Russell Targ's exTEDx Talk

Russell Targ from Suzanne Taylor on Vimeo.

I really loved Russell Targ's talk during the Brother Can You Spare a Paradigm, exTEDx event. It was an excellent program overall, but some of those talks are must hear and his was one of them. Suzanne Taylor has apparently uploaded the talks to individual videos on a dedicated Vimeo channel to replace the livestream version I originally posted here. More background on the TED's abrupt revocation of the West Hollywood charter can be found here.

If you haven't listened to these talks, I highly recommend doing so. I also particularly loved Gary Bobroff and I thought Craig Weiler did a great job of explaining the paradigm shift that is leaving TED behind. But the whole thing is worth listening to and it can now be accomplished in easily digestible bites.

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Broken Things

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Some years ago, I found myself living in an area that, let's say, would not have been my first choice. Dog owner. Sometimes you have to take what you can get. It wasn't a bad little place but I was never comfortable there. And I started to have health problems. Allergies that I thought were under control worsened dramatically. I was just uncomfortable. The place, the entire area, simply felt... wrong. One evening, as I was coming off the highway and driving into the neighborhood, I had the distinct sense of moving through a membrane into a much darker, heavier energy, and the thought that came to me unbidden was "Indian burial ground." Suddenly, I was certain of it. I had been living on top of an Indian burial ground and that was why it had always felt so dreary, so dissonant, so corrupted.

Several years later, after I'd long been out of there -- I'd only been able to stand it briefly -- I was doing readings in new age bookshop. One of my clients there, I learned, had lived in the same neighborhood. She had also found it to be an unhappy, uncomfortable time. I mentioned my theory to her -- that I was convinced it was on an Indian burial ground. A few weeks later I received a note from here in the mail. It contained a newspaper clipping. There was some new construction in that area and they'd turned up a number of artifacts that seemed to indicate that they were digging on an Indian burial ground.

Some things you just shouldn't do.

So I was very saddened to hear that it's open season on ancient Mayan pyramids in Belize.

A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."

Indeed.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they can do much to prevent this kind of desecration in Belize. Even though the law technically protects pre-Hispanic ruins like this one, they lack the funding and infrastructure for enforcement. This is not the first time a Belizean ruin has been desecrated and it probably won't be the last. Similar destruction is occurring in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

I was reminded recently of the desecration of one of my most beloved sites: Teotihuacan. Many were sickened when Wal-Mart decided to build a store on an outer edge of the ancient complex. For me, it was particularly painful because of my time there -- a time when I experienced a kind of rebirth. Teotihuacan is magical, otherworldly. And Wal-Mart is evil.

In December, the New York Times revealed the massive bribery scheme that allowed Wal-Mart to build on protected land. In a recent blog post, archaeologist Dr. Donna Yates expounded on the damage allowed by Wal-Mart's alleged $24 million "investment."

We archaeologists often find our discipline difficult to explain to outsiders, specifically outsiders with an unyielding eye for unnuanced commercial development. Just because the core of Teotihuacán is massive and visible, doesn’t mean that the archaeology stops at the edge of the temple. Rather it extends, under the ground, in all directions, hidden from view but waiting to be exposed and studied. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it is not there.

. . .

It is this periphery, these outer zones of sites, that are most at risk for destruction from development. It is difficult to convince planning authorities to protect this kind of past simply because people cannot believe what they cannot directly see. Even worse, it is in these areas that the average people lived: the people who built the massive pyramids, not the people who lived in them. The archaeology of real life, of workers, of farmers, of craftspeople, of the everyday is the hardest to preserve. It gets paved over and destroyed.

. . .

I share in the outrage surrounding the allegations of corruption involved in this scandal, however I urge readers to not lose sight of what we may have lost. Luis Gálvez, a leader of the workers’ union of the state National Institute of Anthropology and History, has stated that the Walmart at Teotihuacan is an “offence against Mexico”. I would contend that it is more than that. It is an offence against our shared cultural heritage. Everyone who visits the site, everyone who climbs the Temple of the Sun to look out over the Valley of Mexico and imagine the vast ancient city, painted bright colours and sparkling in the Central American sun will either have to pretend not to see the Walmart or ask themselves why it is there.

