I DON'T NEED NO INSTRUCTIONS TO KNOW HOW TO ROCK

"We are still treating the area as a crime scene. There were no injuries. Everyone was evacuated properly, and everyone now back to their locations."

"Davis said that residents should not be afraid to enter or leave the city and that additional police resources have been deployed to help ensure people that they are safe."

public service annoucement

Almost as soon as Coburn proposed to eliminate the bridge, Ted Stevens came tearing down to the floor of the Senate with his face red and his fists clenched, bellowing that he would not be treated with such disrespect, that the rest of the Senate would have to rise up and protect his project or he, Ted Stevens, would pack up his bags and quit the Senate and never come back. By the end of the day, eighty-two senators had voted with Stevens. Voted to spend $200 million on a bridge to nowhere, while Tom Coburn could find only fourteen members to agree that the money might be better spent somewhere else—like, say, rebuilding New Orleans.

That’s what Tom Coburn wants you to know. Not about the bridge; about the bigger thing. He wants you to know how it works in Washington, how the machine keeps itself running, and the favors get traded, and the deals get struck, and the bridges to nowhere are going up every day. He wants you to know that the United States Congress simply cannot stop itself—that both parties are in on the fix, backing each other and looking the other way, and that in the spirit of bipartisan waste, they manage to blow $500 billion more than they collect in taxes every single year. He wants you to see where that money is going: the 10,000 personal projects and earmarks that senators and congressmen are sneaking into the federal budget every year—like the Waterfree Urinal Conservation Initiative in Michigan. And the Sparta Teapot Museum in North Carolina. And the Appalachian Fruit Laboratory in West Virginia. All paid for with your tax dollars.

That’s what Tom Coburn wants you to know. That the members of the United States Congress will spend your money just because they can. That they’ll do it even when they can’t. That every year, they borrow the extra $500 billion from China, raising their own credit limit each time they reach it and then raising it again the next year, for a total of $9 trillion in debt so far. That’s right, nine trillion dollars, a figure so enormous that even if the fifty richest people on earth—including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and Michael Dell, along with the richest men in Saudi Arabia and Russia and Hong Kong—got together and sold everything they owned, right down to the last buttons on their last embroidered shirts, and then they donated all their money to the U.S. national debt, they still couldn’t afford to pay a single year of interest at 10 percent. That’s how much $9 trillion is, and that’s what Tom Coburn wants you to know: that in Washington, there isn’t really a party in charge, or a principle, or a leader. What’s in charge is the money. Because at the end of the day, when it comes down to a choice between borrowing $200 million from China to build a bridge to nowhere and taking a stand against government waste, four out of five politicians will blow it on the bridge. *

Zobmondo!

Do you think it would be worse to die on a mountain, like those dudes from "Alive!", slowly freezing to death over a matter of weeks? Or to be mauled by a shark, in the middle of the ocean, finished off in a matter of an hour or so?

This is what I think about when I'm working my spreadsheets.

Zobmondo!

funny band names

My favorites:

• Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives
• Man Scouts of America
• Harry Chronic, Jr.
• Ben Folds Laundry
• MC Glockamolie

• Runner up: Reality D. Blipcrotch
  

Pretty much the creepiest thing you'll see all day

in another life, brother (furry love)

Man, I hate it so bad that this show is ending! Taylor+Ryan=10x better than Ryan and Marwhatsername. Even Seth+Che was awesome while it lasted. It fits Che's character so perfectly that he would believe his drugberry dream about Seth's animus and his bullfrog bumpin dirty. And the MiniCoop+Bullet subplot is superbest. She wants so bad to have a stepdad called The Bullet. Plus, Hot Chip and the new Of Montreal? Every other show on tv right now can suck it.

don't believe everything you think

Interesting. A few quibbles, though:

First, is it clear that Leia only adds her holographic message to R2? Is it explicit that R2 is already carrying the plans at this point? I'm not sure it is. While I'm willing to accept the "R2 as spy" paradigm, I think a large part of the argument rests on the assertion that R2 has the plans in him, unbeknownst to Leia.

