Musicality

It's kind of a shitty day out here in Carolina. Why not stay inside and listen to the radio? Well, computer radio that is! The new Coverville is really good, and features covers of Burt Bachrach songs.

And a whiny little brat shall lead them

Probably too small to fully appreciate here, but click here for the orig, and revel in it's radness. Isn't Luke's expression perfect? Very serene, but still you can tell he's acting. Horribly. Arguments could be made for putting Annakin in the Jesus seat ("Rise, my apprentice."), but Luke is probably the better choice.

(Link via DataWhat?)

Euro-larious

Hahaha....nice work, Annie.

"Cold Roses"

Very exciting news around JAI headquarters.
Stream the entire new Ryan Adams album, "Cold Roses," right here. (Scroll down a bit.) Have you gone to his website lately, and heard the first single "Let It Ride"? You should do that. Or buy it from iTunes '>here.

i got a fever

From Pitchfork:

In other news, Reznor has made the album's lead single, "The Hand That Feeds", available for download in Apple's GarageBand format. This'll enable you (yes, you!) to make your own remix of the album and play around with each different track.

Reznor explains: "I did this on a PowerBook...Drag the file over to your hard disk and double click it. Hit the space bar. Listen. Change the tempo. Add new loops. Chop up the vocals. Turn me into a woman. Replay the guitar. Anything you'd like. Giving this away is an experiment. I'm interested to see what comes of it, what issues are raised and what the results are."

That's right, boys and girls. You can download this, add a cowbell track, and call yourself the DFA. Oh wait, speaking of the DFA, they're currently prepping their own remix of "The Hand That Feeds". On the NIN website, Reznor said the DFA are "doing the most interesting production work out there."

Trent Reznor is obviously smarter than me. But good for him. It should be cool to see if other bands use this same approach.

Link dump

So, it's nearly 9pm here, and I'm still stuck at work. I'm stuck in a training session which I'm co-leading, but I currently have nothing to do. I haven't blogged a whole lot recently, so I wanted to throw up a few linxxx that are kinda hot, so I'm not just sitting here picking my ass.

First, here's G-Dub looking kinda queer.

Next, here's a monkey hooked on cancer sticks.

If you're a guy, go play The Urinal Game, and test your public restroom etiquette.

Britney Spears hearts Radiohead.

Possible sunflower seed shortage threatens national pasttime. "Rush to war" commencing in Texas, designed to exploit North Dakotas rich natural resources.

This guy breaks down, in detail, how he could beat up a room full of 5 years olds. Contains much cursing.

Constantine was an embarassment on AI last night. I have no idea how people can tolerate the Greeks, much less those that sing, much less those that sing very poorly and do ridorkulous low kicks at the camera. Constantine is Yancey to Bo Bice's Fry. Ferreals.

Matt...out.

the so-called "Death Star"

Heh. More here. (Link via DataWhat?)

whiskey tango foxtrot

Ok, I heard something stupid this morning, and I wanted to share.
My officemate is a really nice guy, but dude spends a lot of time on the phone, and not always for work-related matters. I'd say the first two or so hours of his day each morning is dealing with outside-of-work shit. Today, por ejemplo, he was trying to square away the insurance for his new car. Which he had to get cos his died last week, which necessitated more phone time than normal, cos his gf is also moving in, and he's got some pretty serious health concerns...You get the idea. Lots of phone time.
Anywizz, this morning, he's spelling out his last name to the insurance dude, and I hear this:

"...'k'...'e'...'l'...no, it's 'l' as in "elle..."

Ok, the idea of the phonetic alphabet is that critical combinations of letters could be pronounced and understood by aircrew and air traffic controllers regardless of their native language. People mangle this all the time, and it frankly really bugs me. Not to the point that I'm going to learn the whole list or anything. But still. Using an example of " l as in elle" is just retarded. "Elle" doesn't even start with an l! Whiskey tango foxtrot, dude?!?!