Indeed a number of artifacts were turned up by Wal-Mart's construction crew.

They found the remains of a wall dating to approximately 1300 and enough clay pottery to fill several sacks. Then they found an altar, a plaza and nine graves. Once again, construction was temporarily halted so their findings could be cataloged, photographed and analyzed.

The ensuing firestorm resulting from that find was not enough to keep Wal-Mart from greasing the wheels of "progress."

Elsewhere in the complex, Teotihuacan is still slowly revealing its mysteries to more patient archaeologists.

Hundreds of mysterious spheres lie beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, an ancient six-level step pyramid just 30 miles from Mexico City.

The enigmatic spheres were found during an archaeological dig using a camera-equipped robot at one of the most important buildings in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan.

Clearly there is much still be discovered through the painstaking process of archaeological examination that doesn't destroy the integrity of such ancient marvels. Yet, I'm not convinced that even archaeologists approach these sites in the right spirit. I have more than once had the experience of walking through museums and encountering angry spirits around items that they don't seem to want displayed.

After having communed with the spirits at Teotihuacan -- spirits who demanded offerings and placed conditions before we could even step onto some of the structures -- I am left heartsick at the lack of respect paid by a retailer already well known for cannibalizing communities. And I can't help thinking there will be a price to pay for helping itself to to this one.

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Sheldrake's View From TED's "Naughty Corner"

In very pointed comments, Rupert Sheldrake takes aim at the New Atheist cabal that co-opts the authority of science to advance their cause. He explains that there is a lengthy history of New Atheists and so-called "skeptics" targeting media organizations that give any coverage to topics they don't like. Their organized assault on TED which resulted in the still unexplained removal of Hancock's and Sheldrake's talks was just another chapter in their attempt to control the organs of information so that their world view dominates discussions of anything even vaguely related to the sciences.

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HuffPo to Broadcast Eclipse

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Next best thing to being there... Well, not really, but it'll have to do.

While some Aussies will be able to witness the annual "ring of fire" eclipse first-hand, the rest of the world won't be able to get a glimpse of the spectacular event -- at least, not in the sky.

So how can you watch the eclipse? We'll be running a live feed right here on HuffPost Science starting at 5:30 pm Eastern on Thursday, May 9.

SLOOH, a private company that controls robotic space cameras, often broadcasts such events through a real-time feed in true color -- we'll have their feed, along with a slideshow where readers can submit photos of the event and their setup for watching it.

Named for the ring shape created by the moon blocking part of the sun's light, the 'ring of fire' or 'annular' solar eclipse will be visible in certain parts of Australia and the Southern Pacific Ocean.

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Who Will Hold the Bishops Accountable?

It turns out that the disgraced Cardinal Roger Mahony, who actively conspired to protect abusive priests from prosecution and then spent untold millions in an attempt to conceal that fact, also tried to scuttle the John Jay report.

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, in a strongly worded letter to then-Bishop Wilton Gregory, at the time president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, complained at length about the forms that John Jay researchers produced. He described them as "designed by people who apparently have no understanding of the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiastical culture, hierarchical structure, or the language of the Roman Catholic Church."

The previously unpublished letters that circulated among Mahony, Gregory, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, Justice Anne Burke and others provide a behind-the-scenes view of some of the tensions in the air the year after the U.S. bishops formulated their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People during their June 2002 meeting in Dallas. Public outrage had forced the bishops to take a dramatic step to deal with the scandal of sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up of the abuse by scores of bishops across the United States.

The underlying reason, rather unsurprisingly, turns out to be concern that the data collected might be subject to legal discovery.

Mahony also expressed fear that the information being collected by John Jay researchers, though it went through an elaborate system to disguise the dioceses and keep accused perpetrators and victims anonymous, would be both leaked and subject to legal discovery.

Mahony gathered the unanimous support of the bishops in the California Catholic Conference, but was ultimately smacked down by Bishop Wilton Gregory of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mahony's concerns were unwarranted. The John Jay study was a whitewash that blamed '60s counterculture for somehow causing priests to molest children. Far from being "designed to create a further media 'feeding frenzy,'" as Mahony feared, it repeatedly rebutted unspecified media reports for calling the priests pedophiles. It did so by misrepresenting sources and torturing statistics. The study was roundly criticized for taking the bishops' money and data and presenting a study that was "garbage in, garbage out," which was really one of the kinder things you could say about scholarship so terrible.

