Eli Sanders, one of the senior writers for The Stranger is currently in Oregon (or if not currently, was yesterday) blogging about the Clinton Campaign and the voters she's courting. Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence and perhaps says nothing about national trends, but nevertheless the first two pieces are interesting in what they reveal about white people (and how much I want to smack them—stupid white people). The latter two are more about the current energy of the campaign.

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/05/in_search_of_hard_working_white_people
http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/05/hanging_with_the_hard_working_white_folk

http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/05/clinton_in_the_arena
http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/05/with_clinton_on_the_ropes

"Great tits cope well with warming"

*giggle*

Oh, this is good. I'm not a Peter Frampton fan, so that may be why this album has gone unnoticed by me for all these years (and given that this album is 30+ years old, apologies if this is old to you and no longer tickling of the funnybone).

Who signed off on this album title?



How lovely is that? That this could be an album title for the guy who wrote "Baby, I Love Your Way" is just mind-boggling. "I'm in you?" 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny" sounds tame by comparison, at least so far as titles are concerned. Granted, the lyrical content of the song is completely G-rated, but still, there have to be better ways of putting such a sentiment.

This is, of course, what prompted Frank Zappa to record the first track on Sheik Yerbouti, "I Have Been In You."

The intro to the song from Baby Snakes:



And then the song itself:



I love that most of the latter half of this song is made up of "I'm goin' in you again" over and over again.

Oh Syyyyyyyyyd!



Watch very carefully. Something magical happens at about the fifteen second mark.

Syd!!! HORSE BALLS!!!

Matt Taibbi has an entertaining piece in this week's Rolling Stone called "Jesus Made Me Puke." Adapted from a section of his forthcoming book The Great Derangement, the article details a weekend Taibbi spent undercover at an evangelical retreat. Alternately hilarious and horrifying (and sometimes both at once), he paints a picture of what goes on in at least one evangelical church when the cameras aren't rolling: John Bly-cum-Promise Keepers gratuitous man-weeping, groupthink, superstition, anti-intellectualism, speaking in tongues (during which Taibbi begins reciting the lyrics to a Russian song to try to fit in—unsurprisingly, this seems to convince them) and a host of other fun activities.

Below is an excerpt in which Taibbi describes the culmination of the weekend: a rather involved casting out of demons ceremony. When I said it's sometimes both hilarious and horrifying? This is what I had in mind.

4:53:28 PM melvillean: I am the banana bread king.
4:53:37 PM melvillean: You should make yourself some banana bread.
4:53:42 PM melvillean: It's dirt fucking simple.
4:54:19 PM melvillean: And you probably already have a lot of the stuff you need.
4:54:36 PM melvillean: The two loaves I just made rule.
4:54:37 PM archaeologydork: GET FUCKED
4:54:52 PM melvillean: Here's what to do.
4:55:05 PM melvillean: Let 4 bananas ripen.
4:55:26 PM melvillean: Once they're fully ripe to brown freeze them.
4:55:27 PM archaeologydork: GET FUCKED
4:56:31 PM melvillean: This causes the water molecules in the fruit to turn to ice which in turn breaks down a lot of the cell walls in the fruit. Thus, when you unfreeze them, they'll be mushy and easy to mix.
4:56:47 PM melvillean: Combine the thawed bananas in a bowl with:
4:56:50 PM archaeologydork: GET BANANA FUCKED
4:58:30 PM melvillean: 1 egg
                                   1/3 cup of melted butter (roughly 5.3 tbsp.)
                                   1 tbsp. baking powder
                                   a pinch of salt
                                   1 tbsp. vanilla extract
                                   1 cup sugar
4:58:41 PM melvillean: Once those are mixed, add 1.5 cups of flour.
4:58:42 PM archaeologydork: USE THIS MOTHERFUCKER
4:58:44 PM melvillean: Ta-da.
4:58:51 PM archaeologydork: 1 GET FUCK
4:58:56 PM melvillean: That's your basic banana bread.
4:58:58 PM archaeologydork: 1/3 CUP OF MELTED GETTING FUCKED
4:59:21 PM archaeologydork: 1 TBSP OF BAKING FUCKING
4:59:23 PM melvillean: My chocolate chip banana bread rules and for that I just added a shit-ton of semisweet chips and an extra tbsp of vanilla extract.
4:59:29 PM archaeologydork: A PINCH OF GETTING FUCKED
4:59:47 PM melvillean: The other loaf is good too.
4:59:51 PM archaeologydork: GET FUCKED
5:00:15 PM melvillean: And all I added to that was a small bag of mixed dried berries (blueberries, strawberries, cranberries and cherries) and the zest of two lemons.
5:00:26 PM archaeologydork: GET BERRY FUCKED FOR ZEST
5:00:46 PM melvillean: Put the batter into a loaf pan and bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour.
5:01:05 PM melvillean: If I wanted to get froofy with the fruity one, I could sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