Smartest man alive. Right here.

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all.

What a great article! I'm actually surprised he doesn't mention "Arrested Development," though. If there's a smarter show on tv right now, one that offers more rewards for paying very close attention to dialogue and shifting content and multiple plot lines, I don't know what it is. Shows like AD and, to a lesser extent, The O.C. not only reference plot lines that stretch back over several episodes or a season, but reference individual lines of dialogue, often quite brief. (E.g. Season 2's finale has George Michael repeating his quip from early in Season 1, "I like the way they think," when Maeby alludes to "Les Cousins Dangereaux.")
Of course, more and more Americans are spending time online these days, just as TV is becoming more cognitively engaging. Who said irony was dead?

My distopian afternoon (warning: post may contain lists)

As far as go convalescent Sunday afternoons, I have to say that I've had better. First, the soundtrack. Not being one who subscribes to the lazy notion assigning a given band or album to a particular time of day, I'll here do the reverse and say that Radiohead has none too subtly affected the direction of the day. [Break here to discuss random Radiohead thoughts:

1. How pissed was Radiohead, do you think, to not be the first to think of putting an {insert little r with circle around it symbol here} after their name, like Spiritualized did? Probably pretty durned pissed, I'd think.
2. "Hail To the Theif" sucks. Ok, it sucks in relation to other Radiohead albums. Is it better than the album/clothing line so horribly named that I dare not type it? Yes. Is it better than other albums of recent vintage by brethren recovering British paranoiacs? Decidedly no.
   

Note also that Radiohead ("Nice Dream," first) appeared quite by accident, on Angry Hippie's car stereo, and only when I got home did I follow it up with "Hail..."] Unsurprisingly, the music has directed my thoughts toward Thom Yorke's lyrical concerns, which seem to be:

1. Being lonely, British
2. Technology, how it sucks and/or contributes to being isolated or lonely (see point 1)
3. the vomit, the vomit, the vomit, the vomit...
   

I don't mean to poke fun. He's a somewhat easy target, and one who would seem to have difficulty firing back, what with the gammy eye and all. But I respect Mr. Yorke's lyrical gifts to the extent, in fact, that I briefly considered breaking my self-imposed ban on posting song lyrics, so enamored was I.
My second disappointment of the afternoon is that I lack nearly all the requisite ingredients to concoct a Bloody Mary, of which I am in sore need. (Other hilarious, but assuredly nasty drink here.) Also, I'm out of Hot Pockets. Which sucks.

Howevs.

The music did gel nicely with the two articles I came across today while catching up on my surfing of the computer interweb. Both by one Philip Longman, and both jumping off from the counterfactual springboard of the global population decline. Everything you thought you knew about overpopulation is a myth.

Or will be very soon.

All told, some 59 countries, comprising roughly 44 percent of the world's total population, are currently not producing enough children to avoid population decline, and the phenomenon continues to spread. By 2045, according to the latest UN projections, the world's fertility rate as a whole will have fallen below replacement levels.

This, of course, has yuge implications. Everything from health care, to Social Security, to national defense depends on people making more people. Or at least making enough people to replace the ones we lose every year. It is henceforth our national duty, as Americans of child-bearing age, to get bizzay. Reihan over at The American Scene calls this the "pro-natalist" agenda, and commands, often in raps disguised as paens to Saffron Burrows, that we get down wid it.
It's not just governments that are affected, though.

Population aging is also likely to create huge legacy costs for employers. This is particularly true in the United States, where health and pension benefits are largely provided by the private sector. General Motors (GM) now has 2.5 retirees on its pension rolls for every active worker and an unfunded pension debt of $19.2 billion. Honoring its legacy costs to retirees now adds $1,800 to the cost of every vehicle GM makes, according to a 2003 estimate by Morgan Stanley.

So, where are the kids going to come from? Not you, hippies!

