Double Flee A: June 2007

I am officially out of excuses not to learn to play my mandolin, thanks to MusicMoose

bad media backfire

In my quest to acquire the horrible song "Shakedown" by Bob Seger, I had to look at this list, and at that point it dawned on me that I know the words to almost every one of these hundred hit songs from 1987. If only there was some way to remove this awful burden...

01. 001 - George Michael - Faith.mp3 [3MB]
02. 002 - Heart - Alone.mp3 [3MB]
03. 003 - Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody.mp3 [4MB]
04. 004 - Robbie Nevil - C'est La Vie.mp3 [3MB]
05. 005 - Gregory Abbott - Shake You Down.mp3 [4MB]
06. 006 - Los Lobos - La Bamba.mp3 [3MB]
07. 007 - Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer.mp3 [4MB]
08. 008 - Whitesnake - Here I Go Again.mp3 [4MB]
09. 009 - Belinda Carlisle - Heaven Is A Place On Earth.mp3 [4MB]
10. 010 - Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes - The Time Of My Life.mp3 [4MB]
11. 011 - Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now.mp3 [4MB]
12. 012 - Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now.mp3 [3MB]
13. 013 - U2 - With Or Without You.mp3 [3MB]
14. 014 - Billy Vera & The Beaters - At This Moment.mp3 [4MB]
15. 015 - Georgia Satellites - Keep Your Hands To Yourself.mp3 [3MB]
16. 016 - T'pau - Heart & Soul.mp3 [3MB]
17. 017 - Madonna - Open Your Heart.mp3 [4MB]
18. 018 - Whitney Houston - Didn't We Almost Have It All.mp3 [5MB]
19. 019 - U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.mp3 [4MB]
20. 020 - Jody Watley - Looking For A New Love.mp3 [4MB]
21. 021 - Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over.mp3 [3MB]
22. 022 - Whitesnake - Is This Love.mp3 [4MB]
23. 023 - Debbie Gibson - Shake Your Love.mp3 [3MB]
24. 024 - Bob Seger - Shakedown.mp3 [4MB]
25. 025 - Duran Duran - Notorious.mp3 [5MB]
26. 026 - George Michael - I Want Your Sex.mp3 [4MB]
27. 027 - Chris De Burgh - Lady In Red.mp3 [4MB]
28. 028 - Atlantic Starr - Always.mp3 [4MB]
29. 029 - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - Head To Toe.mp3 [4MB]
30. 030 - Billy Idol - Mony Mony.mp3 [5MB]
31. 031 - Debbie Gibson - Only In My Dreams.mp3 [4MB]
32. 032 - Genesis - Land Of Confusion.mp3 [4MB]
33. 033 - Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam - Lost In Emotion.mp3 [4MB]
34. 034 - Richard Marx - Should've Known Better.mp3 [4MB]
35. 035 - Kim Wilde - You Keep Me Hangin' On.mp3 [4MB]
36. 036 - Samantha Fox - Touch Me.mp3 [4MB]
37. 037 - Club Noveau - Lean On Me.mp3 [4MB]
38. 038 - Pretty Poison - Catch Me I'm Falling.mp3 [4MB]
39. 039 - A. Franklin & G. Michael - Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).mp3 [4MB]
40. 040 - Cutting Crew - I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight.mp3 [4MB]
41. 041 - Janet Jackson - Control.mp3 [5MB]
42. 042 - L. Ronstadt & J. Ingram - Somewhere Out There.mp3 [4MB]
43. 043 - Prince - U Got The Look.mp3 [5MB]
