Since I'm a graduate student and drunkenness on a Thursday night is practically required, last Thursday I was terrifically far from sober and, as a direct result, read an article about Das Racist. I read this article because whenever Das Racist pops up on my radar, I read about them, like I read about MGMT even though I've only ever listened to MGMT once, and that was their song “Kids,” and, when I listened to it, it was about two years after “Kids” was a hit. I try to avoid dwelling on Das Racist, but, like I said, last Thursday I was drunk. Even when I'm not drunk, I have this terrible compulsion to read everything ever written about Das Racist because we all went to the same college, and because that fact signifies to me something particular, some life I wanted and didn't have. This particular article said that Das Racist was pronounced Da-as, as in "That’s," and it occurred to me that I’d always pronounced it in my head Dass, like "Ram Dass," and how horrifying, because the members of Das Racist were practically in my year. (My internal voice is slightly histrionic.) Which at my university actually meant something, since it was a student body of 2,800 and everybody there seemed to know everybody, except for me. READ MORE