Arctangential

Hey, I forgot to mention;

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I don’t really understand religion.

Allow me to clarify. I understand, or at least I think I do, on some intellectual level, why it exists and why people believe in it. I don’t dislike it particularly, nor do I dislike religious people. I mean, there are plenty of religious people that I dislike, but those people would be assholes no matter what their belief system — their assholery just makes them put the religion out front and it’s what you encounter first. Even for them, I believe that I understand why they find it important.

But I still don’t get it. It simply doesn’t hit me at that gut level that I really think is required to actually be a religious person. I don’t feel that I am or ever will be able to really believe that there’s any kind of mystical unknown presence that controls the world. People tell me that I will someday have a kind of spiritual encounter, some kind of numinous visitation that will forever convince me as to the reality of the almighty and the correctness of whatever dogma they’re advocating to me. I just can’t even begin to imagine what form this epiphany could possibly take that would convince me of anything apart from my own delusional state.

I’ve thought about trying to pretend, about joining a church or synagogue and just going through the motions, but I really don’t think I would feel right doing something so insincere. It would be nice to have something to believe in, but it’s not the kind of thing you can just decide to do.

Oh well.

Report from the discount CD bin. The following discs cost me $5 (plus applicable taxes):

Agnes Gooch – blind
violent bruised sky – unlearn
Big Car – Normal
Willie Wisely Trio – Raincan
Junkster – Junkster

As you can probably tell, I just choose them based on their having interesting names (or sometimes interesting cover art).

Mini-reviews of each:

Agnes Gooch (which seems to be made up only of men, so that’s just a band name, not a person name), is sort of semi-mediocre guitar rock. The lyrics aren’t really intelligible, so I can’t say if they’re intelligent or not. It’s not bad though — I will listen to it for a while probably.

Big Car… maybe this is the “Emo” thing I keep hearing about — these people sure are emotional, anyways. It’s hard to say exactly what they’re emotional about — maybe the issue is that their music SUCKS ASS. This will not be getting much airplay on Radio Avi.

violent bruised sky: Shitty Cannibal Corpse wanna be death metal, lots of high pitched meaningless screaming, random guitar mutilations, steam hammer drumming a complete lack of rhythm or melody. I think I like it. Too bad it’s only 4 tracks.

Willie Wisely Trio actually has a guy in it named Willie Wisley, but… it’s actually 4 people. So I’m not entirely sure what’s up with that. Anyways, it’s an improv jazz kind of deal, and when I say “improv” I mean “Music this bad couldn’t have been planned in advance.” The lead singer sounds like Jerry Lewis with a head cold and the lyrics are on an intellectual par with Phish. Hating it.

Junkster, despite its decidedly stupid name, is actually pretty good. Female vocalist, a nice mellow rock sound, very catchy. It is making my head move around a little. Prime replay material.

So, for $5, I got 2.5 pretty decent albums and 2 really shitty ones. That’s not a bad deal.