In Utah, where 69 percent of all residents are registered members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, fertility rates are the highest in the nation. Utah annually produces 90 children for every 1,000 women of childbearing age. By comparison, Vermont -- the only state to send a socialist to Congress and the first to embrace gay civil unions -- produces only 49.

Less and less (liberal) people, more and more technology...sounds like a hit record!
It's important to note, I think, that nowhere does Longmann mention abortion as a cause of the precipitous decline in world-wide birth rates. AIDS, yes; infectious disease, yes; abortions, no.

It is a bit of a time investment, but you should read the whole article in Foreign Affairs that details the scope of the problem. There's a more digestible version here, and more hearty version here. The final word goes to Reihan:

[B]eing down with the pronatalist agenda, insofar as it demands an explicitly countercultural stance - a critical distance from a broader cultural licentiousness that defines cool at the present moment - is necessarily "uncool." For now. We need "happening" young people to embrace said agenda, the better to dupe the bobbysoxers and hepcats alike to "go with the flow," as it were.

Any volunteers?

You got a reaction

I know it's very de la mode to hate on Meg White, but...hot damn, have you heard the new White Stripes' single? It's shit hot, and I have to say, it's all cos of Meg's just poppin' drums. Whoo-ooo!

Super hits!

Annie combines hipster-baiting and iTunes to blog up some springtime radness. Check her (slighty more) hip playlist here. And because blogging is mostly stealing other people's shit, here's mine, too. Click the image to make it bigger, and more legible.

AI (no, not the shitty Spielberg movie)

This was on Drudge this morning:

FOX 'AMERICAN IDOL' SLIPS IN RATINGS... 16.1 RATING/24 SHARE [DOWN FROM PREVIOUS WEEK'S 16.7/25]. LACKLUSTER TALENT SEEN DRAGGING AUDIENCE LEVELS... SHOW COULD FINISH 3RD PLACE FOR WEEK...

You wanna know why? Cos dumb muthas keep voting effing Anwar through! And Federov! Seriously, folks. You vote for boring-ass people, and you get boring-ass TV. Hey, if you wanna listen to Earth, Wind and effing Fire for the cotdamn quintillionth time on that show, keep on doin' whatcher doin'. But you people put Bo Bice in the bottom three last week, which is inexfuckingcusable. So, please, quitcher bitchin, and stop voting for Anwar Schoolmarm, and Anthony Trach-hole. Ferreals.

Area 51

This guy's found satellite photos of Area 51 from Google Maps. Check it out before the gov't shuts him down.

(link via DataWhat)

Weak finishing move, though

I normally find this kind of performance really effing annoying, but I couldn't stop laughing at this one. Fans of Dr. Mario should be especially pleased.

3 years in the dirty dirty

Ok, this may be enormously red-necky of me, but I really really want to see this NASCAR 3D IMAX movie.

Stealing the baton, Pt. Deuce

In response to this post, Rochester has posted his "Top 5 Hot, but Not" list. So, check that shit out. Angry Hippie's list is here, and Annie's is here, instead of on her own blog, which I don't get. And of course we're still waiting for Lindsey to finish her list, and for Wally to start hers. Women. Ya can't live with 'em...

Nerds 24/7

Apparently, if you call this number, you can talk to one of the fans in line for Star Wars Episode III. They're lined up outside some theatre, and the number goes to the pay phone on the corner. It's long distance, but it's free if you call from work!
Perhaps some one would be good enough to remind them that the movie doesn't come out for another MONTH.

Can I get a "EFF YEAH!!!"

The AirScooter II, though, is designed for people. It weighs around 300 pounds and doesn't require a pilot's license, according to the company's Web site. The company is seeking regulatory approval but has said it expects to release the product this year.

The AirScooter II has two rotors which function in a similar fashion to helicopter rotors, but the vehicle is easier to fly, advocates say. It sports motorcycle-style handlebars that contain flight controls, but there are no pedals--so people without the use of their legs should be able to operate it, according to the Web site. The company also offers a movie of the device in flight (click here to download the video).

