Here’s the tracklist for my annual end-of-the-year mix CD. It’s songs that I listened to this year, not songs that were released this year.
1. Arvo Pärt - Ludus (from Tabula Rasa)
2. The Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
3. Crooked Fingers - New Drink for the Old Drunk
4. The Mountain Goats - Hebrews 11:40
5. Megafaun - The Process
6. Radiohead - Black Star
7. The Avett Brothers - Pretty Girl at the Airport
8. Superchunk - Misfits and Mistakes
9. Tor/Sufjan Stevens - Star of Wonder/None Shall Pass (feat. Aesop Rock)
10. Hi Ho Silver Oh - Perjury
11. Bonnie “Prince” Billy - Missing One
12. Mount Eerie - Between Two Mysteries
13. The Busy World - Idaho
I'm driving from Charlotte to Orlando in a few days, and then back to Charlotte a few days after that, so I've got some good music-listening days ahead of me.
27 December 2009
21 December 2009
Breaking some of my rules.
The rules in question: “don't use a blog to vent” and “don't metablog.”
Briefly, though, I take it as pretty basic that hostile argument in comment boxes never works. If you actually want someone to change her mind, friendly questions might do it. Long posts on your own blog might do it. Chances aren't good, but I've seen people adjust position after such exchanges. The shadowy facsimiles of friendship that comprise most of our online “relationships” aren't good for much, but you need at least that much if you want even a ghost of a chance of changing someone's mind. Why should I even bother with terse, aggressive comments from total strangers?
So I think my new rule should be never to respond to someone who hasn't already demonstrated good faith.
Or maybe I should implement Zeke's rule: “Remember to pre-emptively disavow every conceivable inference that you don’t intend next time!”
Briefly, though, I take it as pretty basic that hostile argument in comment boxes never works. If you actually want someone to change her mind, friendly questions might do it. Long posts on your own blog might do it. Chances aren't good, but I've seen people adjust position after such exchanges. The shadowy facsimiles of friendship that comprise most of our online “relationships” aren't good for much, but you need at least that much if you want even a ghost of a chance of changing someone's mind. Why should I even bother with terse, aggressive comments from total strangers?
So I think my new rule should be never to respond to someone who hasn't already demonstrated good faith.
Or maybe I should implement Zeke's rule: “Remember to pre-emptively disavow every conceivable inference that you don’t intend next time!”
20 December 2009
17 December 2009
Reverence.
I really have no clue whether the David Foster Wallace short story in the New Yorker was intended as a stand-alone piece or if it's part of that novel he was working on, but I was glad I got to read it anyway. It includes this line, which satisfies my yen for Rudolph-Otto-style typographies of the numinous:
“This was the year, at five or six, that I learned the meaning of ‘reverence,’ which, as I understand it, is the natural attitude to take toward magical, unverifiable phenomena, the same way that ‘respect’ and ‘obedience’ describe the attitude one takes toward observable physical phenomena, such as gravity or money.”
-from “All That” by David Foster Wallace, at The New Yorker
“This was the year, at five or six, that I learned the meaning of ‘reverence,’ which, as I understand it, is the natural attitude to take toward magical, unverifiable phenomena, the same way that ‘respect’ and ‘obedience’ describe the attitude one takes toward observable physical phenomena, such as gravity or money.”
-from “All That” by David Foster Wallace, at The New Yorker
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