By the way, good party people, Of Montreal is coming to you!

I saw the show three nights ago, and it was really good.  They get better and better, and the new album “Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?” is a real glam rock throwback.

I love the show too, lots of costume changes, and they are quite up to the business of getting down.

ofmontreal.net

I’ve listened to quite a bit of Hem, and with a new cd just out, I’ve had the chance to analyze their sound over a few albums.

Rabbit Songs was remarkable in the peaceful grace it offered, with No Word From Tom offering only a slightly edgier feel. Think of a ‘Prarie Home Companion’ version of edgy.  Rabbit Songs is a superior album, the songs being structurally sound, more complete and whole.

The new addition, Funnel Cloud is heavily laden with orchestral overtones, and lacks some of the simpler charm of Rabbit Songs.  While this album is still simple in ideology, the trappings have become more fixed.  Funnel Cloud begins to make both a stride forward while providing an aural recall to their early influences of lullabies, long walks in the lengthening twilight, and Southern infusion.

The gems on this album are few, (“He Came to Meet Me”, “Not California”, “The Pills Stopped Working”) with the rest being merely forgettable, pleasant background music suitable to a summer day party or inoffensive work hold music.  While perhaps the cd does not deserve that harsh criticism, the earlier Rabbit Songs, and even No Word From Tom had more verve and life to hold them together.

All in all, an album worth borrowing from a friend before purchasing.

If you like:

Iron and Wine
Neko Case
Loretta Lynn

Take a listen.
Amazon Listing Click Here

Hey peeps,

I’ve added a few links to the sidebar. Enjoy.

Local Harvest

Slow Food

On the Commons

A Mont blanc pen is one of the most expensive writing pens in the world. It is sort of the Nike or Dunhill of pens. I just recently learned this. And I also just recently learned how to make my own Mont blanc for only $15. All you have to do is buy a Pilot G2 roller ball pen (G for Ghetto), take out the cartridge, and insert a Mont blanc roller ball refill. Hence you have a pen that looks cheep but writes like a three hundred dollar pen! I tried it last night and I really like it. the writing is much smoother and you do not have to press the pen against the paper, hence less writing fatigue.

The G2 pen is about $5 but comes in a four pack, with or without the free mechanical pencil. The Mont blanc refills are around $10, but comes with two catridges. So in reality, you are paying around $9 for the pen.

 Something to consider.

I know this is long and I am sorry, but this is an important subject and I am curious as to your thoughts. 

Is the U.S.-Led War With Iraq Just? 

The world is an abnormal world. Because of the Fall, it is not what God meant it to be. There are many things in this world which grieve, but we must face them down. We never have the luxury of acting in a merely utopian way. 

Utopian schemes in this fallen world have always brought tragedy. The Bible is never utopian. Authentically biblical morality, and not a non-Christian and romantic counterfeit, demands that people have our prayers – but not only our prayers. 

From my own study of Scripture I would say that to refuse to do what I can for those who are under the power of oppressors is nothing less than the failure of Christian love. . . . This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor fallen world in which we live – this lost world – means that we desert the people who need the greatest help. -Francis Schaeffer   [...]

I’m busy.

“Modernism grew from the belief that style is the individual responsibility of the individual architect, who need obey no rules or principles beyond those of his own artistic conscience, and who owes no obedience to the order so painstakingly established by the generations who had gone before. Only the greatest of architects should make himself apparent in his works, and then only after acquiring that discipline of the mind and eye. What is wrong with modernism is precisely what is wrong with modernity-that it assumes an absolute licence to do as one pleases, while disparaging every discipline that would make the doing of it worthwhile.

“In the battle between the Classical and the Gothic, both sides were agreed over the most important point: that nothing matters more in a building than its public appearance. Facades, towers, roofs and pinnacles are the essence of architectutre, and the duty of the architect is to compose them successfully. Height, proportion and form are rendered intelligble by detail, and the true discipline of architecture, therefore, lies in a sense of detail-how to see it, how to draw it, and how to combine it in a harmonius totality. “

Roger Scruton
Building at a Crossroads

From Sage:

[...]

