#alex kazemi

[grandhotelabyss]

Five years ago, when "cancel culture" was at its height and books were being pulled from publication schedules due to social-media outrage campaigns, I proposed that publishers turn the controversies to their advantage using the old "Banned in Boston" technique.

This phrase refers to olden times, when the puritanical authorities in Boston were always proscribing material they found objectionable. (According to Wikipedia, they literally banned the Decameron. It's admittedly a pretty filthy book, but, as it's been in print since the 14th century, since before print, the Bostonians were a little late to the bonfire.) Publishers began to hope their products would be "Banned in Boston" since it promised to the public that their contents would be satisfyingly salacious.

And now we see a small-press book—with an extraordinarily ubiquitous publicity campaign; this guy's everywhere from Interview and Vanity Fair to the dissident-right culture podcasts—being marketed with "they forced me to have a content warning" and "the woke girls in the office almost staged a walkout." "Banned in Canada" would be a good selling point, too, though "Euthanized in Canada" might even be better: "My book's so dangerous, the doctor asked me if I'd ever considered MAiD!" Anyway, good to see that publishers and publicists have caught on at last. I wonder whether the book's any good...

(If Alex's indefatigable publicist is reading this, my email's in my bio in case you want to send me a review copy. Or in case you want to be my publicist, in the event that I can afford your services. I almost said "unlikely event," but Alex is a manifestor and would no doubt object to such a "limiting belief.")

[brainstormmood]

[ctbooks]

Boyz to Men: The Rumpus Interviews Alex Kazemi

by Miah Jeffra

Alex Kazemi’s novel New Millennium Boyz (Permuted Press, 2023) is a divisive book. It may piss you off, may offend you, may have you nodding your head to its reality-TV reality, a hazily self-reflexive gesture of the early millennium’s particular brand of pop culture consciousness. Heavily dialogical and uniquely sparse in reflective voice—despite being written from teen Brad Sela’s perspective—the novel reads more like a screenplay stitched together by saturated scenes of suburban banality and angst, largely concerning Brad’s troubling friendship with goth-kid Lusif and emo-stoner Shane. There is so much violent, racist and sexist overtone to the three teens’ interactions that it feels like we’re watching a mashup of The Doom Generation and Beavis and Butthead. Think Brett Easton Ellis. Think Larry Clark. Think deeply unsettling, especially as readers influenced and informed by the last two decades forced to look back. 

Born, raised and currently living in the Vancouver area, Kazemi began working in the fashion and music industry at 15, and emerged as a pop culture journalist, working for Dazed, King Kong and Prim, among others. His early experience inhabiting this—as Kazemi calls—“post-empire world” clearly influences the novel, flooded with sharp critiques and observations of Y2K music, from Blink 182 to Fiona Apple, backdropped by the popularization of the internet and reality-TV. 

New Millennium Boyz serves to indict our recent past as a caustic soup of creative expression, cynicism and techno-reality, a Baudrillard-ian horror film where the characters won’t stop watching themselves, and through gritted teeth simultaneously implore the reader, have we changed all that much? Using our current techno-reality, Kazemi and I chatted over Zoom to explore this question.

* * *

The Rumpus: We obviously see your knowledge of music and culture and fashion all over this book. Why did you decide that you needed to write this story as a novel?

Alex Kazemi: When I was 18, I started writing notes. I uploaded the first 50 pages onto Tumblr and a lot of teenagers really resonated with it. I got a lot of messages and, as viral as things could go in 2013, it did. It wasn't initially concerning style or aesthetic or anything. I was only taking from what I knew back then. As I grew up, however, the meanings of those initial pages changed. I lost a certain innocence.

As the world became crazier, as my 20s became more turbulent, there were more intense emotions that I wanted to explore. I had to grow, practice, change, and evolve. This book is so different from the original Tumblr manuscript, but the reason it was a novel was because that's just what felt right.

Rumpus: In several moments in the novel, the dialogue runs together so much that you don't even know who's speaking. The characters blur. Why?