Also, why would it be necessary for Obi-Wan to accompany R2 on the mission to Yavin?
Isn't stopping to pick him up a needless complication in an otherwise simple plan? I mean, I can see if Organa wants Obi-Wan to be at Yavin when the shit goes down, cos I agree that those two plus Yoda equals the embryonic Rebellion. But it seems really risky to put three of the Rebellion's most valuable assets (R2, with the plans; Obi-Wan, and Leia) on the same ship when a seperate, less obtrusive, less risky mission to pick up Obi-Wan could be undertaken. I think the ship with R2 coulda/shoulda gone right to Yavin.

Also, in retrospect, using a counselor's ship as cover to dissuade Imperial attention seems to have been a bad idea, since it did exactly the opposite.

Last, while I sympathize with DataWhat's skepticism regarding R2 making deals with Jawas, I think the alternative, that the Jawas just happened to be on their way to a stop at the isolated and desolate moisture farm (or, luck, more simply put), strains credulity even farther.

bag that cougar once and for all

Apparently, duder's been playing this song for a few years, and it wasn't written just to sell trucks.

One question now is what impact a commercial that has been running for months can have on sales of a new album. Some executives at Universal Republic, Mr. Mellencamp’s label, are concerned that the exposure peaked too soon, and that the audience has already tired of the song. Mr. Mellencamp admits that the situation has put radio programmers “in a position they’ve never been in before,” adding that he never anticipated that the ad would be played so frequently. “They sure pounded it,” he said with a chuckle.

Uh, yeah, I think I may have seen it once or twice. Joan Baez admires it's "subtlety." Still no explanation regarding "the dixie highway."
Oh, this is funny, too:

The album’s most striking songs, though, display a more intimate depiction of the small-town life that Mr. Mellencamp, 55 and a lifelong Indiana resident, knows so well. The acoustic “Rural Route” is an account of a crystal meth-fueled murder in which the victim’s body was found at the edge of his parents’ property.

Intimate.

BlogRadio: songs that sound like other songs

I haven't put new songs in the radio for awhile. This time, we'll listen to songs that share more than a passing resemblance to other songs. Samples and Weird Al parodies are off limits, as is that tenuous-ass claim that that one George Harrison song sounds like that one Phil Spector song. Which, that was always bullshit, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway. These are songs that I think sound like other songs, presented in pairs for purposes of facile dismissal. Note: I'm not saying these are bad songs in any way. I quite like most of them.

FIRST: The Pretenders- Back on the Chain Gang vs. The Ladybug Transistor- In December. First, let it be said that I do not like the Pretenders. This may be because I am not a girl. But the trumpet that starts at about 2:20 into The Ladybug Transistor song straight up bit the guitar line from Back on the Chain Gang. It isn't hard to spot, either. My question is, do bands realize when they do this? I mean, aside from like linebacker-rock bands like Nickelback and Filter, and obviously label-assembled shit machines like Hinder or Panic at the Disco (your punctuation sucks almost as hard as you do, idiots), you've got figure that bands have at least some semi-well informed musical knowledge. And The Pretenders were pretty big for awhile there. I'm just saying that it seems like someone in the band would've realized when they were playing that line "Oh, shit, can't use that one." Unless it's an intentional artistic statement, like the songs are somehow related lyrically. But I don't really see it.

NEXT: Tom Waits- Martha vs. Wilco- Blasting Fonda. Again, how can you hear these two songs and not think they're designed to sound alike? See, this is why music journalism is worthless: I've read dozens of interviews with Jeff Tweedy, and I've never seen anyone ask him about this. I just have a hard believing that Tweedy isn't familiar with Tom Waits' catalogue. And even some of the lyrics are similar: "...in days of olden" vs. "those were days of roses". That's a more poetic example, sure, but here at least I can see kinda drawing some lyrical parallels between the entire songs. Incidentally, this is one of my favorite Wilco songs evs.