It's entirely possible that Bishop Gregory and the bishops he represented wanted to obtain an impartial review, yet somehow, they ended up with what was transparently advocacy research. And Bishop Mahony is not the only cleric to balk at research that looked like it might be a little too independent. A criminologist was fired by the German bishops who'd retained him so they could look for a new "partner" -- one who didn't have so many notions about reaching conclusions not sanctioned by the Church.

So just who will hold Church officials to account? Cardinal Mahony, after being relieved of his duties in the Los Angeles Diocese, hopped a plane to Rome to help elect a new pope. Many Catholics were outraged but the Vatican showed little concern over the impropriety.

Even the criminal justice system is showing, at best, mixed results. The landmark prosecution of Msgr. William Lynn in Philadelphia appears to be falling apart. Key witness, Billy Doe, has proved to be unreliable and apparently gave contradictory testimony. The priest convicted of molesting him may have given a false confession. The conviction is very vulnerable to appeal. This is despite the fact that it is inarguable that the diocese had a lenghty, documented record of protecting abusers. But the clearly prosecutable crime for which one of the key actors was convicted may never have occurred.

Two Philadelphia cardinals in succession, John Krol (head of the archdiocese from 1961 to 1988) and Anthony Bevilacqua (1988-2003), for decades knowingly protected priests who had sexually abused children, sometimes savagely, hiding their actions from civil authorities and from the Catholic community they were supposed to serve.

We are certain of those assertions because a grand jury in Philadelphia managed to subpoena thousands of pages of documentation and to accumulate hundreds of hours of testimony before issuing, in 2005, a stunning report detailing years of sexual abuse of children by priests and cover-up of the abuse by cardinal archbishops.

. . .

The Philadelphia archdiocese was one of the worst examples of high clericalism in the United States and of what the clerical/hierarchical culture could breed in its single-minded determination to hide the crimes of sex abuse and protect itself. In the end, it did neither.

Like many others, we felt that a bit of justice had been done when a jury reached a guilty verdict in the case of Lynn and the court sentenced him to jail. Certainly, the other overseers of the cover-up -- the cardinals and other officials -- escaped prosecution, but Lynn stood as an example to others that determined prosecutors could find ways to reach into the hierarchical ranks and force accountability even as church authorities refused to do so.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a smoldering fire exploded last week when it was discovered that a known child molester has been assisting with youth events. The Archdiocese of Newark had already raised the ire of lay Catholics and victim's groups when it appointed Rev. Michael Fugee as co-director of the Office of Continuing Education and Ongoing Formation of Priests.

Fugee was convicted in 2003 for two separate incidents of groping a 14 year old boy. The conviction was overturned on appeal due to improper instructions that allowed jurors to consider his confession of homosexual feelings. Prosecutors and Fugee reached a deal at that time to avoid retrial with a binding agreement that would keep him away from anyone under the age of 18. Many felt that a known child abuser did not belong in a high profile position, let alone one that put him in charge of education. But further reporting turned up greater offenses that have led to massive fall-out and multiple resignations over the past week.

[Fugee] has attended weekend youth retreats in Marlboro and on the shores of Lake Hopatcong in Mount Arlington, parishioners say. Fugee also has traveled with members of the St. Mary’s youth group on an annual pilgrimage to Canada. At all three locations, he has heard confessions from minors behind closed doors.

What’s more, he has done so with the approval of New Jersey’s highest-ranking Catholic official, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.

In response to the furor, Fugee resigned from active ministry and given up his post at the Office of Continuing Education. Further resignations were submitted by Pastor Thomas Triggs and two lay ministers, Amy and Mike Lenehan, have also resigned from St. Mary's in Colts Neck, NJ, Diocese of Trenton. All three claim they were in the dark as to the restrictions Fugee was supposed to operating under. The Lenehans were personal friends of Fugee.