Pricing has not been set, but the company expects it will sell for under $50,000. *

I got a problem with Thomas' bagels

I buy Thomas' everything bagels cos I like them the best. They're big, chewy, and they come 6 to a package. Seriously, a bag of 5 bagels is just ridiculous. But the one problem I have with Thomas' everything bagels is that they always have waaaaaay too many poppy seeds on the bagel. I end up having to scrape off a few thousand poppy seeds before it even becomes edible. Just look at the bagel I had this morning:

Totally ridiculous! Nobody wants that many poppy seeds!

A more reasonable bagel, post-scraping.

You might be an indie-yuppie if...

Pretty hilarious discussion over at Stereogum regarding what makes one an "indie-yuppie."
Faves so far:

• You're iTunes starts with !!! or +/- rather than Abba or Aaliyah...
• You think Collin Melloy is the new Morrissey.
• You buy a $28 Bloc Party t-shirt at Urban Outfitters
• You might be an indie-yuppie if time reading Pitchfork ends up as a billable hour.

Also, lots of back and forth from self-hating fans of The O.C. and that Kelly Clarkson song. Both...So...Rad!

Stealing the baton

Ok, nobody's asked me to do this. This seems to be a big-boy game. Since I don't anticipate an invitation, I'm going to just jump right in.
The game:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), “Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice.”

Heeeeeeeeeere we go:

1. Led Zeppelin. I know I'm going to take a lot of shit for this one, but what's so great about a gaggle of morons in tight pants going on about Lord of The Rings? 70s rock, as a whole, is bloated and lame. And the production sucks. Pink Floyd, too. Dark Side Of the Moon is the most overrated album EVER. Really, I could do an entire one of these lists just about music (Talk Talk, anyone? The Secret Machines? Elvis? Vinyl?), but I'm gonna try and mix it up.
2. Halloween. Now, I'm talking about the holiday, not the movie. It just seems like a whole lot of work just to go out and get drunk. Yeah, clever costumes are funny. But honestly, who cares?
3. Organic food. This just mystifies me. My working theory is that this whole fad is based more on an anti-big-business (anti-capitalist?) ideology than the nebulous idea of "wellness." (Thrift store shopping would also fall under this category.) It's been explained to me a hundred times, but I still don't see how it makes me healthier or a better person in any way other than theory. I shrug in it's general direction.
4. The Simpsons. They had a good run for 6 or 7 years. But the last I'd say 5 seasons, as a whole, have been painfully bad. Preachy, obvious, recycled jokes and plot lines. Yawn. What time does Arrested Development come on?
5. Me. Seriously, people call and try to hang out with me all that time. But I'm just a OCD nerd with a knack for snark and a penchant for emotional inaccessability. I frankly don't see the big deal about me. Get over me.

Wasn't that fun? Ok, your turn. I'm passing the baton to...er, my only friends with blogs! So Rochester, (newly resurrected) Annie, take it away!

You can participate, too. Leave your list in the comments. Or, better yet, get yer own blog! This could be your first post! (I'm looking at you, 3000, JB, and Angry Hippie.)

Try whistling this

That pang you're feeling when you hear the Walkmen on the show is the realization that indie lifestyle, in all of its anti-mainstream fervor, is just as commidifiable an identity as any high school hallway archetype, fit not only for the personality of an ensemble cast member but a whole slew of show-related merchandise...do they have "O.C." hoodies yet?

They should, shouldn't they?

So if this throwaway compilation has an underlying message, it's this: You're not special. That complex, detached, artfully depressed persona you've cultivated isn't unique; in fact, it's so easily simulated, the network that also brings you "Life on a Stick" can replicate it. But don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning. Accelerate the inevitable: Embrace your lack of the unique, stop liking bands for their scarcity, enjoy the full spectrum of music, not just the portions with credibility directed prefixes. And don't forget to thank "The O.C." for saving you some time along the way.