Kazemi: I remember working with my editor on the locker room scene where the boys are talking about girls and porn. I was like, “I have to include speaker indicators.” They're like, “No, because all the boys are just the same in the scene. They're all amorphous, facets of the extreme teen-boy experience.” I think that in that era—maybe every era—there were so many mixed messages of what it means to be a boy, what masculinity meant, the violence of it, that’s not explored much in art.

Rumpus: Why do you have it set right at the dawn of the millennium?

Kazemi: I was perplexed and fascinated by our culture becoming so obsessed with Y2K. I wanted to unmask the corporate, buzz-feed-type nostalgia for that era and create more of a gritty, voyeuristic version of teen-hood. What if we take the voice from American Pie and explore the darker aspects of that world? I wanted to show that these themes that we're dealing with currently in our culture, of hyper reality and the Internet age, emerged back then. 

Rumpus: You're very interested in the consumerism that is bound in this hypermediated society. Do you feel like we were worse off 20 years ago than we are now?

Kazemi: I often think about this. We look at Gen Z, who are so openly queer, openly celebrating their POC-ness, anything that makes them different. And then we rewind twenty years ago and it looks like we are now better off. How have we been able to make that progress if we didn't have social media, if technology didn't accelerate in the way it did? I don't know the answer to that. But it's often something I think about. I think maybe in certain ways we were more intelligent about our moderation around screen time. You open a magazine, and eventually it ends, right? An Instagram feed doesn't end. A TikTok feed doesn't end.

Rumpus: Do you feel like that is one of the functions of all the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the characters in your novel, for us to look back twenty years ago and see how far we've come?

Kazemi: I particularly made the characters like that to show what the culture amongst white men was encouraging at the time. It’s definitely not a celebration of it, but more so holding up a mirror to how those issues were presented in that time period. Twenty years later we're supposed to look at it and be like, “Holy fuck, this is how people talked. This was normal. Why was it like that? And why did we allow it to be like that? And why did we associate it with creative freedom?” 

Rumpus: So, you’re suggesting media of the time was packaged in this effort to celebrate creative freedom, when in fact, it seemed to indulge in aspects of our own culture’s hatred?

Kazemi: If kids are listening to Adam Carolla on Love Line and he says something objectionable, they don’t have the clear ability to critique it like we do now. They were inside of it. They were participating in the culture. For us to say that our media doesn't encourage certain impulses in us is just absurd. Of course, we can't control who is consuming the media. I'm not saying violent movies creates school shooters, but I'm saying there are unwell people who are not equipped to handle this content, and it can unfold into madness.

Rumpus: One of those examples would be the protagonist, Brad? 

Kazemi: Brad is in this masochistic male friendship [with Lusif], yet he also fears losing him. A level of trauma bonding.

Rumpus: Do you think that is born of some desperate need for young males to share intimacy, that they would let someone like Lusif abuse them, because at least they were experiencing an intimacy with another male, without reproach, that isn't fostered in our culture?

Kazemi: Absolutely. I think that these young men who, for instance, pledge a frat are really looking for a shared intimacy amongst other men. They're desperate for communication and physical intimacy that feels safe for them and their sexuality. Brad was so intimacy-starved that he would let someone bad like Lusif into his life. I think boys in our culture are in that state of starvation a lot, and that's pretty scary to think of what they're capable of doing in that malnourished state. I was trying to display the way teenage boys have to manage being a good boy to their family while behind the scenes they have all these unresolved feelings around sex and violence and drugs. They're this weird, netherworld creature that's not a boy, not a man, managing this middle-space. They are processing a lot of unresolved sexual energy. It's something that is provoking a very extreme reaction in readers, which is so weird to me because I never predicted that. I definitely have a better understanding of the prose that most people like, and I don't think I went the traditional route.

Rumpus: You averted the traditional route by being so heavily dialogical without much access to Brad’s interiority?