pensivewombat has challenged me to a "Random Shit We Find on the Internet" Contest.



Granny says "Game on."

"What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as 'unread' by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place."

So, in the past month I've met up with half a dozen or so other people who are interested in forming some sort of comedy collective here in town (mostly sketch comedy, but perhaps also comedy shorts of the Channel101 variety). I figured that 1) it would be something to get me out of the house; 2) it would be fun; 3) it would introduce me to new people; and 4) it would be a welcome distraction and challenge in the midst of this horrendously long job search (and would provide some needed release, I imagine, once I get a job).

An executive decision was made a few weeks ago to lose our stage virginity at The Stranger's Second Annual Gong Show this last Saturday, and we did.



(We appear [me first] at around 0:55.)

There's only about 15 or so seconds of us, and only the first part of the routine. We called ourselves the Choir for the Deaf from the Bellevue Church of Baby Jesus (but The Gong Show people truncated it to "Choir for the Deaf") and the set-up was that we were doing interpretive signs to the song "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands." It starts off (as you can see) piously enough and we even got boos initially, since I think people thought we were serious. The boos turned to cheers, however, when the signs devolved into giving one another handjobs and mimicking various sex acts to each different verse (why they chose the beginning of the song where the worst we do is some finger gestures [when they could have used something from slightly later when people started humping one another] is beyond me). My role as conductor was improvised since initially I was going to be supplying the music by holding a boombox up to the microphone. We had been told that we would be given a mic and an amp, but they failed to mention that we could bring a CD and the sound guy would play it—we brought a CD just in case (since this would sound better than boombox-through-mic) and the sound guy was amenable, so I had to figure out something to do. I wound up hopping off stage right in front and acting the part of the conductor for the four other people on stage.

We were third to go on, which many people later said worked against us—a lot of the acts (as you can see) were kinda bad and the judges might have liked us better had we gone on after they did. At least we didn't get gonged (like a lot of acts apparently, including the one where two women did some strange dance in tights and helmets—and when they were gonged one mooned the audience quite, erm, fully [thus David Schmader's comment about not seeing buttholes very often]). As it stands, we got two 6s, a 5, a 3 and a 2 [22/50], and the audience booed the judges who gave us the lower scores. Chop Suey (the club where all this went down) was ROASTING hot from being fire-code-packed (there was a line ~20 deep waiting to get in), so right after we did our act, we took off for pizza and beer across the street. We were complimented by no fewer than five or six different passers-by/groups of people both inside and outside Chop Suey as well as through the window as we sat eating and drinking.

If I can get a hold of a full video of our performance, I'll share it. And, as should go without saying, any videos we end up making will wind up here as well.

Under the cut is a Magic Eye picture that is quasi-NSFW. I mean, there are two barriers to entry: 1) you have to be able to do the whole Magic Eye thing and 2) doing that, you have to be familiar with the original picture (a very popular, disgusting [non-Astleyian] internet meme). But I saw this and, in the oft-used phrase of redbaker, I lost my shit:

( Enjoy. )

This has got to be the best song of 2007 and I am utterly at a loss as to why it slipped under my radar until just tonight. Also, don't listen to this anywhere where people might look at you askance if they were to hear content that would get a radio station slapped with an FCC fine. The video, while completely safe for work, is accompanied by lyrics that are anything but:



And yes, there's no Rick Astley hiding in here.

