Updating Imminently

I returned to Madison from Spring Break to the revelation that my landlord has decided to start charging for use of the internet. I write to you from a pirated wireless signal. Just kidding, Homeland Security. Anyway, in between fits of studying for an upcoming Sociology exam, I will be drafting posts offline, so prepare thyself for a deluge of knowledge. Then again, I will probably write three lists and a short essay about how stupid Tom Cruise is.

George W. Bush Is A Terrorist

I have this recurring dream in which the people of America band together and set fire to the White House and string up George W. Bush like Mussolini. Then I wake up, pick the wireless transceivers out of my toothpaste, and deal with real life. Apparently, a lot of Republicans in Congress share my dream. Yesterday the House Appropriations Committee voted 62-2 against a White House-backed bill that would give control of ports in American cities to a company that works with the Taliban. It vexes the shit out of me that for almost 5 years they have been shoving this Axil of Evil garbage down our throats and out of nowhere are willing to sign over American shipping hubs to a bunch of friendly guys with funny hats and bazookas. And now even Republicans are starting to wonder where exactly the Bush train is going. To return to what I said in 1999, before I was allowed to vote, why would people want another George Bush in the White House? And the Saddam fixation...It's like the house is on fire and George smothers the flames in his room, then just stands there and admires the job he did saving his stuff, then tortures all the flammable materials in sight and spies on the firefighters. Then Cheney shoots a guy. No wonder even the crustiest-assed Senate Republicans are weighing their desire to willfully go down with a big sinking abomination of a ship made entirely out of human waste. I'm telling you, let's give Bush the Mussolini treatment. I'm not saying someone should murder the President. I'm saying that wouldn't that be great? Then again, if that happens then Cheney's in charge.

Ten Pink Floyd Songs That You Didn't Know You Liked

In keeping with my recent jones for lists, here are ten dark horse candidates for Best Floyd Song.

• The Nile Song - this is earlier Floyd at its most nonsensical and sublime. I have no idea what this song is about but the chord structure is so simple that it almost sucks. It also features one of the best sloppy pentatonic blues solos ever. It was written for the soundtrack to a movie called More that apparently otherwise blew.
  
• The Narrow Way (Pt. 3) - a very eerie and dark tune from an extremely eerie and dark album. Ummagumma was an album that was basically an LSD symphony separated into movements composed by individual members of the band. This is a part of a movement penned by guitarist David Gilmour, whose actual songs stand out against the rest of the band's experimental sonic wankfest.
• One of These Days - another violently creepy Floyd song. Only Pink Floyd could have a song whose only lyric is "one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces". And 2:49 into the song there is a really weird guitar effect that can only be described as psychedelic robots karate chopping your soul. Or something.
• Atom Heart Mother - the symphonic marathon from the album of the same name. It is actually a pretty formidable piece of what is oxymoronically called modern classical music. It is also the centerpiece of the first actually good Floyd album. I can't help but think that George Lucas had this song in mind when he came up with that ridiculous Ewok song at the end of Return of the Jedi.
• Summer '68 - another one from Atom Heart Mother, and one of the first Floyd songs to express some deep emotions lyrically. This gets tossed around on my short list. My only gripe with it is the little sendoff at the end...what a bunch of weirdos.
• Nobody Home - my favorite Pink Floyd song. There are few songs that are perfect for just sitting in your room and thinking about things that are actually about sitting in your room and thinking about things. This is one of them. There is something about The Wall that makes me accept its content as human mythology. Not only does it represent another classic Pink Floyd "cycle" album, but it represents the classic Icarus analogy. If Icarus owned a TV and wrote a musical about his life, he would have written Nobody Home about a week after crashing to earth.
• Mother - another song from The Wall. This one features a topic with which any Irish guy can identify and my favorite understated Floyd guitar solo.
• One of My Turns - interestingly, this song that everyone skips when they listen to The Wall was their only single to reach #1 on American charts. Well, not really. It was the b-side to Another Brick In the Wall (Pt. 2), which was. Pretty close though, right? This is the best song not by a punk band about smashing everything that one possibly can as a means of attempting to impress a girl. Fuck it, it's the best song about smashing not by the Smashing Pumpkins.
• Is There Anybody Out There? - the last song on the list from The Wall, I promise. This song goes from being a really weird and typically creepy song to being a really beautiful guitar ballad in seconds flat. Vaguely reminiscent of the James Bond theme at times, it also captures the theme of the album while remaining completely different from the rest of its songs.
• In the Flesh - so I lied about the whole "last song on the list from The Wall" thing. Who cares, it's my fuckin list. Besides, I didn't want to touch Dark Side of the Moon, Animals, or Wish You Were Here. Those just don't work unless presented as a whole. Anyway, this song rules. The End.

Wow, we sure had a lot of fun today, didn't we boys and girls? Stay tuned for my next post, in which I will discuss the various benefits and drawbacks of using different household spreads and condiments to get your dog to lick your balls.