44. 044 - Jody Watley - Don't You Want Me.mp3 [4MB]
45. 045 - Huey Lewis & The News - Jacob's Ladder.mp3 [3MB]
46. 046 - Bananarama - I Heard A Rumour.mp3 [3MB]
47. 047 - Fleetwood Mac - Little Lies.mp3 [3MB]
48. 048 - Kenny G. - Songbird.mp3 [5MB]
49. 049 - Swing Out Sister - Breakout.mp3 [3MB]
50. 050 - Glass Tiger - Someday.mp3 [3MB]
51. 051 - Michael Jackson - Bad.mp3 [4MB]
52. 052 - Genesis - In Too Deep.mp3 [5MB]
53. 053 - Michael Jackson - I Just Can't Stop Loving You.mp3 [4MB]
54. 054 - Madonna - La Isla Bonita.mp3 [3MB]
55. 055 - Janet Jackson - Let's Wait Awhile.mp3 [4MB]
56. 056 - Suzanne Vega - Luka.mp3 [4MB]
57. 057 - Jets - You Got It All.mp3 [4MB]
58. 058 - Madonna - Who's That Girl.mp3 [4MB]
59. 059 - Richard Marx - Don't Mean Nothing.mp3 [4MB]
60. 060 - Expose - Come Go With Me.mp3 [4MB]
61. 061 - Chicago - Will You Still Love Me.mp3 [5MB]
62. 062 - Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead Or Alive.mp3 [5MB]
63. 063 - System - Don't Disturb This Groove.mp3 [5MB]
64. 064 - Cyndi Lauper - Change Of Heart.mp3 [4MB]
65. 065 - Gloria Estefan - Rhythm Is Gonna Get You.mp3 [4MB]
66. 066 - LeVert - Casanova.mp3 [6MB]
67. 067 - Abc - When Smokey Sings.mp3 [3MB]
68. 068 - Jermaine Stewart - We Don't Have To Take Our Clothes Off.mp3 [4MB]
69. 069 - Steve Winwood - The Finer Things.mp3 [4MB]
70. 070 - Michael McDonald - Sweet Freedom.mp3 [3MB]
71. 071 - Wham - Freedom.mp3 [5MB]
72. 072 - Expose - Point Of No Return.mp3 [3MB]
73. 073 - Sting - We'll Be Together.mp3 [3MB]
74. 074 - Crowded House - Something So Strong.mp3 [3MB]
75. 075 - Kool And The Gang - Victory.mp3 [5MB]
76. 076 - R.E.M. - The One I Love.mp3 [3MB]
77. 077 - Madonna - Causing A Comotion.mp3 [4MB]
78. 078 - Prince - Sign 'o' The Times.mp3 [3MB]
79. 079 - Europe - Carrie.mp3 [4MB]
80. 080 - Bruce Hornsby & The Range - Mandolin Rain.mp3 [5MB]
81. 081 - Genesis - Tonight, Tonight.mp3 [8MB]
82. 082 - Dan Hill & Vonda Sheppard - Can't We Try.mp3 [4MB]
83. 083 - Herb Alpert - Diamonds.mp3 [8MB]
84. 084 - Bryan Adams - Heat Of The Night.mp3 [5MB]
85. 085 - Expose - Let Me Be The One.mp3 [4MB]
86. 086 - Bruce Springsteen - Brilliant Disguise.mp3 [4MB]
87. 087 - Lou Gramm - Midnight Blue.mp3 [4MB]
88. 088 - Smokey Robinson - Just To See Her.mp3 [4MB]
89. 089 - Huey Lewis & The News - Doing It All For My Baby.mp3 [3MB]
90. 090 - Steve Winwood - Valerie.mp3 [4MB]
91. 091 - Jets - Cross My Broken Heart.mp3 [4MB]
92. 092 - Lionel Richie - Ballerina Girl.mp3 [3MB]
93. 093 - Glenn Medeiros - Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You.mp3 [4MB]
94. 094 - Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin.mp3 [6MB]
95. 095 - Cutting Crew - I've Been In Love Before.mp3 [4MB]
96. 096 - Beach Boys & Fat Boys - Wipeout.mp3 [4MB]
97. 097 - Fleetwood Mac - Big Love.mp3 [3MB]
98. 098 - Bruce Willis - Respect Yourself.mp3 [4MB]
99. 099 - Heart - Who Will You Run To.mp3 [4MB]
100. 100 - Breakfast Club - Right On Track.mp3 [4MB]

