Month: June 2010

Random 10 6/11

Last week. This week:

  1. “Southern California Wants to Be Western New York” by Dar Williams
    There’s a part of the country could drop off tomorrow in an earthquake
  2. “Frank and Jesse James” by Warren Zevon
    War broke out between the states and they joined up with Quantrill
  3. “Time to Pretend” by MGMT
    Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute
  4. “No Easy Way Down” by Dusty Springfield
    Your toy balloon has sailed in the sky, love
  5. “One Time Too Many” by Willie Nelson w/ Steven Tyler
    I let love die, broke a woman’s heart
  6. “Animal” by Miike Snow
    There was a time when my world was filled with darkness, darkness, darkness
  7. “Push” by Smash Mouth
    Keep your hands off my door
  8. “The Parlour Rollers” by Christine Fellows
    A pair of real squeakers once rolled one hundred and twenty-five feet
  9. “Lonely Teardrops” by Jackie Wilson, guessed by Occupant
    You know my heart does nothing but burn
  10. “You’re Only King Once” by Beulah
    Hoping for a little more than just another kiss goodnight

Good luck!

Thursday various

  • Yesterday, when I was posting links to stories about babies, I neglected to mention Ardi Rizal a two-year-old Sumatran baby who smokes some forty cigarettes a day. I think, mostly, because I wanted to pretend he doesn’t. [via]

  • Meanwhile, this is just heartbreaking [via]:

    A German biologist says that efforts to clean oil-drenched birds in the Gulf of Mexico are in vain. For the birds’ sake, it would be faster and less painful if animal-rescue workers put them under, she says. Studies and other experts back her up.

  • Whereas this is just…fingerprinting to take out a library book? Seriously? The huge privacy issues aside, how does this improve the system for the library or the patron? [via]

  • A couple of periodic tables:
    • The Periodic Table of Superpowers — I shall henceforth refer to Superman always as OAFSISpVxVhSn. [via]

    • And Periodic Table of Women in SF — There is, of course, a meme going around for this, where you bold the names you’ve read and star the ones you’ve never heard of, but if I were to do it, I think it would just reflect how unread I am. If nothing else, this is a good place to start a reading list. [via]

  • But finally, speaking of women I don’t want to spend any more time with, A.O. Scott’s review of Sex and the City 2:

    Yes, it’s supposed to be fun. And over the years audiences have had the kind of fun that comes from easy immersion in someone else’s career, someone else’s sex life, someone else’s clothes. But “Sex and the City 2” is about someone else’s boredom, someone else’s vacation and ultimately someone else’s desire to exploit that vicarious pleasure for profit. Which isn’t much fun at all.

June 9th

No sooner had I woken up this morning than I sprained my ankle. I’m still not quite sure how I did it, or even if a sprain’s really what it was, since I was pretty much fine by the time I got to work. But I was a little iffy on my right foot for awhile there, unable to put all of my weight on it.

Other than that, it was just a cold(er) and rainy day here.

Wednesday various

  • Stieg Larsson is turning out to be an incredibly prolific dead man.
  • Scientists have created software that can recognize sarcasm. Now if we could just figure out a way to transfer that ability to more people… [via]

  • Whatever your feelings about deaf culture and cochlear implants — personally, I sympathize, but I still believe deafness is a disability — it’s hard not to be a little moved by this video of an eight-month-old deaf baby hearing sound for the first time. [via]
    • And that child later would grow up to be…Iron Baby.
  • And finally, Lorne Michaels on being Canadian and comedic [via]:

    “I think that Canadians have an incredible reverence for authority and regard for authority, and I think one of the healthy ways that it’s challenged is through questioning it, through the polite hostility of comedy. It’s allowed. It’s not encouraged, but it’s definitely allowed, and you stand very little chance of being shot.”