Those of you who've been eagerly awaiting a new year of Printculture snark and wisdom will have to wait just a week longer; we'll resume our regularly scheduled programming on January 14 (though if you're lucky someone might post something in the meantime). You may also notice the return to the old format: after much discussion, it was felt that more zine, less blog, suited our temperaments and the ethos of the site better.

Chalk it up to moving, to technical issues with the site, to exhaustion, to travel, to El Nino, to global warming, to gas prices, or to whatever you want; the printculture gang is going to take some more time off this summer. So if you, like me, are missing your daily printculture fix, I encourage you to mine the archives of our humble little blogzine.

Summer — time to fire up the grill, slather on the sunscreen, and allow the trials of the rest of the year to fade into memory. The Printculture gang will be taking a vacation over the next month or so, giving us time to move house, recharge, and discuss directions that Printculture may take over the next year. Check back in for intermittent posts, and don't forget the sunscreen!

As I struggle with end-of-the-semester burnout, wanting to take a nap but instead having to grade essays and continue with administrative work, I thought I'd offer some of my scattered thoughts in response to E Hayot's post from last week, specifically on moving and on the work of printculture, not in that order.

A few small things today, just some ideas I've come across or thought this week, but none of them quite large enough to become its own entry. 1. “A Chinese judge charged with corruption died in his cell from ”adult sudden death syndrome“, Xinhua news agency said today.” This is the first line in a real story in a real newspaper. Apparently “ASDS” has been known to strike a variety of prisoners held in Chines...

Next week we'll be devoting the site to answering a series of questions posed to humanists by Thomas Mallon, author of a number of novels and former deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanites, in a recent issue of The American Scholar (the official publication of Phi Beta Kappa, for those of you hooked up to the secret handshake). We'd like to invite you all to participate in this series of responses, either via the comments o...

I thought long and hard about what top ten list I could compile and had to admit, finally, that I was only half paying attention to the world of culture or politics in 2006. Have I even been to 10 movies in the past year? Sadly, no. Have I managed to read 10 books, never mind 10 books that came out in 2006? Negative. If I'd known I'd be making a list, I might have paid more attention. In fact, whatever chewy morsels of cultural commentary I di...

The only retirement party I’ve attended was given in honor of a person who’d managed a humanities center for several decades, capably seeing it through its heady, glamorous period and into those periods that seemed, by contrast, far more mundane. At her party the music was swank, the hors d’oeuvres elegant, and the accolades earnest, well-wrought expressions of gratitude. The atmosphere was thick with praise. I don’t know whether she actual...

Dear Printculture readers, Wilted from the waves of heat waves, we're taking August off, sort of. What this means is that instead of the regular schedule of new weekday posts from our team of 8, we'll have irregular posts from some of us some of the time, with maybe a guest poster or two in the mix. So, check in with us from time to time, especially for more on Rwanda from H Saussy. We'll be back to our regular schedule right after Labor D...

The posts here over the last two days, admirable and moving both, have cut sufficiently close to the heart of things that a pause for consideration seems fitting. Thinking between the two of intelligibility as a fundamental experience – when we have it and when we don’t.

If blogging about your mix is “like saying you’re baking special birthday cupcakes for all your cats,” then this is the restaurant review. A day late and an idea short, this week I offer some piggyback commentary on S Shirazi’s Awesome 2005 Mix.

It's been almost a year since five crazy kids with a couple nickels in their pocket (these kids were so crazy they only had one pocket between them) and a dream started up a scrappy little website at www.printculture.com. The epic agonies of a New Year's Eve party celebrated, however briefly, with Carson Daly and fifty thousand of his closest friends now beyond us, today--the first day of the rest of the year, as the philosopher said--seems li...

We're taking a little break so that we can all get enough rest for the 3-day New Year's drunk we're planning on going on. We'll be back with your regularly scheduled content on Monday, Jan. 2. In the meantime, happy holidays to all our readers.

What's new? The design, obviously. But what might matter more to you are: three new writers, whose brief bios you can read on the "About printculture" page (link on the top left), and the comment function now available on all new articles. Current media now appear on the left, as well as at the bottom of articles; recent comments (once there are any) will also show up on the left side. There's also the Weekend blog (see below), and the ability...

If you have come to this site seeking information about masturbation and/or pregnancy, please check out the WebMD site, which may provide the answers you’re seeking. Pretty much everyday, I check printculture’s sitemeter to get a sense of who is visiting our site and how they’re getting to us. I’m happy to say that more people seem to be visiting us on purpose than not; that is, they’re getting to our site direc...

Last night at the Cultural Studies Association conference I saw Jodi Dean, who blogs at I Cite, give a really interesting talk on the interactions between blogs and academic culture. Dean, whose blog recently featured a series of comments by a white supremacist who disagreed angrily (aggressively and violenty) with her, has encountered first-hand the complexities of the internet's remediation of academic culture. The latter, as she pointed out...

At some point I will tire of the game of reposting the searches that get people to the website, but right now it keeps striking me as hilarious. The latest: porn wallpaper for cell phones (never occurred to me, but obviously this is fantastic) Malgorzata foremniak sex (apparently a person's name and not a type of sex) nfl films music (C Bush gives us the business) disadvantage female masturbation (this search makes me sad) porn big breas...

Since it's Sunday, I thought it would be nice for you (dear reader) to relax by pondering the fact that the four most recent searches that have brought readers to the website are "art positions anal," "Delisa Styles," "how can I get a tummy tuck" (that one was all in capital letters so I edited), "cosmetics made from abortions" (!!!! obviously a longtime printculture reader), and "Delisa Styles surgery." The latter four of course in reference ...

I came across the following in a book of interviews with Michel Foucault this morning: It is the task of philosophy to explain what today is and what we are today, but without breast-beating drama and theatricality and maintaining that this moment is the greatest damnation or daybreak of the rising sun. No, it is a day like every other, or much more, a day which is never like another. What is today? What are we today, who live today as the ...