Post-Critical Concern and Healthcare debates...

People cannot contribute to the nation if they are never taught to read or write,if their bodies are stunted with hunger, if their sickness goes untended, if their life is spent in hopeless poverty just drawing a welfare check. So we want to open the gates to opportunity. But we're also going to give all our people, black and white, they help they need to walk through those gates.

-LBJ, in a speech to Congress called "We Shall Overcome" following the racial violence that broke out in Selma, AL in 1965.

sigh. a breath of fresh air.

For your consideration.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8147179.stm

The new Woody Allen film, "Whatever Works."

"The question of the year-will Americans embrace soccer? And if so, can they use their hands?"

"Hey yogurt! If you're so cultured, how come i never see you at the opera?"

-Stephen Colbert

Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky

Allowing yourself to fall in love.

Also, i think i'm giving up diet pepsi. Consider the possibilities, and wish me luck.

Allah! Allah! Allah! In everywhere we look.

Dear friends.

Seated on an anonymous bus stop with my darling Aaron F., throwing around phrases like "existential crisis," "genital mutilation," and "shoegazer rock," i found myself overwhelmed by a sensation that has blessed me during these last few months: an deep and abiding love for my friends, both near and far.

Sentimental as it may seem, i hope that i can communicate the immeasurable love i have experienced and renewed in those around me. May the God of Creation remind me every day that His triune love is most evident in the vulnerability in which we so rarely allow ourselves to indulge.

Please sleep well, knowing that i am thinking of you and missing you all terribly. Give me your home address if i don't already have it, as i would love to elaborate on these affections in written form.

Also, Vonnegut readers should share some tips for appreciating Slaughter-House-Five, which i opened this afternoon.

Much, much, love. 

Amen and Amen.

Stephen Colbert on the new "National Organization for Marriage" ad:

"I love this ad. It's like watching The700 Club and The Weather Channel at the same time."

Happy Easter!

God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. 

- Dorothy L. Sayers,
The Man Born to Be King (1943)

Don't Wear Those Pajama Bottoms to Chuck's, Girls!

things i humbly recommend:

Truth:

  1) Jon Stewart's interview with Jim Cramer 

  2) The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner 

 3) "Adam Lives in Theory" by Lauryn Hill

  4) An aptly-titled round of "True Colors" with a collision of high school and college chums.

  

Beauty:

  1) "Araby", a short piece of fiction by James Joyce.

  2) Ralph Lauren's spring 09 collection. Vanity, thy name is harem pants.

  3) "Machine Gun" by Jimi Hendrix

  4) High liturgy masses without a dress code.

   

Freedom:

  1) Bob Evans biscuits, minus the calorie-counting.

  2) the opportunity for diplomatic reconciliation in South and Central America.

  3) "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon. Loving pretentious, hairy Brit rock is admirable again?

  4) bare feet on gravel.

Love

  1) Stephen Colbert's rap battle with Michael Steele.

  2) "Adam's Curse" by my boy Billy Yeats.

  3) "A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall" by mewithoutyou.

  4) not winter.

Do you know why i have perfect friends?

McDonald's drive-thru, approximately 12:10am.

Naomi : (to allison) can you ask them for some splenda?

Allison: (to drive-thru attendant) may we request some splendor?