Read the whole thing.

Students For Awareness (SFA... OK)

Gotta love freshman:

"What we hope to achieve with the walkout is a lot of awareness on campus that the war in Iraq is still being fought," said UW-Madison freshman Katy Williams, another member of Stop the War. "People are still dying daily, and it's something that our campus, as a historically liberal campus, should have an awareness of, and I think that the walkout is an attempt to raise this awareness."

So, let me get this straight: There's still a war going on? And people die in war? Wow...I wasn't aware. Crazyness.
But just because they're against this facist, imperialist war for oil doesn't mean they don't support the troops, right?

Additionally, petitions against the conflict in Iraq and military recruitment on campus will circulate and be presented to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley and Gov. Jim Doyle.

Er, well, stop questioning their patriotism!!!

Unilateralism

Ruthlessly self-interested citizens poised to thwart the will of the international community and plunge forward with unilateral policies. Stupid Americ---wait...It's the French!!!

[I]n a brutal shock to the European experiment, 11 opinion polls in France in the last month have indicated that the French are poised to vote no in the national referendum on May 29 on Europe's first constitution.

It is this kind of reckless disregard for the will of the international community that will isolate France, and further exacerbate the trans-Atlantic rift, leaving France completely isolated.

"We would likely be completely isolated," President Jacques Chirac said last month. Rejection of the constitution would threaten France's ability to protect its national interests; nothing less than "peace, stability, democracy, human rights and economic development and social progress in the world of tomorrow" is at stake, he added.

At least they're keeping it in perspective.

This is the weirdest headline you'll see all day

Ok, you're probably too lazy to click the link, so here it is:

Robots will replace child camel jockeys in UAE

Read the article, I promise it's not just a racist joke.

Clever headline makes good

Here's a story from The Daily Cardinal, one of UW-Madison's two daily student newspapers, about a talk a founding editor of The Onion gave on campus.
The Onion started in Madison, so it's good to see them still remembering their roots now that they've moved to New York City.

Surprisingly, the headline that sparked the greatest uproar in the Onion's history was a seemingly tame one: "Mary-Kate Olsen Is Bringing Ashley Down.""We got more hate mail from that, by a factor of 10, than from anything else-the Pope, 9/11, Area Sodomite," he said.

Tennessee's a brother to my sister Carolina

Ryan Adams' new single "Let It Ride" streams automatically here. It's cool, country and rootsy, like his old stuff.

Robot urinal. Creepy. Probably painful, too.

Boner

Bill Simmons is some lunatic that ESPN.com gave a column. He also has this bloggish thing that is pretty hilarious. Excerpt from today (if he has perma-links, I don't know where they are, so just click and scroll down to read the rest):

I saw U2 last night at the Staples Center and sent an e-mail to my friends about it before realizing I should have just posted it right here. Here's what I sent:

1. Bono is completely out of control. He's a rambling lunatic, not that he wasn't before, but now he's just plain nuts. Told a fantastic story about the Pope that was absolutely incoherent, followed by Bono pulling out some rosary beads that the Pope gave him and dramatically hanging them on the microphone. Had a speech about Africa where people were glancing at each other like "Do you understand this?" He's the best.

He doesn't always write about sports, obvs, but his sports stuff is funny, too. Unless you're a Yankees fan, I guess. In which case, stop reading my blog. You're not welcome here.

Full frontal playlists

C-Net reports on a paper recently presented at some conference or another about how "people actively work to create an image of themselves through the music they make available to others." Which is to say their iTunes playlists.
iTunes (for those LOSERS who still don't use it to manage their digital music) when connected to a network, can look around for other users, and allow you to view and play the music they have stored in their library. Apparently, some folks are worried about the image portrayed by their selections.