Kazemi: That's interesting because a lot of people say that's a lot of telling. But it's fucked up because in my head, I was like, “Oh, I'm showing their reality. I'm almost creating reality TV, setting it up with minimum imagery, and then getting to watch the conversation.”

Rumpus: Maybe these critics are summoning classic tropes of storytelling when reviewing this book. I think what you said resonates with me. The book mirrors the reality television narrative. Minimal situation and lots of dialogue and reaction.

Kazemi: There are these moments of suburban romanticism in our culture, of hanging out in the 7-Eleven parking lot, smoking—American rites of passages that would resonate with the typical Total Request Live watcher. I definitely did try to create those tiny moments of suburban claustrophobia. The book resembles a three- to four-hour nineties teen movie. It's like an extended cut. I'm shocked that I did it and also that I was so insistent with my publisher to stay true to my vision. Obviously, it's not something I want to do again, this type of style, but it is a bit jarring.

Rumpus: You say you're probably not going to write a novel like this again. Do you have another project on the horizon?

Kazemi: I definitely have ideas, but much like the Madonna school, I'm all about reinvention, thinking of different ways to tell stories. I want to stay in the novel medium and I want to write more books, but I have to figure out what comfort zone I’m going to push against next. ________________________________________ Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac and the novel American Gospel. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches creative writing and decolonial studies at Sonoma State University.

[therumpus]

Boyz to Men: The Rumpus Interviews Alex Kazemi

by Miah Jeffra

Alex Kazemi’s novel New Millennium Boyz (Permuted Press, 2023) is a divisive book. It may piss you off, may offend you, may have you nodding your head to its reality-TV reality, a hazily self-reflexive gesture of the early millennium’s particular brand of pop culture consciousness. Heavily dialogical and uniquely sparse in reflective voice—despite being written from teen Brad Sela’s perspective—the novel reads more like a screenplay stitched together by saturated scenes of suburban banality and angst, largely concerning Brad’s troubling friendship with goth-kid Lusif and emo-stoner Shane. There is so much violent, racist and sexist overtone to the three teens’ interactions that it feels like we’re watching a mashup of The Doom Generation and Beavis and Butthead. Think Brett Easton Ellis. Think Larry Clark. Think deeply unsettling, especially as readers influenced and informed by the last two decades forced to look back. 

Born, raised and currently living in the Vancouver area, Kazemi began working in the fashion and music industry at 15, and emerged as a pop culture journalist, working for Dazed, King Kong and Prim, among others. His early experience inhabiting this—as Kazemi calls—“post-empire world” clearly influences the novel, flooded with sharp critiques and observations of Y2K music, from Blink 182 to Fiona Apple, backdropped by the popularization of the internet and reality-TV. 

New Millennium Boyz serves to indict our recent past as a caustic soup of creative expression, cynicism and techno-reality, a Baudrillard-ian horror film where the characters won’t stop watching themselves, and through gritted teeth simultaneously implore the reader, have we changed all that much? Using our current techno-reality, Kazemi and I chatted over Zoom to explore this question.

* * *

The Rumpus: We obviously see your knowledge of music and culture and fashion all over this book. Why did you decide that you needed to write this story as a novel?

Alex Kazemi: When I was 18, I started writing notes. I uploaded the first 50 pages onto Tumblr and a lot of teenagers really resonated with it. I got a lot of messages and, as viral as things could go in 2013, it did. It wasn't initially concerning style or aesthetic or anything. I was only taking from what I knew back then. As I grew up, however, the meanings of those initial pages changed. I lost a certain innocence.

As the world became crazier, as my 20s became more turbulent, there were more intense emotions that I wanted to explore. I had to grow, practice, change, and evolve. This book is so different from the original Tumblr manuscript, but the reason it was a novel was because that's just what felt right.

Rumpus: In several moments in the novel, the dialogue runs together so much that you don't even know who's speaking. The characters blur. Why?

