Leonard Cohen is Your Man
Our household loves Leonard Cohen. But we learned from the documentary that we can sort of do without Nick Cave, and can definitely do without either of the Wainwrights, especially when Rufus tries to cover songs whose lyrics he doesn't actually know by heart.
Cohen is wonderfully understated, something his homage-givers can't quite capture.
(To be devil's advocate about even Cohen how hard would it be to write a Leonard Cohen song lyric generator? We can even make it an exercise for the reader. You don't have to implement it: Just some pseudocode and a list of your seed strings would suffice.)
"You must be Kurt. I suppose your resume is mildly impressive..."
Few things in life are as deliciously enjoyable as overhearing aggressive job interview questioning from a conference room on the other side of a not-so-soundproof wall.
(If you get the reference in the title then I pity the number of radio ads you've subjected yourself to. Just try not to get the jingle stuck in your head.)
Taiwan
(This post might be penance for my making a big deal out of planning to ignore the Olympics, yet then watching them after all.)
This Fareed Zakaria piece ("What Bush Got Right" - I read the print edition at an opportune time yesterday) has its moments, but he lost me at Taiwan.
"On the most important issue to Beijing—that of Taiwan—Bush not only sided with the Chinese but has done so in a more direct manner than any previous president. He made clear to the then Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian that were Taiwan to make any moves toward independence, the island would lose the support of the United States."
"make any moves toward"?!?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but who takes care of the garbage in Taiwan? Who hires the police force? And what are those periodic elections all about? The Communist Party of the PRC can fantasize all it wants about fictitious territorial bounds, but for all practical purposes, the only effect the PRC has on life in Taiwan is all those cruise missiles it has aimed there.
(And as we all know, aiming cruise missiles at a piece of land is exactly the right way to indicate that there's still somehow national unity. Just like all those missiles we point at Hawaii, right?)
Bonus Misanthropy: Political Edition
Presidential TV ads. Are these REALLY catering to what The American People (think they) want?!
Based on what they chose to emphasize in the ads they bought during Olympic coverage, one major-party candidate intends to "create 5 million jobs" by pursuing alternate energy sources, while the other intends to "stand up to Big Tobacco and Big Oil."
Yeah, that's exactly what a president should do: "Create" jobs by force of will (hell, if that were the goal in and of itself, we could hire 10 million people to dig holes, and 10 million more to replace the dirt, and just print an arbitrary amount of currency to pay them all -- what could possibly go wrong?), or better yet pointedly stoke an adversarial relationship with whichever industry happens to be least popular at the time.
(The part about pursuing alternate energy sources is plausibly laudable, but on the other hand is this really something that requires top-of-the-agenda presidential leadership? Are we really to believe that alternate energy has to be a U.S. government thing because somehow nobody else would ever be interested in it?)
The last time I checked our constitution (no, I've never been one of those guys who carried a pocket-sized constitution everywhere, though such people are underrated), the president is in no particular order:
*- Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces
*- someone who signs some bills into law and vetoes others
...and less officially someone who gives stirring orations. (On that note I actually quite liked Obama's recent Bill Cosby routine.)
What Has Stoked My Misanthropy Lately?
In no particular order:
Mayonnaise. Funny because it rings true, sad for the same reason. (I cannot emphasize enough my virulent dislike for mayonnaise.)
Slate women on sports, part one (presented without comment):
A few minutes in, we began to wish we were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-and-personal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the contestants beyond where in China they were born. And certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and probably won't hear from again.
Slate women on sports, part two:
The kids on the other team had made up the "you're safe if you fall down" rule midgame. They didn't seem inclined to apply it uniformly—no one on Eli's team tried to invoke it, and he didn't think it would have flown if they had. Still, we were a bit uneasy about urging Eli on in his fight for the rule of law. [...]
The problem is that the point of playing games isn't only to win, most of the time. It's also to hang out with friends, have a good time, while away a sunny or rainy afternoon. Viewed through that lens, it's important to tolerate a little rule bending. Did the dice fly off the board? OK, roll them again. Game playing takes a lot of that kind of compromise and improvisation.