Ten Moments That Defined Baseball

c. 9,000 B.C.E - Jose Lima drills Julio Franco with the passed kidney stone of a 30-foot ground sloth. Unsure about what to do next, Franco invents first base and advances to it.

c. 1700 B.C.E. - Greek islanders construct the first monoxylon, a boat completely dug out of a single tree. These mariners proceed to litter the floor of the craft with sunflower seed shells and used hypodermic needles.

c. 1300 C.E. - Thinking they are smarter than us, the British invent Cricket. Meanwhile, Long having crossed the Bering land bridge, Lima and Franco encounter Don Zimmer, who proceeds to fall down.

May 24, 1935 - To win a bet from Emil Fuchs, Babe Ruth eats an entire horse. And I mean en entire horse. The next day, in an 11-7 loss to the Pirates, Ruth goes 4/4 with 3 home runs and 6 RBI.

1943 - The Racine Belles win the first Championship of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Meanwhile, a tree falls in Northern Wisconsin's Chequamegon National Forest. Some other stuff happens as well, but the tree was the important part I wanted to tell you.

January 31, 1947 - Nolan Ryan exits his mother's womb in excess of one hundred miles per hour. Two orderlies are killed and Ryan's uncle George requires an emergency jaw rewiring.

April 15, 1947 - Jackie Robinson goes 0/3 for the Dodgers. Subsequently, Moses Walker forgets his own name.

June 20, 1970 - Dock Ellis throws a no-hitter while under the effect of LSD, but forgets his one-hitter in his car. Meanwhile, Spaceman Lee can't leephus his way into a no-hitter but has his one-hitter with him on the mound at all times.

1986 - Doc, Darryl, Rocket, Buckner. It's the World Series on NBC! I'm not sure what the bigger story of this series was. I really don't. Only in New York in 1986 would an entire baseball team be on coke. It's like those Amazin' 1969 Mets, only spitting up blood.

October 20, 2004 - The Red Sox complete the greatest comeback in sports history. Having upset the homeostasis of Earth's magnetic fields, their victory results in the worst sports hangover of all time and the Sox are currently destined to be hated forever by all people everywhere. Johnny Damon attempts to escape his fate by signing with the Yankees and shaving his beard, but just ends up looking like a stupid jerk.

A Quick One While He's Away

The names Kaylan and Volman are never thrown around anymore. Sure, they didn't really write a whole hell of a lot. But if you are telling me that Happy Together doesn't feature one of the top 10 catchiest choruses, you are sorely mistaken, jerk.

Two More Lists

Movies that don't receive enough credit

• A Page of Madness - this is a Japanese silent movie from the 20s that used editing techniques and bizarre narrative components that were singular to the time and didn't resurface anywhere in the world for another 30 or 40 years.
• Krull - the weirdest combination of sci-fi and fantasy, the best score, and the best claymation spider of any movie of the first half of the 80s. This movie also featured a very weird performance from Francesca Annis, perhaps best known as Roman Polanski's Lady MacBeth. Also look for Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane, who would each in the future take a divergent path from the combination of genre's in this movie. Neeson would appear as Qui-Gon Jin in the Star Wars prequels and Coltrane as that big fucking giant in the Harry Potter flicks.
• UHF - any movie that makes both a "Conan the Librarian" joke and extensive use of Gedde Watanabe belongs on this list. Oh, and it stars Weird Al.
• Cable Guy - I cannot emphasize this point enough. Excepting a few awkward moments, this is Jim Carrey's best performance. My dad can't watch this movie because Jim Carrey's character makes him uncomfortable. And this is from a guy who recommended that I watch Harold and Maude when I was like 10. There are at least 25 good solid out-loud laughs in this movie, and the soundtrack is a superb example of Corporate America's uncanny ability to compile soundtracks for comedy films in the mid 90s.
• Weekend at Bernie's - they perfected the "dead guy" movie with this one, to a degree that it has not even been attempted since. Silverman, McCarthy and Bernie (was that Robert Goulet under those shades? I hope.) were clearly the three stooges of the 80s.
• Bachelor Party - Tom Hanks' best film.
• Four Rooms - an increbile and mondo bizarro flick consisting of four interconnected vignettes directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. Tarantino's segment, right at the end, is probably my second favorite Tarantino venture. It's just a crazy movie, not even worth describing in any capacity except its insanity.
• I Heart Huckabees - I don't know how, but David O. Russell made an awesome and relevant movie that is overtly about existentialism. Not just existential issues, but existentialism itself. Holy shit. That's pretty much like making a good movie about calculus.
• Manhunter - William Petersen doing the Grissom thing 15 years before Grissom. They would remake this movie once Silence of the Lambs became a franchise. Red Dragon was good, but Grissom! Such a stone cold player.
• The Empire Strikes Back - I can't believe some of the hate that gets tossed in the direction of this flick. The rare appearance by 2-1B is worth the price of admission alone. Seriously though, this one was much better than the first one and probably better than Return of the Jedi. Did you know that in the DVD releases they digitally retouched the end of Return of the Jedi so that Hayden Christiansen would appear instead of the original Anakin Skywalker? I'm not exactly a huge fan of the franchise (maybe more of an Indiana Jones guy), but sheeeeeit.
  

