Month: April 2009

Random 10 4/3

Last week. This week:

  1. “She Don’t Use Jelly” by the Flaming Lips, guessed by Eric B.
    She likes her hair to be real orange
  2. “Someone Keeps Moving My Chair” by They Might Be Giants, guessed by Eric B.
    Something unpleasant has spilled on his brain
  3. “Obviously Five Believers” by Bob Dylan
    I got my black dog barkin’
  4. “Me and a Gun” by Tori Amos, guessed by Eric B.
    But I haven’t seen Barbados
  5. “Radio Radio” by Elvis Costello & the Attractions, guessed by Eric B.
     I wanna bite that hand so badly
  6. “Get This Party Started” by Shirley Bassey (orig. Pink), guessed by Eric B.
     Boulevard is freakin’ as I’m comin’ up fast
  7. “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price, guessed by Kim
     And the leaves came tumblin’ down
  8. “You Make Me Feel So Young” by Frank Sinatra, guessed by Eric B.
     You make me feel like spring has sprung
  9. “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” by the Mountain Goats
    I ran the water hotter than I could stand
  10. “She’s Not There” by the Zombies, guessed by Eric B.
    But it’s too late to say you’re sorry

And so the vicious cycle continues. Good luck!

Thursday various

  • Earlier today via Twitter, I wrote, “People always complain that MTV doesn’t show videos anymore, but is this really a bad thing? Were music videos really so good for music?” This was in response (sort of) to John Scalzi’s thoughts on ’80s pop music. He writes:

    • The way to most accurately judge the quality of a pop music era, in my opinion, is not by the stuff universally acknowledged as the high points of era, but by all the other stuff that happened to be popular too, and whether it’s better or worse than the average pop song of any other era one might think of.

    Although he also makes the frightening prediction of “a whole lot of N*Sync references come 2029,” when the tweens and teens who listened to that music come into their own. I shudder even to think.

    My own question still stands.

  • Gerry Canavan asks an interesting question: “How could the Romans think in terms of centuries but we can’t think past a single business cycle?”

  • I was pretty sure Fox’s new no extras on rented DVDs policy would come back to bite them, but who knew it would be so soon? Apparently, many customers who have bought DVDs of Slumdog Millionaire have received the extras-free rental version.
  • Speaking of DVDs, apparently there are some problems with the subtitles for Let the Right One In, that feel-good Swedish vampire movie of last year. I have a copy on its way right now from Netflix, so I’ll have to see how it compares.

  • And finally, a double-shot of disturbing. First, Justine Lai’s oil paintings of herself having sex with each US President. (Not overly pornographic, and strangely fascinating in concept, but still not remotely SFW. [via]) And second, the Peekaru, which John Scalzi describes as “a Snuggie and a chestburster from Alien all in one.”

My March mix

Only about half as many as last month, but here’s what March sounded like for me, more or less:

  1. “Middle Cyclone” by Neko Case
  2. “I’m Goin’ Down” by Florence and the Machine (feat. Kid Harpoon)
  3. “Ballad for Old Decorations” by Claire Cronin
  4. “Walk Like and Egyptian” by the Puppini Sisters
  5. “Elephant Gun” by Beirut
  6. “Art Isn’t Real (City of Sin” by Deer Tick
  7. “You’ll Disappear” by the Phenomenal Handclap Band
  8. “Bag of Hammers” by Thao
  9. “Dreamer” by K’naan
  10. “I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James
  11. “Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel” by Townes Van Zandt
  12. “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)” by Leila Broussard
  13. “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire

As always, I’m open to trades.

Wednesday various

  • Okay, I’ll admit it: I was fooled by Improv Everywhere’s April Fool’s Day joke. Well played, sirs. [via]
  • I’m not so sure anyone should be encouraged to dress up like the characters from Watchmen, much less like Dr. Manhattan. Presumably blue body paint and Speedo are not included…?
  • Cory Doctorow on the real problem with Amazon’s Kindle [via]:

    If we want to talk about potential outcomes for Amazon, then one in which the company disappears, changes hands, or loses its mind should get far more consideration from us than the possibility that it will mastermind major technological breakthroughs in machine-speech synthesis.

  • A fascinating story about DNA evidence and, more remarkably, how Germany’s Phantom of Heilbronn serial killer…never existed [via]:

    This raised suspicions that the DNA found at all the Phantom’s crime scenes might be traced to a single innocent factory worker, probably employed to package the swabs. Cotton swabs are sterilized before being used to collect DNA samples, but while sterilizing removes bacteria, viruses and fungi, it does not destroy DNA.

  • Yahoo Movies posts 100 Movies to See Before You Die, no doubt to stir up controversy about movies included or not. Still, it seems like a pretty decent list, with a lot of very good and/or important movies. With In the Mood for Love, which I watched this past weekend — and about which more, maybe, later — I’ve seen sixty-six of these. [via]