fury and Maria Hill along for his ride which - surprise! - turns out to be quite deceitful. Interestingly, "From From Home" is aware of its own ludicrous blockbuster trappings. Beck is a cartoon megalomaniac, sure; Fury and Hill realize that, and acknowledge so on-screen in an amusing exchange. Other side-characters, like Peter’s hapless teachers (Martin Starr and J.B. Smoove), best friend Ned (Jacob Bata...

I am not a musician, but I would like to find my music. I would like to write my music. I want it to flow from me. I want to care, and I don’t want it to stop. I want to find my muse, or my amusement. I want to write my music. I don’t care much if others listen. I just want to find my music, and to write it. Is there a trick, or do I just need to stick with something? Will I start to care, will I get invested, if I stay invested? I don’t want to force it, but I don’t want to ignore it. I don’t know how to evoke it, or if it’s even there. If it’s not, I’d like to put it there. If I can’t find my music, I’d like to make it. To create it. I don’t know how, but I’ll try to figure it out. I sure don't want it to pass me by.

Sometimes opening a window helps. Otherwise, it can be suffocating. Serenade, sweetly. I think these things as I walk down the street, toward the place where the Goblin lives. That disgusting little man, that vile, unworthy scum… he revolts me. I have arranged to meet him. I regret this decision. Fee, fie, fo, fum. He sits under his bridge. Fuck him. That troll, that gross, gangly, ghastly, ghoul. I’d spit on him if I could. That would make the meeting an awkward pain, though. Imagine that, my spit, coating his face. A barrier between me and him. Perhaps that’d make it more bearable, I think to myself. I laugh to myself. I crinkle my nose and close my eyes, but the light still penetrates them. The street is wet. My shoes are wet. Soon, my socks will be wet. Then, my feet will get wet. And then I will be a soggy fuck, trodding flatly through these dull streets, uncomfortable, barely mobile, slowed by the stringy, soaking fabric between my sickly skin and the wet ground. I’ll ge...

I just made a mistake. I screwed up. It was my first chance to provide my camp with a major upgrade, something that might improve the livelihoods of my compatriots, those I’ve come to think of as my friends and family. Lured in by the promise of upgrades to my satchel, I opted to buy an expensive set of leather working tools, dropping around one hundred dollars from my personal savings (more than half of what I had accrued since the disastrous failed robbery) as well as the entirety of the camp’s collective funds on the endeavor. As soon as I’d made the purchase, I regretted it. Buyer’s remorse in a world without refunds. A simple reality dawned on me: I had just chosen to purchase a handful of tools in order to improve my satchel’s capacity to hold herbs, ammunition, food, and other assorted goods. I’d never been out roaming the frontier lands and wanted for extra space on my person before; rather, I had been seduced by the luxurious promise of an upgrade to my personal abilities. I c...

I am not qualified to speak about the “best” films of 2018, because I have seen only a tiny handful of the myriad, wonderful films that released this year. I wish this were not the case. I wish I could say I’d seen every worthy film, from Shoplifters to Eighth Grade , Sorry to Bother You to Leave No Trace . But the truth is, I haven’t. I am a student and a freelance writer, and I do not have the time nor the disposable income that would allow me have a comprehensive knowledge of 2018 in film; the films I have seen are disproportionately American. But I still would like to share my favorite films of the year, however incomplete my filmic experience has been, and however much my feelings might change as I continue to absorb 2018’s cinema in the new year. So, here is my woefully incomplete portrait of a year that, for all its political toxicity and global violence, at least offered up some great movies. I’ll be doing my best to add one new entry on each of the last five days of this...

This article contains relatively major spoilers for all seasons of 'Channel Zero'. Nick Acosta’s Channel Zero is a show with so much to offer. At its highest points, it's the scariest thing on television, probably by a long shot. It can be so adept at its get-under-your-skin-and-make-it-crawl approach so as to rival the most unsettling sequences in popular horror media. But then it goes off the rails. Off the deep end. It takes things too far, and instead of going lovably bonkers, it just gets boring. This is not an isolated occurrence — I'd argue that it's happened, to an extent, in every season of this underappreciated SyFy anthology series, each incarnation of which adapts a different creepypasta story from the dark corners of the web. In the first season, Candle Cove , a blood-curdling opening scene gives way to a genuinely chilling mystery surrounding a shady children's TV show and a creepy, clicky, child-snatching tooth monster... and then the toot...

One cannot separate the art from the artist; they are deeply intertwined. To understand why, consider this scenario: We choose to study the films of Roman Polanski in-depth, without considering the fact that, while in his forties, the director raped a thirteen year old girl. On the surface, the argument is simple: we wish only to consider the art, the form of the films, the narrative content and the thematic subtext. We do not wish to get caught up in the personal life of the artist, however egregious his actions might have been, because such a line of inquiry is not relevant to a survey of the art itself. But then, we should surely be able to teach a similar class on the visual art of Adolf Hitler, who was famously rejected from an art school years before overseeing the mass murder of more than 11 million innocent people. Of course, that would be impossible. With the weight that the name "Hitler" carries, how could one possibly teach a class on his art without address...

