The Danks

Really enjoying music by The Danks, streaming for your listening pleasure by the good people at Killbeatmusic.com.


Samples EP

Who’s Afraid of the Danks? LP

Does the Lord Regret?

In 1 Samuel 15, as the eponymous prophet is apprising king Saul of the Lord’s rejection of his house, Samuel says the following in response to Saul’s pleas: “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you. And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret (1 Samuel 15:28-29 ESV).”

After Samuel “hacked Agag to pieces before the Lord” and separated from Saul, we are told that he “grieved over Saul”, which is to be expected. However, we are also told something unexpected: “And the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel (1 Samuel 15:35 ESV).”

“More Like Not Running Away”

More Like Not Running Away: A Novel by Paul Shepherd

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The initial impression was that this would be a long version of Faulkner’s “Barn Burning”, but after the first 30 pages, Shepherd seemed to find his own stride and the narrator Levi begins to develop into a real character. Mr. Shepherd’s phrasing is taught and somewhat stylized without ever feeling hurried or put-on, leaving a quasi-biblical aftertaste, like a McCarthy-infused aperitif.
Despite a few incongruities of characterization here and there, my only real complaint with this otherwise excellent story is the ending: I suppose it could be defended as realistic, but having successfully made me care about the narrator’s father Everest, the complete lack of redemption (and the seeming implication that this isn’t that big a deal) was frustrating to me: I felt a little put on. I thought I had a heavy-weight novel on my hands, only to have the last few punches thrown by a bantam-weight from Connecticut. Nevertheless, an enjoyable and beautifully written debut novel, and a few afternoons well-spent.

View all my reviews >>

Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom

Tom Waits is releasing a live set of performances culled from his Glitter and Doom Tour. You can pre-order the album on CD or vinyl LP, or get one of the pre-order packages that include, among other things, one of Waits’ “stain” T-shirts.




NPR is streaming one of the shows from this tour here, if you want a preview.

Hat Tip: Remy

‘Imaginitive’, Aye

Not much to be said that hasn’t been already on President Obama’s Nobel award, but in case you missed it, I thought I would share Desmond Tutu’s official response, a brilliantly diplomatic version of the “Huh?” reaction of so many of us (one can only hope that the irony was intentional):

[A] surprising but imaginative choice.

Hat Tip: Times UK

Sinai

Photographs of Chaiten volcano in Chile. In the middle of the night toxic ash and dust from the eruption ionized the air, generating an explosive electrical storm around the plume.

Jonah has Pity on the Gourd

Jacob Steinhardt

Barter

This Guy Named Mark from Sweden carves these groovy pipe tampers, and he’d love to trade you something for them.

Hat Tip: Joffre

The Deep Dark Woods

Now that fall is closing in on us, you should listen to The Deep Dark Woods’ latest “Winter Hours”, which can be streamed at killbeatmusic here.

Hat Tip: Larson Hicks

After Their Own Kind

Nonhuman primates scarcely respond to human music, and instead prefer silence. . . . Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to the heavy-metal band Metallica.

from “Monkeys get a groove on, but only to monkey music”, PhysOrg.com
Hat Tip: First Thoughts

Butterfly in Space

Hubble image of a butterfly nebula

Paglia on Democratic Elitism

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism…

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it’s invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote “critical thinking,” which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (“racism, sexism, homophobia”) when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.

Read the full article here.

Playlist for the Morning

Enjoy