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Ev'ry time I go to town,
Somebody kicks my dog around.
Now I don't care if he's a hound
They oughtn't go kicking my dog around.
For unknown reasons the tune to that song appeared in my head on the way to get the little daughter from ballet the other day. I couldn't remember the words at first, but I ran the tune over and over in my head and eventually they came. (These aren't exactly the usual words, I realize, but that's what makes folk songs.)
The song is apparently called "Jim Dog". Shockingly, the iTunes music store doesn't have a version with vocals (just a track of Porky Cohen doing it, or something like it, on trombone; impressive in itself, but not what I was looking for). Even Google didn't entirely succeed; it did find me one vocal version, by a barbershop quartet, which is also quite memorable in itself, but also not what I was looking for.
So can anyone point me to a good rip-roaring banjo and vocals version of this classic?
"Always trying to kidnap all the argon" (link, once again, from MeFi).
One reason I love the left (and I say that entirely without sarcasm): this minister dude links to the weblog of the (deep breath) Anti-Racism Anti-Oppression Multicultural Transformation Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Isn't that nice? If only everybody was Unitarians...
And in the opposite corner, a U.S. Senator who'd be right at home in Certain Not Entirely Friendly Countries We Could Name:
Besides the fines, Miller's legislation directs the establishment of a Council of Decency, which would advise the Federal Communications Commission on programming standards. The council would consist of three ministers, three teachers and three media representatives. Money raised from the penalties would go first for administrative costs, then to faith-based programs selected by the White House.
And I don't even think this is a joke. A Council of Decency, including religious authorities, to sit in judgement over the media, with fines for indecent works going to religious establishments. Talk about unamerican!
And more questionable law:
Under this decision, anytime you share your userid and password you're potentially committing or facilitating a felony. If you subscribe to, for example, the New York Times website (a free login) and let someone else log in with your userid, you might end up in the slammer -- at least if you appear before Judge Buchwald.
I heard Kerry on the news this morning (or sometime recently), declaring that he supports the Second Amendment but is against people like having guns, and that he's for equal rights for everyone but is against same-sex marriage.
Which is sort of sad, since I'm probably going to vote for him for President...
To relieve all this stress, you can play with this. Although if you treat it as a game rather than a toy, and try to acheive the goal, it might cause more stress that it relieves...
That wonderful little Flash game from yesterday turns out to be somewhat famous on the Web. And here's a brief interview with the artist. (Or something that describes itself that way, and seems plausible. Did you know that Mr. Ed, the TV talking horse, was actually played by a zebra?)
From MeFi, the very righteous God Hates Shrimp dot com:
Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed.
And equally, Scalzi's Pictures of People's Souls.
I have to wonder about the anti-marriage people. How do they think of themselves, relative to (say) the people who screamed at the little black children on their way to a newly-integrated school? The people who voiciferously opposed the idea of women voting? The people who supported the laws against mixed-race marriage?
How can they not realize that they're on the wrong side here? Do they think, oh, this issue is entirely different, and while those people were wrong, we're right? Do they just not think of the comparison at all? Or do they think that those people were right, that integration and mixed marriage and women's suffrage shouldn't have happened?
I wonder. Some of each, certainly.
Oddly relevant, now that I mention it: The Museum of Unworkable Devices.
"Naked teachers are the way forward," says the 34-year old who is leading a mini-revolution in straight-laced Hong Kong."I want to make nudity educational, as well as entertaining."
How To Write Unmaintainable Code.
Got a piece of spam recently (I randomly open one or two spams a day, just for fun) with a big image advertising "Hottest seminar on the web!" and "Learn how to auction at ebay, where to buy your stuff, and all kinds of free stuff to help you succeed.!". The notable thing was that at the very bottom it said "Advertisement brought to you by the Kangjan Co. No.101 Village Guanjiayin Songshan District. ChiFeng City The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region China".