( Song title under the cut so as not to spoil the surprise. )

And, no, it's not "KAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN!!!"

Are you, or is somebody you know, an athletic woman with strong, powerful legs? If so, this man wants to meet you:



Oh, yes. Also VOTE TOMORROW PLEASE.

I had actually meant to post this yesterday, but sometimes imeem is wonky and it won't register all of the tracks I've uploaded for, like, 12-24 hours (the usual is about fifteen minutes once everything is uploaded). Those who have been here a while know that my favorite band in the world is XTC and that I truly believe, in my not-so humble opinion, that they were a better band than The Beatles. To wit, I figured it was about time to share one of my favorite albums of theirs, 1999's Apple Venus, Volume 1.

I will write more later today, but I wanted to post it up so I could listen and make sure everything is all right (for some strange reason, imeem has a hard time [maybe it's that I'm using Firefox] playing every track when I'm listening to a playlist on their website: it will play one track and then stop, and then if you want to listen to another one, you have to reload the page and select it—double-clicking before a reload does nothing). I will also likely later add a bonus track or two (on the "Easter Theatre" single Andy Partridge has a really interesting track about the way the song developed, which is both a fantastic story as well as a really cool look inside the brain of a talented musician—and since "Easter Theatre" is such a bang-up track [my favorite on the album], it's worth listening to. I may also include the ET demo, but I have to give it a listen to see if it's worth it).

All right. Time to do good on my threat to write more about this (here on the 27th of April). I wont bother with a cut, since this is probably off most of your friends pages by now and if it isn't, well, then you don't have very cluttered friends pages to begin with and surely you won't mind the longer post appearing somewhere down on the page.

Apple Venus¹ Volume 1 is the first of a two-album collection of songs penned while XTC was "on strike" from Virgin Records (the strike began after they released Nonsuch in 1992)—they were released from their contracts (which apparently forbade them from releasing any of their music outside of Virgin Records, thus the seven year dry spell) and struck some sort of settlement, but the settlement included some sort of gag order as the band have not been able to talk about the terms of the settlement or their previous contract, so this whole period is rather murky. The long and the short of it is that while from 1978 to 1992 XTC released 10 albums, in the seven years following, they released nothing (aside from Virgin putting out a few greatest hits collections), all the while writing songs and remaining a band.

( Ok, here's a cut. Biographical info on how I came to love XTC, as well as more about the evolution of the band. )

AV1, then, is 6-7 years of songs stored up after a good six-year, three-album series (Skylarking, Oranges and Lemon and Nonsuch) that saw them at the peak of their songwriting abilities. They had wanted initially to release a double album with one dis being the "orchoustic" music and the other being the "eclectric." There was some doubt as to the commercial viability of such a venture, however, so they released the first volume in 1999 and the second (Wasp Star) the following year.

The result is an album that revels in its studiosity. The whole thing starts off quietly, with a single droplet of water, echoing in stereo, triggering successive droplet-like layers of pizzicato strings, muted trumpets and vocal lines piling onto every else to eventually form a full cacophony of sound. Along with the gradual growth in sound comes Andy's characteristic wordplay—"I heard the dandelions roar in Piccadilly Circus"—as well as a pastoral image—of which he's also fond (the references to nature throughout the album, often evoking a paganistic sensibility, are abundant: "Easter Theatre," "Greenman" and "Harvest Festival" all drawn from the more verdant fields of Andy's imagination): a river of orchids pushing up through the concrete.

Having cleared its throat thoroughly in the move from silence to looped orchestra madness in the first song, XTC forges ahead with a strong album, highlighted by nearly every instrument in the orchestra carefully And lovingly deployed. Songs like "Easter Theatre" and "Harvest Festival" explode from the speakers in a sonic lushness that rivals the beauty of the images therein. And while it's clear that Andy Partridge is in debt to the Beach Boys and the Beatles, it's on songs like this where he clearly surpasses their greatest achievements.

