Les Jours Tristes

A magnificent piece.

Hated Since Conception

So I found a video that made me cry. Meet Gianna Jessen:

Part Two

Please watch this all the way through, and ask yourself whether you have been desensitized by lies about the weakest among us.

Lets Go Pens!

Just in time for Game 7, here are five great Pittsburgh Penguins Stanley Cup Finals moments.

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I Am Aglow

I really am! Sarah Harmer, recommendation of the week:

Norah

I haven't posted a music video in a long time. Mostly because I haven't been moved like this in a long time.

The Problem

Do you know what the problem with pop music is? Well, actually there's two: no dobros and no good tenors. Here's the Seldom Scene- eat your hearts out, Coldplay!

Boots of Spanish Leather

Nanci Griffith, from the Transatlantic Sessions Part 2. Featuring Jerry Douglas.

Pennsylvania Waypoints

Here's a new site containing GPS and Geocache data on a large collection of overlooks, waterfalls and covered bridges. If you have a program like Delorme's Topo USA, you can load up the GPX files to view the whole collection.

Skydiving

Yeah, that's right. I went skydiving. Check it:

A Useful Baseball Guide

Perhaps you've taken the opportunity this summer to catch a baseball game or two. If that's the case, and you're relatively new to the sport, Bill Simmons has a useful primer on one of the game's best features: the Baseball Brawl.

The Man With the Golden Key

To us he appeared to be indeed the Man with the Golden Key, a magician opening the gates of goblin castles or the sepulchres of dead heroes; and there was no incongruity in calling his lantern a magic-lantern. But all this time he was known to the world, and even the next-door neighbours, as a very reliable and capable though rather unambitious business man. It was a very good first lesson in what is also the last lesson of life; that in everything that matters, the inside is much larger than the outside. On the whole I am glad that he was never an artist. It might have stood in his way in becoming an amateur. It might have spoilt his career; his private career. He could never have made a vulgar success of all the thousand things he did so successfully.

G.K. Chesterton on his father, Autobiography

The Cremation of Sam McGee

Check out this reading of Robert Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee. Sorry about the link- the owner of the video turned off the embedding feature.

More on Robert Service here. His poetry is indexed here. My favorite is The Ballad of the Northern Lights. Enjoy!

Cannonball Rag!

So I was searching YouTube today at lunch for the great Merle Travis piece Cannonball Rag, and I found this guy named Tommy Emmanuel playing it. Unbelievable! I'll admit I'd never heard of him before, but apparently I should have. Check out the Beatles bits he does on there too.

Samson Agonistes

Ogden Nash

I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.

Mind Control

Laugh, because the devil wants you take everything seriously. Go here, because the government wants to control your mind.

Touche!

For though to-day is always to-day and the moment is always modern, we are the only men in all history who fell back upon bragging about the mere fact that to-day is not yesterday. I fear that some in the future will explain it by saying that we had precious little else to brag about. For, whatever the medieval faults, they went with one merit. Medieval people never worried about being medieval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern.

G. K. Chesterton, On Turnpikes and Medievalism

Nature's Promises

"I think modern people have somehow got their minds all wrong about human life. They seem to expect what Nature has not promised; and then they try to ruin all that Nature has really given."

G.K. Chesterton, The Flying Inn

Narnia's Side

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's the funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, "The Silver Chair", C.S. Lewis (p. 159).

Going to Asia

"That's just what we meant; to link up the great religions of East and West; Buddha and Christ. Surely you must understand that all religions are really the same."

"If they are", said Father Brown mildly, "it seems rather unnecessary to go into the middle of Asia to get one."

G.K. Chesterton, "Red Moon of Meru"

2005 Bulwer-Lytton (Bad) Fiction Contest Winners

For a good chuckle, check out the San Jose State University Bulwer-Lytton (Bad) Fiction Contest Winners. It's amazing how talented some people are at writing poorly. The winner compared a woman's breasts to knobs on a carburetor, and one of the runners-up wrote about India, "that hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia". Here are some of my favorites:

• After she realized the man she had fallen in love with was her long lost twin brother and they must break up immediately, they shared one last kiss that left a bitter yet sweet taste in her mouth--kind of like throwing up after eating a junior mint. [Tami Farmer, Rome, GA]



• The rising sun crawled over the ridge and slithered across the hot barren terrain into every nook and cranny like grease on a Denny's grill in the morning rush, but only until eleven o'clock when they switch to the lunch menu. [Lester Guyse, Portland, OR]



• Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, in General Hospital born I was, and quite happy were my parents, but when a youngling still I was, moved we did. [Mary Potts, Oneco, Fl]