And here's this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian Wank of the Week. This one was an actual toughy as there wasn't that much stuff out there that was that over the line. What's up with that? Also, I thought about giving them a break this week because they actually wrote an intelligent, well-reasoned cover story on how to defeat Bush. We certainly are living in strange times.

Anyways, in a column that discusses the problems with hip-hop stars like Kanye West name-checking Jesus in songs (they're also trying to make money!), I found this:

"Don't misunderstand. I'm not shutting the door on music or throwing my hands up in "kids these days" defeatism to go meditate in a cave. I'm just suggesting that in the end, during such trying times, it might serve us well to heed the contemplations of those more invested in souls than sales when seeking higher ground. For example, in Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, music is simultaneously viewed as a path toward transcendence and a cause of potential spiritual harm, a seeming contradiction I've often approached by placing the words of 10th-century Sufi mystic and scholar Ibn Hamdan beside the overlying sentiment in the writings of 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi.


You know, the writings of 13-century Sufi poet Rumi often come to me when I'm listening to hip-hop. Wasn't it he who said: "I need to know a whole lot then to teachin' a broad, with my ding dong make her tongue tickin the bong.