Opinion of Phoebe Bridgers' 'Chinese Satellite'

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's an excellent song on an excellent album. In addition to what it says about the narrator's (who is, of course, not always the same person as the singer-songwriter) own values and beliefs, it's also a lot more compassionate to the fervently religious-conservative worldview of the narrator's loved ones than most people with Bridgers's political commitments are willing to get these days. I hope she hasn't lost that capacity in the two years that the culture war has spent getting some-f**king-how even worse since Punisher was released.

The song on the album that really represents my values is "Kyoto", though, so much so that I wrote a 600-character essay on it in Japanese for a project called Magellan no shisen that didn't pan out.

It is just an obvious fact of life that is only disturbing or alarming to atheists who were raised in religious households.

This is a glib hypergeneralization that has already been disproven multiple times in this very thread.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovalante) raise you:

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Despite being irreligious I’ve long accepted my false idols. Occam’s Razor dictates 90% of being a Philly sports fan is some malevolent cosmic entity tormenting me for my sins in a past life.

I (and discovolante) raise you:

I have never felt such a breadth of fervor becoming malaise as a member of any broader community as was in the air here when we lost the 2012 AL East to the Yankees. We as a people were in tatters, and it can be said that we never really recovered on levels not limited to the O's marching right back into the sea since then.

I'm glad my great-grandfather, who was in charge of the Baltimore parks department when the team moved from St. Louis and was honored with a plaque on the Os' tenth anniversary that still hangs in my parents' home, was dead long before the 2018 and 2019 seasons. At least the Red Sox have had a great couple of decades--but then, having a great couple of decades has caused the team to lose something of its old soulfulness.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The song on the album that really represents my values is "Kyoto", though, so much so that I wrote a 600-character essay on it in Japanese for a project called Magellan no shisen that didn't pan out.

If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about this!

This was in connection with a photo album that I bought from a rare book dealer in Scotland that has several hundred pictures from a young Air Force secretary's time in Occupied Japan. I wanted to explore the role of tourism in supporting "traditional" Japanese culture in a time where the domestic Japanese interest in it is 1. declining because, well, the population itself is declining and 2. more and more entangled in various political and historiographical shibboleths. I was proud of what I eventually wrote, although I didn't cite Discourses of the Vanishing enough. The overall project was me and a few other people trying to expand from this phrase "Magellan's gaze" that Pope Francis used at one point to describe "viewing the center from the periphery"; personally, Magellan would NOT be my first choice of historical figure to use to describe this concept, but, well, that's the phrase that was used.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Based

https://mobile.twitter.com/phoebe_bridgers/status/1521582506801254400

Genuine honesty and vulnerability in music is rare and actually leads to real success, even if untied from commercial success. I knew her from a collaboration with Lord Huron, a band I quite like. Not listened to her full catalogue yet. So this thread is a good prompt.

I think you'll really love Punisher, Andrew. Let us know what you think of it once you've listened to it!