It's important to tolerate a little rule bending, WHEN THE RULE-BENDING SERVES A PLAUSIBLE PURPOSE. The point behind "dice that fell off doesn't count" should be obvious to anyone who's ever played dice games. I'm completely baffled as to how a "if you fall down you're not out rule" would serve any purpose in kickball other than the naked interest of the team that pulled it out of thin air.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between "if you fall down you're not out" and "dice that fall off the table get re-rolled" is someone that I fervently hope isn't the sole philosophical mentor of his or her offspring.
And last but not least: Olympic gymnastics judges who give a zero ("no exercise score") to someone who didn't wait for a red light to turn green are the moral equivalent of quiz companies that rule an answer wrong if the player who rang in "didn't wait to be recognized."
Which Circle in Hell...
...is the appropriate place for whoever designed those social networking ads that use the names and head shots of your own friends?
("Is [X] is funny as Ed Asner?" "Which of [E], [F], [G], [H] is more likely to listen to the new single by Burl Ives?")
I've never understood the people who think of text-correlated ads within their e-mail as a privacy violation. (The only thing that "knows" what the text was was the automatic process itself; in theory whoever owns the process could infer things about your e-mail, but in theory you could accomplish the same thing by packet sniffing, and about as tediously.) This practice of using one's own friends' names and likenesses, though... I'm not going to claim it's deceptive (anyone with half a brain will realize that these friends aren't actually endorsing those things) so much as violative.
It also inexplicably reminds me of the voice a kindergarten teacher might use. "Does a COW like to eat grass? Does a DUCK like to eat grass?"
Anyway, there is already one movie (plus a handful of music acts whose names fortunately escape me) that I will make it a point of going a lifetime without seeing.
This Would Make A Good Wits & Wagers Question
According to an August 2008 post to LiveScience, over the past 25 years, cheerleading accounted for what percent of all catastrophic sports injuries to high school females?
Rowing Schadenfreude
Rowing is on NBC today. All these medals at stake and I have yet to see a Chinese rower or team. Didn't they spend oodles of money to become competitive in medal-rich events like this?
Another Bar Bet
Fill in the blank. (Don't look it up until you've tried getting it without looking it up.)
1. Joe Mauer
2. Mark Prior
3. [blank]
4. Gavin Floyd
5. Mark Teixeira
Bonus points if you have any idea where he is now (I don't). It's not John VanBenschoten (who's #8 on the list in question behind two names I don't even recognize).
Actually gettable bonus points (that in turn might give away the answer): This guy is to Opening Day 2005 as which two players (actually traded for each other) are to Opening Day 2004 and Opening Day 2006?
Additional (gettable) bonus points: This guy was traded in December 2005, straight up, for whom? (And as a matter of opinion, which of the two players in that deal is a bigger bust?)
Rain, A Free Ride, and/or Good Advice
I did not know this particular plot twist:
"Not long ago, [Lynn] Johnston, 61, had planned to retire this year and offer mostly reruns of her 29-year-old comic strip. But her life changed when her husband fell in love with another woman and the couple divorced."
--L.A. Times
The potential irony here involves:
A. The name of her comic strip?
B. The content of her comic strip?
C. Who cares? (Actual indifference.)
D. Who cares? (Sadistic glee.)
(found via Comics Curmudgeon of course)
Transaction Analysis: Seven Trades in Two Weeks
Prior to 2008 I don't think I'd made seven fantasy baseball (or fantasy anything) trades in a 12-month span, much less a two-week span. So that was fun.
Nobody cares [etc.] -- though one of these trades did involve both my new third-favorite Oakland Athletic (behind Jack Cust and Frank Thomas) while other trades involve two my new favorite underrated-in-fantasy-baseball pitchers (neither of whom is the aforementioned A.)
Continue reading "Transaction Analysis: Seven Trades in Two Weeks"