The point is that you can never ever run out of things to write about. Just let your hand go, and it will write something. If you put no blocker on it, no filter, and you have no criteria, and just write whatever is flying through your brain down on a piece of paper, or a wall, or a table, or whatever it is you’re writing on, you can’t possibly run out of things to write because your brain is always firing, there’s always something shooting through it, every fleeting moment from its formation until your death — your brain-death, that is. If your heart is beating but your brain is blank, you aren’t really alive, because you can’t write anymore. At that point, you have truly run out of ideas.

Is anyone still thinking about Harry Potter? For the better part of the seven elapsed years since the release of the eighth and final installment in the film franchise centered on The Boy Who Lived, I have not been. But obviously, the franchise still has plenty of ardent followers — the ones who are lining up for the midnight premiere of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, who have propelled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to dizzyingly successful heights in London and on Broadway, and who continue to fuel J.K. Rowling’s seemingly endless world construction on part-fan-site-part-universe-expansion Pottermore. I, however, have fallen out of the loop. In 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 entranced me. When it released, I was fourteen, about to begin high school, and nearing the tail end of a childhood that transpired very much in the midst of the Harry Potter phenomenon. To say that I was anything less than engulfed by the franchise for a majority of my youth...

If someone could create a pen that would never run out, I think I could entertain myself forever. When I run out of paper, I can write on walls and floors and ceilings. I can draw on them, too. Once I run out of those, I will start writing on the ground and the rocks and such. And before I run out of those, I will die. But the pen will not run out.

Hereditary , at its best moments, is chilling. It makes you feel cold inside, and it’s worthy of a ticket purchase for that horrifically unpleasant sensation alone. It’s imperfect. Sometimes, it gets stuck awkwardly between self-aware camp and progressive art-shock. It’s scary. Comparisons to the greats of the genre are inevitable. Hereditary welcomes them, and at its lower points embrace them a tad overzealously. But when the film is at its best, it’s shocking on its own terms. First time writer-director Avi Aster has a demented vision that results in what might be the most shocking, sustained, ten-plus-minute-stretch of sheer, cold-blooded horror that I’ve ever seen in a film. It comes early, though, and the holistic product isn’t as shocking, nor as innovative, nor as frightening, nor as capable of leaving a lasting impression, as those utterly bone-chilling ten-ish-minutes. But the surrounding film is so handily constructed - superbly acted, visually entrancing, and well-paced ...

It's back! That wonderful, freeing feeling That terrifying aimlessness The flip-flop, flowing river Can't help but breathe it in For the time being, it feels good And the moment matters The freedom to draw a cube on a piece of paper and to feel good about it; to think it's beautiful I am ignoring him now I don't care about what he's saying So I'm choosing to be free of it Regret is senseless, and I do my best to avoid it To breathe it out when it starts to creep back in Instead, I focus on the moment, And on what matters On shading the cube It matters to me

It’s easy to get caught up in the game, the game that chews you up and gurgles you and spits you out if you’re lucky. Realizing this, the piece did its best to avoid the big hand, the hand that rolled and craved, more than anything, for a landing on Boardwalk. An intense fear gripped the piece whenever this hand reached for it. It knew others endured the same frenzied flights away from the hand’s grasp. Some got swept up by it, and others hopped out of the way, but they were all afraid of it. It came as a relief, a tremendous blessing and a breath of calmness, to encounter another piece that shared the strong desire to get off the board altogether, to hop onto the floor and roll somewhere safe, down a vent or under a couch. Even being eaten by a dog or taken as cheese by a mouse might be preferable to the alternative. Annihilated by an overwhelming sense of dread, bursting with an energy inside it, the piece began to grow, and stubs sprouted from it, stubs that grew to limbs, lim...

The Mutterer sits muttering to himself, and biting his fingernails. He is a mangy beast, and his claws have grown jagged. He resides in a cave, in a hillside, and he mutters to himself all day. He mutters things like, “I want to leave this cave,” but the steep hillside always stops him before he can get far. So instead, he does things like listening to his heartbeat, and examining the patterns of stone formations on the walls and ceilings of his dwelling place. He breathes and sits and mutters. Speaking in full sentences, to others who listen for him to say something, is too hard, so instead he mutters. Muttering is, for him, freedom. A total lack of expectation. He says nothing, is content. Muttering to himself binds him and it frees him. It keeps him in his cave and it ensures his continuing comfort. He finds not much to complain about. He finds no desire to talk to anyone except himself. That is why muttering is enough for him. No one else would be as good at listening to what he m...

Chemicals drag us around. You can feel them coursing through you, when you stop and let it in. It’s a fibrous liquid, and it pulls at every part of you at all times. Stop trying, because it ends up dragging you everywhere. It is fate and physical control. Mock its power and it comes back to jerk you away. It’s a hell of a beast. Stop trying to do something different because it always does the same. It’s not bad, it shouldn’t make you feel bad. Stop trying, you’re trying too hard again. The right stimulus is impossible to find, so stop trying to find it and just go and let the movements occur. Light in all your fingertips and heavy in the chest. Gulping. Stare at the space between the point formed by your thumbs, and think about shapes for a minute or two, or ten or twenty. Start counting. Try to find calm. It’s a storm, and the ground is rocking. Crashing and thrusting its contents all about, dislodging that which it holds up. This is called perfection. Perfection is this. What you cre...