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Weekend Edition: 2-20

Blog Headline of the Week

Blog Line of the Week

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

Bookish Linkage

Nonbookish Linkage

Art is anything you can get away with.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

February 20th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Weekend Edition | Comments are closed | |

Friday Follies 2.4

Insurance.com lists “Attorney/Judge” as the most dangerous driver by profession. And, it asks, “Why chase ambulances if you can bring them to you?” (Via.)

Stupid proposed state legislation of the week: A South Carolina legislator has introduced a bill to require the use of gold and silver coins as the legal tender of the state as opposed to federal currency. Or, as the legislator himself put it, to ban “the unconstitutional substitution of Federal Reserve Notes for silver and gold coin.”

This one strikes way too close to home: A law professor is scheduled to go on trial in France in June for criminal libel for a book review he wrote of a book on the International Criminal Court. (Via.)

Atlanta police arrested a 61-year-old woman for asking “why” when she was told to “move it” while standing outside a convenience store with friends.

No doubt this will contribute to ending the Nigerian spam emails.

…this is America. Everybody needs a lawyer.

Winchell (Matthew McCurley), North

February 19th, 2010 | Tags: , , | Category: Law, Miscellany/Linkage | Comments are closed | |

The Vatican’s Desert Island Discs

What’s going on at the Vatican? Is Pope Benedict trying to be even more hip than John Paul II? On Sunday, its official newspaper published a list of the top 10 rock albums. Not surprisingly, none of the records on its list of Desert Island Discs is on my list. Even without that, the list seems odd, if not bizarre. Listed chronologically, the albums on the list are:

1. Revolver, the Beatles. Clearly, the Beatles are a logical choice for number one.

2. If I Could Only Remember My Name, David Crosby. WTF???

3. The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd. Can’t you just imagine the Pope spacing out to this?

4. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac. Hmm. You wouldn’t think the Vatican would look to Bill Clinton for music advice.

5. The Nightfly, Donald Fagen. WTF #2???

6. Thriller, Michael Jackson. Hate it myself but guess I can see why an album that sold that well might make the cut. Evidently, though, no one at the Vatican has seen the video for the title cut or else the Church’s view of zombies, the supernatural and the like has changed.

7. Graceland, Paul Simon. Not a fan yet still seems an odd choice for top 10.

8. Achtung Baby, U2. I imagine you gotta have an Irish band on a Catholic list.

9. (What’s The Story) Morning Glory, Oasis. Have to admit I’ve never listened to it but I still find it a surprising choice. Maybe there was a heavy lobby by Irish priests.

10. Supernatural, Carlos Santana. Setting aside the title as being itself surprising, as a Santana fan I am somewhat offended that they would choose this — one of the most unSantana-like LPs of the Santana catalog.

I am even more put off by the fact Bob Dylan was excluded from the list. Although the authors of the article recognized his “great poetic vein,” they say, “His great fault is, however, giving the green light to generations of songwriters … that harshly tested the ears and patience of listeners, thinking that their tortured meanderings might interest somebody.”

Some of us recovering Catholics might find the term “tortured meanderings” more appropriate to things we heard in church or Catholic school.

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”

Bob Dylan, title cut, Highway 61 Revisited

February 16th, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Music | Comments are closed | |

Microreview: Brodeck by Philippe Claudel

“I had nothing to do with it.”

That’s what the title character says in the opening sentence of Philippe Claudel’s novel Brodeck. And while Brodeck is right, he has been given the task of detailing how the small village in which he lives felt it had no choice but to kill an outsider.

There are several layers of collective guilt in this excellent novel. Although Claudel takes pains to never explicitly say so, the story appears set in a small village bordering Germany after the conclusion of the Second World War. Brodeck spent much of the war in a concentration camp. Something horrible happened in his village while it was occupied. The unusual stranger who appears in town after the war and Brodeck’s return is known almost instantly as De Anderer, “the Other.” When the Other has a showing of the portraits and landscapes he paints while in the village, they seem to hint that he knows the secret behind the community’s guilty conscience.

When the outsider is murdered, the town wants Brodeck to write a report on “the whole story,” explaining why the village acted as it did and so any authority reviewing the report will “understand and forgive.” Translated from French by John Cullen, Brodeck is not the report. Rather, it is the story of writing the report, a story that takes us with Brodeck to the concentration camp, inside what happened in the village during the war and the circumstances surrounding the Other’s murder. Brodeck refers to the last as the Ereigniës, “the thing that happened.”

Yet much of what takes place over the course of the book could also easily be called the Ereigniës. Heavy on symbolism and allegory (some might say too heavy), there is is plenty of guilt to go around in this isolated and insular village. With it, a reader will ponder issues of not just evil and fear but survival, hope and being an outsider. Powerful and well-written, Brodeck is a worthy read.

A great many things have no smell at all, and yet they rot senses, hearts, and souls more surely than all the excrement in the world.

Philippe Claudel, Brodeck

February 16th, 2010 | Tags: , , , | Category: Book Reviews | Comments are closed | |

Musing Mondays: For reference

Do you keep reference books on your shelves at home? What’s your first port of call when you need information – the internet or a book?

I have a ton of reference works on my shelves that I dip into with varying frequency. Two, however, aren’t with the rest. There’s a well worn paperback American Heritage dictionary on the headboard of the bed and a hardcover Webster’s dictionary on the bookshelf where I usually sit and read at home. That’s because I tend to look up words far more frequently than check some other compendium of information.

As for general information, I tend to use the internet far more frequently now. I tend to keep a notepad near where I am reading and will jot down names, events or other items that I want to look up later. Goggle is just faster than digging through the reference books I have.

If a word in the dictionary were mispelled, how would we know?

Steven Wright

That, in fact, is one of the things I somewhat look forward to with ebook readers — the ability to highlight a name or event and have immediate access to online information about it. Part of that stems from my increased reading of foreign literature, which often references places and events with which I am unfamiliar. At the same time, I fear that such instant access will lead me off on tangents and disrupt the flow of the book I am reading

February 15th, 2010 | Tags: , | Category: Book Memes | One comment - (Comments are closed) | |
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