the return of the occasional Sunday links

One year after the controversial finale, Inessentials makes the case for understanding Lost as a religious text:

Religious texts mostly don’t make things explicit when they are telling stories. (They often do that elsewhere.) They tell you parts of the story: the parts that answered someone else’s question or that portrayed a particularly resonant idea. And as in most religious texts, Lost is about people without enough information, making monumental decisions, the consequences of which they don’t understand. Occasionally the gods/God/showrunners step in with another piece of the puzzle, either directly or surreptitiously. But mostly we live in ignorance, trying to learn a little more, fitting together the pieces, knowing that ultimately even if it all fits together we’ll live most of our lives without all the pieces in place.

In a series of 3 posts at Antenna, Allison McCracken looks at the significance of Kurt and Blaine as revivals of once-popular male vocal types: the countertenor and the crooner. (part 1, part 2, part 3)

At Slate, Ben Yagoda argues in favor of "logical punctuation" -- putting periods and commas outside the quotations marks.

What does English sound like to people who don't speak it? Here's one answer, a gibberish song written by Italian pop star Adriano Celentano in the early 1970s. Not only is it weirdly compelling listening -- I keep thinking that I can almost understand what's being said -- but it also seems to be a sort of precursor to both disco and rap.