I’ve just started re-reading Russell’s Unpopular Essays. I was torn between Russell and Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which has been sitting unread on my shelf for far longer than I care to admit. Ultimately, I chose to re-read the Essays because in them Russell offers prescient and portentous arguments on the dangers of dogmatic authoritarianism, not unlike that espoused by the present Bush administration. While Bush and Co. haven’t exactly delineated their motivating principles (quite the contrary: they’ve been careful to mask them with some nominal commitment to vague “democratic” values based in weakly Christian “ideals,” whereby citizens may be held indefinitely, without charge, under unmonitored conditions and wars may be waged without congressional approval or sanction), neither have they eschewed the anti-scientific moralism that has been the biggest deterrent to critical liberalism for the past three millennia. In “Philosophy and Politics,” Russell notes that, “The scientific outlook… is the intellectual counterpart of what is, in the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberalism.”

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I have just made the most wonderful discovery. I was busy gluing some pieces on to a writing table I’m making and I had some old “goth” post-punk CDs in the changer. A bit of Bauhaus, a little Sisters of Mercy, some Siouxsie Sioux… I had also included one of my favorite bands, (Clan of) Xymox, which was on the 4AD label back when it had claim to Lush and The Pixies and the Cocteau Twins. It shames me to admit it, but I’d never really listened to a lot of the lyrics very closely—which helps to explain how I was surprised today to find that CoX quotes my favorite poet Swinburne in their song “Back Door,” which appears on the Medusa album.

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On Friday, my web host (WebQuarry) performed some service upgrades on the server, which is great, because now we have the latest versions of everything, and it’s all on a faster, more reliable machine, and ain’t life great, yada yada yada, except that some of the programs I was running before the upgrade no longer worked afterward. Of course, I didn’t know about any of this, until Friday afternoon when I tried to update my page here with Important News that you Can’t Live Well Without.™ I have since forgotten what that Important News was. At any rate, I couldn’t update all weekend, and I watched anxiously as my blog sat idle for days, and I felt as if I had Failed the World.

I’m sorry, World, I failed you.

But everything’s fine, now. The good people at Movable Type were able to pinpoint the problem quickly, and now I can post more drivel to my blog. Never again, World, will I let you down. Blog on, Michael. Blog on.

Ohohohoh!!! I remembered one piece of the Important News! My good friend, Stephanie Pytlinski, turned… um… well, she turned old like me on Friday.

Happy Birthday, Steph!

NP: Sisters of Mercy, More

Since late May I have been taking a 6:30am bus to the train station to make my daily jaunt into the nation’s capital. Since late May I have almost every day been joined on the bus, two stops after I get on, by a rather attractive woman about my age. ‘M—’ is not beautiful in the ordinary way—her lower lip thrusts too far forward, her nose is too prominent, her cheekbones are flatter than one might hope, her toes turn slightly outward, giving an ever-so-distant hint of a limp to her walk. Yet her ice-blue eyes are bright and clear, her voice is pleasant and forthright, and her wispy but perfectly coiffed wheat-colored hair surrounds her head like a Giotto halo. She dresses sharply but comfortably, usually wearing grey or black wool slacks and a button-down, half-sleeved, soft-colored shirt. She is poised but demure, reserved but affable. She generally keeps to herself, but when engaged in light talk by a stranger she will usually respond openly, with a smile. I took interest the moment she first stepped onto the bus, but my inability to approach her has steadily grown increasingly oppressive.

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I am currently 92 pages in to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë—and I am fully prepared to declare them the best 92 pages of fiction I have ever read. No amount of enthusiasm or fawning could convey the spiritual transports I have enjoyed in the past twenty hours. I won’t attempt to convey them to you. I will only exhort you to find a copy at your earliest convenience and experience for yourself the beauty that life might hold.

For some time in college, when I was subject to such lines of thought, I was convinced that I was “untimely”—born a century and a half too late. I once fell in love with a woman’s name, simply because my friend described her as a classical Irish beauty whose manners and character were quite out of place in our own time, who could have passed for a Brontë sister in another era. I never met the woman, but I was sure she would have pleased me greatly if she remotely warranted the description.

Anne Brontë may always have my heart, but I’m not so selfish as to keep her all to myself. Go forth, men, and read. You’ll thank me for it yet.

NP: The Alkaline Trio, Stupid Kid

Happy Birthday, Matthew!

I’ve built you your very own web page. Go crazy with it. Or do nothing with it. It’s yours. I hope you have a glorious day.

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Man, the web is fun.

NP: Willie Nelson, I Never Cared for You on KEXP

for eternal bliss
long life, sunshine, happiness
drink coffee daily

black pants, round bottom
callipygous roman muse*
train girl, i love you

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While checking Amazon for something else entirely, I saw that the welcome page was promoting a book [currently ranked 6th in sales at Amazon] on “spiritual healing” by a certain Caroline Myss, Ph.D. I love how they always put ‘Ph.D.’ after their name; whenever I see that, I KNOW the book is crap. My curiosity piqued, I clicked on the book to see what junk was contained inside, and it was pretty bad [don’t take my word for it, go and see for yourself]. So I went on over to Myss.com to find out what “Dr.” Myss got her doctorate in. It says on her bio page that she earned a Ph.D. in “Energy Medicine” from Greenwich University, an “autonomous accredited university.” I’d never heard of Greenwich University, and I had no idea how “Energy Medicine” could be taught at an “accredited university.” A little research was in order.

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Saturday, I went with a couple of friends to hike Old Rag in Shenandoah National Park. It was a hot day, and we got a late start—we started the approximately 8 mile hike around noon. For about the first third of the hike, I was sure I was going to die. I was hot, thirsty and I’m horribly out of shape, so my heart was pumping extra hard. It was great, though, to be out of doors, and because we started so late, we saw very few people on the trail. Shenandoah is beautiful, and as we approached the top of the mountain, we could look out across the valley below and see for miles. The trees below looked like a great green plush carpet ready to soften a fall from the heights.

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