Kazemi: I remember working with my editor on the locker room scene where the boys are talking about girls and porn. I was like, “I have to include speaker indicators.” They're like, “No, because all the boys are just the same in the scene. They're all amorphous, facets of the extreme teen-boy experience.” I think that in that era—maybe every era—there were so many mixed messages of what it means to be a boy, what masculinity meant, the violence of it, that’s not explored much in art.

Rumpus: Why do you have it set right at the dawn of the millennium?

Kazemi: I was perplexed and fascinated by our culture becoming so obsessed with Y2K. I wanted to unmask the corporate, buzz-feed-type nostalgia for that era and create more of a gritty, voyeuristic version of teen-hood. What if we take the voice from American Pie and explore the darker aspects of that world? I wanted to show that these themes that we're dealing with currently in our culture, of hyper reality and the Internet age, emerged back then. 

Rumpus: You're very interested in the consumerism that is bound in this hypermediated society. Do you feel like we were worse off 20 years ago than we are now?

Kazemi: I often think about this. We look at Gen Z, who are so openly queer, openly celebrating their POC-ness, anything that makes them different. And then we rewind twenty years ago and it looks like we are now better off. How have we been able to make that progress if we didn't have social media, if technology didn't accelerate in the way it did? I don't know the answer to that. But it's often something I think about. I think maybe in certain ways we were more intelligent about our moderation around screen time. You open a magazine, and eventually it ends, right? An Instagram feed doesn't end. A TikTok feed doesn't end.

Rumpus: Do you feel like that is one of the functions of all the sexism, the racism, the homophobia of the characters in your novel, for us to look back twenty years ago and see how far we've come?

Kazemi: I particularly made the characters like that to show what the culture amongst white men was encouraging at the time. It’s definitely not a celebration of it, but more so holding up a mirror to how those issues were presented in that time period. Twenty years later we're supposed to look at it and be like, “Holy fuck, this is how people talked. This was normal. Why was it like that? And why did we allow it to be like that? And why did we associate it with creative freedom?” 

Rumpus: So, you’re suggesting media of the time was packaged in this effort to celebrate creative freedom, when in fact, it seemed to indulge in aspects of our own culture’s hatred?

Kazemi: If kids are listening to Adam Carolla on Love Line and he says something objectionable, they don’t have the clear ability to critique it like we do now. They were inside of it. They were participating in the culture. For us to say that our media doesn't encourage certain impulses in us is just absurd. Of course, we can't control who is consuming the media. I'm not saying violent movies creates school shooters, but I'm saying there are unwell people who are not equipped to handle this content, and it can unfold into madness.

Rumpus: One of those examples would be the protagonist, Brad? 

Kazemi: Brad is in this masochistic male friendship [with Lusif], yet he also fears losing him. A level of trauma bonding.

Rumpus: Do you think that is born of some desperate need for young males to share intimacy, that they would let someone like Lusif abuse them, because at least they were experiencing an intimacy with another male, without reproach, that isn't fostered in our culture?

Kazemi: Absolutely. I think that these young men who, for instance, pledge a frat are really looking for a shared intimacy amongst other men. They're desperate for communication and physical intimacy that feels safe for them and their sexuality. Brad was so intimacy-starved that he would let someone bad like Lusif into his life. I think boys in our culture are in that state of starvation a lot, and that's pretty scary to think of what they're capable of doing in that malnourished state. I was trying to display the way teenage boys have to manage being a good boy to their family while behind the scenes they have all these unresolved feelings around sex and violence and drugs. They're this weird, netherworld creature that's not a boy, not a man, managing this middle-space. They are processing a lot of unresolved sexual energy. It's something that is provoking a very extreme reaction in readers, which is so weird to me because I never predicted that. I definitely have a better understanding of the prose that most people like, and I don't think I went the traditional route.

Rumpus: You averted the traditional route by being so heavily dialogical without much access to Brad’s interiority?