choose one

In this corner, the 1967 Shelby GT 500

Against the 1965 Fastback

Is there a clear winner?

fun music toy

long time no peak oil: Kunstler on peak suburbia

Cool: north korean photography

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name.

Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name.

- a commencement address

essentialist explanations of language

sterographic projection demo

close-up nsfw photography

What is religion? It's nothing more than an idea that many people take far too seriously, and if I am going to live a life I can continue to tolerate unmedicated, I am going to have to take it less seriously, too.

My problem isn't religion; it's what fake religion does to people who don't know better, and what it does to people who do know better, and all those million shades in between, the great mass of Orwellian doublethinkers who knowingly and unknowingly interpret "holy" words to best serve their fears and prejudices. That last group deserves a more thorough examination than I am capable of.

Over the last however long it's been, it's been in my mind that those most responsible for the world's misery use "faith" to mask and to justify their bigotry and other twisted psychological dysfunctions. I can't --but don't need to, do I-- go through a chain of events to illustrate that faith was, at some point, hijacked by "faith", which was genius. It created an unbeatable, unquestionable assurance and much political power was thus derived. I am confident that the transformation of faith to "faith" had something to do with television, postmodernism, money, and power.

People who don't identify with a religious group, or like myself actively identify outside one, are at least forced to apply a more sincere philosophical analysis to questions that religions answer, like the soul, and who deserves what, and what it's all about. You'd think that that knowledge alone would nourish me and give me satisfaction, but all it did was take me to levels of batshit aggravation that I took out on youth pastors and other flakes who use their bullshit to scare and hypnotize gullible people. The more gullible people are, the more we all lose collectively, yet the more the church wins. You can see how I really got into hating on religion, right?

My endlessly pissy fury aimed at everyone who's faithful missed the point that there was a major rift that I was too lazy to consider very deeply. There's a kind of faith that people who honestly meant well were practising, and there's a kind that spends a lot of money trying to look like that other kind and succeeds, except that its message is one of exclusion, selfishness, and so on. (A good rule of thumb might be that the more people one is addressing, the less seriously each person should take you. I think you zero out at about a million. Alas, we all live among the cultural wreckage of that the pre-mass media mind was unprepared for the likes of Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Rod Parsley, Tony Little, and Ron Popeil. If only I could go back and warn them.)

In closing, I am still plenty grouchy, but I'm not angry at a thing called religion, nor the people who were brought up inside and still adhere to a system of belief based on tolerance, sacrifice, consideration, and gratitude. I'm making an effort to figure out who it is that I ought to be mad at.

On being white, a section I deleted from this post but want to include:

It's convenient if I want a decent job, or want to shmooze, but shmoozing is for people with no honor. I'm from the south, and if I need to identify with something because of that, something I can go to bed feeling good about, it's that I know what honor is. And is it honorable to take a shit on some poor people, or make a crack about how someone's brown, or is named Muhammad?

Part of the reason you see so many young, healthy white people with tattoos all over them is their whiteness conflict. They don't have a space to live in intellectually, and at least partially because of this, have to draw it with ink. That's what I think anyway.

book review

I started reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy tonight and made it all the way to its eighth page, number ten. At that point, in an effort to prevent irreversible psychological damage, my hands put it down quicker than a stray mutt at the kill pound.*

The narrative takes place after some life-altering cataclysm that has left the landscape, well, here's a list of every adjective from the first several pages.

Page 3. dark cold dark gray cold precious plastic stinking wet inward granitic deep stone great stone black ancient far dripping rimstone dead white sightless pale naked translucent alabaster dull glass
Page 4.low first gray barren silent godless soft loose dead standing cotton ashen blue plastic grocery cornmeal plastic plastic
Page 5. small safe essential chrome motorcycle wasted empty little still gray motionless precise dead gun-metal entire old concrete few roadside gas
Page 6. broken asphalt faint stale intact service good drive metal metal old swollen sodden stained curling leaking steel quart plastic
Page 7. plastic little long gray long gray far stark black charred limbless sagging blind blackened burned stark gray raw red abandoned faded weathered open charcoal

Are you kidding me?

I'm not reading any more of this thing, not even for you, dear reader. I will drag your empty gin bottles out after dark so the neighbors won't see, but I can't take this book, not for another page. I counted three typos in those same pages, missing apostrophes and spaces. Is this "style", or is it just copy editing that sucks as much as the writing?

If you couldn't guess, there are lots of dependent clauses hanging out by themselves just for effect. As in: An effect that missed me completely.

So if you're in the market for a book, here's how to increase your chances of getting something readable. Go down to the bookstore, find "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and then get a book other than it.

*I do not have, nor have I ever had, a job killing dogs.

rules of thumb

1. Do not bend it backward.
2. Exercise care when hammering.
3. When holding down another thumb, you do not win until the count of three.
4. Keep the nail on it trimmed just the same as the fingers, so as not to provoke suspicion.
5. Twiddling for more than a minute or two is too much.
6. Deft operation of a sock puppet depends on good mobility. To avoid debilitating gout, drink plenty of water.

forget about the juicy fruits

Do you need a reason to post hot go-go stewardesses from the future?

My coworkers are good people, but they are sadly misinformed about the world in general, and things political in particular. They have subscribed to the mythos that the United States can do no wrong, and that the actions of the government in the Middle East, and elsewhere, are not only justified, but sanctified by god. That is the thinking behind manifest destiny.