This isn't to say that this is an orchestral clusterfuck: "I'd Like That," is pretty much a guitar-and-bass affair and uses for its percussion thigh-slaps—and it works beautifully—drums would have ruined the intimate feel of the song. Similarly, "Knights in Shining Karma" floats along gently with Brian Wilson harmonies atop a sea of layered fingerpicked guitars and hints everywhere of nearly every percussion instrument that isn't a drum. The bitter divorce song, "Your Dictionary" is (for the more bitter first half of the song) almost solidly acoustic guitar and nothing else. The album ebbs and flows and you're not assaulted Phil-Spector-Wall-of-Sound-style, even though some songs come close to that aesthetic.

Colin Moulding brings some nice material to the table as well: he plays the George Harrison to Andy's Lennon/McCartney, and his output is similarly strong across the board: both "Fruit Nut" and "Frivolous Tonight" are nice pieces of jaunty, jolly, rollicking pop music celebrating the mundaneness of domestic life.

The album isn't all sunshine and happiness: aside from "Your Dictionary," there are also two more mournful songs that help bring the album to a close: "I Can't Own Her" and "The Last Balloon" cover the pain of unrequited love and a dim view of our own ability to rise beyond our more violent instincts. Even so, though, both songs are beautifully written and the loving care given to them in the studio is evident toward the end of the album where Andy sings the final word and as it gradually fades out, a flugelhorn playing the same note is busy fading in—the effect being, unless you're listening very closely on very good equipment, that Andy's voice has morphed into a flugelhorn that then plays a sad little solo line.

Enough. I've yammered on for too long and it's not likely many will read this anyhow.

In the meantime eEnjoy.



(And fear not: I will likely be posting more XTC stuff in the coming months. It was a tossup right now between this and Skylarking, and I felt I just had more to write about for AV1 at the moment.)

ETA: The title for my post is from one of the two great Colin Moulding songs on the album, "Frivolous Tonight" (the other is "Fruit Nut"). What I didn't think of in selecting it (the runner-up was "What was best of all was the / Longing look you gave me" from "Harvest Festival") and only recognized when I looked at the date, was how fitting for a 4/20 entry this lyric is, since the next line is "Let's go to pot." I swear, this is not me being coy: I didn't even think of it until after I made the post.

---

1. There's a bit of a fun piece of trivia behind the name. First we have to go back to 1986's Skylarking and the song "Ballet for a Rainy Day," which opens with the lyrics "Orange and lemon / Raincoats roll and tumble / Together, just liked fruit tipped from a tray." According to Andy Partridge, it was a complete coincidence that the next album they released was titled Oranges and Lemons. Similarly, it was also a coincidence that this album has the lyric "I'm skating over thin ice, while some nonesuch net holds me aloft," and their next album was titled Nonsuch. This is the official story, at least, because as Andy tells it, somebody alerted him to this, which prompted him to lift the Apple Venus title deliberately from the lyrics of Nonsuch's "Then She Appeared": "Then she appeared / Apple Venus on a half-open shell." Well, it's fun trivia to me at least (since before I learned this, I thought it was all planned).

Pullman's first album, Turnstyles and Junkpiles, always does the trick for me at night:



Recorded live (mostly—I believe there were a few overdubs here and there) in four days, using only two mikes and a two-track recorder, this features a lot of folks from different groups (Bundy K. Brown of Directions in Music, Curtis Harvey of Rex, Chris Brokaw of Come, and Douglas McCombs of Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day—as says the page on them at their label, Thrill Jockey, though I'm only familiar with Tortoise [and to a lesser extent Come], and this sounds *nothing* like either group), getting together playing a lot of different instruments with strings. Very soothing music.

Other albums that work to get me to fall asleep:

* Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
* Brian Eno's Music for Airports
* Enya's discography (don't judge me)

Oh, man. This is beautiful. Sent to me by redbaker



I love how the brackets are used in that story (you have to be familiar with the scene in question, I guess).