Kazemi: That's interesting because a lot of people say that's a lot of telling. But it's fucked up because in my head, I was like, “Oh, I'm showing their reality. I'm almost creating reality TV, setting it up with minimum imagery, and then getting to watch the conversation.”

Rumpus: Maybe these critics are summoning classic tropes of storytelling when reviewing this book. I think what you said resonates with me. The book mirrors the reality television narrative. Minimal situation and lots of dialogue and reaction.

Kazemi: There are these moments of suburban romanticism in our culture, of hanging out in the 7-Eleven parking lot, smoking—American rites of passages that would resonate with the typical Total Request Live watcher. I definitely did try to create those tiny moments of suburban claustrophobia. The book resembles a three- to four-hour nineties teen movie. It's like an extended cut. I'm shocked that I did it and also that I was so insistent with my publisher to stay true to my vision. Obviously, it's not something I want to do again, this type of style, but it is a bit jarring.

Rumpus: You say you're probably not going to write a novel like this again. Do you have another project on the horizon?

Kazemi: I definitely have ideas, but much like the Madonna school, I'm all about reinvention, thinking of different ways to tell stories. I want to stay in the novel medium and I want to write more books, but I have to figure out what comfort zone I’m going to push against next. ________________________________________ Miah Jeffra is author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac and the novel American Gospel. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches creative writing and decolonial studies at Sonoma State University.

[scumgristle]

Really good essay about a book I have no desire to read.

really starting to feel like that part in Inside Lewyn Davis where he starts screaming “I HATE FOLK MUSIC”, just replace “FOLK MUSIC” with “TRANSGRESSIVE LITERATURE”.

[the1975attheirverybest]

Is Matty paying these big update accounts I’m crying 😭 No way Pop Crave just tweeted about Bret Easton Ellis and Alex Kazemi praising Matty’s performance art on a podcast.

I joked about it the other day when they shared that photo almost immediately but now I’m so serious. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit but if this is promo it’s genius because these are the same accounts that have been spreading misinformation and putting his personal life on blast for months. True redemption arc lets gooo

Idk. Could be. Could just be that they’re trying to get in on the interest that’s about to come with this new tour. Glad he got a compliment from BEE though. He’s like one of his heroes from back in the day. Happy for him 🥹

[atomicarcanas]

Book Review: Pop Magick by Alex Kazemi

“Pop Magick” by author Alex Kazemi, is a captivating work that offers a unique perspective on the intriguing intersection between popular culture and the realm of magick. Drawing from disciplines such as semiotics and cultural studies, Kazemi unveils hidden layers of meaning within pop culture icons, music lyrics, visual artistry, filmography, fashion trends, and more. He carefully examines how…

[maddiviner]

[Book Review] Pop Magick, by Alex Kazemi

The author spends an awful lot of time discussing his own magical triumphs and the interesting life magic gives him. With that, too, we see a bit of lifestyle editorializing on the subject of things like drug use and pornography. 

He also talks a bit about celebrities through an occult lens. “ARIANA GRANDE IS A POWERFUL MAGICKAL ALCHEMIST,” he writes.

These things didn’t really add to the book very much - I’m not particularly interested in the author’s peculiar perspectives on drug use, strippers, and his relationships with celebrities. 

I picked up this book to read about magic, not 25-year-old Alex Kazemi’s personal life philosophy. I get that life lessons are often entwined with magic lessons, but so little of it seems relevant here, and runs awfully close to just bragging.

The author assigns a definition to the phrase “pop magick,” portraying it as a flavor of results-oriented magic, albeit with heavier witch influences. So much of his theory, and many of the practices in the book, recall older chaos magic techniques. 

Strangely, though, Mr. Kazemi describes magic as creating “order” out of “chaos” through imposition of one’s own divine will on nature. This is a little odd, and seems to blend high magic with the chaos magic paradigm. 

I spent a few years in the late 2000s studying chaos magic, and then the first half of the 2010s focused on Thelema and other high magical systems. They can work well together, but the author ought to provide more to work with.