It seems likely that Fugee was misleading people about the scope of his legal history and the binding agreement that was supposed to keep him away from underage youth. And it looks like the Bergen County prosecutor will be investigating the violation. But what about the Church officials that should have been monitoring Fugee? They're taking no responsibility. And they can't get their story straight.

“The person who caused all this upset is Archbishop Myers, and he’s still in office,” Bambrick said. “It seems like the archbishop needs to take responsibility for his own actions, as everyone else has in this crisis.”

Myers has declined to directly comment on the issue. His spokesman, James Goodness, initially defended Fugee’s interactions with children, saying they did not violate the memorandum of understanding Fugee signed with prosecutors because the priest was always under the supervision of other clergymen or lay ministers.

Goodness later took a different stance, acknowledging that Fugee violated the court-sanctioned agreement and saying the priest had acted without the knowledge of the archdiocese. Fugee concurred with those statements in his letter seeking leave, stating it was “my fault alone.”

They have also, more than once, insisted that Fugee was acquitted, which is patently false. He was convicted. It was overturned on a technicality and without prejudice. Prosecutors reached this deal to avoid the costs of a new trial. Yet Myers's spokesperson further insists that the Church hierarchy is in agreement that Fugee was cleared and there was no sexual abuse.

Goodness reiterated the acquittal stance in an April 29 email response to Fr. Jim Connell of the Milwaukee archdiocese, a canon lawyer and abuse victims’ advocate. A day after reading The Star-Ledger report, Connell wrote to Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, seeking clarity in the matter.

The email, also sent to Myers, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, the U.S. bishops’ conference, and several media outlets, posed three questions: Did the memorandum and Fugee’s confession warrant enough evidence for the congregation to review the case? Did Myers report the case to them, as well as all pertinent documents, including the memorandum and Fugee’s 2001 deposition that included his confession to the abuse? And, if not, will Myers face a church penal process?

Responding on behalf of Myers, Goodness said the archbishop, after an investigation by the Archdiocesan Review Board, sent all information to the congregation, including all court documents and interviews and other materials gathered by the review board.

“The Congregation subsequently, after a complete review of the materials, concurred that there was no sexual abuse and that Fr. Fugee could return to ministry,” Goodness said in his reply to Connell.

It calls into question the effectiveness of the criminal justice system in curtailing clerical offenders, if Church officials are just going to dismiss legal findings and agreements designed to prevent sex offenders from re-offending.

For decades bishops actively protected sex offenders from prosecution and the Vatican apparently supported that stance. We've made great strides, at least in this country, in requiring bishops to comply with reporting laws. But if bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and other officials, face no serious consequences for these abject failures of leadership, can we really trust the process? It looks none to promising. If Myers is penalized, maybe I'll feel differently, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Graham Hanock on TED Censorship

Two of my favorite writers, Graham Hancock and William Henry, discuss TED and its censorship of talks that deal with non-local consciousness. I won't belabor this, because I have a nasty head cold and I'm headed back to bed, but it's a great interview and distills what Hancock learned from this experience and what it means for the status of the reductionist, materialist science that seems to be driving TED's choices.

On that subject, I also recommend this recent article discussing materialist science and how it fails to answer the experiences of those of us who have glimpsed what lies behind the veil. It's a sumptuous description of the writings of Walter de la Mare and his unique vision of the supernatural.

Materialism - the philosophy, not the perennial human tendency to pursue and accumulate material things - sees the universe as a physical system. Everything that exists in it must be some sort of matter, or something that emerges from matter. In a fully scientific view of the world, only material things are real. Everything else is just a phantom.

In this view, science is a project of exorcism, which aims to rid the mind of anything that can't be understood in terms of physical laws. But perhaps it's the dogma of materialism that should be exorcised from our minds. Science is a method of inquiry, whose results can't be known in advance. If scientific inquiry is the most powerful tool for increasing human knowledge, it's because science is continuously changing our view of the world. The prevailing creed of scientific materialism is actually a contradiction, for science isn't a fixed view of things, still less a dogmatic faith.

The belief that the world is composed only of physical things operating according to universal laws is metaphysical speculation, not a falsifiable theory.

For the complete rundown on TED's attempts to censor consciousness see here.