How so many intelligent people could arrive at such an erroneous conclusion is not as mystifying as it might appear. It is the result of an assault on reason that is sweeping the nation and actively promoting ignorance and superstition in place of rational and ethical thought.

The prevailing view among my coworkers is that science and reason are shams because they undermine Christian orthodoxy, and thus contradict their belief system. For them, this makes science and reason not only anti-Christian, but the enemy of faith.

link

If you're in Portland, head to Fun Town Auto. And don't forget your checkbook.

video at funny or die

essay

The biggest problem with modern American liberalism may be the word itself.

In less urban areas it's not quite as bd but even in the US the point's the same.

How children lost the right to roam in four generations

holy crap

You should see all of this:

ACLU pizza Purple laser flashlight My favorite screen name ever = mediocrates Prisons of the world Guy steals a bike on security camera, has music video made of him Global warming argument Former homosexual transformed by Jesus sings you a song he wrote himself

Conway Twitty is the man. If you can take the plodding four/four, give tight-fittin' jeans a listen to see why.

Tracks 11-20 of CUE THE BUGLE TURBULENT
the 2007 Believer Music Issue CD
compiled by Brandon Stosuy

11. Page France, “Without a Diamond Ring”
12. Clogs, “I Used To Do”
13. The Blow, “Parentheses” (Rory Phillips Remix)
14. Bill Fox, “My Baby Crying”
15. Explosions In The Sky, “The Long Spring”
16. Magik Markers, “Body Rot” (the no nude mix)
17. The Drones, “I Don’t Ever Want To Change”
18. Zach Condon, “Venice”
19. Lightning Bolt, “Deceiver”
20. Grizzly Bear, “Easier” (Alternate)”

hope you like .ogg

Tracks 1-10 of CUE THE BUGLE TURBULENT
the 2007 Believer Music Issue CD
compiled by Brandon Stosuy

1. Deerhunter, “Hazel St.”
2. No Age, “Everybody’s Down”
3. Oxford Collapse, “Please Visit Your National Parks”
4. Sufjan Stevens, “In the Words of the Governor”
5. I’m From Barcelona, “The Painter”
6. Aesop Rock, “The Next Big Thing”
7. Reykjavík!, “Rex”
8. YACHT, “I Believe In You”
9. The Twilight Sad, “Watching That Chair Painted Yellow”
10. Of Montreal, “Du Og Meg”

more tomorrow, if I don't sleep in

Another grab bag of hijinks and infotainment here at the best website in the whole wide URL.

Crammed into the door of my apartment:

The management office has been informed that there is an alligator living within the large lake of the community. Please be careful when walking with pets or small children near the edge of this lake.

Problem solved with last night's mp3 crisis. After a good night's sleep my reserves of luck and patience were renewed and I found what I was looking for in
Adept installer
Others
Ubuntu restricted extras

If you get the chance and want to learn something, go to the new york academy of science's website and listen to their podcast.

Go through your woman's dirty underwear and check for semen with the Checkmate semen detection kit! 'Cause otherwise, how you gonna know?

Watch people steal George Bush's watch right off his wrist! Thanks, internet!

i am dumb and i suck at stuff

The CD mentioned at this page arrived yesterday and it's good. I want to give it to you.

BUT, I am at one of those points when I want to destroy my computer and say words like FUCKING a lot, so sick and tired am I of fighting to get it to do what should be an incredibly simple thing. You see, my OS used to come with this beautiful little package program that took care of small details of programs that did things like make them make mp3s and so on, and that's been moved somewhere I can't find, and with it my hopes of making this available to you. Keep looking long enough and maybe someone will figure out how to make a .torrent out of it. The worst irony of it is, the cd comes with mp3s already on it and ready to go, and I can't even figure out how to get them off.

Isn't it amazing how quickly the Get Tough On Crime (tm) right wing reverses course when one of its own is roasted by the criminal justice system?

a team from MIT were able to power a 60W light bulb from two meters away

nsfw, cleaning off my desktop

I always think the perfect occasion's gonna come along for me to email these to people. But when the perfect occasion never arises you don't just get a new driver's license, stop being Jewish, or throw out all your pictures.

These bad album covers make the other bad album covers look good.
1
2

boo!

On the campaign trail, Giuliani plays a man exasperated by the inability of Americans to see the danger staring them in the face. "This is reality, ma'am," he told a startled woman at Oglethorpe. "You've got to clear your head."

