Whimsy: December 2007 Archives

Book TV - 2007 Texas Book Festival: Sherman Alexie: Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

My wife recommends as "very funny" the reading and talk given by Sherman Alexie from his autobiography in which he discusses growing up on an Indian reservation and overcoming some serious physical disabilities. This book won the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. (Here's the Amazon page with some quotes from the book in the reviews.)

the evangelical outpost: The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls: Comparing George Bailey and Howard Roark

"... Roark lives to create inspiring works of architecture but cannot do so without relying on others. When society fails to appreciate his "genius", his egotistical purity leads him to engage in a massive destruction of private property. By the end of The Fountainhead Roark is revealed to be an infantile, narcissistic, parasite. Bailey, on the other hand, has all the marking of a repressed, conformist, patsy. He lives for others (a sentiment that would make Ayn Rand gag) rather than 'following his bliss.' He compromises everything but his integrity. And yet he discovers that he has all that makes life worth living."

What I Saw in America: It's a Destructive Life

Via Rod Dreher, who says, "it's like having Christmas with James Howard Kunstler": "A deep irony pervades the film at the moment of it joyous conclusion: as the developer of an antiseptic suburban subdivision, George Bailey is saved through the kinds of relationships nourished in his town that will be undermined and even precluded in the anomic community he builds as an adult."

Townhall.com: Andrew Tallman: Why Do We Give Bad Christmas Gifts?

Yuletide pressures, in case you didn't feel enough already: "Bad gifts are a burden precisely because they show your lack of love for the recipient. The prerequisite of love is knowledge. You cannot love whom you do not know. Thus, a gift shows love when it demonstrates a real knowledge of who someone is and what he desires. Bad gifts are evidence of a bad relationship because they demonstrate that you do not know enough about this person to be capable of giving a good gift."

purgatorio: Divine Vinyl: Exciting Christmas Stories

Purgatorio is back from hiatus with some strange and hilarious Christmas album covers from the past.