Month: December 2008

Random 10 12/12

Last week we had this. And this week, we have:

  1. “Mull of Kintyre” by Paul McCartney, guessed by Eric B.
    Far have I traveled and much have I seen
  2. “One of Us” by Joan Osborne, guessed by Eric B.
    What would you ask if you had just one question?
  3. “Veda’s Waltz” by Christine Fellows
    Here’s your parade and your tinfoil stars
  4. “Shop Vac” by Jonathan Coulton, guessed by Occupant
    Because the other one’s not as good
  5. “Broken Arm” by Winterpills, guessed by Occupant
    You know these actors always die in threes
  6. “You’ve Got a Friend” by James Taylor (orig. Carole King), guessed by Eric B.
    And that old north wind should begin to blow
  7. “Finale: The Magic Store” by the Muppets, guessed by Eric B.
    You’re burning with hope, you’re building up steam
  8. “I Got Stripes” by Johnny Cash, guessed by Eric B.
    On a Wednesday I’m down in solitary
  9. “Korean Parents” by Randy Newman
    That generation could be you
  10. “Little Black Crow” by divineMAGees
    Your little black eyes fall from grace

Good luck!

Thursday various

  • Well here’s one positive of these tough economic times:

    THE number of executions in the United States has fallen to a 14-year low of 37 this year as social concerns about the death penalty and its financial costs rise, the Death Penalty Information Centre said.

    How much an execution costs will, I’m sure, vary state to state. But I’ve seen estimates as high as many thousands, if not millions of dollars per prisoner. I can think of many other reasons not to support the death penalty. But hey, if you were looking for a reason that would bring everything down to brass tacks, here it is. Killing people costs too much money. [via]

  • Ever wonder what Disney characters would look like when broken down into their base particles? Well, wonder no more! [via]

  • The Keanu Reeves’ remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still will apparently be transmitted into deep space as part of a promotion. Damn, all the good jokes here are too obvious or already taken!

  • This is just shocking:

    Anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV/Aids are being bought and smoked by teenagers in South Africa to get high.

    Apparently it’s a very widespread problem — with even AIDS patients partaking in it. It just proves, I suppose, that there’s no drug out there that somebody won’t figure out a way to abuse. [via]

  • Pre-chewed pencils? Oh, those crazy British design firms.

    The company, called Concentrate, says the pencils look like they have already been chewed making pupils less likely to put them in their mouths.

    Here are the problems I see with this idea. First, parents and students are not going to want to use pre-chewed pencils. Except for a small minority, who won’t care, and who may very well chew them anyway. And second, if you tell them that it’s just a joke, and that the pencils are not really pre-chewed, that defeats the whole purpose. I know it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but I can’t imagine them being of any real use.

Wednesday various

  • Scott Tobias on J-horror ghosts:

    There’s no particular menace to these specters — I recall Kurosawa himself, in a Q&A following a screening of his fine 2000 thriller Séance, joking that ghosts in Japanese horror films “don’t do anything” — but their presence is an unnerving suggestion of death itself, specifically that unholy transitional space between the human world and the afterlife. These aren’t the usual hauntings, where spooks are looking to settle a piece of unfinished business; instead, they’re pitiable folks who are now stuck, perhaps permanently, in one fixed place, from which they can never break free. To me, that prospect is a heck of a lot scarier.

    The original Pulse, by the way, is often incredibly frightening. Tobias’ criticisms of the film — which include a whole lot of spoilers — aren’t completely off, but I definitely recommend it.

  • Well here’s something you don’t read every day: “…even a horny Sasquatch has an impeccable sense of orgy etiquette.” Or maybe you do, I don’t know. Me, I read it here, in a write-up of the annual Texas Bigfoot Conference. [via]

  • Starting next fall, Boston college will stop offering its students e-mail accounts, instead offering a address and forwarding service to the e-mail provider of their choice. Reading the comments to that Chronicle of Higher Education article, I gather this is either long overdue or the worst idea ever. [via]

  • Over at Desuko Movie Spot, Eric B. has posted a really useful index for browsing his older movie reviews. As he writes, “These 166 films represent 93 years of movie history, from 1915 to 2008,” and he always has something interesting to say about them.

  • There is, in fact, a giant black hole at the center of our galaxy:

    According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit.

    That’s sort of equal parts terrifying and beautiful. [via]

  • “Rasta Irish meth-heads doing parkour”? I almost want to see the new Punisher movie now!

Baby this town rips the bones from your back

The kinder, gentler, less relevant Bruce Springsteen? Via Gerry Canavan:

Right now, though, the streets aren’t burning. The night isn’t lonely. It isn’t some infested summer in a dead man’s town with nothing but boring stories of glory days. A bright new day is percolating across the land. What will Bruce do for material?

It’s not an invalid argument. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, boom times don’t necessarily produce great art, whereas oppressive regimes often do. And while it’s too soon to call the Obama presidency a boom time, and it might — might — be a stretch to call the last eight years of Bush an oppressive regime, there’s evidence to suggest that happiness maybe isn’t always great for great art.

But, y’know, if the price of getting rid of George W. Bush and turning this country around is a mediocre album or two from Bruce Springsteen, I’ll gladly pay that price.

It’s like what Patton Oswalt says:

I’ll happily give back the 15 minutes of “our president’s a sociopath who can’t speak and believes in angels” material I wrote if we WEREN’T TORTURING PEOPLE ANYMORE. I know everyone thinks Bush was some sort of comedic Everlasting Gobstopper but believe me, history’s going to look at these last eight years and think, “I don’t know if teetering that close to the brink was worth the funny YouTube impressions.”

That’s one way of putting it

Peter David on the current season of Heroes:

It’s like someone poured both previous seasons into a blender, started it up, yanked the top off, and the resultant explosion all over the ceiling is what we’re seeing.

Every time I read something new about the series, I’m happy again that I gave up on it months ago. I think it used up whatever limited storytelling chops it really had in the first couple (if not the very first) seasons.