Sentential Links #42

Here we go with this week's clicky goodness:

:: I say no records, no Hall for steroid-using players.

:: Guess what? Macaulay Culkin has named his, um, well, you know... (Oh, for the love of God! That kid is so messed up.)

:: The way I see it, critics can play a useful cultural role, but composers should ignore what they say, even when it's positive. (Why limit that to composers? I'd include just about every artist, personally.)

:: The whole duty of a conductor is comprised in his ability always to indicate the right TEMPO. (OK, it's not a quote from a blog post, but from a written selection that was in turn quoted within a blog post. But the words are Wagner's, after all. If I had a time machine, I'd use it to hear Wagner and Berlioz conduct.)

:: As the raindrop scatters the sun's light into a rainbow, so your love scatters joy into my life. (What a nice custom this guy has! It's explained here. Lynn is always linking this guy, but somehow I never checked him out until a week ago.)

:: A mysterious communication arrived via my agent. (Man, this is surreal. But when did merely linking a site become something that could be legally challenged? Did I miss something? Am I tempting fate by linking the site? Oh no!)

:: At this point, Dems need to proclaim as loudly and as often as possible that they've got the far stronger hand going into 2006. President Bush is a deeply unpopular president who's hitting record lows in the polls; he's widely seen as incompetent and a failure; he's lost the ability to corral Republicans in Congress, who are running from him as though their lives counted on it; and, perhaps most important, less than half of Americans approve of President Bush's handling of terrorism -- the very thing pundits somehow can't stop describing as his "strong suit." (Exactly! In the words of John Stewart: "Talking points. They're true, because they're said a lot.")

:: What all these violent aggressive conquests by the rep-resentatives of missionary religions do demonstrate is that there are no major world religions devoted entirely to peace, and no major world religions devoted entirely to war. There are only changing motives. (Exactly. The whole problem with the "Religion of peace" meme, when applied to any religion, is that it omits the religion from the people who practice it. Violent people beget violent religions.)

:: What a wonderful concept. Most times when people hurt or disappoint us, we treat them with with judgment and alienation. What if we were to accept that we all make mistakes, we all fail miserably and often, during this human condition. What if we were to make this paradigm shift to respond with Love, compassion, and understanding instead of with anger, judgment and rejection?

:: I will tell you my opinion. Be aware of some facts first. (Good post providing a real-life example of how a skeptical bit of inquiry works.)

:: To put it in its simplest terms, for me, reincarnation is nothing more than the act of human compost. From what I've observed in my lifetime, all matter eventually dies and breaks down into its most fundamental elements. These elements come together to form new matter.

And at last, two I found recently that may, in one way, be kindred spirits:

:: There has been some discussion recently about the value of overalls in society but nowhere has the overall truth been mentioned - overalls bring happiness.

:: However, the potential utility of these amazing pants quickly overwhelmed the comic intent and I spent a good deal of the party imagining myself wearing them while performing chores around the house. On Sunday, I turned that reverie into reality and donned these penultimate pantaloons.

Carry that flame forward!

...and more sentential goodness next Monday.