New Music

It's been a busy music month (almost an album per day)! I've mostly been patching holes in my musical trousers. Yes, I have musical trousers! Listen to the two older Eels albums if you get a chance. Among other things, you'll be reminded: "Don't take any wooden nickels when you sell your soul."

Here's what's new in my collection:

Albums

Eels – Shootenanny!
Eels – Daisies of the Galaxy
Les Savy Fav – Inches
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Weezer – Make Believe
The Beatles – The White Album
Alicia Keys – The Diary of Alicia Keys
The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Brazilian Girls – Brazilian Girls
Britney Spears – Greatest Hits: My Prerogative
The Cure – Disintegration
David Gray – A Century Ends
The Decemberists – The Tain (EP)
Eminem – The Slim Shady LP
Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Indigo Girls – Retrospective
The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin
Marvin Gaye – The Very Best Of Marvin Gaye
Neil Young – Harvest
New Order – Waiting For The Sirens' Call
Otis Redding – The Very Best of Otis Redding
Snow Patrol – Final Straw
Stevie Wonder – Love Songs: 20 Classic Hits
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
Widespread Panic – Another Joyous Occasion
The Who – Who’s Next
Wilco – Being There

Singles

All Girl Summer Fun Band
“Jason Lee”

The Apples in Stereo
“Rainfall”

Nina Simone
“I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good”

Of Montreal
“True Friends Don't Want to Do Things Like That”

article | Blogging, Foucault, and Periodicals.

Again, still on the road. One of the things I've come to recently is that one of the valuable aspects of blogging is to point away from the blog itself. Blog as signpost. I'm still of the opinion that even really solid blog posts/discussions are relatively weak in formulation and execution. People don't usually spend 3 weeks crafting a post. So I'm just passing along some reading material that I take to be worthwhile:

"It goes without saying that [Foucault] did not blame his misfits, lunatics, delinquents and eccentrics for deviating from conventional norms; his originality was that he did not praise them either. He was perhaps the first thinker to identify the perversity of the kind of progressive thinking that expects the oppressed to conform to a preconceived model of resistance or revolt. According to the progressive norm, genuine victims of injustice will be ennobled by adversities, strengthened by misery and purified by suffering. They will bear witness to their authenticity by playing a starring role in the good old drama of democratic resistance to oppression. And they will gratify their patrons by bringing new vigor and militancy to the part, and perhaps a dash of cathartic revolutionary violence, not to mention unimpeachable moral authority. If Foucault had a mission in life, it was to discredit the progressive model of the perfect rebel."

Read the entire article...

Also, consider subscribing to the following periodicals:

Stop Smiling
The Believer

Observing Poems.

"...children's feet - little fish - mermaid through the flow..."

[Picture is of the fountain at Columbus Circle in NYC.]

Things to Check Out on the Internet

Man wird Barths Theologie nicht gerecht,wenn man einfach die Ewigkeit als die Seinsweise Gottes und die Zeit als die Seinsweise des Menschen einander gegenüberstellt. Feststellungen dieser Art beruhen auf der Voraussetzung der Gegensätzlichkeit von Zeit und Ewigkeit und behandeln sie wie ontologische Kategorien. (112) Bei Barth sind sie aberformale Kategorien, mit denen er den Raum und die Gestalt umschreiben kann, in denen es gerade zum Miteinander und Verkehr zwischen Gott und Mensch kommt. Barths Unterscheidung von Zeit und Ewigkeit zielt auf die unterschiedlichen Bedingungen, unter denen Gott und Mensch jeweils Mitarbeiter im gemeinsamen Raum des Bundes sind.

article | more thoughts on blogging...

It should not surprise those who know AYT that he does not, at least not without reservation, like blogs or blogging. One can, for example, see the inaugural post of this blog.

That being said, the following article is interesting:

"Indeed, blogging demonstrates the persistence of a key truth in the history of reading, an insight as obvious to Tocqueville as it should be to most bloggers today. The insight is that readers, in a culture of abundant reading material, regularly seek out other readers, either by becoming writers themselves or by sharing their records of reading with others."

Read entire article...

"Obscenities Uttered by Jesus Christ."

Click here.

A special thanks to "Oxford" for the link and laugh.

poem | I Return to that Before

I return to that before

   before the philosophical
      diction so long, so foreign
         that one knows it to be German-born

   before the heartache so tender,
      so quick to bleed - like a watermelon
         once the hull is breached

   before the tomorrows now ossified,
      dust collectors of the guild yesteryear, and
         the sculpted adult form still weathered by fear

Neither to cast these aside, the attempt to within that
   before-society hide, nor follow Lucretius there

One cannot start over, only begin again, so some say

If only one could return to the same point,
   sleep atop the same stair

Yet, a long-traveled soul can chain
   itself to memory's rack, hoping in time that
      reclaimed habits might ameliorate virtue's lack

=================
Daniel R. Morehead

article | Boomtown Goes Bust

"At the Boomtown Cafe yesterday, the lunchtime regulars crowded outside the door, hoping for a steaming bowl of chowder or hearty plate of lasagna. Instead, the door was locked, the lights were off and the piano in the front window was silent."

Read entire article...