sunday best-of blogging

most romantic song about pants: i love your pants, too, rathergood.com. i love them right to death.

best album to remember you love after having forgotten about it for years: guided by voices' mag earwhig!. so good, people. so good.

most concise summary of tuesday's state of the union: blah blah blah, terrorists secretly long for democracy, blah blah blah, 9/11, blah blah blah, i'm above the law, blah blah blah, gays and women who have abortions will burn in hell. oh, and i guess i can close with some empty promises about health care and energy reform. heh heh heh.

in six years, this man couldn't learn to pronounce the word "nuclear"? i wouldn't trust him to lead me out of a pair of velcro shoes.

best alternative to the super bowl: the discovery channel's puppy bowl, which starts today at 3 p.m., is the cutest thing in the history of television broadcasting. last year i actually wept, i was so overwhelmed by the snuggly wonderfulness of it all. do not miss it. really. don't.

best blog of note:


finally! why has it taken the world so long to give my faf some sugar? you all should listen to me. i know what's up.

most captivating concert lineup: the tibet house benefit concert, taking place at carnegie hall on march 1, will feature philip glass, laurie anderson, sufjan stevens, antony (of antony and the johnsons), nawang khechog (a grammy-nominated tibetan flautist), damien rice, and allen toussaint, plus some other folks who've yet to be announced. cheapo tickets are about $30, but even at $100, i think the priciest seats are still a steal. but if you're not the sort of person who cares to pay big bucks—or any bucks—for a good time…

best way to see malcolm gladwell for free: the columbia university arts initiative has teamed up with the new yorker to present six free events, and malcolm will be talking about something delightful on february 21 (ticket info here, other events here). there was an article on malcolm in the 2/4 edition of the ny times; it opened up with a bit of a pan, and i wasn't interested in paying or signing up with their web site for a pan (i can hear people say snotty rubbish about him anytime i want for free), but if any of you caught it and believe i'm mistaken, please let me know. and, as always, if you or someone you know makes it over to his talk, send him my warmest, fuzziest love. oh, and look, it's february! you could even shower him with a fistful of candy hearts*. awwwww.

usage directions most open to interpretation: a friend recently told me about some sort of super colon cleanser he happened upon whose label directed the user to start out with one tablet at night and increase the intake by one tablet every day until the user experienced "2–3 meaningful bowel movements per day." meaningful? in what way? isn't the significance of that sort of thing a bit relative? how does one know if the appropriate depth of meaning has been achieved? reader assignment: compose a 500-word essay on the one eliminatory experience that left you the most moved**.

erosion of willpower i feel i should be most ashamed about, and yet am not: every time i see the commercial for the new platinum-edition monster ballads compilation cd, it becomes a little harder to resist. i can't be alone, though, and if you scroll down to the "customers also bought" section, you'll see that it is in no way necessary for a person to be an exclusive devotee of leopard-print spandex and aqua net to give in to the album's allure. not that there's anything wrong with that. and i don't care how much you make fun of me, mr. big's "to be with you" is the bomb.




* the new yorker readers in the crowd may have noticed that malcolm has written me a valentine's day article on the throughly unreliable practice of profiling, and his reference point is the public's completely unfair prejudice against pit bulls, some of the sweetest dogs ever (when they're not abused) and one of my favorite breeds. i'm going to read it on the 14th, 'cause it's more romantic that way, but you should feel free to dive into it now.

** pun absolutely intended.

sunday best-of blogging: the "i'm cranky" issue

album i always want to listen to when wearing my peach wrap-around cardigan with the floral embroidery and sequined embellishments: seven swans, sufjan stevens. i can not begin to explain this.

most ridiculous automotive fact: my mechanic can not buy an oil pan for my 1995 dodge neon from a supplier, because the part is no longer manufactured. i'm pretty sure i don't have the lone existent neon, and if cars of this sort were going to need new parts they'd start doing it right around now, wouldn't they? so why would dodge tell us we can't have them? like we're all going to go out and buy new neons or something. if i had a 1949 mercury (and believe me, if wishes grew on trees i might) i would understand various parts for it being unprocurable, but that isn't at all the case. see? ridiculous. and i would never drive a mercury, those things suck gas like nobody's business . . . but damn, they're some sweet-ass rides:


most infuriating sound to be woken up by on a sunday morning: toadie's parrot's favorite toy is a small plastic frog with a mirror in its belly that makes what i assume is meant to be interpreted as a ribbiting sound whenever its head is pressed on. the ribbiting is not the infuriating sound, though; that sound is the one that's made by the hard plastic body banging against the floor and walls of the hallway outside my bedroom, where the bird most likes to play with his frog, maybe specifically because of the plastic-on-wood racket. what's really infuriating, though, is that toadie would never think that maybe it was a teensy bit impolite to set the bird loose in the hallway at seven o'clock on a sunday morning, or any morning, for that matter, and allow him to make all that noise. i would never do that to her, or to anyone. some people are so blind about their kids' bad habits, and their own.

