ROMOPHOBIA–THE WORST DISEASE: Speaking of things I haven’t read yet, the Cigarette Smoking Blogger has posted her senior essay: “Decadence, Christianity, and Oscar Wilde’s Conversion to Catholicism.” I’ve been putting it off for fear that reading it will cause me to explode from sheer awesome. (Was a bit conflicted whether this post title was the best possible punk reference; would also entertain nominations of, “When Two Heavens Clash.” 1877, and we are going mad….) Read more

MARRIAGE MAKES THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE REBEL: The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has collected the Pope’s statements on marriage (PDF). Learn the secret connection between weddings and world peace! (…I haven’t read it yet.) Read more

RIDDLING WHILE FOAM BURNS: I just saw The Way Things Go. In a seemingly-abandoned warehouse, an incredibly complex apparatus has been set up, with no apparent purpose save its own destruction–and glory. A slowly untwisting garbage bag sets off a chain reaction of rusty, low-rent, slow, implacable old objects. The camera moves in relentlessly; the soundtrack is intensely tactile; there are menacing knives, whistling kettles, huge wooden spools rolling all catawampus toward an inevitable destination. There are unnatural combinations, like... Read more

THE FOUNTAIN OF BETHESDA, MD: Claw of the Conciliator writes, Just saw your new Weakerthans article. Just FYI, in case you don’t know: St. Boniface and St. Vital are the names of two neighborhoods here in Winnipeg. St. Boniface is the historically French one, and St. Vital is a fairly upper-middle-class one that people make a lot of jokes about. I guess because it’s got a high proportion of rich kids with time on their hands there’s a lot of... Read more

ENEMIES OF EROS: It’s startling how much of contemporary rhetoric is expended to get us to view sex as banal, rather than sublime…. I guess it hurts less that way? Or: “We’re just roommates,” says the last man; and he blinks. Read more

“LITURGY OF THE OTHER HOURS”: In which I rant about the Weakerthans, at Godspy. Read more

NEVER BEAST TODAY: So it took me until yesterday to figure out that this post about the Beast in Revelation might somehow be connected to the 200-proof, killer distillation of present-tense in, “I Am that I Am.” Read more

AM I A TORTURER? …It got even hotter in the Conex container, the kind you see on top of 18-wheelers, where Ben kept his prisoners. Not uncommonly the thermometer inside read 135, even 145 degrees. The Conex box was the first stop for all prisoners brought to the base, most of them Iraqis swept up during mass raids. Ben kept them blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties, without food or sleep, for up to 48... Read more

No constaba el nombre del heresiarca, pero sí la noticia de su doctrina, formulada en palabras casí idénticas a las repetidas por él, aunque–tal vez–literariamente inferiores.–“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” Read more

UNQUIET GRAVES: Horror movie reviews. Or, really, snacks. In the order in which I saw them: Audition: Japanese horror; incredibly scary and suspenseful until the climax begins, about 20-30 minutes from the end. After that it devolved, from my perspective, into standard-issue icky-creepy-ouch. I loved the setup (widower auditions women for role of next wife, but becomes enthralled by intensely frightening beautiful lady with a secret) but the climax felt way too horror-movie, rather than actually horrifying. Still: scariest gray... Read more