“Have you tried not being a blogwatch?” Apparently this is the cussin’ blogwatch. Makes sense. I’m in no fit mood. Burke to Kirk defends the agrarians (and manages not to cuss). If you take the agrarians as an aesthetic movement, that’s certainly better than taking them as a political one… but it still seems a little too much of a muchness, like those pomo art pieces that win the Turner Prize. A rejection aesthetic that thinks it’s a recovery aesthetic.... Read more

I thought you said,“You scratch my backAnd I’ll scratch your blogwatch”And I thought you said we had a deal… Dappled Things: “In Whom do we put our faith? I think those are questions that all of us should seriously ask ourselves periodically. There are probably a number of ways that we could phrase our response, but one answer that is certainly 100% wrong is that we have faith in Father So-and-so, and that we believe in God because Father says... Read more

But the fervour of our admiration and the burden of saintliness which weighed on the chain that gripped his wrists–his hair had had time to grow and the curls had matted over his forehead with the cunning cruelty of the twists of the crown of thorns–caused the chain to be transformed before our unastonished eyes into a garland of white flowers. The transformation began at the left wrist, which it encircled with a bracelet of flowers, and continued along the... Read more

CRAZY LIKE A FOX?: A couple responses to the “LOL Americans” post below. Keep in mind that that post really was a… is it a blunderbuss I’m thinking of? The thing that fires a huge amount of shot all over the place, in hopes that some of it might hit the target. So: T.H. writes: Long time, no talk. I had one short point about your post, and a question. First, the question: did Kirk really identify with the agrarians?... Read more

Blogwatch happens, and I’m head over heels… (Wow, that was bad. Sorry.) I’m enjoying Amuse-Biatch, a blog devoted to season 2 of “Top Chef.” Click at own risk etc etc. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new blog, Open Market. Jeremy Lott of hypocrisy fame will be contributing. Looks like a good place–I’m blogrolling. Free markets, free will, free beer, Free Press…. Read more

LOL AMERICANS: OK, I know it’s unladylike to eavesdrop. But the guys sitting next to me outside Starbucks today were so fascinating!!! I’m not made out of stone, people. One of them was writing a book about conservatism, or something. He did most of the talking, as his younger interlocutor asked him to elaborate on various points. His basic thing seemed to be tracing the intellectual lineages of various possible conservatisms–e.g. is a Burkean conservatism possible or desirable in the... Read more

I’m not going down on my knees,Asking you to blogwatch me… Hit & Run: “Most people are still under the quaint assumption that you can’t be punished for a crime for which you’ve been acquitted.” (But wait. There’s more.) The Rat: In which I am pwn’d by Shakespeare. And Yale still looks for leaders. (The link at the latter post is a must-read if you are interested in Yale stuff. For contrast, you could try this 2001 Yale Free Press... Read more

So he prayed. But the sea remained cold, and the darkness maintained its stubborn silence. All that could be heard was the monotonous dull sound of the oars again and again. Will I turn out a failure?, he asked himself.–Shusaku Endo, Silence Read more

WHEEL OF FORTUNE: I re-read Kathy Shaidle’s post from the post-election in 2004, and it holds up really well with the names changed. “Don’t pray for victory. Just pray.” Hit & Run has a quickie roundup of how the various anti-Kelo (eminent domain abuse) propositions fared. And in non-political linkage, I really loved this column, in which a comics writer gives a script and squiggly sketch* to several different artists and compares the resulting panels. My favorite might be the... Read more

TWO LINKS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ELECTIONS: Cinecon reviews the Virginia Film Festival, which took “finding God at the movies” as this year’s theme; and Ratty has a really fun, snarky, insightful post about her trip to Paris. Read more