David Stagg

About
My Book

The Burning Ones
By David Stagg

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.

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Posts

Music

The Top 14 Riffs Pantera Ever Wrote

Apr 30, 2026
Pure metal riffage, thrash-rips, neck-wrecking headbanging.
Design

Hyperspecialisation

Jan 26, 2026
As the business of “product” became more normalised, the jobs…
Technology

Post-AI AI

Jan 12, 2026
I had been thinking about this recently: There is a lot of…
Movies

The Top 23 Songs of 2025

Dec 31, 2025
When I sat down to put this together, my first…
TV

The Top 12 TV Shows of 2025

Dec 30, 2025
Movies are my first love, but I still love culture.…
Movies

The Top 26 Movies Of 2025

Dec 28, 2025
Note: I have yet to see: Marty Supreme, 狂野时代 (Resurrection),…
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Long Form

Sleeping Giant

How We Are Free

“I remember just crying. I didn’t know why. I just started crying, thinking about being totally given up on. To still have maybe 30, 40, 50 years left, but according to society, you’re done. There’s no value for who you are.”

In Full ➟
Chelsea Grin

The Red Badge of Alex Koehler

“When this band started I was 16. Now I’m 23. The older lyrics were just written based around bands I idolized at that age, just gory and disgusting. This album was really easy for me because I decided I wanted to write about real life.”

In Full ➟
For Today

Silence is Broken

“It didn’t have anything to do with theology. It didn’t have anything to do with doctrine. It didn’t have anything to do with the academics of Christianity. It had everything to do with the heart of the Father breaking for these girls who are lied to and deceived and are having their destiny stolen, so that people can make a little bit of profit at their expense.”

In Full ➟
iwrestledabearonce

Run Fast, Play Heavy

“The day I stopped believing in God was the day that God didn’t answer my prayers that the frickin’ Looney Tunes squad would come out of my TV with Michael Jordan and be my friends. I did meet Charles Barkley once. Wait. Twice.”

In Full ➟
More Long Form

A Quote

I can imagine him, with his puritan heritage … in that city foreign and paradoxical, with its atmosphere at once fatal and languorous, at once feminine and steel-hard—this grim humorless yokel out of a granite heritage where even the houses, let alone clothing and conduct, are built in the image of a jealous and sadistic Jehovah, put suddenly down in a place whose denizens had created their All-Powerful and His supporting hierarchy-chorus of beautiful saints and handsome angels in the image of their houses and personal ornament and coluptuous lives.

General Compson on New Orleans
Absalom! Absalom!
By William Faulkner

A Video

My close personal friend David Kline, a member of Knoxville’s free-flowing, improvisational music scene, wrote and directed a piece about them called Out (The Out Series Documentary). The full work is available for free to watch on YouTube.

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