Along with the culling of items in personal playlists, the researchers detailed the way that people browsed and judged other people's collections. In general, people reported that music libraries didn't dramatically change their perception of their co-workers--except for one or two people who seemed a little too attached to the most current pop hits.

Well, that's a relief. Although I've made it a point to always keep you hippies updated on what's currently rocking my suburbs (via the Playlist o'er yonder on the sidebar <----), I will admit that I've committed the sin of omission. Several times. So, now, in the spirit of full disclosure, and maybe a pit of penance, too, considering the recent death of the Holy Father (not Johnnie Cochran, obvs), I will list the most embarrassing music currently in my iPod.

• Kelly Clarkson- "Since U Been Gone" Although she's a former American Idol, and that lot are not known for their street cred, I have to admit that this song kicks fucking ass. Ok, enough of that. I'm so movin' on...
• Alanis Morissette- "Thank U" Maybe I just like songs that rip off Prince's naming conventions. Strangely, I got no Prince in the iPod.
• The Bangles- Greatest Hits. I don't care, I think "Walk Like An Egyptian" is an effing badass song. Their cover of Big Star's "September Gurls" is one of the best I've heard, too.
• Bonnie Raitt- "I Can't Make You Love Me" I've always liked this song. George Michael has sang it, too. I'm not sure that makes it any worse. Oh, wait, yes I am.
• Glen Philips- live bootleg show. This is the dude that used to front Toad the Wet Sproket. He's since gone solo, but what I've heard so far kinda sucks.
• Mandy Moore- "Drop the Pilot" and "Whole of the Moon." Ok, fuck off, cos Mandy Moore is the poop, so take a big whiff. These two songs are both covers of respectable songs (by Joan Armatrading and The Waterboys, respectivlizz) from her "Coverage" album. They're both infectiously rad.
• Michael Jackson- Bad and Thriller. "What's a pederast, Walter?" "Shut the fuck up, Donny." These are still both great albums. Well, maybe not Bad so much, but it's got "Smooth Criminal," so there.
• Norah Jones- both albums. Yeah, I really got no explanation for these. Just please try to forget it.
• Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman- "Something Stupid" This is a cover of a song that I think Frank Sinatra did with Nancy Sinatra. It's cheesy as all hell, and Kidman is a shitty singer, but I still like it. From "Sing When You're Winning."

And that's it. Thank god that's over with. Ok, well, commence ridicule in the comments. Please go easy on me; this post has taken a lot of strength to get through.

Conclave Madness!!!

Time to fill in your Pope brackets, bitches!

Pitchfork on Wilco's "Panthers"

Tweedy sings in his newfound meek whisper, as if not trying to get recognized by anyone owning a tie-dyed shirt as that raspy alt-country turned art-pop guy. "Temper is the warp speed of red flashes," he sings, and you go, "Okay, man, cool, whatever, pax americana." Then he sings "Alive in the weeds the orchestra is proving death," and you're like, "It's all good, holmes, just let me go check on some fish sticks I got cooking."

I don't think I've seen any reviews talk about the preponderance of themes of nature on "A Ghost Is Born." Think about it: "Spiders," "Hummingbirds," "A Muzzle Of Bees," the whole nest thing on the cover, now "Panthers."
Not that that has anything to do with this bit. I'm just sayin'. Ok never mind.

More crushing of dissent

Schwarzenegger's backers brushed away suggestions the protests were bothering the governor or hurting his popularity.

Rob Stutzman, the governor's spokesman, told reporters Tuesday at a Sacramento briefing that those complaining about the governor's agenda were little more than paid shills.

"It's obvious when you go to San Francisco, you're going to get large protests when you're doing something controversial,'' he said. "So we're not at all surprised that there will be a large turnout tonight of protesters, many of which are paid union protesters punching the clock."

Well, it ain't exactly unheard of, y'know.