There’s bits about which color candles “do” what, correspondences for the moon phasesTo be honest, it would have been prudent for the author to talk more about the origins of these techniques (such as Spare sigilization) rather than flying past them at breakneck speed.

About halfway through, the author declares himself (and the reader) to be Illuminati members. To be Illuminati, he claims, just means “bring[ing] order to chaos” via the imposition of your divine will on reality. I would’ve liked more context, and maybe a bit of the relevant history of Illuminati legends.

Some portions of the book felt a little disjointed in a way I can’t quite describe - I feel like the transitions between different sections could flow a little better. Keep in mind that I received an advance reader copy, and that issue might vanish in the final book when published; we’ll see. 

I didn’t really come across anything that was new to me in this book, but I could see a beginning chaos witch finding it a bit helpful. You can find much of the same information online, though, or in more detailed, existing books. 

For this reason, I’m giving this book two out of five stars. I didn’t really enjoy reading it, nor did I learn much from it.

Please note that much of this book discusses adult subject matter - this isn’t one for the kids! There are plenty of references to drugs, alcohol, and sex magic - though the author admits he’s never tried sex magic.

[askanaroace]

I actually call it a magickal orientation because we are a lesser known orientation and are just becoming visible now. It's magick and rare, and special to be demisexual and I'd love to date someone one day who also identifies this way.

The frustration people are facing for wanting me to label me in their box they feel I fit in has nothing to do with me. I am doing what works for me, and I'm not asking to be believed or accepted. I am following my instincts; this is just what fits for me. I know that I'm rare, and I'm willing to take that people are skeptical and believe this in an invalid orientation. Maybe because this is something new it will scare people, but I'm happy to take that risk, to be myself and hope others can do the same, for those who are out there and feel the same as me. I've gotten dozens of letters from people saying they felt seen and validated by my coming out. That's what matters.

[an-angel-wing-shop]

We sometimes need to still access our divine will to become the mystical creatures we were born to become.

Alex Kazemi in “Finding Self Love in Taylor Swift’s New Single ‘Me!’”

[practice-is-praxis]

Recommended Magick Reading

“Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey To Self-Awareness” by Rachel Pollack “Create A Servitor: Harness the Power of Thought Forms” by John Kreiter  “Pop Magick: A Simple Guide to Bending Your Reality” by Alex Kazemi “The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation, and Ritual” by Lisa Marie Basile  “SUPERGODS: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, And A Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human” by Grant Morrison  “High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row” by Damien Echols  “The Hero with a Thousand-Faces” by Joseph Campbell “Natural Witchery: Intuitive, Personal & Practical Magick” by Ellen Dugan “The Pocket Spell Creator: Magickal References at Your Fingertips” by Kerri Connor  “Qi Gong for Beginners: Eight Easy Movements For Vibrant Health” by Stanley D. Wilson, PhD

[scarletravenswood]

COSMIC KEYS PODCAST

Dan and Scarlet open the episode with an astrology and Tarot forecast for the week of February 17, 2020, to Feburary 23, 2020, followed by an interview with pop artist, author, and magical practitioner, Alex Kazemi. We talk with Alex all about his new book, Pop Magick: A Simple Guide to Bending Your Reality, which drops this Tuesday, February 18. We get into Alex's early life, his introduction to magick, his first spell in summoning Marilyn Manson, how to raise energy for magick, plus a whole lot more! 