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The Labyrinth of Warren Jeffs: Another Tour

The other day I posted a video tour of Warren Jeffs's estate conducted by Willie Jessop who recently claimed it at auction. The new video above was shot by Jim Dalrymple of Salt Lake Tribune's Polygamy Blog.

What strikes me in both these videos is the incredible devotion to secrecy and this video makes it in even more apparent. These are heavy walls within heavy walls. The doors are so thick and solid they need four hinges. Everything is practically soundproof.

As Dalrymple takes the viewer past the outer walls of the compound and through succeeding sets of walls, leading finally into the house, I have the sense of being drawn into the center of a maze -- one that leads to a central but externally obscured "rape room." This is the labyrinth of the Minotaur.

The Minotaur was a monstrous half bull, half man creature of Greek myth.

After he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos competed with his brothers to rule. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull, as a sign of support (the Cretan Bull). He was to kill the bull to show honor to Poseidon, but decided to keep it instead because of its beauty. He thought Poseidon would not care if he kept the white bull and sacrificed one of his own. To punish Minos, Aphrodite made Pasiphaë, Minos' wife, fall deeply in love with the bull. Pasiphaë had the archetypal craftsman Daedalus make a hollow wooden cow, and climbed inside it in order to mate with the white bull. The offspring was the monstrous Minotaur. Pasiphaë nursed him in his infancy, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of man and beast, he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance. Minos, after getting advice from the oracle at Delphi, had Daedalus construct a gigantic labyrinth to hold the Minotaur. Its location was near Minos' palace in Knossos.

. . .

Androgeus, son of Minos, had been killed by the Athenians, who were jealous of the victories he had won at the Panathenaic festival. Others say he was killed at Marathon by the Cretan bull, his mother's former taurine lover, which Aegeus, king of Athens, had commanded him to slay. The common tradition is that Minos waged war to avenge the death of his son and won. Catullus, in his account of the Minotaur's birth,^[10] refers to another version in which Athens was "compelled by the cruel plague to pay penalties for the killing of Androgeos." Aegeus must avert the plague caused by his crime by sending "young men at the same time as the best of unwed girls as a feast" to the Minotaur. Minos required that seven Athenian youths and seven maidens, drawn by lots, be sent every seventh or ninth year (some accounts say every year^[11]) to be devoured by the Minotaur.

Some of the parallels are obvious. Jeffs's use and abuse of children -- girls and boys -- throughout his life is well-documented. And he apparently needed a regular supply of underage brides to sacrifice in sometimes highly ritualized sexual abuse. He was also noticeably bizarre and inappropriate from an early age, which along with frequent illness often resulted in isolation. And he was the son of the leader of FLDS.

There are other subtleties that point toward that archetype. The bull that sired the Minotaur was pure white. Jeffs required that many of the details of the compound were white. The cement used for much of the external construction is brilliant white. Even little touches like pipes and garage door opener hardware had to be hand-painted white. It's bizarre little touches like these that suggest to me a longing for purity and perfection even as he was evermore consumed by his own demons.

In the end, the Minotaur was conquered by Theseus. He was aided by Ariadne's thread which helped him find his way out after he'd slain the monster. Jeffs is dying the death of a thousand cuts as followers find their way out of his maze and tell their stories to police and in courtrooms.

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GE: Plug Yourself Into the Matrix

"Brilliant machines are transforming the way we work" ~  General Electric "We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI... artificial intelligence." ~ Morpheus, The Matrix

Hey Coppertop, General Electric would like to jack you into the machine world.

Yes, GE is paying Hugo Weaving to reprise his role as Agent Smith to promote (???) the seamless integration of software and hardware that will allow medical technology to achieve omnipresence.

Bear in mind that the agents aren't just the villains in The Matrix. They represent the archontic consciousness that keeps humanity in the bondage of illusion.

So if an archvillain praises a product as an "agent of good," does it mean that product is good or evil? It's a kind of liar paradox; a vicious circularity.

