I came across this gem today, Nirvana covering Terry Jacks in Brazil: I think they had to trade instruments to keep just a smidgeon of ironic distance from the schmaltzyness of the original. This kind of necessity is the curse of my generation.

There's probably some language that has a word denoting the kind of emotion Gillian Welch summons in "Look at Miss Ohio." Maybe English does. I don't know. It has something to do with dashed expectations. The subject of this song has a convertible and maybe has a kind of Auntie Mame devil-may-care type charisma. But…

Eric's post about how philosophers die hit home for me in part because it was posted a week after the first anniversary of my dear friend and colleague Ian Crystal's death.  When Ian died I had just been helping Mark Ohm translate Tristan Garcia's chapter on death in his Form and Object, and what Garcia writes continues…