[narcissistpsychopath-abuse]

NEW VIDEO Back to the Future: Spectacle of Narcissism, Spectre of Psychopathy (Convo with Alex Kazemi)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsbw2Y3ikSA Watch 550+ Videos about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships - click on this link to visit my channel: http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin Counselling with Sam Vaknin, or Lidija Rangelovska, or both of us - click on this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html NEW! Amazon Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited FULL TEXT, 10th EDITION https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983208175 (US) https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1983208175 (UK) Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3 Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! You OWE IT to yourself and to YOUR LOVED ONES! Save $63!!! BUY SIXTEEN e-books about toxic relationships with narcissists and psychopaths - and get the PDF versions of ALL 16 books plus a huge bonus pack FREE! Click on either of these links and send the proof of purchase via email to samvaknin@gmail.com to receive the PDFs and Bonus Pack: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FK6316T https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FK6316T Copies SIGNED and DEDICATED by the Author, Sam Vaknin (use only this link!): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8023833847/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_myi?m=A2IY3GUWWKHV9B Everything You Need to Know about Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Abuse - click on this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq1.html Kindle Books about Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Abusive Relationships - click on these links: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Sam%20Vaknin&search-alias=digital-text&sort=relevancerank (Amazon USA) http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Sam%20Vaknin&search-alias=digital-text&sort=relevancerank (Amazon UK) The BIBLE of NARCISSISM Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited in Barnes and Noble now COSTS $40 instead of $55!!! CLICK ON THIS LINK TO PURCHASE THE PRINT EDITION: From Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Malignant-Self-Love-Narcissism-Sam-Vaknin/dp/8023833847/ 100% of the text of "Malignant Self-love" (730 pages) - at 40% the price! 100% of the tips, advice, and knowledge - at less than HALF the cost!!! Buy the e-book instead of the print edition - click on these links: http://www.amazon.com/Malignant-Self-love-Narcissism-Revisited-FULL-ebook/dp/B00HDJF7HC/ (Amazon USA) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Malignant-Self-love-Narcissism-Revisited-FULL-ebook/dp/B00HDJF7HC/ (Amazon UK) NEW e-BOOK "How to Divorce a Narcissist or a Psychopath" - Click on this link now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00759NMQ8 NEW e-BOOK "Personality Disorders Revisited" - Click on this link now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00708SLRE NEW e-BOOK How to Cope with Narcissistic and Psychopathic Abusers and Stalkers https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0080X5LYE

[path-of-my-childhood]

[Excerpt]

Alex Kazemi (interviewer): As someone who connects deeply with the element of water, I can say that all emotion will blind your judgement and rationale. I do love to feel. This is why I love Taylor Swift.

Bret Easton Ellis: I love a lot of her songs. I think she’s a phenomenally talented person. I love “All Too Well.” Love the Red album. I think it’s a masterpiece. Her private life and her views are not something I have ever felt wrapped up in. I know Taylor through her records. I know Taylor through her art, like I know Bruce Springsteen through his art.

AK: The reason Red is such an important record is because it perfectly paints what happens, when you idealize too hard over the wrong person and you have to accept that one person you thought would show up isn’t going to show up, and never will show up.

That recently happened to me and I didn’t spiral, I actually took accountability for my role, my mistakes, my expectations. I was left with a cold hard reality to face, that two people’s realities might not ever merge together. I was reminded that Red is about coming to terms with the violence of being alive.

[manxita]

Alex Kazemi: As someone who connects deeply with the element of water, I can say that all emotion will blind your judgement and rationale. I do love to feel. This is why I love Taylor Swift. Bret Easton Ellis: I love a lot of her songs. I think she’s a phenomenally talented person. I love “All Too Well.” Love the Red album. I think it’s a masterpiece. Her private life and her views are not something I have ever felt wrapped up in. I know Taylor through her records. I know Taylor through her art, like I know Bruce Springsteen through his art. Source: Bret Easton Ellis Loves Taylor Swift - Hypebeast.com

[rivaltimes]

Iraq inaugurates the reconstruction works of the Mosul airport five years after its destruction

Iraq inaugurates the reconstruction works of the Mosul airport five years after its destruction

File – File image of the battle to retake Mosul from Islamic State. – Europa Press/Contact/Ssgt. Alex Manne – Archive The Prime Minister of Iraq, Mostafa al Kazemi, has inaugurated on Wednesday the reconstruction works of the Mosul International Airport, in northern Iraq, five years after it was destroyed during the fighting to expel the Islamic State terrorist group from the city. . The north…