Why I heart Kasey Chambers

Okay, so I finally tracked down a copy of Kasey Chambers’ latest CD Carnival, which it turns out was actually released LAST August, not this August as implied by her website.  D’oh!  If I lived in Australia, I’d have known that.  And much else in my life would be different.  Anywayz, I am feeling the need to spread the love and explain to others why Kasey is a) the bomb, and b) my hero.

Theology in Cyberspace; Confessions of a Heretic

So, while the nrrd grrls and sailor boyz and other miscellaneous brain hotties were being quiet this weekend, I accidentally stumbled into a very interesting discussion of Virtual Evangelism at Innocent Bystanders, a comments site populated by seriously entertaining nrrds.  I initially intended only to chastise them for taking totally out of context the words of a very respectable Italian Jesuit literary critic (of whom I had never before heard), and I ended up a) falling in love with the Jesuit and deciding I need to learn to read Italian, b) becoming very intrigued by Second Life, c) engaging a prolonged theological debate with a totally random assortment of evangelical protestants and rabid atheists, d) sucking my dear agnostic pal Euphrosyne into the fray, and e) linking the IBs on my blogroll because I really do now heart them that much.  Oh, and f) deciding that Flannery O’Connor is actually a Pollyanna as well as generally being the bomb.  It takes truly deep reserves of faith to find grace in the abject and the absurd.

So here are a few of the epiphanies that I’ve come to recently (both before and after getting all tangled up with Father Spadaro and the Innocent Bystanders–oh, what a perfect name for a punk band!):

Public debut of the Undead Poet (Be afraid. Be very, very afraid…)

Okay, I threatened Euphrosyne a while ago that I might start publishing some of my recently rediscovered juvenalia. Nuthin’ like a really depressive adolescent grrl with a penchant for the modernists. But before I inflict any of the authentic works on my readers, I will share my more recently composed postmodern pastiche/homage to the Undead Poet (not to mention a whole host of other young poets whose works I still have in my possession–including Euphrosyne herself), which a few of you have already read.  I dare the rest of you to click here for more….