I was quite old before I realized that I was the only person at my church who listened to secular music. I must have been in seventh grade, because I clearly remember a Sunday School classmate asking me what my favorite album was at the time, and I said Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Of course. [...]
Archive for the ‘Religion’ category
Will the pope resign?
I’m reading the excellent Capitalist Realism, by Mark Fisher of k-punk, and came across a great bit that I wanted to share. Fisher writes, What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. As Marshall Berman explained, describing Stalin’s White Sea Canal project of 1931-33: Stalin seems [...]
Boredom?
I was thinking this week about boredom, first in a religious context. When I was a kid, church was pretty boring — although, as “good kid,” I was kept in line by a combination of my hypertrophied superego and an intense interest in doodling. As an adolescent, I started to really take an interest in [...]
Businesses I wish I’d started
The creator of the Frisbee died last week, age 90, a wealthy man for having adapted a popcorn tin lid into a toy. How great would that be – to invent an object beloved by millions and retire off it? Whenever I read stories about the people who become zillionaires by inventing cool stuff, I [...]
A very gory vegetarian festival
RB and I just returned from two weeks in Thailand. We saw and did the things one does there – snorkeling, hiking, riding elephants, kayaking, visiting temples, that sort of thing. But we also witnessed something most unexpected – something we happened to read about in a magazine and rerouted our trip especially to see. [...]
Fine art made finer
The McNaughton “Fine Art” company has made available a print called “One Nation Under God,” packed with symbolism and helpfully annotated. Click here to see the work with its original meanings explained, including the depiction of a tormented Supreme Court justice and an evil “Mr. Hollywood.” The image below isn’t the print, because unfortunately you [...]
Sontag seminar discussion questions
“Something new each weekday.” To that end, Susan Sontag in Aspen magazine: Every era has to reinvent the project of “spirituality” for itself. (Spirituality = plans, terminologies, ideas of deportment aimed at the resolution of painful structural contradictions inherent in the human situation, at the completion of human consciousness, at transcendence.) In the modern era, [...]
The discreet charm of the 40th birthday
A few weeks from now I will turn 40. It’s made me a little reflective lately. I’ve been thinking about birthdays and the important part they play in organizing the life process. Up until now birthdays have organized my life according to a series of very momentous rights of passage. They have marked out a [...]
That Fresh RM Smell
Several nights ago I got a phone call from my mom. She said that my youngest brother was going to be stopping briefly in Los Angeles on his way home from his Mormon mission to Australia. This morning he borrowed a phone from a fellow traveler and called to let me know where I could [...]
The morality of faith
In an article in the Guardian the other day I read the following from novelist Ian McEwan, who, it turns out, sheltered Salman Rushdie after the fatwa came out: Faith is at best morally neutral and at worst a vile mental distortion. This strikes me as exactly right. Clearly, based on my posting history here, [...]
