Month: October 2008

Not quite live journals

I wonder if I could convince my friends with Livejournals to stop posting friends-only entries. Google Reader, which is what I’m using, doesn’t pick up the locked entries in the RSS feed, even if you’re logged into Livejournal. (And at work that’s no longer an option.) If there’s any easy fix — and one that doesn’t involve giving someone else your log-in information or the text of those locked entries — I haven’t found it. And it’s sort of annoying to find out that a friend who you didn’t think was posting anything, was.

10/10 Random 10

Last week proved unexpectedly difficult for everyone. Hopefully you’ll all fare much better this week:

  1. “The Legionnaire’s Lament” by the Decemberists
    I am on reprieve, lacking my joie de vivre
  2. “Does Anyone Else in This Room Want to Marry His or Her Own Grandmother?” by Atom and His Package
    We’ll move you and your samples down to Philadelphia
  3. “I Need a Lover” by Pat Benatar (orig. Johnny Cougar), guessed Clayton
    Electricity runs through the video
  4. “Losing My Religion” by Nina Persson (orig. R.E.M.), guessed by Eric B
    Like a hurt, lost and blinded fool
  5. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot, guessed by Eric B
    Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the words turn the minutes to hours
  6. “Dignity” by Bob Dylan, guessed by Eric B
    Somebody got murdered on New Year’s Eve
  7. “The Littlest Birds” by the Be Good Tanyas
    But I’m not too blue to fly
  8. “JCB Song” by Nizlopi
    And I wanna transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex
  9. “Could’ve Gone Mad” by Poe, guessed by Eric B
    If I decided to make you my religion, I think God would be kind
  10. “Leave” by Glen Hansard
    And the truth has a habit of falling out of your mouth

As always, guess the lyric, win no prize! I think some of these have even appeared here before — but no cheating! Good luck!

Politics as (un)usual

  • How can Barack Obama say he’ll work to protect our planet when he’s spending money to let our nation’s children look at other planets? Such foolishness… what? Not true? Somebody should tell John McCain.

    Well, shock of shocks — it turns out McCain’s characterization of this was all wrong. In fact, I would call it a lie. He knows it wasn’t for an overhead projector, a piece of classroom equipment that costs a couple of hundred dollars. That money was for Adler’s Zeiss Mark VI star projector: a venerable piece of precision fabricated equipment that projects the stars, constellations, and other objects inside the planetarium dome. Adler’s Zeiss is 40 years old, and desperately needs replacing. These machines are pricey, and replacing them difficult.

    Adler needed money to do this. They asked local politicians, and eventually were able to get a request in a budget submitted by Obama. However, Obama never even voted on that budget, and Adler never got that money — thus making, again, McCain a liar.

    Via Gerry Canavan and Cynical-C, respectively.

  • On the whole ridiculous Bill Ayers thing — namely the idea that Obama has some kind of dangerous relationship with the man and will, I dunno, destroy America or something — or that he’s lied to America about that relationship, despite his being completely candid about the whole thing on many occasions — John Hodgman rightly points out that “McCain/Palin are essentially attacking Obama with BLOG COMMENTS.”

  • We could look at any domestic terrorists who were active when John McCain was eight, but I think the dinosaurs ate them all. Just ask Sarah Palin if you don’t think that’s possible!

  • You know, at the end of the day, if that’s even what John McCain still is, do we really want a maverick in the White House?

  • Huh. Ralph Nader is still running for President? Fool me once, Ralph… Yeah, I voted for Nader in 2000. Um, sorry ’bout that.

  • Small Beer Press is having a sale! And 20% of the proceeds of this sale will be donated to Barack Obama’s campaign! Great books, a good cause — what more do you want?