NSFW, obvs

Go take the NWA quiz.
I missed 8 questions, and was thus advised to "Break yo self, sucka!"

The Onion reviews "Kung-Fu Hustle"

This is the first review I've seen so far.
I watched an earlier Stephen Chow film, Shaolin Soccer, last weekend. Totally rad. Choreographed dance scenes, hilarious dialog (both intentional and unintentional, via reliably-unreliable Sino-American subtitle mistranslations) and characters, and a story that subtly mocks other recently successful "wire-fu" movies (and thus, to an extent, Chinese culture); all within the disquieting confines of China's censorship. Brilliant.

Oil-for-food update

I've been kinda slack about blogging about all the developments in the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal. Claudia Rosett, recently snubbed for a Pulitzer for her work in investigating this scandal, has a new piece in The Weekly Standard, and is incredulous at Kofi Annan's claim of exoneration by the Volker Committee's recent report.

Now, in his rush to exonerate himself, the secretary general seems to have forgotten that Oil-for-Food was a vast endeavor, running from 1996 to 2003, in which the United Nations, in the name of providing for the sanctions-squeezed people of Iraq, oversaw more than $110 billion worth of Saddam Hussein's oil sales and relief purchases, much of that riddled with billions in graft. All but the first month of this exercise was administered and--in the words of one of Annan's spokesman--"audited to death" by Annan's Secretariat. It was Annan who personally signed off on Saddam's shopping lists, and repeatedly urged the Security Council not only to continue the program, but to expand it in size and scope, which allowed Saddam to rake in yet more illicit billions from oil smuggling.

If Annan has indeed lost sight of his own oversight role, it would hardly be the only such lapse turned up in this inquiry. What emerges from the jumbled narrative of the Volcker interim report is a U.N. universe of forgetful officials, botched record-keeping, cronyism, and conflicts of interest so abundant they start to sound simply routine--which they apparently were.

Read the whole thing.

Grammaticality

If you're a stickler for grammar (and really, who ain't?), then definitely check out this nerdily humorous post about The Simpsons' (s---There! Are you happy?!??!*) use of and jokes about gammar. Sample:

Episode: “Bart’s Inner Child,” Episode # 1F04
Loss of adjectival -ed in Adj-Noun compounds

"I feel like such a free spirit, and I'm really enjoying this so-called ... iced cream."

Episode: Marge in Chains. Episode # 421 9F28

English spelling, borrowed consonant cluster reduction

Troy McClure is introducing an infomercial, says “I’m Troy McClure, star of such films as ‘P is for Psycho’”.

Which reminds me:




*shit's private, yo

Rock on, hippies

It is the anger that does them in. Resting his case on much original reporting, Mr. York convincingly shows that the activist left mistook its base--2.5 million strong and anti-Bush to the (mostly white) man--for the mainstream electorate, as if fury and contempt were the only logical responses to the Bush presidency. Reciting the mantra that it was "too big to fail," the left wing bought into the conspiracy of its own vastness. An inability to connect with swing voters followed, and electoral defeat.

Especially trenchant is Mr. York's analysis of the Center for American Progress. Convinced, mistakenly, that modern liberalism's problem was its deficit of sound bites, the think tank gave short shrift to compelling policy ideas. A disgruntled Democratic source--the book is densely populated with this species--offers an apt postmortem: "Just getting bigger amplifiers doesn't make the music any better."*

