The Agenda

by Saruman the White, Chief Scientific Policy Advisor to President Bush

[This article first appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

Honestly, you people with your ridiculous “science.” Bah! When I bring agony and ruin upon your villages with the power of the One Ring, will the pathetic explanations of those blasphemous witch doctors you call “scientists” ease the pain of your destruction? I ask you, will their “logical conclusions” based on “data” and “experiments” drown out your screams? Only so foolhardy a race as men could build a society based on “scientific methods” and “empirical evidence.” Such nonsense! Istari magic and the visions of my palantir—those are the foundations of a functioning society.

by Molly Booker

[This interview appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006, and previously in longer form in the glorious-but-now-defunct Providence Music Paper.]

This interview was conducted on a chilly October morning in 2004. Alec K. Redfearn invited me into his home and allowed me to ask him questions about religion, his family, music, and addiction. In the interview, Alec returns again and again (unbeknownst to him, I believe) to the theme of pieces and shards: his shattered leg, the somewhat schizophrenic state after sobriety, his lyrics, his influences. As I typed the interview, I was struck by the way he talks and thinks—it was largely pieces and shards as well; rarely a fully formed thought. I found Alec's speaking style to be just as illustrative of his creative mind as what he actually said.

by Jeremy Lansing

[This article first appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Lansing was asked to resign from the staff of his middle school newspaper after attempting to print the following controversial interview. In the interest of defending the first amendment and promoting diversity, we here at The Agenda have decided to run it, so the readers can decide for themselves. Plus, he totally traded us two Ring Dings and a bag of Funyuns in exchange for publishing it.

Three Ways To Lose An Argument
by John Taraborelli

[This article appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

There are three all-purpose arguments in American public discourse that are so insipid, so hackneyed, so insulting to our intelligence, that anyone who invokes them cannot help but forsake their credibility. They are: the Nazi Argument, the Terrorist Argument, and the Founding Fathers Argument.

A Shepard Fairey Interview From The Archives of Matt Obert

[This article appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

This interview was originally intended for publication in the NicePaper in August 1995. Unfortunately, there were no issues in August: the last issue of that publication came out in July of that year. Perhaps this conversation would have been lost forever, had I not been invited by Helen Stickler and James Brayton Hall to create a little zine for an art opening at RISD's Woods-Gerry Gallery in 1997.

[This article first appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

Point: Bruce Springsteen: The Emo Meatloaf

by Eric Smith

With the recent release of a Bruce Springsteen concert DVD shedding new light on his dim early ‘70s output and allowing hordes of rock scribes to wax ad infinitum on the staggering Boss-ness of the Boss, please allow me—a non-fan—to speak from my heart as a non-believer of the highest order while imparting some much-needed sense into the thick skulls of you poor, poor, sad fucks.

by James O'Connor

[This article first appeared in The Agenda #14, January 2006]

Brickway On Wickenden
234 Wickenden Street
Providence
(401) 751-2477

I'm guessing it was sometime after eleven-hundred hours that I received a call about a lunch mission; I was forced to decline. I refuse to skip a meal, especially one of the three most important of the day—the amateur meals as I sometimes like to call them. I reminded my buddy of this, and he was soon swayed from his original plan of lunch, quickly realizing who he was talking to. I take my eating seriously and hell or high water I wasn't starting the day with anything other than breakfast.