• I've often wondered, when listening to or reading someone who seems to be a really hardened anti-Christian, what it would take to crack that shell. I say "seems" because of course one can never tell from the outside what's going on inside a person. And I say "anti-Christian" rather than "anti-religious" or "anti-theist" because for

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  • I can't imagine why The Atlantic thought it was a good idea not only to publish a piece written by an ex-Catholic-priest (and apparently more or less ex-Catholic) called "Abolish the Priesthood," but to put it on the cover. I suppose it might appeal to the average reader of The Atlantic as a step toward abolishing

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  • May 29

    It happened to come to my attention earlier today that this was the date in 1453 when  Constantinople fell to the Turks. Many years ago I read a book about that event which was sad and disturbing, as is almost any account of mankind's propensity for conquest and slaughter.  I thought often of that story

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  • Maybe you remember that a few months ago I got excited about a track by Nan Vernon on a compilation album (see this post). It was a Cruise-Lynch-Badalamenti-sounding arrangement of an old Bobby Fuller Four song. I had never heard of her, but quickly discovered that she had released one album, Manta Ray, in the

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  • A CapitolOne ad: Life Doesn't Alert You About Your Credit Card–But Eno Can And I thought I was pretty close to unshockable in such matters.  Sure, I'll keep an eye on that credit card for you. Of course Eno has changed a lot since the above pic (ca. 1972). Brian Eno, in case you don't

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  • I noticed in the statistics for this blog that the search button has been used a lot over the past few days. Don't feel paranoid: it doesn't record any info about who's doing the search, just that the URL has been referenced. So as a public service I must tell you (if you haven't figured

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  • "Again" because I was talking about it last week in this post, when I had only read 60 or 70 pages. Now I've finished it.  I'm still not sure that it's right to expose other people so very intimately to the world, but I gather that the main characters apart from herself who are still

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  • The Big Heat

    Fritz Lang directed this 1953 film noir, which would lead one to expect that it would be at minimum pretty good. I think it's way better than that, one of the best of its type, although it isn't my favorite (my favorite so far is Out of the Past–see this post). Glenn Ford stars as

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  • Early Memories

    I'm reading Mary Karr's memoir The Liars' Club. It's very good, but I realized fairly quickly that some part of me wants to dislike it. At first I didn't want to admit that to myself, keeping a keen eye out for faults while not quite consciously wanting to find them. Then, when it got difficult to

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