Tar Wars/Star Heels

Ok, ok, ok. Everyone just calm down. Yes, Carolina won the national championship last night. Yes, the entire town of Chapel Hill took to the streets for a Dionysian revelry of good cheer, booze, and fire. And yes, the badass Marvin Williams t-shirt I was wearing surely psychically spurred him to make that amazing tip-in that would prove to be the decisive points in the last minute victory.
But this is the internet after all, so let's try to focus on what's really important. Namely, the new trailer for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of the Sith that was shown during the game. Now, I haven't been able to find a link to it yet, so I only saw it the one time last night, through a haze of beer and chicken wings. But I think I remember seeing a new shot of Anakin Skywalker dressed in this crypto-Vader getup, leading a small army. Which, y'know, is pretty badass. And also a shot of C3PO aboard the ship that Leia is using on her spy mission at the beginning of Episode IV. There's lots of continuity issues to grapple with in Episode III: The birth of Luke and Leia, the consturction* of the Death Star(click that shit), and the political issues (vis a vis decline and eventual dissolution of the Imperial Senate, the acsencion of Palpatine to the role of Emperor, etc.).
C'mon people. It's time to get pumped.


*hey kid

Rollin' wit da flatness

Read this really cool Tom Friedman piece in the NYT. It's not a loop, it's a sample:

Do you recall ''the IT revolution'' that the business press has been pushing for the last 20 years? Sorry to tell you this, but that was just the prologue. The last 20 years were about forging, sharpening and distributing all the new tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real information revolution is about to begin as all the complementarities among these collaborative tools start to converge. One of those who first called this moment by its real name was Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O., who in 2004 began to declare in her public speeches that the dot-com boom and bust were just ''the end of the beginning.'' The last 25 years in technology, Fiorina said, have just been ''the warm-up act.'' Now we are going into the main event, she said, ''and by the main event, I mean an era in which technology will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, of life.''

I'm not halfway through yet, but it's pretty amazing so far, aside from his labored "the world is now flat" analogy.

Talking back to pop music*

Ok, wait. So, your boyfriend is named "Maps?" That's stupid.


*idea stolen from PW

It might be about fishing

Being a firm believer in the marketplace of ideas, and of the notion that more speech best serves the public debate, I've oft encouraged you, my loyal skimmers, to check out other blogs.
"Bah," I hear you say, "I don't need any more Rove-bot propoganda! I shall not follow his links!" Fair enough, you dirty hippies. Should you, howevs, ever feel the need for more enlightened discourse of a more liberal nature, point yer Firefoxes towards palomarknot.blogspot.com, the new home of our very own Angry Hippie. He has also promised tits.

Welcome to the 'sphere, Hippie.

Gettin' yo nerd on

So, I spent most of my Sunday trying to get my AirPort Express to stream music wirelessly from my computer to my stereo. I got so frustrated that I had to call Apple's tech support, an emasculating experience for any self-respecting nerd. Small solace, then, that even Apple couldn't help. To avoid the somewhat drastic next step of dropping a few large on a PowerBook or G5 (JB stizz), I spent the rest of my Sunday relocating my stereo so it can reside next to my computer, forcing my music to stream to my stereo through stupid old wires. So lame, so lame.

But I also managed to catch a few dozen wrecks on World's Scariest Car Chases. Yeah, it's a bit redneck-y. But still, the leap from disallowing foreign cars to calling NASCAR an "ethnic pride" festival is a big one, even for those of us with cognitive dissonance. Wait, hang on...Junior's on the march! Wooooo!

Big Apple

Fiona Apple's unreleased album gets reviewed in the New York Times:

Had it been released, "Extraordinary Machine" would have been a fine counterbalance to a pop moment full of monolithic, self-righteous sincerity. As it stands, mysteriously leaked and proliferating, the album is an object lesson in how an Internet that's not controlled by copyright holders can set artistic expression free.

Of course, Fiona Apple is not seeing any money for this, either, which makes it a less than perfect strategery.

Isn't she lovely?

AK sends us (the royal we...the editoral...) this snarky little nugget. Look, the girls are just having fun, blowing off a little steam after college. Jenners and Babs are like our Harry and William, only with less Nazi sympathizing and more Bud Light. Give 'em a break, eh?

Aggressive stupidity

My lord, you gotta hear this. Some woman calls 911 because Burger King can't make her cheeseburger correctly.
To her credit, the operator is having none of this shit. Just...wow.