I'm reading a couple books on the Emergies right now. First up was a book that I have not the heart to criticise, at least in a public sphere...my wife has had to hear all about its fallacies at length, and I won't belabour the point to you all. "A New Kind of Christian", by Emergie-in-Chief Brian McLaren. Read it if you must. I still have the final bit at the end to get through, but I'm suffering from an overdose of Postmodern-Hyper-Introspection, I had to put it down.

As an antidote, I am now reading the very humorous and insightful Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. I'm only about 60 pages in, but so far they do a good job expressing criticisms that I would have expressed in a much more ham-fisted way, and besides, they are more well read on the Emergie conversation than I.

I also just watched a documentary entitled The Weather Underground. It was a fairly balanced view that gave these domestic terrorists a pretty fair hearing. I find it thoroughly baffling not only that these people are not locked up in jail, but that people like Ayers and Dohrn are actually respected members of the educational establishment, not to mention personal friends of the President and First Lady.

I suppose there is a common thread to this post:

"Hippies! They're everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad. I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about "protectin' the earth" and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets - I hate 'em! I wanna kick 'em in the nuts!" - Eric Cartman

It's fairly normal for me to go in phases of, well, renaissance, if you will (I sure as spit wouldn't!) as regards music. Right now I'm somewhat back in a Steely Dan phase.

Someone finally uploaded this tune, a song never released because some idiot in the recording studio erased the final version, and the band was either too discouraged or too stoned to attempt it again. It is in low quality, but the playing and writing are great.

Steely Dan - The Second Arrangement

Here's another great one from their most recent album Everything Must Go, a much better album than Two Against Nature. This song was described as a metaphor for addiction...not by me, so don't point those pretense-accusing fingers at me! The weird, distorted keyboard solo at the end is worth price of admission alone.

Steely Dan - Lunch with Gina