What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness?
Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Luce is forty-five, his brown hair floppy, his lips pouty. On the screens above the stage, his green eyes blink furiously. "The devil hates us," he exhorts, "and we gotta be ready to fight and not be these passive little lukewarm, namby-pamby, kum-ba-yah, thumb-sucking babies that call themselves Christians. Jesus? He got mad!" Luce considers most evangelicals too soft, too ready to pass off as piety their preference for a bland suburban lifestyle. He hates what he sees as the weakness of "accepting" Christ, of "trusting" the Lord. "I want an attacking church!" he shouts, his normally smooth tones raw and desperate and alarming. He isn't just looking for followers -- he wants "stalkers" who'll bring a criminal passion to their pursuit of godliness.
BattleCry's enemies are "queers and communists, feminists and Muslims...and the entire American cultural apparatus of marketing and merchandising, the 'techno-terrorists' of mass media, doing to the morality of a generation what Osama bin Laden did to the Twin Towers."
The New York Times article is here. Rolling Stone had a great interview here. But for me, I'm going to pull out my old dogeared copy of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and raise a glass to one of my favorite literary rebels. Although some of his works were just plain weird, I'll never forget the delicious weirdness of Billy Pilgrim's shattered life in Slaughterhouse Five, a book which spoke to me at a young age when I was wrestling with my own ideas of fate and free will and just who in the hell am I? I always enjoyed Vonnegut's ability to pull these deep themes out of such hilariously bizarre settings. I also loved that I knew I was reading a book that had been banned from the Montgomery Academy high school library.
So goodbye Mr. Vonnegut. I hope you and Kilgore Trout and a couple of Tralfamadorians are relaxing somewhere in the fourth dimension, sipping tea and watching the fires.
You may have heard that Google Maps has a new feature called "My Maps" which allows you to create personalized annotated maps with links to pictures, audio or whatever you feel like commemorating your travels with. Be sure and check out this week's featured map, America's Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66.
Take this silver lining
Keep it in your own
Sweet head
And shine it when the night is
Burning red
Shine it in the twilight
Shine it on the cold, cold ground
Shine it till these walls
Come tumbling down
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the darkest deep
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
Step into the silence
Take it in your own
Two hands
And scatter it like diamonds
All across these lands
Blaze it in the morning
Wear it like an iron skin
Only things worth living for are
Innocence and magic, amen
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the darkest deep
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
We were born with our eyes wide open
So alive with wild hope now
Can you tell me why
Time after time they drag you down
Down in the talk so cheap
Fools and their madness all around
Know that the light don't sleep
Know that the light don't sleep
This is a map that first appeared in 2002 in Scientific American, and was based on data collected by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach. Think it's gotten any better since then?