Movies that recieve too much credit

• Garden State - I liked this movie. There was a funny scene in which a dude shot a flaming arrow into the air and scrambled around beneath it. Any message the movie had was lost in Zach Braff's attempt at micromanaging the movie into a pop culture juggernaut. Sorry, everyone in the world, but your favorite movie receives too much credit.
• The Godfather - see Diane Keaton. See Diane Keaton overact. See Al Pacino. See Al Pacino overact. See Marlon Brando. See Marlon Brando do absolutely nothing other than show up on set. This was that magical part of Brando's career during which he could commission $10 million just for not eating all the food at the craft services table before lunch.
• Old School - I loved this movie when it came out. Todd Phillips knows how to make extremely fun movies. Sadly, I go to school with 40,000 people who feel the same way and who are not shy about letting you know this at least once every two minutes. And like I said, this list ain't about the movies, but the credit they receive.
• Lost in Translation - another example of a movie that I really like, but just needs to be gotten over.
• Brian's Song - Gayle Sayers was just better anyway.
• Halloween - all the film nerds can fellate John Carpenter all they want, but it was a crappy movie with a crappy premise. Such a bad movie that the sequel with LL Cool J was actually a better movie.
• Saving Private Ryan - I said it.

PEACE! WE OUTTA HERE!

This Is My Pizza, Which Shall Be Given Up For You

Next year, a new township in Florida will be incorporated. This gives me a headache primarily because I'm not sure if Florida is a place for which a population influx is such a swell idea. However, when more thoroughly considered, this new town makes me sick for altogether different reasons. The new town, which will be called Ave Maria, intends to enforce strict Catholic policies, including bans on contraceptives, pornography, erections, and self-esteem. Who, you may be wondering, came up with such a perversion of the Aristotelian idea? Who else but the guy who originated Domino's Pizza, Tom Monaghan? Of course! Anybody with a rudimentary practical knowledge of how to make a shitty pizza makes my short list of dream urban developers and planners. To my further dismay, the town will be the site of the first new Catholic University in the States in forty years. It would be wise of me to note at this point that this idea alone does not bother me. To the contrary, if it were not for my 14-year Catholic education I would not be in possession of either my incomprehensible intellect or my smug superiority. However, some of the text being generated by the higher-ups in this new school is more than disturbing, citing America's "catastrophic cultural collapse" as well as the "virtual collapse of Europe" as components of the current state of our faithless hemisphere. I don't know where these people have been, but at no point in my life have I felt more suffocated by the morality of others than in the past 5 years. Not even in fourth grade when I got screamed at for having a lucky rabbit's foot or for bringing a Stephen King book to class. Or the time my dad broke all of my Marilyn Manson CDs (hi dad). Not even during the longest, hottest, most incense-choked renditions of the Stations of the Cross did I ever feel like maybe we were all in an assload of trouble with the rest of the world. I'm sure the prospective citizens of Ave Maria would love to work together to restore our great nation to the strength of McCarthy and the prudence of Torquemada, but I would not quite pinpoint their general absence in Western society as "cultural collapse", because, unfortunately, I find their absence a bit too absent for my liking. And for that matter, what the fuck is a "virtual collapse"? Is that like when Jesus died but like didn't really die or something? Because I thought that was a good thing. Or wait. I'm confused. Seriously, though, if the formation of the European Union and its currency's outperformance of America's own is a "virtual collapse", doesn't that just basically mean that you should take your head out of your ass? Aside from just my personal objections to this idea, there are some constitutional ones as well, such as what will happen when this goomba actually tries to enforce THE BIBLE AS CODIFIED LAW. "Hi, welcome to Ave Maria! Here are your chastity belt and broadsword. Be sure to thrash the hell out of your wife and children, heck, even kill them if God asks you to, and never forget to smear lamb's blood on your doorframe lest the Angel of Death claim your firstborn!" And for all you animal lovers out there, Ave Maria's zoning on the edge of the Everglades infringes upon the natural territory of the already endangered Florida Panther. Anybody want to guess who broke ground on this project? I'll give you a hint: depending on who you ask, his brother is or is not the president of the United States of America. Now, I realize the value organized religion has for the world, just not anywhere near its systems of real laws. And it is certainly not for me. If you, dear reader, have any decency or passion for the progression of mankind, you will take up arms and join me in my seige of Ave Maria, Florida. We shall annex the burg in the name of Frank Zappa, and we will have a killer luau/coronation ceremony, for I shall be named Megahedotron 5, ruler of all that kicks ass. Then again, I will probably just never go to Florida again. I mean, I wasn't going to anyway, right? Right.