Start a tradition with me. Every week I'd like to recommend a book (pulp) and a record (platter) with some kind of internal connection. This week, I'm reading Wendell Berry's collection of essays Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community. It was so thoughtful, so articulate, and so funny in its defense of a holistic view of the person, well, I wrote my first ever Amazon review of it. My favorite 3 quotes:  1. The sign of exceptionally smart people is that they speak a language that is intelligible o … [Read more...]

You ever get that thing where you're asked to review Pope Francis' new exhortation and it's groovy and you like it...but then you remember Pope Benedict......and you're trying to be all, "hey, not every Pope can be a witty, concise, revolutionary theologian" but now all you can think about is Intro to Christianity and Deus Caritas Est and Called to Communion and every essay Ratzinger ever published for Communio......and you've still got 200 pages of Amoris Laetitia to go a … [Read more...]

I'm not trying to be butt about other people's near-death experiences. When I mangle myself in a car or by insulting a bear, I'm sure I'll regret this. But there's a silliness indulged by the skeptic that makes me counter-skeptical, and seeing as this silliness has been well-expressed in a recent news article, I'm going to give it a swing.When one says there is "nothing" after death, they've usually snuck "something" into their "nothing." A recent and briefly-dead fellow said this rather … [Read more...]

My generation’s sitcoms still refer to sex as a fun, healthy, and fundamentally light activity -- something between a pelvic workout and an exciting way to say, "hey, I totally respect your need for meaningful self-expression." It is, as aging sexologists assure us, a normal behavior that we all ought indulge as a way of "relieving tension." We may agree -- who wouldn’t want it to be true? -- but we nod with the sadness of a generation raised on divorced families, infidelity, immense sexual vio … [Read more...]

The question I've been asking myself, watching the 2-year, extra-masturbatory edition of American Idol known as the Presidential Campaign, is, quite simply -- am I feeling the Bern? And in truth, my bitter, cynical, and frozen political fingers are at least luke-warmed by the guy, if only because he seems so bad at being confident, hip, and attractive. And because (and this is an aesthetic judgment) he seems honest. Comically wrong about a few life-or-death issues, but honestly wrong.Now the … [Read more...]

Look, gosh-heckity-darnit, I get the critique: Christianity, by introducing the fear of Hell into her believers, is just the worst. Her education has raised up a veritable ocean of sniveling, frightened humanoids who can barely walk to the grocery store without fearing that they are in some way offending a highly-offendable God.But is it all that pathetic to walk into a Wal-Mart, pick out an ice-cream sandwich, and on the way to the checkout, for no real reason, fear that one will spend an … [Read more...]