Billy Liar's got his hands in his pockets...

The Decemberists are coming out with a new album! This is perhaps the happiest news I have heard in the last 153 hours or so, and I'm quite excited. If, by some fluke, you don't know who they are, you should listen to them. Or check out their web site. They're one of the few bands which has stuck with me for more than a couple months as recurring favorites.

Wow, I feel like such a fanboy.

In other news, I went to Lincoln's culture festival and enjoyed some reggae and celtic rock last night. It was an enjoyable time.

We bought some new art for the apartment, so it increasingly feels like my home.

I was recently listening to some Okkervil River and was struck by the song "West Falls". I was intrigues by the thesis that "evil don't look like anything", which drives the story about a boy who, seemingly for no reason, ends up murdering a girl and then looks at the public's reaction to the event. I think its very tempting for us to try to make certain people "evil" so that we can console ourselves because we're not like them. I remember hearing a reference to an interview with a man who had killed three people and was in jail for life. When asked if he felt guilty for the act, he responded that in prison "we know who the really bad people are. The child molesters. I'm nothing like them." Everyone has a tendency to find sin in people they're not like so as to console themselves. Whether those people are murderers, child molesters or religious hypocrites, its easy to look at them rather than at ourselves. However, the truth is that any lines we draw among people to make them good and evil end up being arbitrary and false. A Christian view of the world is not to differentiate between ourselves and sinners, but instead to humbly recognize the wickedness in our own hearts and, as a result, to grow in love for our fellow man and revel in Christ's grace. When Paul says "and such were some of you," we ought to meditate on its truth in our own lives. Or, as another song puts it about an infamous murderer, "On my best behavior/I'm really just like him/Look underneath the floorboards/For the secrets I have hid."