LAST: The Beatles- With A Little Help From My Friends vs. Oasis- She's Electric. Ok, I just put this in because I want to talk about Oasis for a minute here. The comparison is, obvy, when Oasis bites the descending harmony and chords to end the song. But more importantly, lots of people who think about these things think that "Be Here Now" was the album where Oasis really lost the plot. Even Noel Gallagher admitted this to Q magazine, that that album was where they became a little too enamored of the finer things in life, and went off the deep end (maybe literally?). But that's busted, because "Be Here Now" is a fantastic rock 'n' roll album, and the point where Oasis, I think, crystallized the elements that had been present, but slightly sublimated, in their previous two albums. "Definitely Maybe" definitely rocks, and contains some like history-making singles. It lauched Britpop onto the world stage, broke Oasis in America (always the goal of any up-and-coming British band), and made them huge rock stars. But it does have a couple of crap songs on there, and it's almost monolithic sound can make it feel slow and drag in parts. "Morning Glory" is, I think, a very overrated record. There's 12 tracks, ok, and two of them are just like waves crashing and static, and the first two songs kinda suck. Even "Some Might Say" got to big for its britches, and the lyrics mean absolutely nothing. "Hey Now!" is boring. So that leaves like six tracks which were great, which is hardly enough to make for an all-time album, unimpeachably fantastic though they were. It fittingly ends with "Champagne Supernova," which, lyrically, segues nicely into "Be Here Now." (The cover art for the single of "Don't Look Back In Anger" does, too, and ranks, for me, among the best cover art of all time.) "Be Here Now" is just an enormous album. It is when Oasis decided to just take over the world, by force, if necesary. In the first track's video, they arrive at the gig (in front of a building they've no doubt destroyed with the power of their rock) in helicopters for dog's sake. The production is their best yet, with like dozens of tracks on every song (side note: 1997 is, I think, the year when many bands became fully aware of the possibilities the age of digital recording and mixing allowed them. Think "OK Computer," "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space," "Be Here Now," "Aquemini," "Version 2.0"... there are dozens of examples.), and a mix that's clear enough to hear them. The melodies and choruses are just titanic, and this is not at all diminished by the times when they step back a little for "Don't Go Away" and the quieter parts of "All Around The World." The criticism is that because the tracks are longer than normal, this is Oasis being self-indulgent. But look: the hooks on "Definitely Maybe" and "Morning Glory" come so rapidly and so often that they never really get a chance to explore them musically, and never get to kind of sit in a groove. On "Be Here Now" they spread out a bit, play longer solos, and just have the confidence to take their time. Could "All Around the World" be four or five minutes instead of nearly 10? Well, I suppose, but that's more like halfway around the world, and Oasis did nothing half-ass on this album. It's my favorite Oasis album, and there's nothing like it.



UPDATE: Goddammit. I don't know why it keeps putting the tracks in the opposite order. I can't seem to fix this.

of vice and men

If it's just that I can't have feminists fake a rape, if that sends me off some cliff of thinking all women are a certain way, I don't think that's fair. I will say that the portrayal of those women...it was affected by the coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal. Immediately, when they turned those cameras on and cut to the demonstrators, so many people, before anyone heard anything, were willing to hang those kids, or to support them fully. And I just found that remarkable and distasteful. So there was some reaction to that, watching. You don't know what happened, and yet you want those boys in prison. By the way, I look at those lacrosse boys and my own personal gut reaction is that they're a lot like Dick Casablancas, you know -- that they are probably lunkheads and male chauvinists, but I'm not willing to call them rapists before we've even heard anything. And...oh, the word I was looking for is "strident." There was certainly some notion of putting the strident people who I reacted to in the Duke lacrosse thing into the show.

--from TWOP interview with Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas

Uh, no, it's not.

It is most definitely not.

i just bought a new goddamn phone

Holy crap this is really amazing.

not dark yet, but it's gettin there

Apparently, there is still a way to add money to your account at the Russian site. Step-by-step instructions here. Seemingly easier instructions in the comments.

I ain't tried it yet, but it wouldn't surprise me that those crafty Germans figured a way around the current restrictions.

Worst day ever

No more Friday morning blog posts:

Fox has bid farewell to Warner Bros. TV’s The O.C., cancelling the four-season-old series that has been struggling in the ratings this season.

The sun will set for the last time on the once-hot series on Thursday, Feb. 22, in its 9-10 p.m. time slot. All original episodes will air from this Thursday through the last episode.

No doubt a "Save the OC!" campaign is already underway on the webs, but given Fox's prediliction for cancelling awesome shows (Firefly, Arrested Development) and keeping others on waaaay past their time (Simpsons [no, it's true, and you know it]), I really don't see much hope of them changing their mind. Thank god Veronica Mars isn't on Fox.