What I’ve been listening to lately

The Welcome Wagon: Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

A release from the Ashmatic Kitty label, the Welcome Wagon are a husband and wife duo who sing, sweet, uncomplicated songs about faith, love and religion. The record clerk I bought it from described it as being “Great, as long as you don’t mind people singing about Jesus all the time”. I don’t, and I’m glad I bought it. the instrumentation is fairly simple. Sufjan Stevens seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of background accompaniment. It sounds like it was developed by sincere amateurs, and I mean that in the most complimentary way  that it can be taken. It’s a fairly solid album, but two tracks that stand out for me are “Up on a Mountain” and “Never said a mumblin’ word”. Worth a look, as long as you don’t mind people singing about Jesus.

DM Stith: Heavy Ghost

Another Ashmatic Kitty release, this is the stylistic antipodes of the Welcome Wagon.  Eerie falsetto, crashing cymbals and piano, drum loops and and abstract  lyrics give this album a bewildered, haunted feel in keeping with its title. The first track off the album, “Issac’s Song”  chills, with Smith singing (I think) “I brought him” over and over again till his voice crescendos to an inarticulate cry,with the aforementioned pianos and cymbals crashing in the background. This song is radiates despair, confusion and seems haunted with the presence of looming terror.  Considering that the titular Isaac is meant to be in reference to the Old Testament’s Abraham and Isaac, this makes sense.  The second song “Pity Dance” takes a more meditative, solemn approach with Stith expressing a  desire for honesty and communion, while seemingly afraid that the only thing he might receive is punishment. Stith asks “How many things can I say to you/And expect shock horror/shock horror/shock horror to descend again in sweet oblation”, and then goes on to the state that “the body waits/for obliteration”. Not an cheery album, but very rewarding. If you can listen to”Isaac’s Song” and not get chills, you’re doing it wrong.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Beware

The first song on this album “Beware your only friend” opens with Will Oldham singing ”I want to be/your only friend” with the back up singers replying or asking ”Is that scary?”. This sets the tone for the rest of the album, which largely deals with dysfunctional relationships and heartbreak. However, the odd thing is that while this sounds like a downer of an album, it largely isn’t. Oldham’s clever lyrics and warm singing voice seem to encourage the listener to simply openly acknowledge that our relationships, sexual or otherwise, will always be manifestly imperfect and never what we wan them to be. A particularly good example of this is the song “You Don’t Love Me” where the narrator says of his lover “You say that my kiss wouldn’t raise a six on a scale of one to ten/ and you wouldn’t  spend your time with me ‘cept you’re tired of all your friends” or “You don’t love me/That’s all right/because you do me all though the night”. Very funny and bittersweet.

Brian Eno & David Byrne: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

I wasn’t expecting this album to be anything less than amazing, and it didn’t disappoint. The opening track “Home”, skillfully evokes  feelings of nostalgia, loneliness, a desire to belong, and  the acknowledgement that none of us can ever fully escape our origins: “Home/Will infect everything you do”. Other personal favorites from the album include “Strange Overtones” and “Big Nurse”. “Strange Overtones” also happens to have an amazing video. This is probably the most poppiest album I’ve been listening to, out of all of them. For those who remember Byrne from his Talking Head days, rest assured that his ability to craft smart, odd lyrics remains undiminished.

Sundays are for linkers

Vatican Prelate defends abortion for 9 year old

An influential prelate said Brazilian doctors didn’t deserve excommunication for aborting the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was allegedly raped by her stepfather because the doctors were saving her life.

[Link from Associated Press]

Religion: Biological Accident, Adaptation – Or Both

Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn’t require divinely dedicated neurological wiring. Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling.

[Link from Wired Magazine]

Neko Case Interview

In the epic battle between Man and Nature, Neko Case’s allegiance is clear.

[Link from A.V Club]

AIG Planning Huge Bonuses After 170 Billion Bailout

The American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, plans to pay about $165 million in bonuses by Sunday to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.

[Link from New York Times]

Extraordinary Rendition

Britain’s role in America’s alleged torture programme is looking murky

[Link from The Economist]

wisdom lost in knowledge lost in…

The internet’s librarian [Link from The Economist]

 Apparently this man wants to create the world’s most comprehensive digital library. A sort of “Alexandria 2.0″, as he he calls it.

I think this is an interesting idea, although obviously I’m not quite sure if  it’s entirely practical.  I don’t think there’s any way you could realistically claim to ever provide any kind of comprehensive library of  information on the internet. How could you? Information is, by its very nature, an incredibly amorphous entity. Technically, this post counts as information. Everything, in a sense, counts as information. I actually find the entire project  a little troubling, in a fascinating kind of way.

There’s the obvious question of power and control. Who gets to decide what information is valuable, or not valuable? Why them? What are the criteria by which they judge how something is or is not considered worth saving? Can that criteria be appealed? It can never be a question of simply retaining everything, obviously there has to be some kind of selection process. To try and retain everything would just be absolutely futile. Standards are inevitable. But what could they be?

Of course, along with the “Can” and the “How”, there’s always the “Why”. I mean, even if this were technically possible, and there were standards set up,  is this even really desirable? It reminds me of the Borges story “Funes The Memorious”. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, written by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, it concerns a man called Funes who has perfect memory. Literally perfect. As in, he remembers the particular shade of grey of the strange cloud formation that he saw in 1938. He remembers the exact angle of your smile as you sat down to eat ice cream. Ultimately, all of this information is paralyzing and overwhelming.  He finds it difficult to sleep because  his mind is constantly working.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting we could die from info overload, but I think there are parallels. If we can remember everything, what would we choose to remember? Should we even try? After all,  we developed the capacity to forget for a reason. It helps us survive. Maybe somethings should just be forgotten.

