Ich Kann Kein Finnisch

I just got two visits, one from Berlin and one from somewhere in Finnland. I have no idea how they found this Little blog.

Ich kann kein Finnisch, aber Ich wollte sagen an Besucher aus Deutschland, "Wilkommen!" Es ist viele Jahre gewesen seit Ich mein Deutsch richtig benutzt habe (und Ich habe keine Umlauts; es tut mir Leid), aber wenn Sie wollen Sie konnen hier auf Deutsch kommentieren. (Wie war dass? Ich habe keine Idee.)

Okay. Danke.

P.S. Und klar, Willkommen an alle aus Finnland auch! Und anywhere.

Old Timey Protest Music

Possibly my favorite kind.

From his esteemed excellence, Jesus General, a link to a new song by old-timey masters Norman and Nancy Blake, Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-cons.

You can buy their CDs right here.

Don't be Afraid of the Neo-cons
Norman and Nancy Blake

And away down yonder in the Florida sand
Old Jeb Bush is a mighty man
He told little brother, don't be blue
For I'ma gonna hand this thing to you

The churches all got on board
In the Holy name of our Lord
They took him for their favorite son
And they sent him away to Washington

Now Georgie Bush, he is the man
He landed in Afghanistan
We'll get Osama, was his crack
And now we're stranded in Iraq

He told ole' Rumsfeld on the green
Now you're the best I've ever seen
Just heed my words and you'll go far
And help me win my daddy's war

O' Cheney lives away down town
By a cement bunker underground
No more he'll roam Wyoming's hills
Halliburton is his thrill

Don't send your money to Washington
To fight a war that's never done
Don't play their games don't be their pawns
And don't be afraid of the neo-con

Katrina blew through the town
Black waters flooded all around
No money to raise the levees high
And so we watched New Orleans die

Bill Clinton was a Democrat
He saved us money in his hat
He fell from grace the story goes
Then Georgie put us in the hole

Now Casey was Cindy's son
He marched away with his gun
For a noble cause he heard Bush say
He died in a war so far away

Now Georgie is kind and meek
He kissed the king upon his cheek
They walked the garden hand in hand
As the oil and blood dripped on the sand

And now my little song is done
'Bout the neo-cons in Washington
No more I'll sing these words again
You can see it all on CNN

Don't send you money to Washington
To fight a war that's never done
Don't play their games don't be their pawns
And don't be afraid of the neo-cons

Ma Nofoaga o le au totoa!

I just posted this in the comment section over at the best blog in the business, Hullabaloo. It regards the recent kerfluffling over our national anthem being sung in Spanish. (No!)

Uhhhh, what about the lands that we Americans own where they have another language? Here's the Somoan version of the Star Spangled Question Mark:

In January 2006 it was reported that a Samoan-language version of the first verse of the anthem had been translated by Pouesi Pouesi, Jr. of American Samoa Community College. A bill was subsequently introduced in the Senate of American Samoa to officially adopt the Samoan version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" to complement the local anthem "Amerika Samoa". The proposed lyrics are as follows:

I.
Aue! se'i e vaai, le malama o ataata mai
Na sisi a'e ma le mimita, i le sesega mai o le vaveao
O ai e ona tosi ma fetu, o alu a'e i taimi vevesi tu
I luga o 'Olo mata'utia, ma loto toa tausa'afia
O Roketi mumu fa'aafi, o pomu ma fana ma aloi afi
E fa'amaonia i le po atoa, le fu'a o lo'o tu maninoa
Aue! ia tumau le fe'ilafi mai, ma agiagia pea
I eleele o Sa'olotoga, ma Nofoaga o le au totoa


ma Nofoaga o le au totoa INDEED!

So, my thinking here is, if we took over Mexico, then it would be okay to sing the national anthem in Spanish?

Welcome Neil Young Fans

Go to him.

Go listen.

Neil Young's got some things he wants to talk to you about.

Go. Listen.

Listened to the recording twice this morning, got to work hours late, jumping all over the house, screaming laughing, crying. Neil done good. Real real good. Proud to have him on our side.

Ruff Ruff, Bow Wow, Bark Bark, Fuck You

I've got a new song up over at my MySpace site.

I call it My Own Best Friend, but the damn bar has basically turned it into The Dog Song. Whattaya gonna do?

You can hear it and download it at Pure Volume and at Podsafe Music Network also.

Neil Young's Blog

Look at that title. Neil Young's got a blog. Too fucking fun. I can't tell you how much natural affection and respect I have for Neil Young as an artist and a human being. Honestly. From the time I was 12 in the basement of Mark Thomson's house with 12-packs and the album Harvest over and over and over and over...to learning the guitar when I was 17 or 18 and Needle and the Damage Done and Comes a Time...to seeing him at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium all by himself and turning some tens of thousands into his friends sitting around a living room (Do you want me to play this new shiny keyboard or this beat up old piano I brought with me?...) It just never went away, my love for the gentleness and strength and grace and grit and straight-ahead just say it beauy of the songs and, it has always seemed, his personal attitude. All done with a smile.

Hat's off to Neil Young.

Here's a link to the lyrics of the unreleased Living With War.

They're Not Ready to Make Nice

And piss on anyone who says they should.