Beyond Bush
What the world needs is an open, confident America

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the darkest days of the Depression, declared that the American people had nothing to fear but fear itself. The only thing George W. Bush apparently fears is the absence of fear...

Bush mantra: be afraid.

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid
William Stafford

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

lol

it's a rhetorical question

Am I such a bad person for wanting to kill people who tell children they deserve to burn in hell?

Blow this up and check out the right side.

good radio program

I especially enjoyed the program about genes and ethics.

What this program almost says is that the always-broadly referred to "genetics" is a cultural remnant of eugenics. When you overhear someone having a conversation about genes (which is in this context about as scientific as phrenology) being responsible for something as abstract as crime, voices in your head ought to be saying "If I'm not white, I should go now", because some very stupid people are very nearby, and they may not even realize they're setting themselves up for a good old-fashioned episode of race-hatin', which has been known to result in premature death.

And if you don't want to be a lil' Hitler, it is incumbent upon you to both understand and be able to articulate to those less fortunate, the difference between genes' scientific and cultural relevance. Hit it!

University of Warwick podcasts

let's all have a great day

awesome and true:
Linux User at Best Buy

They have rednecks all over the world. Listen to this, at Documentary Archive. Like Borat, but real.

The Roma population of the Czech Republic have experienced a history of friction in their relationship with the rest of the Czech population...

What would it be like if memories moved from person to person? If every time someone forgot something it would show up in someone else's head, and depending on if they could tell who it was, things could get weird pretty fast.

In honor of Sunday I thought I'd put a Catholic joke up that was being passed around my workplace that needed a lot of fat trimmed off it. So I did and here it is:

A miscellaneous event occurs which causes a bunch of Catholic girls to die at the same time, and they are standing in line trying to enter heaven when St. Peter asks the first girl, "Have you ever had any contact with a male organ?"

She replies, "Well, I once touched the head of one with the tip of my finger."

St. Peter says, "Okay, dip the tip of your finger in the Holy Water and pass through the gate."

At this moment there is a commotion in the line, and one pushes her way to the front. When she gets there St.Peter says, "What seems to be the rush?"

She replies, "If I'm going to have to gargle that Holy Water, I want to do it before Jessica sticks her ass in it."

Not as good as one I heard Townes Van Zandt do about a cop who sees a drunk walking down the street. He says, "Hey, Buddy, you're a little loaded, you ought to go get some coffee". The guy says, "Man, I sure am glad I ran into you officer. See, somebody just stole my car." The cop says, "Where was the car when you last saw it?" The guy says, "Right on the end of this key." The cop looks at the key and says, "Well, go two blocks down to the precinct house and they'll help you fill out the proper forms." The guy says, "Thanks, officer. You been a big help. I'm headed that way right now." The cop looks down at the guy's pants and says, "Hey buddy, before you go, you better zip up your fly." The guy looks down at his pants and says, "Aw man, they got my girl too."

get on the hate boat

As far as I can tell, the blogosphere has roundly rejected both prior restraint and the half hour news hour. This means that
A) I'm only getting part of the story because there are lots of people who love it.
B) It totally sucks and is an embarrassment even to the people it's supposed to appeal to.
C) Something else I hadn't thought of.

If it's option A, please let me know. It bothers me if I don't "get" it, and I'd like to at least understand why people think it's funny, even if it's not.

This doesn't qualify as humor to me, basically because the tone is hateful and stentorian. Is this the only mode of communication neocon Christian white male buddyroos have left at the vast and growing mental distances perforated by large fields of actual funniness?

not like anything else you'll see today

I was going to cut and paste an excerpt here, but you need to read the whole thing. More than you ever wanted to know about life inside the porn business, it's "Lewd and Clear". In this episode, our hero has to deal with loud phones, free food next door, chicks who smoke crack, and much, much more.

Double Flee A

Friday

bad media backfire

Thursday

choose one

Wednesday

book review

Monday

rules of thumb

Saturday

forget about the juicy fruits

Wednesday

Saturday

Friday

essay

holy crap

Thursday

hope you like .ogg

Wednesday

Tuesday

i am dumb and i suck at stuff

Sunday

nsfw, cleaning off my desktop

Saturday

boo!

Friday

lol

Thursday

it's a rhetorical question

Wednesday

good radio program

let's all have a great day

Tuesday

Sunday

Friday

get on the hate boat

not like anything else you'll see today

retina barbecue

eustachian justice league

many moons

toys