If blogwatching is wrong, I don't want to be right.

A few quick hits:

1. REACTIONARIES AND FORMALISTS, TOGETHER AT LAST!: This column on the vinyl LP is worth reading all the way through, but you gotta let these two sentences into your life:

Maybe it’s because current methods of listening aren’t cutting it that I’ve started buying more vinyl. Not because it sounds better or evokes nostalgia, as any number of articles on the vinyl resurgence claim, but because listening to vinyl is a more structured and formal experience.

2. CATHOLIC TRADS AND OTHER CATHOLIC TRADS, TOGETHER AT LAST!: John Zmirak is just precious:

There are Facebook groups that summon from airless basement rooms the fans of squabbling heirs to the vacant throne of Byzantium, and dating services catering to the most peculiar tastes, and the tiniest coteries of dispossessed souls. For instance, orthodox Catholics. No, not the folks who happened to grow up Italian-American or Irish in the wake of Vatican II, and learned a little less about their Faith than most 19th century Haitians. I mean the much smaller subset of people who have blundered somehow onto the actual teachings of the Church—and even worse, come to believe them.

From a mass religion that exercised a sweaty grip on the minds of tens of millions, the American church in the past 40 years has become something very different: An exotic, almost esoteric sect of old believers, hidden inside the shell of a mainline Protestant denomination. Apart from the occasional Latin Mass full of elderly anti-Masonic activists, we typically sit through our dismal local services with teeth clenched and earlids shut, and spot each other (if at all) by secret handshakes and coded phrases. See that blonde over there, a friend might nudge you with his elbow. She took Communion on the tongue. I wonder if she’s single…

Via the Western Confucian.

3. John Darnielle takes Nachtmystium's frontman to task for saying, "I don't make music for other people":

To this I feel I must say: oh, really? Nonsense. If you are making music only for yourself, you don't release it. While it's true that an artist does not owe his fans the music they want, he does, in fact, owe them quite a great deal, and he lies if he says he isn't making music for them. Because it's the listeners to whom an artist owes the right to self-identify as an artist. They gave you that job. It is for them that you make music, not yourself; only artists of whom no-one has ever heard have any right to claim that they "don't make music for other people."

The rest of us must always be true to our visions, don't get me wrong. If we waste our inspiration trying to chase down past glories to satisfy people who don't think we should grow or change, we're traitors of the worst kind. But don't kid yourself. You do owe the audience something, and you do make music for them, and if you don't think of it that way, perhaps you should.

The nice thing about this post is that he's obviously not operating within the if-Nietzsche-was-so-smart-how-come-he's-dead school of Gotcha, but really trying to get this guy to rethink how he makes music. (Aside to Eve: The other person may feel bad about himself, but that doesn't mean my criticism--or shaming--is coming from a place of sadism. Even if I'm kinda glad he feels that way.)

4. Did you realize that "White Wedding" totally works as weird-old-America murder-ballad-y banjo music? Blessed are those who have not heard and yet have believed, but why wait?

5. Anonymous is back! Catch all the hot gender theoretical action in real-time, or just dive in yourself! Updated almost constantly, so be sure to keep checking back.

6. I do not know what is happening to my life. Not safe for work. Or home. Or anywhere, ever.