A refresher:


And a parody:

Family Guy - Brian sings a song on FunnyOrDie.com

Robert Reich , Secretary of Labor in the first Clinton Administration (1993-1997), has formally endorsed Barack Obama on his blog today. While he notes that his decision to publicly announce his support has been delayed "by the pull of old friendships [he's known both the Clintons for 30+ years] and [his] reluctance as a teacher and commentator to be openly partisan," he nevertheless feels that his conscience (and that's where it's really gotta sting for HRC—not coming out in support of Obama became a matter of conscience for him [emphasis in both instances mine]) won't allow him to remain silent. Ouch.

If you're not familiar with Robert Reich, you should be. He's enormously intelligent and has a great sense of humor to boot, which makes him a very engaging speaker.


A really good lecture he gave about three years ago at Berkeley entitled "How Unequal Can America Get?" in which he looks at the growing economic disparity in America, globalization, technology and why this matters for all of us (even those at the top). It's worth it to get to the end of the lecture where he says this (in a bit that prefigures some of the rhetoric of Obama: "The most important thing you can do is regard politics not as your enemy, but as your hope, and as your friend: politics as the applied form of democracy. And the most important thing you can do is stop whining and stop being cynical and stop being resigned and start calling your friends ... and relatives in red states."

There are a ton of videos of his lectures and appearances on everything from Charlie Rose to Bill Maher, and he has to be one of the most intelligent and well-spoken (former) public officials I've ever seen. That and he can turn a mean phrase: in describing the move of the Baby Boom from the working population to retirement, he conjured up an image of a pig in a python. Sweet.

And for fun, here's a sketch he did with Conan O'Brien:


I can't say that I would mind seeing him in the Cabinet again.

ETA: To add even more to the sting, not only is he an old friend of the Clintons, but he's an ex of Hillary Clinton! According to CBS News they dated while she was going to Wellesley. WOW. Bros before Hos, I guess.

(ganked from fountaingirl)

This is a startlingly accurate reflection of my personality (though I suppose if one takes enough of these, one is bound to hit something like this eventually). Click on the "Full Personality Report" link below to see, well, the full thing (i.e. each category listed here broken down a bit more and explained a bit more).


My Personality

Neuroticism	54
Extraversion	7
Openness to Experience	54
Agreeableness	68
Conscientiousness	51

You are a calm person who is considered almost fearless by some, however you tend to lack energy and have difficult initiating activities. People generally perceive you as distant and reserved, and you do not usually reach out to others. You prefer facts over fantasy and are more interested in what is happening in the real word. You see no need for pretense or manipulation when dealing with others and are therefore candid, frank and sincere. People find it relatively easy to relate to you, however you will help others if they are in need. If people ask for too much of your time you feel that they are imposing on you. You take your time when making decisions and will deliberate on all the possible consequences and alternatives.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report. The best Buying Pet Gifts.

A former colleague posted this as a note on Facebook. I'm saving it here for posterity. I dunno, it's kinda sweet. I occasionally looked for Missed Connection notes like this geared toward me, but there never were any.

Please be my English instructor. Forever. - m4w

You are an English graduate student at UW who instructed English 131 classes, and I was an extremely lucky student in one of your classes last quarter.

I'll cut to the chase - everything about you sparks a flame which breeds an unstoppable, passionate fire of unadulterated love. From the moment we made eye contact when I volunteered to present my Cultural Identity letter to the very last smile that I exchanged with you when I left the classroom at Gould Hall, a cloud of longing has blocked the sun rays of happiness from my life.

Is it your accent? That adorable Canadian way of pronunciation surely struck a chord with me the very first day. Perhaps it is your sense of style; I love a woman who knows how to defy conventional fashion and cultivate her own edgy vogue. Is it your cutting wit? Your ability to seem admirably unpretentious yet ridiculously charming? The way you use your hands when you speak about something intellectually stimulating? Is it how you're so smart that it ridiculously intimidates me whenever I speak with you when no one is around? I know that it is all of those, you painfully intelligent Canadian vixen, you.