most suspicious closing of a criminal investigation: oh, army, army, army. you're so dang skeptical.

the army closed a criminal investigation of abuse allegations by an iraqi detainee last year, finding no reason to believe his claims, even though no americans involved in the case were questioned, according to pentagon documents made public yesterday. internal army documents about the iraqi's capture on jan. 4, 2004, and his subsequent interrogation at an unspecified facility at or near baghdad international airport were not reviewed, the records show, because investigators were told they had been lost in a computer malfunction.

skeptical and conveniently disorganized. i'm a bit of a skeptic myself, though relative to slightly different points, as evidenced by my disbelieving italics. i don't have an objective problem with the military, but i do tend to bristle at people who assume they know everything before they've begun, with utter disregard for relevant evidence, as our army is wont to do. please stop treating us citizens like stupid, whining children. we recognize a supercilious brushoff when we see it.

best alito interview: nobody sticks it to 'em like fafblog. i've tried to stay abreast of the recent confirmation hearings, but it's tough for me to stay involved, what with it all seeming like a meaningless exercise the way it does. if fafnir had a news channel, though, it would be all i watched, except for sometimes the cartoon network and any channel airing svu, which i've recently been forced to proclaim myself powerless against. this, too, i am unable to explain.

weirdest partnering: that between starbucks corp. and lions gate entertainment corp., who have joined forces to market and distribute the movie akeelah and the bee, yet another heartwarming tale of a young spelling-bee champion. why were these things not popular when i was a kid? i'd have been a superstar. oh well. anyway, i think this is creepy. maybe i shouldn't, given the role of fast-food chains in pushing blockbuster paraphernalia on the impressionable masses, but i do. i think this quote is the one that really drove me over the edge:

"While we are a coffee company at heart, Starbucks provides much more than the best cup of coffee—we offer a community gathering place where people come together to connect and discover new things," said Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman. "We are always looking for innovative ways to surprise and delight our customers, which is why we are so pleased to be working with Lionsgate on 'Akeelah and the Bee' as the first film to introduce to our customers."

oh, come on. here's what jarvis cocker and i think of you and your community gathering place, starbucks: grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag, take your "year in provence" and shove it up your arse. you want our money and you'll shake us down every which way you can. well, i'm buying my espresso elsewhere, you shameless, heartless whores. nyah. p.s., your cds suck.

most despicable film adaptation: tristan and isolde, the wb rendition. i can't even force myself to learn enough about this movie to be able to criticize it effectively, i'm so angry. i'm so angry. how could you, kevin reynolds? you go to hell. you go to hell and you die. grrrrrrrrrr.

best act of rodent vengeance: monday morning, i heard a story on a local radio station (100.7, maybe? this is the classic rock station in boston, which, sadly enough for yours truly, now plays songs off of rem's automatic for the people. *sigh* i'm old.) about a very bad man who found a mouse in his house, captured it, took it outside and threw it into a pile of burning leaves in his backyard. bastard! i thought, and so did the mouse, i guess, who caught fire in the pile but did not go gentle into that good night and instead turned and ran back into the house, setting it righteously ablaze. do unto others, my friends; it's the only rule worth remembering.

a halloween love story

let me tell you about my crush on haunted fafblog. it's big. first it was so big that i had to move it from its bowl into a ten-gallon terrarium, but it kept making sad bambi eyes at me so i kept giving it one more popcorn shrimp, and after a little while of things going on like that it was so much bigger that i had to move it into the bathtub. man, were my roommates ever hopping mad, but i said, "listen, roommates, i never pitched a whizzy when your parrot ate my favorite shoes/cd/chair/book or when your rotten cat peed on my favorite fuzzy orange bath mat, so suck it up; this here's my crush on haunted fafblog, and it's here to stay! you all can wash your hair in the kitchen sink, and while you're there you might think about doing some of those dishes. hmph."

WELL, today i went to check on my crush, and guess what? it told me, "joon! JOOOOOOOOOON! i'm too big for the bathtub, you have to take me to the harbor and set me free!" and i said, "but crush on haunted fafblog, i don't wanna set you free! i wanna keep you forever and ever and ever! besides, i already pissed off my roommates for you, and i'm too stubborn and bitchy to let them think they were right!" so i built a pool for my crush in the backyard, and when it gets hungry i put on my mexican wrestling mask and hold up the japanese restaurant down the street, and sometimes i make them throw in some avo-kyu maki for me, even though i shouldn't. but if it gets any bigger i really won't be able to keep it, so i need to put some distance between me and faf until after halloween. but you should check in with him, provided you aren't scared of having to feed your own monstrous amphibian crush, and maybe you can tell me how he's doing. but don't let me look, 'cause those poor sushi chefs are positively threadbare.

finally, someone with a plan.

fafnir for FEMA director!

postscript, 9/9/05: i was momentarily very proud of myself for posting this a full 29 hours before atrios, but then i remembered that that's because he's been so busy following the real news.

screw it. i beat atrios! ha ha ha!

i suck.