Atrios is beating the drum for the Chicks. I'm truly happy to beat along.

Ahem.

Take a listen to a really nice song from the new album.

You can go buy one, too.

Live Science

The story about the flexible-necked, water-exiting, land-borne-bug stabbing catfish (oh, I know, we've all heard that one a million times) came from Live Science. Their front page today has a story entitled Amphibian Young Eat Mom’s Skin.

Many amphibian moms provide their young with an egg yolk nutrient sac and then take off, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

Now scientists have found the world's most doting amphibians: mothers that let offspring eat the skin off their backs.

Brooding Bolengerula taitanus moms transform their skin into a nutrient-rich meal for developing offspring. The youngsters squirm all over mom's body, peeling off the outer layer of skin with special teeth.

Now that's what I call good news reporting. And the best part: they have video.

And I just found Live Science Blogs. They've got a live Animal World blog, a live Human Biology blog, a live astronomy blog, even a history blog.

They also reminded me of a blog I'd forgotten about, Pharyngula, by biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, PZ Meyers.

Class dismissed.

Wakes With the Fishes

Shhh. Don't tell the Flying Spaghetti Monster.



From LiveScience.com, a site I'll be visiting often now that I've found it, comes a catfish:

These particular eel catfish, Channallabes apus, live in tropical swamps in Africa, where most of the water is confined to small, acidic pools.

"There's probably more food traveling on land than in these small puddles of mud," said Sam Van Wassenbergh of the University of Antwerp in Belgium. "That's probably why this fish has specialized to go out of water to search for food."

The catfish pick up speed in water and flop onto land, where their flexible vertebral column lets them move around like a snake. They also have a special organ for breathing air without using their gills, although scientists don't quite know how this works.

In water, eel catfish suck in water to capture their prey. But because air is less dense than water, this trick is less effective when hunting on land, and these fish have developed a different approach.

Once they find their terrestrial prey, usually a small beetle or insect, they lift their head and mash at the creepy-crawly with their mouth.

And there's even video. How cool is that?

Naomi Campbell Had Sex On A Plane With Naomi Watts While Wrapped In Snakes Playing Online Poker

Google Zeitgeist conjuring from the internets:

Gaining Search Queries: Week Ending April 3, 2006

1. whitney houston
2. sharon stone
3. duke lacrosse
4. solar eclipse
5. britney spears sculpture
6. basic instinct 2
7. naomi watts
8. natalie gulbis
9. april fools jokes
10. ice age 2
11. jill carroll
12. daylight savings
13. naomi campbell
14. tori spelling
15. michelle wie

All the News That's Fit to Fake

From Raw Story

A study by a group that monitors the media reveals that, over a ten month span, 77 television stations from all across the nation aired video news releases without informing their viewers even once that the reports were actually sponsored content, RAW STORY has found.

One "news report" that aired on three stations relied on a video news release (VNR) produced by a PR firm on behalf of General Motors which was even apparently based on a "false claim."

Does your station air fake news? Does mine?

One More Piece in our Puzzle?

This is why big kids still play in the dirt"

The skeletons have the fins, scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, the scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but has changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans.

Dug this up at Americablog

Your Money in Their Hands

Via the Huffington Post, a story of incompetence that boggles the mind and strangles the heart. Read about your money:

A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says.

The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.

It's not the only contract they have:

Security And Justice Sector - Parsons Inc. (US)... Provide design-build construction services for projects associated with the rehabilitation and construction of Iraqi security and justice facilities and facilities for the Iraqi National Defense Force

Repair of Iraq's Oil Infrastructure (North) - Parsons Iraqi Joint Venture (US)... Repair and restore Iraq's oil infrastructure in the northern region

Tadji Military Base renovation - Parsons Inc. (US)... Reconstruct and renovate the Tadji military base and the Iraqi Armed Forces recruiting stations

More later...

44

There were 44 people
At my funeral
I liked
Four
I
Didn’t know the others

The grass smelled like diesel
Ash
Gas
Cigarettes
1978 or 9

I wrote
Better yet
Sang
A song
As wide
As Alaska as
dead as
Buddha’s toenails
As
Easy as apples

I loved all 44
One
For each caliber

David Byrne and Brian Eno

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts came out in 1981. Over the last decades, hundreds of artists in genres ranging from DJs to alternative to electronic have all borrowed from its ideas and claimed its influence. It is now being re-issued in a beautiful new package, with extensive liner notes and photos, and featuring 7 previously unreleased tracks from the original album and a film by influential artist Bruce Conner.

I'd somehow missed that one, but that will soon be recitfied.

From the Snowflake Preservation Society...

[Links fixed] This is the coolest thing I've seen since Sunday.

Ever wanted to catch a snowflake and keep it forever? You can. This is a photograph of a snowflake that fell in January 1979, but it isn’t a 27-year-old photo. It is a recent shot of a snowflake that’s been sitting in chemist Tryggvi Emilsson’s desk for 27 years, locked in a drop of that miracle of modern chemistry we call superglue.

And I gotta learn that on April 1. Sheesh. C'mon December, I've got snowflakes to entomb.

(Things like this are why I go to Metafilter)