These were some of my favorite dishes growing up (and later, in college). My mom has been very gracious in sharing them with us all. The last two may be especially interesting to all of seeking to follow a more vegetarian diet.

Chicken Enchiladas;
these are all approximates on the amounts-
about 3-4 cups of cooked chicken or turkey, shredded
1/2 diced onion
4 cans diced green chillies
about 1 cup sourcream (enough to moisten all the meat).
salt, garlic powder, and any other spice to taste (cayenne).
microwave a package of flour tortillas to soften them.
Roll the mixture into tortillas and place in a baking dish
[...]

Hey All.

Rod Dreher (Crunchy Cons) was on All Things Considered two nights ago. Pretty good stuff. You’ll find comments and links to it here: Here’s the good stuff:

“In the commentary, I talk about coming to terms with the end of an illusion. As someone who came of political age under Reagan, I’ve been a conservative for most of my life (for the sake of brevity, NPR edited out the part of the essay in which I explained that I’d had a high school and early-college dalliance with liberalism). I disdained the Vietnam-era “hippie” mentality with regard to national security. I took it for granted that those people were hung up on Vietnam, and ought not be listened to because they were blame-America-first liberals. (NPR also edited out, for brevity’s sake, my line about how it was fairly easy to maintain that viewpoint because the left in the 1980s were such appalling squishes on Soviet communism.) I formed my political views on national security in the confident glow of Reaganism. For me, it was a fact of life that Republicans were strong, capable and confident, and Democrats were weak, vacillating and incompetent (Carter’s failed hostage rescue mission was the template).

When Bush led us into the Iraq War, I thought the liberals who predicted doom — and, crucially, the conservatives (like Buchanan) who did as well — were either fools, cowards or unpatriotic. But now I see that I was the fool. In the NPR piece, I wrote about how I sat there watching Bush’s speech and thought that when they get old enough to understand these things, I have got to teach my children never, ever to take the word of presidents or generals at face value. To question authority, because the government will send you off to kill and die for noble-sounding rot (e.g., crusading for democracy in the Middle East). [...]

I found this quote and thought I’d found a kindred spirit:

It seems you find some tensions between political radicalism and theological conservatism. I myself find them to be quite compatible, however. I take my politics radical, my theology orthodox, and my coffee black.

In light of our recent discussions on the Christian’s responsibility toward the poor and how we line ourselves up with political parties, I find this quote most relevant.

Okay. I’ve raved for the past year or so about E.F. Schumacher and his decentralist, green, and classic Small is Beautiful. And some of you have read it. If you haven’t yet, you’re behind on one of the most influential movements in current eco-political thinking. Read it and become wise.

So, with that being said, I am happy to announce a new project from the wonderful Catholic literary biographer Joseph Pearce–author of definitive biographies of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Alexander Solzhenitsen. His new book, Small is Still Beautiful, is one I’ve been waiting to read for some time. It basically looks at the situation since Schumacher published his book three decades ago.

But here’s the cool part. Pearce set up a site to be used for discussion of his book. It’s managed so that we as a cyber community can read it together in chapters (if you get a copy of the book) and contribute our thoughts and discuss our ideas with Pearce. Sound cool? Yup.

 Here it is: http://www.smallisstillbeautiful.com/

From Credenda. The content reminded me of this blog.

Let us begin with a sweeping generalization. The Christian church is directly responsible for all that is despicable about our culture. Not responsible because she sat idly by and watched it all happen, but because she has brought it all about by her own actions and with her very own hands. It has often been said that culture is religion externalized. Any culture will look and smell the way its religion does. And because our religion is so pathetic, American nipples and tongues are frequently pierced. Because the church has used an impotent grape juice in the Lord’s Supper for so long, representing an impotent gospel, Mr. Clinton is our president.

The gospel is central to all of Christianity, and the church has been busy presenting her own emasculated Reader’s Digest version to the public. A man-centered foolishness has landed us in many forms of the ridiculous. From democracy to grunge, abortion to a soft currency, all our culture’s flaws can be traced back to various lies in our modernist gospel.

We see culture born from religion throughout history. The Romans and Greeks [...]