Kirk: Everything Harry tells you is a lie – remember that! Everything Harry tells you is a lie!" Mudd: "Now listen to me carefully, Norman laddie; I - am - lying!" Norman: "You lie, but if everything you say is a lie then you must be telling the truth, but you cannot be telling the truth because everything you say is a lie... you lie, you tell the truth, you– Illogical! Illogical! Please explain! You are human! Only humans can explain their behavior! Please explain!" Mudd: "I am not programmed to respond in that area..." ~ "I, Mudd" ~ Star Trek

Am I alone in finding something a little disturbing about a company that started by making machines that serve humanity, but grew into a massive, multinational conglomerate with tentacles in everything from energy to media to high tech, pitching itself as the Architect of The Matrix?

I'll take the red lollypop.

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Warren Jeffs's Estate: The Grand Tour

Willie Jessop exercised his option to put a credit bid on his former boss's auctioned property. As discussed, the former bodyguard of the currently incarcerated Warren Jeffs won a 30 million dollar settlement against the FLDS leader for his harassing apostate Jessop and damaging his business property. Thursday Jessop purchased the lavish estate and surrounding property.

Jessop’s bids of $1.1 million for a school and its surrounding land, as well as a $2.5 million bid for a parcel containing a warehouse, three homes and four other residential buildings, were entered as credit bids that will simply reduce the court’s financial judgment and were unopposed by other bidders.

The auction, presided over by a Washington County Sheriffs deputy, lasted less than five minutes. Members of the media and many onlookers with ties to the twin communities of Hildale and Colorado City, where the FLDS church is headquartered, looked on.

Yesterday he escorted a news crew through the crisp, white, lavishly carpeted rooms, as well as the hastily remodeled "rape room." This was the massive labor of love from his followers that Jeffs promised would cause God to free him from is prison cell.

Even behind prison bars in Texas, Jeffs still leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He ordered the Hildale compound built in 2010 while awaiting trial and has never lived in the opulent mansions built for him.

Jessop says FLDS members went broke building the compound, but did so with the promise from that “God would knock down the walls” of Jeffs’ prison cell and that “he would be living in the community by the end of the year.”

P.S. He's still in prison.

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Because Everyone Should See Dead Can Dance

Okay, this isn't quite as good as sitting under the stars with my beloveds for the concert of a lifetime but this I can post.

The KCRW copy is hilarious.

The Australian duo of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry made some of the creepiest beautiful music of the 1980s. Almost 30 years and two reunions later, the two are still at it. Watch Dead Can Dance bring its ancient ambiance to Santa Monica's Village Studios for a recording session with KCRW.

Looking through the Facebook thread, I notice that many people are very annoyed at the use of the word "creepy." The thing is... I can't agree. I read "creepiest beautiful music" and found myself nodding in agreement. Their new album is easily the most upbeat thing they've ever done. And I love it. I can play it while I'm driving and not worry about wrecking the car.

Their older stuff is indescribably dark. I love listening to it because it's like staring into the void. It strips flesh from bone. I feel that sense of awe that I imagine Rainer Maria Rilke felt when he encountered his angelic muse at Duino Castle.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to
endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

That's what it feels like to listen to Lisa Gerrard's piercing tones -- not words and yet we understand them. We somehow know what she is saying: the language of the birds.

No one can tell me that this is not a little creepy... or, at the very least, chilling:

Or this:

I think there's a reason Patton Oswalt specifically referenced This Mortal Coil's It'll End in Tears in his KFC's Famous Bowls bit.

Okay, stop right there. Can you pile all of those items into a single bowl, just kinda make 'em into a wet mound of starch that I can eat with a spoon like I'm a death row prisoner on suicide watch? Could I just have that instead?

"Um, yes, we can do that? We can also arrange those on a plate like you're an adult with dignity and self-respect. You don't have to actually eat your food out of a single bowl."

Fuck that, I'm done, I don't give a shit. Just pile all those things in a bowl. Is there a way that the bowl can play This Mortal Coil's "It'll End In Tears" album while I'm eating it at 2 in the morning in my darkened apartment, just kinda staring into the middle distance?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that reason is best summed up by this:

Patton Oswalt has a history of depression. Perhaps listening to a lot of Lisa Gerrard isn't the best plan in his case. But I love her. Not in spite of the penetrating darkness of her music but because of it. It's like going home.

Dead Can Dance Live -- Photo: Mixelle

Lisa Gerrard Live -- Photo: Mixelle

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