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2007:12:29:01:38. Saturday. MUSIC IN 2007: 44 SHOTS IN THE DARK.
Instead of actually producing CD's this year, I did my best-of mix as a set of MP3's included on my year-end DVD. But despite the fact that this could have allowed me to just include as many tracks as I wanted, for whatever reason I still restricted it to two CD's worth of time, mixed it out, etc. In a nice show of what's happened to the music industry in the past few years, all but one of these 44 tracks are available via the iTunes store -- the missing one is from a now-defunct local band, though the other now-defunct local band managed to get their stuff online. When compiling the links for the songs, I was surprised to find how many of them also had videos available at the store -- this year's version may, be sheer coincidence, have more actual singles on it than any other edition.
Disc One:
Disc Two:
2007:12:22:19:25. Saturday. MUSIC IN 2007: 30 VISIONS. 
2007:12:17:14:33. Monday. BACKLASH SYNDROME. Matthew Yglesias links to a New Republic essay on the "new atheism," and agrees that it is self-defeating: In a raw power struggle between people who, like Harris, want public schools "announce the death of God" and those who want them to indoctrinate us all in the Gospel, the numbers aren't on the side of the non-believers and the outcome is unlikely to be a happy one for anyone. The liberal consensus, by contrast, has served the country well and undermining it from the point of view of ideological atheism is really no better than undermining it from any other direction.
This is essentially a version of the backlash argument that "serious" liberals have used to undermine their "fringe" compatriots for the past several decades. It derives, I suspect, from the fruits of the Nixon era, and all the Brokaw-ian beliefs that certain liberals hold about 1968. As the story goes, the country turned to the right as a result of all those dirty fucking hippies that behaved so horribly at the Democratic National Convention, among other places. Since then, leftist "extremism" has been the boogeyman that has scared the Democratic Party toward the center and allowed the Republicans to push ever rightward in response. Thus, countenancing the idea that secular society ought to be, in practice, secular, is seen as the kind of thing likely to destroy the liberal consensus and take tolerance of atheism with it. This is sort of ridiculous on its face, as atheism has simply never had a seat at the liberal consensus table in the United States -- this was, for decades if not centuries, a passively Christian society until very recently. When people began to suggest that the First Amendment had something to say about that, things moved toward secularism for the most part, and the Christianists dug in their heels. This is a lot like what happened leading up to 1968, when blacks, women and other political minorities stood up and demanded to be given their due. What people tend to forget about 1968 and how horrible it all was for the Left, is that a lot of what was sought was achieved back then. The way it was achieved was by fighting for it. Similarly, respect for secularism won't be achieved by people who pretend that secularism doesn't matter or who are afraid to acknowledge their own beliefs, as well as the logic behind them. And if you don't like the tone being taken by activists without much to lose individually, maybe you should hook up with the national political leaders who actively support secularism, particularly when it comes to issues like the Pledge of Allegiance court case. Actually, there aren't any of those, but thank God for that liberal consensus, eh?
2007:12:10:12:52. Monday. SOME PIMPAGE. A couple of friends' new band, the Dan Andreas Fault, will play their first show next Tuesday at the King Club. They're opening for the Attack Ponies, showtime is at 10:00. They're supposedly kind of Wilco-ish, though obviously I haven't heard them yet. Still, I'll be there and you should too.
posted by Aaron S. Veenstra 2007:12:02:21:15. Sunday. FLASHBACK VERONICA MARS BLOGGING. In one of Amazon's recent sales, I picked up Veronica Mars seasons one and two for $25 each, and have been working my way through the first one over the last couple weeks. I haven't seen most of these episodes since they first aired, and I'm really struck by how well it holds up. A show like this, it's possible that there's nothing there for rewatching, but there are a lot of layers to dig into and the fun little beats that I remember are still fun. By the time you get past about the eighth episode, all the little wrinkles have been ironed out and it's smooth sailing. It's really one of the awesomest things in the canon of modern TV.
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