Month: September 2006

It’s that thing. Where I post lyrics to songs you’ve apparently never heard of and you humor me by guessing at a couple? Yeah, that thing. Anyway…
  1. I’ll rail at all his servants
    “Street Fighting Man” by the Rolling Stones, guessed by Karen
  2. She never called me baby-doll
    “Lucky Ball and Chain” by They Might Be Giants, guessed by Kim
  3. Her smell stays on my shirt
    “Suckerpunch” by Bowling for Soup, guessed by Karen
  4. Play a song for me and I’ll sing
    “Applejack” by Dolly Parton, guessed by Kim
  5. And all I can breathe is your life
    “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls, guessed by Kim
  6. I touch the fire and it freezes me
    “Coda” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Once More With Feeling,” guessed by Betty
  7. It speaks of peace to me
    “Ne’er Do Well” by Young People
  8. I see the purple shades of evening
    “Concrete & Clay” by Unit 4 + 2
  9. Summertime will be a love-in there
    “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” by Scott McKenzie, guessed by Kim
  10. She has to discipline her body
    “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1” by the Flaming Lips, guessed by Karen

As always, best of luck!

Oh, and last week’s answers have all been posted, in case that sort of thing is important to you.

MS Word’s grammar check, besides being flat-out wrong a lot of the time, leaves a great deal to be desired. For instance, while you can turn it off and only check spelling, you can’t do the opposite and only check for grammatical mistakes. There’s also no auto-correct for grammar; while you can ignore or change all instances of a something that’s spelled incorrectly, you have to click “Change” for each instance of a mistake in grammar. (There’s an “Ignore Rule” option, but that’s hardly the same thing, and it’s useless when what you’re looking to do is accept all of the program’s suggestions.)

I have several documents with extra spaces between many of the words. If I had to guess, I’d say there are at least 2,000 extra spaces that need to be deleted. Word recognizes each of these as grammatical mistakes and offers to fix them, but not all at once — which, to me, seems like something the software could be easily tweaked to allow. I’m not a designer, obviously, so I can’t say that this software could be easily tweaked. I’m just saying that there doesn’t seem to be a sensible reason for not tweaking it. Why can’t grammar-check be at least as effective as spell-check?

Oh, and typing ctrl-H to replace all the two-spaces with ones isn’t going to work either. I have two-spaces, between sentences, that I need to keep. So I’m stuck with the tedious option of changing each individually.

“The main task now is to agree that hope was not one of the worlds destroyed that day — the day when 6,000 people did not die, but the day when one person died 6,000 times.” – Rabbi Marc Gellman

Five years ago, when it first happened, I didn’t know what to write. I think I still don’t, at least not today. You can find plenty of other people telling you what to think, or not to think, about the events of September 11. There will be speeches, I’m sure. There will be spin. There will be people, like our President, who will try to appropriate tragedy for political gain, engender fear where they should be offering hope.

But when all is said and done, for me, today, this day, is only about the people who died five years ago, about the tragedy and enormity of that terrible loss. Today we remember them, not as a sacrifice or a stark reminder or a politicized figure, but as human beings. Today we remember the loss we suffered five years ago. We commemorate the dead, we celebrate the living, and we try to build a better world from the ashes.