GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN — Calvin College now offers a class on Irish rock band U2.

”What they have to offer is a vision,” said Mark Mulder, who is teaching the U2 course during Calvin’s three-week interim semester. ”They’re saying there’s something wrong with the world. But at the same time, they offer a hope. The gospel message is embedded within.”
Mulder, who teaches sociology, sees the band bringing a Christian worldview to a ”very elaborate cultural critique.” In that critique, they share common ground with other rock bands such as Radiohead and movies such as ”The Matrix” trilogy, he said.
”If you listen hard enough, there are a lot of things going on in pop culture which really question the ordering of the world today, and offer a vision of what things could and should be like,” said Mulder.

This guy — just recently married my old roommate. His account of post-honeymoon life cracks me up.

clean, organize, unpack, wash clothes, clean, smoke a cigarette, go to work, clean, stop to eat something, smoke, think about what to clean next, try and summon the energy to stand back up, smoke another cigarette, think about how I should be cleaning, walk to a room to clean, stand in the doorway trying to figure out where to start, smoke another cigarette instead, throw away a pop can, open another can, smoke a cigarette, go back to the room and move some boxes around without really cleaning anything, smoke a cigarette, bed.

ugh.

I suppose we were lucky, in a way. We came home from Quebec to a house that was mostly empty, full of echoes and bachelor items. My parents’ brought my furniture down three weeks later, leaving me time to properly orient myself to the objects in the house, and build some defences against the oncoming torrent of earthly possessions and gifts.

Karin pointed this out to me the other day — Inmate Classified, a service providing prison inmates with pen-pals.

I’m glad the Drudge Report finally amended their current lead headline from ‘POPE: WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO ME?’
to ‘POPE JOKES: WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO ME?” I was really frightened for a second that the Pope was freaking out on account of his tracheotomy.

It’s good to see this finally starting to go somewhere.