Remember those times I poked fun at your extremist views? I was only doing that to hide the fact that I was completely enamored with you. You know when you lent me a book and I came and discussed it with you when it wasn't even part of the course? I only did that because of the slight possibility of some cliche bumping-hands-leading-to-something-sensual scenario resulting from it. When I found out the unexpectedly good grade you gave me for the course, I had hoped that it was a sign of some longing on your part.

Please find a way to make yourself physically younger. If not, let's just have coffee or something less predictable and banal.

And to answer a few questions, yes, I have a reasonable idea of who it is, but I have never met her (as her being an English 131 TA would mean she's in her first year or two [usually] of being at the UW, so even if we were both in the dept. last year, since I was done with classes, I likely would not have met her—we have a very large department [i.e. ~200 students]). I just figured it out by looking at the schedule for last quarter.

Here's a video of a goat that sounds like Jerry Lewis (courtesy of archaeologydork):



And, no, the goat isn't Rick Astley. It's really a goat. Linkie if the embedded video doesn't work for you.

CINDY MCCAIN HAD BETTER STEP OFF.

This had better get at least a tenth of the press coverage of the silly "OH MY GOD OBAMA IS A PLAGIARIST!!!" hoopla from earlier this year. Huffington Post has found that a number of the recipes up on the McCain website under the heading "McCain Family Recipes" were copied and pasted recipes originally from The Food Network. They even have helpful side-by-side comparisons.

Ok, so, mainstream media? This is plagiarism. Just look at it. It's amateurish; the sort of thing my undergrads would try to pull (though done with less creativity). In one recipe, the intern (as that's who they're saying did this) changed "salad" to "slaw"; in another the cheese used is changed from "Grana Padano" to just plain "Parmesan." This latter point is interesting: 1) the Food Network recipe suggests the substitution by noting that Grana Padano is similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano; 2) one can only surmise that the reason for the substitution is that the majority of voters to whom the McCains are trying to appeal aren't going to have access to them fancy eye-talian cheeses in their local supermarkets, and the inclusion of such a cheese would (I suppose in the eyes of the McCain campaign) make them seem somehow like effete, blue-state, gourmet-eatin' types.

And I know this is small potatoes campaign-wise, I really do. This isn't some major indictment of McCain and his politics. This is the fuck-up of some overly-zealous and underly-creative low-level staffer and not actually Cindy McCain lying through her teeth and stealing recipes from people like my lovely television-girlfriend-cum-softcore-food-porn-fantasy Giada de Laurentiis (though the bitch better watch out: Giada and her homies know how to wield knives). But the whole thing is troubling because of what it says about the role of artifice in politics.

Sure, politicians will often do and say whatever they need to to win elections. This is an ugly fact that we're all pretty much accustomed to. McCain has gone from criticizing Bush to hugging him like a child hugs its mother; he once abhorred the support of the religious right fringe, but he's now courting it. Expedience is the name of the game and if you're not going to get elected without the support of the fundies and the neocons, then the course of action seems clear: get down on your knees with (and in front of) them. You can always renege on your campaign promises once you're in the White House. But this example—Recipegate, let's call it—is troubling on a very fundamental level to me, especially for a politician like McCain.

This is Mr. Straight Talk Express. Mr. What You See Is What You Get. Mr. Maverick Republican. Mr. Very Principled Man Indeed (and on this point, I feel obligated to point out that truly do believe he is a man of strong principles and his conduct in Hoa Lo Prison [where, when he was offered to be released only 9 months into what was to be a 5.5 year imprisonment (due to his father being Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command in the Vietnam War), he refused unless all of the men captured before him were released first] cannot be written off or forgotten about easily—the Hanoi Hilton was a fucked up place [much worse that any Pound Me In The Ass Prison we have here, and likely worse than Guantanamo] and to voluntarily stay there on principle is revelatory of both balls of steel as well as unwavering conviction). Yet (YET!) somewhere along the line he (or somebody he hired) decided that the more politically expedient thing was to plagiarize recipes from professional chefs rather than risk offending the taste-buds of middle America with a potential clunker of a tuna casserole from the McCain-née-Hensley recipe box. I've accepted that his Straight Talk isn't so Straight, but I've attempted to maintain a modicum of respect for him as being, somewhere beneath the politics, a principled man. Recipegate challenges that.

