Michael Atkins-Prescott
Bio
Non-binary artist, DJ writer, bird fancier and licensed forklift driver.
I'm in New Zealand, with my wife and a cat, a pretty decent kitchen,and a turntable I fixed myself.
pssstt... https://linktr.ee/michaelatkinsprescott
Stories (9/0)
Daisy Chains
To me now, the image of a seven-year old girl as a stern and humourless technical instructor is comical. It’s an image that must have been purged from my memory shortly after experiencing it, only to be reconstructed when I reached an age where Catherine O’Reilly’s inscrutable withering glare was not so intimidating. At the time, I had assumed that she was as skeptical as everyone else of a boy wanting to learn how to make a daisy chain. But as I avoided eye-contact, instead watching her hands as she described the proper place to pierce the daisy’s stem (“here”, she said, tolerating no differing opinions about proper stem piercing placement), something in her voice told me that it was not my gender that bothered her. Daisy chains were serious business to her, not something for amateurs to trifle with, and artisans do not teach.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott8 months ago in Fiction
Lest we Forget: Respectfully, We Need to Fix Our National Day of Remembrance.
Every ANZAC Day I am reminded of the old adage about the American civil war. ‘As a child you are taught that the civil war was about slavery. As you grow older, you learn that there were a myriad of complex factors that contributed to the war. But as you grow up, you learn that it was about slavery.’ Situations are always more complex than they seem, but a greater understanding of those complexities sometimes obscures simple truths. As a contrarian teenager, I believed that ANZAC Day was a bunch of old people glorifying war, so that us youths would be happy little soldiers for the next imperialist expansionist adventure. Of course, I grew out of that view, as I realised that the sacrifices made by those who fought for our rights deserves to be honoured. But every April 25th, my heart sinks as I see the glorification of war seep into that sombre reflection on sacrifice. ANZAC Day may not be about the glorification of war, but it’s sadly used that way.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in The Swamp
The Return of the Thin White Mac: A Vigorous Defense of the Harddrive Full of Music
How are the format wars going this week? Well, streaming is down because of the whole Neil Young/Joni Mitchell thing, but it’s still massively dominant. The vinyl resurgence is hitting global supply chain hiccups. CDs are up, though it’s a testament to their decline that their rise may be down to one artist who old people can’t get enough of. And cassettes may be back, but it’s equally likely that some bored hipsters just convinced some naive journalists of a nonexistent trend. Join us next week when someone will be reporting that hampsterdance.com, and those cylinders that make mooing noises when you turn them upside down are the new preferred music formats.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Beat
The Heterosexualisation of Queerdom
The Heterosexulaisation of Queerdom (an Ode to Maddy Morphosis) Of all the shows that Netflix has lost to the streaming wars, no loss has been more consequential than RuPaul’s Drag Race. That loss is beyond simply being a show that is a little less convenient to watch now. Drag Race’s presence on Netflix was almost as important as the show itself, because it introduced the show to an audience who need to see themselves in the media.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Pride
How to Solve Cancel Culture (a Modest Proposal)
We have entered a new age of puritanism, one in which the threat of being held accountable for one's words and actions hangs over us all like the sword of Damocles. It seems nowadays that no sooner has a famous person been exposed as a bigot or a sexual predator, than the censorious McCarthyist left has chosen not to listen to the music they have made, or read the books they have written. Never has free speech, and the right to say whatever we want, whenever we want, with no consequences been in such peril.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in The Swamp
After The Goldrush: Why Neil Young’s Stand Against Spotify is Even Bolder Than it Seems
It’s not news until a celebrity gets involved. When 270 doctors, physicians, and science educators signed an open letter to Spotify calling on the streaming service to take action on Covid-19 misinformation being peddled on the podcasts that it hosts, it barely made any waves in the media. The letter was in response to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Rogan aired debunked claims that “mass formation psychosis” was to blame for our perception that the Covid-19 vaccine is effective, that the Biden administration is suppressing evidence supporting the efficacy of cattle dewormer Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment, and that hospitals are financially incentivised to inflate infection numbers. The Joe Rogan experience is the world’s most popular podcast, and the link to that episode was shared on Facebook nearly 25,000 times. Spotify reportedly paid 100 million dollars to host Rogan’s podcast exclusively.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Beat
Worse Than Appropriation: What Do We Do With Great Art From The Dark Ages Before Modern Racial Sensitivity?
Nothing illustrates the gulf that exists between the political factions in modern society quite like the same statement being reported to mean different things depending on which media outlet reports said statement. Sure, they can report the same event differently, but you’d think that when someone is directly quoted, their words would be a matter of record. Not so. You see this most often when famous artists discuss the hoary old chestnuts of political correctness, censorship, and cancel culture.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Beat
Just Some Completely Random, David Bowie Celebrity Interactions
The fist fight with Axl Rose… Bowie’s famous heterochromatic eyes are actually the result of a damaged cornea he suffered as the result of a fight over a girl, as a youth. He’d repeat the trick with a less flattering result, as a 42-year old man. Amazingly, we have this story from Slash’s 2007 memoir, a 1990 interview with Axl in Kerrang, and in the words of Riki Rachtman, the owner of the club where it happened. The timeline is a little murky, not surprising for the Rashomon-like accounting of the event, but it involves a drunk Bowie coming onto Axl’s girlfriend, Erin Everly (daughter of Don Everly), Axl hurling insults at Bowie from the stage, and finally chasing him down the street yelling “I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man”.
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Beat
Just a Few Landmark Queer Moments in Classic Star Trek
“Please captain, not in front of the Klingons” is my safety word Ok, let’s get this out of the way first… You won’t find any moments in The Original Series that didn’t leave their queerness to the imagination. According to actor George Takei, Gene Roddenberry was reticent about addressing queer rights, as they had done for issues like race and civil rights, because of the need to keep the show on the air. But show business has a proud tradition of inserting plausibly deniable dog-whistle queer references wherever they could. So, whether or not those sultry suggestive looks between Kirk and Spock were intentional, we’ll never know. But boy, did certain members of the audience see them, notice them, and run with that ball!
By Michael Atkins-Prescott2 years ago in Geeks
