A strange thing happened this week -- some semblance of a plot that didn't entirely revolve around sex surfaced. Lauren, Cory's ex, announced last week that she was preggers and now we found out that Cory ain't the baby-daddy, it's some dude back home. He's pissed off.
"Bro," says Thomas to him, "you know what this calls for? A dose of mat-ur-it-yyy."
"So just be nice?" says Cory.
"Yeah," says Thomas. "Just be nice."
It's sad that this needs to be said, but this is a sad season. Later, on the post-show interview thing that MTV does with the cast, Lauren makes some vague allusion to the fact that the baby is no longer in her life. The comment just sort of hangs there, in the air, but to be fair, it's really none of our business.
There's something fascinating about North Korea. A country with a government that controls almost all of the available information, ruled by a family dynasty of repressive dictators, is so foreign to western society it begs to be examined. It's kind of like a wreck on the freeway -- we just can't help but slow down and stare.
Of course, North Korea isn't something we can simply drive past. A United Nations panel recently found the country's boyish leader Kim Jong-un personally liable for crimes against humanity, and recommended that he be referred to the international criminal court. The regime has also been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades.
The Commonwealth Club of California hosts a discussion Friday about North Korea with Robert Carlin, a visiting scholar from the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. As a primer for the event, SF Weekly caught up with Dr. Gloria Duffy, the president and CEO of the Commonwealth Club. Duffy is an expert on U.S.-North Korean relations, and a former nuclear arms treaty negotiator.
We spoke in her office.
The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.
Steven Seidenberg is a San Francisco based writer, artist, and photographer. His first book of lyric, philosophical prose, Itch, was released from RAW ArT Press in January 2014. He is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, including Null Set, forthcoming from Spooky Actions Books, and co-editor of the poetry journal pallaksch.pallaksch. His work as an artist and photographer has appeared in solo and group shows in San Francisco, Boston, Reno, and Berlin.
When people ask what do you do, you tell them...?
This and that. Don't wait to be hunted to hide, that's always been my motto.
What's your biggest struggle -- work or otherwise?
The disavowal of initial impressions and self-satisfied antipathies.
