I’m a hipster intellectual, and I need my coffee-shop-proximity meta-discourse like I need my Djarum Splashes. That said, a few things in this World are better than the meta-discourse, and tonight, 40 oz. to Bad Santaria tried to make it onto my list of Better Things. Did they make it? (Cliffhanger?)

That’s right. I have decided to get back into web design a little bit, and I started by redesigning this site. I switched blogging software to WordPress for no real reason, and I went to town to create a template in my text editor. Let me know if there’s anything you can

In the past month, I have seen Cake, Gomez, and Robbers on High Street; Built to Spill, Mike Johnson, and Hockey Night; the Books; Rilo Kiley, Neva Dinova, and Tilly and the Wall; and Prefuse 73. I’m on a budget, so I bought only the t-shirts necessary to maintain street-credibility (Prefuse 73 was most [...]

I don’t know much about the Jagjaguwar label; and, to be honest, before this year, I didn’t know much about any of the bands on the label. But this has been a very good year for them.

Minus Story
First, consider Minus Story. Their 2004 album The Captain is Dead, Let the Drum Corpse Dance [...]

It’s official: Gabe’s Oasis is an awful concert venue. At first, I thought it was just an honest oversight that they booked Minus Story during the University of Iowa’s spring break, but then they almost got into a fistfight with The Album Leaf last Saturday night because the show was running too late. [...]

And then I didn’t go to the Decemberists show, because Calvin Johnson was playing here on campus and PopMatters wanted me to review it. It was interesting. You’ll read about it in due time.

Decemberists + Okkervil River tonight at the Mill in Iowa City. Any Des Moines-area high schoolers need a ride?
…And by “tonight,” I mean “tomorrow night.”

Well, we’ve arrived back in Grinnell, and it’s just like Montreal.
And I figure I should mention that while I was out of town PopMatters published my review of the Brother Ali/Treologic show:
http://www.popmatters.com/music/concerts/b/brother-ali-050305.shtml
So there.

So I’m chillin’ in the MTL right now, and I thought I would post some pictures of our trip so far. It’s been real. And trippy.

Suffice it to say, Version 1 liberals can become Version 2 liberals out of self-interest by recognizing (and practicing) the necessity of the virtue of public reasonableness to the preservation of democratic legitimacy. And my “Issues in Democratic Political Theory” are resolved. Forever. I hope.*
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*Kymlicka 2002: 289-291.