Eat the Rich

Noticed this banner the first time today: Make Affluence History. Might’ve seen it before, but assumed it said something else.

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Glad Tidings

The Good Cheer has new tracks online. It’s what all the cool kids are gathered around their desktops to stream this summer. If you are a megastar music mogul, I especially encourage you to give them immediate attention and million dollar contracts.

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Mighty Westerners

It occurred to me today how much the meaning of my high school mascot, the Westerners, has changed after life in graduate education circles. I spent three years cheering them on towards touchdowns, and six years dismantling their right to hegemonic, imperialist oppression of marginalized peoples and native cultural identities.

“V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, that’s the Westerner battle cry! GloooooO – Obalize! Wooo!”

[herky]

Just a side note, and favorite story: We met our lifelong rivals, the Plainsmen (whose “s” always went mysteriously missing from their school sign) for an annual Spurs game, the winner of which would proudly display a pair of golden spurs in their school trophy case. I think we’d lost all of the previous six games with them (probably correlated with becoming a magnet school), until my senior year, when we tied. One spur went to each school. Which (the magnet kids liked to say) meant that we would both be able to ride a horse in a circle.

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Hi, neighbor.

I’m in a phase of life where Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood is the most consistent TV viewing I’m doing. So I have a lot of time to think about it.

Somebody submitted a Postsecret card a few weeks ago that was a Mr. Rogers postcard with a message like, “You didn’t prepare me for how cruel the world could be.” I’ve been thinking about this. I realize that there is some legitimate concern about Rogers’ emphasis on self-esteem, his (Carl) Rogerian, therapeutic approach to people’s specialness and feelings, and sense that the way he suggests viewing yourself and others is just not realistic. Especially for a man of his age – a sentiment behind a lot of folks’ judgment that Mr. Rogers is just a little creepy. But I disagree.

What I’ve noticed about Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood is that it is filled with the most gifted people on the planet – Yo Yo Ma, Itzhak Pearlman, Wynton Marsalis, to name a few – and shoe salesmen, and Special Olympians, and a full range of people, tasks, and social roles, each of which Mr. Rogers treats with complete attention, sincere admiration, great curiosity, and tremendous appreciation.

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Where Burnt Offerings Go

I’ve hadn’t listened to Low‘s Great Destroyer in a while, and somehow this song hadn’t caught my full attention before. “Death of a Salesman” offers a redemptive view of dreams discarded and reinterpreted.

It’s a great album.

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I Liked This Shirt Until You Liked It

Heh. Eh heh heh heh.

(Of course, this doesn’t refer to you).

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God laughs, too (I hope)

“Suddenly, there is a point where religion becomes laughable. Then you decide that you are, nevertheless, religious.”

Thomas Merton quoted in Annie Dillard, For the Time Being, following a reference to Bongo Java’s “Nun Bun”

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More Things I Don’t Have Time to Write About (Or: Why I am Leaving This Coffee Shop’s Wireless Range)

1) I really enjoyed Half Nelson. I think more than Babel. The insertion of Dunn’s (what a great name for this character) lectures on dialectic are kind of cheating (Chip Lambert’s doomed script from The Corrections came to mind), but it provided a helpful lens; overall, I thought focus was a real strength of the film. And the strong characters. I am drawn to anything that asks questions about the possibility of change.

2) Tyler posted a link to clips from the conversation Sojourners hosted with Obama, Clinton and Edwards. At the end of the clip, Wallis is commenting on how this is finally a different kind of discussion: one that addresses the issues of poverty, immigration, etc. as issues central to Christian confession and vital to national policy. Which made it a little ironic that, until Tyler pointed me towards this, the only information I could find about the debate were Hillary’s comments on how faith served her during the Lewinsky scandal.

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This entry is a stub.

Thanks to Wess for the tip, whom I should definitely not be more emerging than. Let me just say, before you relegate me to warmongering biblicist status, that my high fundamentalist rating is probably due to my sympathies for the phrase “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” I don’t mean it like that. (More like this.) There’s basically no way to score Free Church or Radical Orthodox on this thing, as far as I can tell. “My favorite nationalism-bashing, left-leaning ethicist is a Texas cusser” was not a statement to rate.

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More Things I Don’t Have Time to Write About

1. I am ever fonder of my BIC Velocity 0.9 #2 mechanical pencils. It’s the writing utensil equivalent of sloppy stomp Professor Longhair blues. It’s like the bold, lush confidence of big stinky black markers, but precise and impermanent. It could inspire the invention of Japanese calligraphy.

2. The new Shapes and Sizes is my listen of the week. A lovely, red, oaky chaos. I dig the horns. Squirrel Nut Femmesistry. I’m trying to get around to saying something about Derek Webb. He haunts me. Like an inevitable wet-willie. Also, speaking of Shapes and Sizes, here, uninitiated readers: know about this tap-dancing band from Omaha for a minute.

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