A Slate Extravaganza with Snoopy and Black Metal

Now that my Internet reading has expanded vastly, sometimes I'll forget about Slate for a couple weeks. Yet, the magazine still remains, in my opinion, one of the best web literature out there, so when I inevitably take a couple hours to peruse its archives, several good pieces will pop out. Anyhow, from my glorious Slate experience last night, here are two of the highlights:

- A slide-show essay on Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts. Sorry the link doesn't go directly to the essay, but there are two places to click on the page.

It's well worth a read, and throws in a bunch of good Peanuts comics to boot. Snoopy was always my favorite growing up.





- Second, we have a surprisingly informative piece on Black Metal, and how the genre went from Devil worship to revering the Norse culture and becoming environmentalists.

The funny part about this is that the Black Metal bands remained counterculture but shifted their focus more benevolently; yet, at the same time, no one could never understand the lyrics anyway. Regardless, I found this to be a riveting read.