The Fredösphere

Christianity Today speaks of curry with worshipful tones.   (Hat tip to A&LD; I hope this link didn't get Denis Dutton in trouble with his fellow skeptics.)

I love Indian food because it is perfect.  It's stews comfort me, and its spices bedazzle me.  It achieves the impossible contradiction:  it is exotic comfort food.

(And speaking of Denis Dutton, check out his screen saver image.)

Labels: Culture, Food

Slate explores an underappreciated branch of African-American music:  the space alien mythos.  I was pleased that Sun Ra, the one practitioner I knew about, is prominent (but I suppose everyone knows about Sun Ra, Saturn's favorite son) and was previously treated by Slate to an exclusive profile back in 1997.  (Wow, did the internet even exist back then?)  Anyone who feels alienated may find solace in science fiction, which is why I was addicted to an embarrassing degree to the Roswell series on the WB network years ago.  Gosh, I blush at the memory.

Labels: Culture, sci-fi, vocal

Savor the delights of passiveaggressivenotes.com.

One of the great failings of my life has been to not photograph a wonderful sign that years ago was nailed to a tree at the edge of a field near my parents' house. It was a rough piece of plywood with letters in drippy white paint. It said (as best I can remember) "Anyone caught trespassing on this property will pay $50 or GO TO JAIL." I'm sure the implicit threat--that the trespasser would fall into the clutches of a seriously psychotic individual--was about 100 times the deterrent of the explicit ones.

Labels: fun, LovableOddballs

Hangin' with Meridith Monk:  M. C- has the story.

Labels: Choral, Composer

Sorry Don, but this is my topic:  harmonic intervals in all their beautiful, mediaeval purity:



I'd like to see the monk's reaction to some of my yummy minor ninths.

Labels: Choral, fun, MusicTheory, VideoClip

I just found out Stanley Kubrick died exactly 666 days before the start of the year 2001.  Come on, guys--you're supposed to let me know about important stuff like that.

Labels: fun, LovableOddballs

Me an' me posse have been trading links lately; I started off with the retro-futuristic ruins of Taiwan; that led to the world's worst building (in North Korea of course) and then someone found this amazing, very slightly racy sci-fi treatment of the same.  Then, someone linked to an old favorite of mine, Jesus Applying for Membership in the UN, and thus we arrive at today's true topic....

I commend to your reading this compelling essay-ette by Tobias Wolff on the topic of the intersection of aesthetics and spirituality in the New Yorker.  (It's the essay that is in the New Yorker, not the spirituality--at least, certainly not exclusively.)  Shown here is the (extraordinary bad--how is it that little old Victorian ladies with a taste for girly Jesuses wearing false beards managed to wrest the tiller of the ship of religious iconography from the hands of people like, well, me for so many years?  Evil little monsters, that's what they are) painting of Jesus mentioned in the essay.  Hat tip to Stefan Beck at Arma Virumque, who has comments worth reading as well.

Labels: VarietiesOfReligiousArt

The folks of the raw food movement must be spitting their expeller-pressed tomato juice all over their morning newspapers today:

"It appears that the greatest protective effect from tomatoes comes from rehydrating tomato powder into tomato paste," said Valeri Mossine, research assistant professor of biochemistry in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. "Processing of many edible plants through heating, grinding, mixing or drying dramatically increases their nutritional value and cancer-fighting potential."

Labels: Food