Here’s a link to the Archive in case you’re interested

No words

Nine year old girl who was raped and had abortion is denounced as a murderer by lawyer speaking on behalf of  Catholic Church.

Wow.  That’s just,  horrible. I mean, that is just such an appallingly stupid and cruel thing to say that I don’t even really know what to make of it. I would advise this guy to read this book called “The Holy Bible“. There’s some stuff  in there about not judging others, and being merciful. Not to mention stuff about obeying the spirit of the law, rather than the letter.  He may want to look into that. I think it’s somewhere near the back.

[Link from MSNBC]

Follow up: Excommunications for some, minature Vatican City flags for others [NY Times]

Neko Case = Awesome

Neko Case’s new album

Everyone please go out and buy this. Neko Case is a brilliant artist and a serious contender for my list of top ten imaginary wives I will never have.

[Link from NPR]

Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘Red State’

Here’s something that’s been floating around the interwebs: Apparently the more religious and conservative a state  identifies as being, the more porn it tends to consume. Apparently the state that had the highest porn consumption was Utah.

To be fair, the study doesn’t indicate the political affiliation of the people buying the porn.  So it’s perfectly possible that it’s a bunch of really, really frustrated liberals. And having to be a liberal in Utah would be one of the most frustrating thing I can imagine.

[Link from Scientific American]

The Incredulity of Father Williamson

Say you’re the Pope.  Maybe that’s a bit implausible, but bear with me, I have a point.

So you wake up and you’re the pope.  Spiritual leader to millions. The head of one of the world’s largest Christian denominations. The public face of the Roman Catholic Church, a learned theologian, and under the right conditions, infallible.

So you wake and think to yourself that it would be a great idea if you reinstated a far right-wing sect that your almost universally beloved predecessor excommunicated(you have no idea what you would call it, “unexcommunicate”, “Recommunicate”,  ”Communicate”? Whatevs. You’re the Pope, you’ll figure it out later). A good idea, of course. Forgiveness is a Christian virtue, after all.

So you decide to do this. What’s your next step? Do you A) Order a full investigation of the views of this schismatic extreme right-wing sect, only to discover – Surprise! – that it’s full of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and God knows what else. You quietly decide to shelve the idea for now. Or do you B) same as  A) except instead you have your people quietly approach the organization and explain to them that you’re thinking about readmitting them – but they would have to fully renounce their views before you reverse-communicate (that’s the name you decided on) them. Or do you C) Not even bother to do a Google search, hide under a pile of rugs, and figure that the entire situation will just resolve itself somehow.

If you picked C), congratulations. You’re Pope Benedict.

For those of you – by this I mean “everyone” – who don’t follow Vatican politics,  let me explain. There’s been a lot of coverage in the media recently about Pope Benedict’s decision to readmit members of the Society of St.Pius X, who were excommunicated by John Paul II, Williamson among them. Upon news of this, an interview between Father Williamson and a Dutch news organization came out, where Father Williamson  denied the scale of the Holocaust – claiming it was at best greatly exaggerated. Naturally, this upsets a lot of people, as his claims are utter nonsense.  Then it starts to snowball.

The  Vatican’s initial reaction? That they didn’t know his views and don’t share them. Oh really? That’s the best you can do? That’s not quite as lame as “I didn’t know it was racist“, but it’s close. Really? No one knew? Nobody could have guessed, or I don’t know, investigated? Hell, it’s not like this organization is shy about it. You can just ask them.

At best, this makes the Vatican look ridiculously sloppy. From a PR perspective it’s a total clusterfuck. The fact that it took prominent German rabbis complaining about this to get the Pope to say anything at all just makes it look like he’s totally out of touch.  Saying “we didn’t know”  is simply not good enough. Nobody bothered to check.  Nobody cared to check. There’s no way that with the resources the Vatican  has somebody couldn’t have researched this a little more thoroughly.

Finally, considering the public perception that most people have of the Catholic Church, I’m not really sure why it was a good idea for Benedict to reach out to these people in the first place. Post Vatican II, a lot of hard work has been done to improve the dialogue that the Church has with other religions – Judaism in particular –  other Christian sects and secular people. I don’t see how reaching out to a fringe right-wing schismatic sect helps that progress.

File Under WTF

Man places hot sauce in his used condoms to keep his fiancee from stealing his sperm. (linked to Jezebel)

Yeah, I know. I made the same face.  And yet,  somehow this guy probably makes more money than me.  Explain yourself, universe.

Ticket in my hand, wish I didn’t hand it in…

Hi.

I guess first times are always awkward. Dates,  jobs, marriages.  You don’t know how to start, how things  work, what goes where, what to say or if you should be touching that. So you’re nervous and awkward and you probably spluttering a lot and feeling like an ass.  Why won’t someone tell me what to do? you wonder. No one ever tells you what to do. You either figure it out or crash and burn miserably.

I”m writing this because I’m bored. And by “This” I don’t mean “this post”, I mean this “at all”. Real life, as you may have noticed, is unceasing boredom occasionally punctuated by toil. So what I plan to do here is to develop a small oasis of things interesting to me in the almost infinite desert of things I couldn’t care less about. My interests include: science, religion, politics, music, pop culture and how all of these lovely, lovely things interact.  Yes, it’s going to be one of those blogs.  Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, but possibly you won’t. That’s cool. The interwebs is a vast, vast place and there are many different tubes to take you to more interesting places. Good luck to you. If you stay, I can’t always promise to be great, but I can promise to try really hard to make sure you feel like your time isn’t being wasted.

So that was my first post.  Please be gentle.

Lost Coastlines