I think that's what bothers me here. It's one thing to make politically expedient statements as a way of building up an electable façade. But to fabricate (nay, plagiarize) a home-life? Really? It feels deceitful in a way that politicking never has to me. The take-away message from all of this is that the John McCain seems to think that a fabricated home-life is more electable than an authentic one—or that he has hired (and trusted) people to run his campaign who believe this (which itself would be troubling in what would say about his abilities as a judge of character). I suppose the best(?)-case scenario is that he's just completely out to lunch here, in which case, he's even less fit to be president.

All right, got all that, mainstream media? This is what plagiarism is: uncredited attribution with intent to deceive an audience vis-à-vis the authenticity of the plagiarized thing. Using a rhetorical flourish at the suggestion of—and with the permission of—the man who came up with it? Totally not plagiarism.

On a side note, this farce has been going on for at least four months, since "Cindy McCain" (er, the low-level intern fall-guy?) submitted one of her plagiarized recipes to a feature in The New York Sun back in January.

On a side-side note, why is Hillary Clinton the one contributing a recipe in that feature (along with C. McC. and Michelle Obama)? Why didn't they ask her spouse? Maybe it's that I'm just coming off the high I got from making my own shrimp stock this weekend, but goddamnit, the kitchen is a man's place too.

Morphine's Cure For Pain will always sound like the Painted Desert at night to me. This was one of those groups that Emmanuel got me into (the other notable ones being Soul Coughing, Phish and Portishead) and this album is good enough that I can recall where and when we were listening to it as we drove across the country back in 2002. I cannot listen to this and not see the silhouettes of cacti zipping by outside a car window.

I was prompted to post this album after seeing a live performance of the title song posted to Fark last night. A very good performance of it too: Mark Sandman is just dripping with sweat and you get some nice up-close shots of his trademark two-string slide bass. And I was initially tempted to just embed the video, but then I thought that wouldn't do Morphine justice. Like, so far as the world is concerned, Morphine was a one-hit wonder band, and "Cure for Pain" was that hit. Were I to post just the single, chances are you might like it (and maybe you even knew it), but that wouldn't create the potential for new Morphine fans, which would be sad.

Of course, the Morphine story is a sad one. They were a unique band, with a sound that Sandman coined as "low rock": he sings baritone and the instrumentation was a sparse trio of two-string slide bass, drums and bari sax. I know that doesn't sound like it would work, or that it wouldn't be enough. But believe me, it did and it was (this is helped, of course, by some pretty good production work to fill things out by doubling the sax or bringing in a tenor sax on top of it). They were critical darlings, but never broke into the mainstream and Mark Sandman collapsed on stage in 1999, dying of a heart attack).

The music is ... man, it's hard to describe. It's dark and brooding, but at the same time isn't depressing. I think this is why listening to it in the desert at night is a good image for it: it's a sort of dark and sparse music that you can appreciate without being in a bad mood (and it certainly won't put you in a bad mood: behind the sometimes sad lyrics, there's often a glimmer of hope: "Someday there'll be a cure for pain / That's the day I throw my drugs away"). And of course, not all of it is as brooding: "Mary Won't You Call My Name" and "Buena" are fairly upbeat (this isn't quite the right word for it ... uptempo?) songs. They also do laid-back well, too (cf. "Sheila," or "I'm Free Now" or "Candy"). One of the best moments on the album is actually the least characteristic of the band: in "In Spite of Me," we get Sandman singing on top of a chorus of mandolins for a very haunting and sad song, which, even though it's sonically nothing the rest of the album, doesn't feel out of place. This is music for the nighttime, for when you're not ready to quite chill out and go to bed (for which I recommend Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out). I don't know how much more I can say about it. It's cool, it's interesting, it's Morphine, man. (I think one of the reasons I like them is that they have a sound that is unique to them: nobody else does what they do).

