HIGH STRANGENESS IMMANENT

Since Mr. Scampers recommended it in his fake Twitter feed, and because the soon to be posted essay deals with the strange realm of biblical gnosticism as advocated by someone who claimed Christianity is but a mental emanation, find below for your enjoyment the classic instrumental La Villa Strangiato by my hometown band RUSH.

From the Album: Hemispheres
Original Recording: Rockfield Studios, Wales (June/July 1978)
This Live Version: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2002)

BREAKDOWN:
------------------La Villa Strangiato (An excercise in Self-Indulgence)

----------------------I. Buenos Nochas, Mein Froinds!
----------------------II. To sleep, perchance to dream...
----------------------III. Strangiato theme
----------------------IV. A Lerxst in Wonderland
----------------------V. Monsters!
----------------------VI. The Ghost of Aragon
----------------------VII. Danforth and Pape
----------------------VIII. The Waltz of the Shreves
----------------------IX. Never turn your back on a Monster!
----------------------X. Monsters! (Reprise)
----------------------XI. Strangiato theme (Reprise)
----------------------XII. A Farewell to Things

HIGH STRANGENESS IMMANENT

SPORTS AS RELIGION

Science... has become one of the three most effective marketing means. The other two are Sports and Sex, writ large. Such are the three S's that rule modern life.

- Fr. Stanley Jaki, The Biblical Basis of Western Science

[RANT]

Never did like the Olympics, winter or summer. When considered as an "international event" (with no reference to the athletes as such), the whole thing smacks of secular messianism. The opening and closing ceremonies - the grandiosity of this politically correct ritualized entertainment, the cornball iconography and symbolism, the exaggeration of the Olympics as some kind of global imperative for humanity - gives TH2 a big time stomach ache. The "Olympic song" for Vancouver 2010 was "I Believe". Well, what the hell do you believe in? Of course, some vaguely defined abstraction requiring no real commitment, some non-specific mystical "force" in the universe, and all the rest of that humanistic crap.





But do not think TH2 to be that much of a killjoy. I did watch the Olympics - specifically/only the hockey games involving Team Canada. We won the gold medal, beating the Americans... Hazzah! Unfortunately, however, hockey has become too much of a religion for Canadians, transmogrifying into that which "defines us". But don't get me wrong again. TH2 loves the game. Been playing since I was a 6 year old punk, right up to the present day, weekly. Oh... and did I say, we beat the Yanks!





Canada's superiority in hockey is quite evident. As for our military - in terms of its strength and expenditures in recent decades... well, that's another matter altogether...

SPORTS AS RELIGION

WAR OF 1812 REDUX

For my American friends ;)

WAR OF 1812 REDUX