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	<title>The Devastationalist Manifesto</title>
	<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words</link>
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	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:56:34 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>They’re All They’ve Got</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Today we have a guest blogger, the renowned podcastress Miette, who sends us this report from far-off Scandinavia:
At the Bergen Akvariet, make your way past the wiry-eyed motorhead feeding dead rats to crocodiles from the safe viewing distance of two rows of chicken wire fencing.  Continue past the petting tank and the iguana.  [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=430</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Plying Very Strange Cargo</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
On the back cover of the paperback edition of My Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress, George Trow&#8217;s second, and ultimately fatal, attempt to trace the line of Western Culture&#8217;s post-war descent into inanity, there is a blurb by the literary pundit, Sven Birkerts, that embodies the root of that inanity with uncanny perfection.
It reads:  Trow models the thrilling [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=424</link>
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		<title>Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Sometimes it seems that the human condition can be summed up as standing dazed and bruised at the bottom of various slippery slopes and wondering, &#8220;How did we get here?&#8221;
One answer might be our mistake in taking it for granted that speed, ease and convenience are always and everywhere inherently desirable qualities, ideals to be [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=408</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Sweetness, I Was Only Joking</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
A few months back, the Independent had an article about neurobiologists at University College London who were studying the physical nature of hate. After conducting their experiments, these scientists discovered that the &#8220;hate circuit&#8221; in the brain was located in the putamen and the insula &#8212; the exact same regions activated by feelings of romantic [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=399</link>
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		<title>All Charms Fly</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
A belated shout-out to a brief sequence in the movie Children of Men that always makes me smile. If you&#8217;ve seen the movie, I&#8217;m referring to the improbable romantic moment in the fleeing car where Julianne Moore and Clive Owen somehow manage to blow a ping pong ball back and forth between their mouths, through [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=387</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Like Brigitte Bardot!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
This is from A General Theory of Love (2000) by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon (M.D.s all). They are talking about how memory stores and shapes love, guiding our romantic choices in mystifying ways:
A scientific theory of memory is therefore a map of the soul. Every such diagram must attempt to delineate the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=381</link>
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		<title>Angela And I Don&#8217;t Want The Two Dollars Back</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
I finished only one book while on the road this summer, Harriet The Spy, but Harriet proved to be a most enlightening traveling companion &#8212; the perfect book at the perfect time. And, as it turns out, arguably the best book I have ever read about writing and living and what it really means to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=372</link>
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		<title>Blammo!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
&#8220;Peculiar Way&#8221; is from a batch of songs recorded back in the 90s at Kris Woolsey&#8217;s apartment in the West Village. In those pre-Garageband days, if someone got their hands on a decent four-track machine you simply had to take advantage. I forget who left the device at Kris&#8217;s house, or why, but its very [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=373</link>
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		<title>A Little Money Riding On The Maple Leafs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
People have been asking me when I&#8217;m going to post something about Halifax, but I&#8217;m not sure what more I can say other than I felt very much at home there, something I rarely feel in The Rotten Apple anymore. 
Halifax is a spectacular city (er, I mean &#8220;regional municipality&#8221;) &#8212; historic, cosmopolitan, grimy, gorgeous, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=351</link>
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		<title>House Calls To Shut-Ins</title>
		<description><![CDATA[
Sometimes, the the best things you can do while you&#8217;re on the road are things you would ordinarily do at home anyway. In our nation&#8217;s capital over 4th of July weekend, we delayed a side-trip to Annapolis because we could not tear ourselves away from this year&#8217;s epic Wimbledon men&#8217;s final (which lasted over five [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.philipshelley.com/words/?p=345</link>
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