Standout tracks: "I'm Free Now," "Candy," "In Spite of Me," "Cure for Pain."

Enjoy.

Oh, lordy, lordy. Look what has been unearthed over at Pharyngula:



My. My, oh my. That's just. Well ... wow. I have no doubt that this was fashioned by some devout maker of Jesusy housewares, but ... really? You didn't think of the implications of centering JC and putting him at *that* height? (This is, of course, to say nothing of the children and how the girl seems to be reaching for ... oh no.) It would seem that whoever created this was blinded by the light.

Some of the better responses from commenters at Pharyngula:

"Hallelujah, He is risen!"

"Suddenly the phrase 'Get behind me Satan' is sounding worse in my head."

"This little light of mine? Who are you calling little?"

My favorite is a series of limericks:

What an interesting tidbit of kitsch
Iconography sure is a bitch
But I'm sure that the thrust
Of the thought is: You must
Turn on Jesus's love, like a switch

He said "I am the way and the light"
And his love is a beautiful sight
If you join with his flock, you
Will see--he won't shock you;
Turn him on, though, and maybe he might

(Entry courtesy of redbaker who, erm, turned me on to the entry on Pandagon which linked to the original at Pharyngula.)

Here's something fun to listen to. Below is a playlist that consists of eleven Modest Mouse songs followed by the Sun Kil Moon album on which they are covered (Tiny Cities). This is a playlist I've been meaning to make for a long time, just because I haven't listened to the originals and the covers back to back. One of the things I really like about Tiny Cities is how much Mark Kozelek makes Isaac Brock's songs his own: like, for all intents and purposes, he's composed his own music and set the lyrics from Modest Mouse songs to them. Yet I'm curious to see if, musically, he's taking any cues from the originals and incorporating them into his covers (the obvious one to me is "The Ocean Breathes Salty," but given that it's off one of their later [and therefore more melodic] albums, this isn't surprising).

I had several choices when assembling the playlist: pair the songs up in the order they appear on TC or keep them separate (as well as choosing whether to put MM or SKM first). I opted to put the originals first and follow them with the covers. This is pretty much because the disparity in sound between the originals and covers it so great that if I paired them up, you'd get musically seasick going from the angular, rough-shod and at times dissonant music of Modest Mouse and Brock's yelping vocals to the sedate, airy fingerpicking of Sun Kil Moon and Mark Kozelek's actual singing. So if you want to compare song-by-song, you'll have to do this manually (sorry—but the inconvenience felt like a lesser evil than the weird back-and forth nature of a playlist that was arranged by song). The cool thing about the covers is that they let you appreciate Brock's talent as a lyricist even if you don't necessarily dig the Modest Mouse aesthetic (and I get it: like Tom Waits, MM is not for everyone), so I'd urge you to at least listen to the SKM album even if you can't stand MM. It's also for this reason that I put SKM after MM—so that if you're somebody who doesn't like MM, you're not going to get jolted by the sudden burst of energy once the SKM album ends.

Anyhow, enjoy.

Ray found the website for the Delaware Valley Dance Academy. They have a helpful icon at the top of their page.



Oh, lordy. If only they knew.

Sent to me from archaeologydork: a video of a mother scaring the crap out of her kid (it looks like he passes out from fear):



And, no it's not a Rickroll, nor is it scary for the viewer. JUST HILARIOUS. I'm so glad the Internet didn't exist when I was a kid, or I'm sure there would be videos like this of me up on it, though without the Britney Spears.

There are few books I've read as many times as Moby-Dick (and those that I have are likely children's books). In fact, I think I can approximately date every single time I've read it:

1: early spring of 2000
2: summer of 2000
3: winter of 2000/01
4: fall of 2003
5: spring of 2004
6: late winter/early spring of 2005
7: summer of 2006

And here's the strange thing: every single time I open it up, I discover something new. I suppose that since it's a long book, this shouldn't be surprising, but the uncanny thing is