So autophage and I have been listening to a lot of "Gothic Americana" lately. Which is basically a fancy term for goth country, mostly from Denver for some reason. I introduced him to the subgenre when I played him 16 Horsepower, and he has paid me back with interest by introducing me to the whole scene ( Read more... )

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=478

Been a while since I read this comic, really, but this is pretty good.

go read Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics ( Read more... )

I have started reading blogs. As in not just my friend's livejournal blogs, but like bloggers, like internet celebrities. There's Andrew Sullivan, of course, but I hope certain of my friends will forgive me the twin sins of admiring and (often) agreeing with both Sullivan and Zakaria by the fact that I also read Ta-Nehisi Coates (not that Coates ( Read more... )

It wasn't a surprise that Fareed Zakaria and The Economist decided to endorse Barack Obama this year. Both have always seemed to admire his poise and his optimism, and both were little short of aghast at McCain's selection of a running mate. Zakaria is also a very prominent foreign-policy realist who doesn't think much of seeing the world in ( Read more... )

It has been a while. This weekend my friends and I will venture into the wilds of West Virginia so that Rachel and I can share our love of the land with the others, who while not city-slickers, one is an Alaskan, after all, are of neither the Old Dominion or the Newer Dominion (okay, except for Eric ( Read more... )

Everyone, particularly folks from south of the Mason-Dixon line, should read Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. We've been reading the two of them for the past two weeks in language class and now in seminary and all I can say is 'Holy Goddamn' or something similar. Reading both of them makes me want to go on a road trip through Virginia and the ( Read more... )

What happens when one of the best violinists in the world busks in the L'enfant Plaza Metro Station ( Read more... )

Man, I am starting to get into this language paper in spite of myself. Maybe it is because Virginia Woolf is really THAT GOOD. Maybe I have more motivation than I thought ( Read more... )

Is it just me or is sadomasochism a minor theme in The Brothers Karamazov? I mean, how many romantic relationships are we shown that don't inolved extravagant acts of submission, the often conjoined desire to serve and to dominate (see particularly Katerina Ivanovna's desire to give ceaselessly to Dmitri while also mastering him), beatings etc? ( Read more... )