I got sort of a warm feeling from that, somehow. I wonder if it's true. If it is true, it's sort of endearing that they were proud enough of the fact to advertise it.
Deliciously offensive (or something): The Passion of the Christ blooper reel.
Another nice piece of spam ended with this Bayes-basher:
Let me know if propylene
Yours truly, Sherman Corbin
And remember, buddha dewey browbeaten factual
If you meet the Buddha on the road, browbeat him.
From the very good books list on del.icio.us, a title few of us could resist: Libraries in Science Fiction.
According to this, I was one of the first people in history to use the word "blog" on Usenet. Whaddya know.
Well, hm. So on the micro-world front, I finished Golden Sun with the little daughter looking gleefully over my shoulder and trying not to give me too much advice. Next I'm required to play Golden Sun: the Lost Age.
We were at Office Max buying consumer goods the other day, and I looked through the Cheap Software That No One Actually Wants Anymore bins (that's where I got my first copy of Alpha Centauri after all, not to mention Dungeon Keeper II), and I picked up a jewelcased copy of Mall Tycoon. Yet another microworld. A very confusing and somewhat garishly-colored one, but fun all the same. Or at least fun for a little while. (Oh look, it's December, and my mall has a "meet santa" layout in the atrium; how cute!)
This morning on the drive in to work, there was a piece on the radio about how the last thing in New York City still taking transit tokens, the "tram" to Roosevelt Island, was being converted to MetroCards instead. Listening to it, it suddenly occurred to me that I could drive to the train station instead of to work, catch a train into the City, find the Roosevelt Island tram, and ride on it, perhaps attending some of the day's meetings via my Cellular Telephone, and otherwise bopping around the City (and/or Roosevelt Island) with my laptop, sitting in coffee shops and gawking at the tall buildings and maybe even getting some work done.
Then I thought that the train is an hour each way, after all, and there was a meeting at 4pm that I really needed to attend in person, and so I decided not to do that. And that turned out to be a good thing, since more or less just as I was thinking it an urgent note was arriving in my mailbox that made it sort of important that I be around to talk to people in person.
So I wonder what the Goddess meant to say by arranging all that? Probably the thing she almost always means to say: "Look!"
Maybe I'll do that tram thing some other day.
So otherwise, I dunno. I've been "web surfing" a little. Here are some "links".
From Daze, the very noteworthy Safe for Work Porn. I'm not sure if it's funny or what. Exactly.
Morford accurately describes this as "Fantastic and beautiful and strange and cute and insanely clever and I have no idea what the hell it is" and notes "there are still five more levels after you figure out how to get past the hookah guy". Definitely worth the ten or fifteen minutes you'll spend on it; high return on investment.
Welcome to The New York Public Library, The Branch Libraries's Wish List. Which of course reminds me of Farm and Wilderness Summer Camps's Wish List. Buy them all books.
From Jessamyn via Metafilter, our Project o' the Week: the Deliberately Concealed Garments Project.
Also from MeFi, Trail Journals; by people doing the Appalachian Trail. I'd like to do that some life. With or without an online journal. Probably without.
Next year, Pepsi will introduce a line of carbonated beverages that have more sodium than any previous cola. The first of these will be Caffeine-Free Diet Vanilla Mid-Lemon Pepsi with Additional Sodium, in a version that has a reduced amount of potassium benzoate.
(Har har! I couldn't find permalinks or archives for that column, so I blatantly saved a copy just in case.)
P2P password sharing: Bug Me Not dot com. A more organized version of typing "fubar" as username and password at random annoying registration-required sites, just in case.
A New Kind of Science; online!
White House To Seek Ban On Gay Sex On The Moon.
From Chris Leithiser, real life tech espionage stuff:
In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a new memoir by a Reagan White House official.
"Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them".
And finally a couple more from MeFi, related, and getting a little dated already (have I linked these before?): weblogging iranian women and photos from the ordinary normal life in Iran.
A little of everything.
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