Random Thinking

Beth and I were fooling around on the computer last night grabbing it from each other until she got it away from me and went to take a peek at her Facebook account.

“Oh my god!”, I heard from her.
“What?”, I quickly asked.
“Kevin shaved his head!”
“Kevin, the guy I met at Shoprite with the hair half way down his back?”
“Yep!”

Today when we picked up Brianna (Kevin is Brianna’s boyfriend’s best friend) we found out why he shaved his head… he donated his hair to Locks of Love. So Kevin, great job! That was a wonderful thing to do and somewhere out there is a little girl whose face will light up because of what you did.

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod.

Sugarcult is a rock band from Santa Barbara, California. The group was formed in 1998. The current members of the group are Tim Pagnotta (guitar and vocals), Airin Older (bass), Marko “Marko 72″ DeSantis (guitar), and Kenny Livingston (drums). The original drummer, Ben Davis, was forced to leave the group because of alcohol problems.

The group has been fairly successful with their last two albums reaching #64 and #46 on the Billboard charts. Three of their singles have reached the top 50. The group has performed on Warped Tour and backed up “Green Day” on their American Idiot tour.

The album Palm Trees and Power Lines is the most successful album released by the band. The title from the album comes from the scenery of southern California. Tim Pagnotta desribes how he wrote the song:

The idea of this song is based more around a lyrical perspective than melody. The subject is about a person I met while I was on tour in Boston. At the time I was fresh out of a relationship and very careful about not starting a new one. I sat on my couch one evening and day-dreamed about all the reasons why a relationship with this person wouldn’t work out. Before I knew it I had played out this fictitious relationship in my head to its entirety and assumed we would fail at handling our differences. (It pays to think things through, but maybe not to this extent!!!). I grabbed my acoustic guitar and started strumming chords. The song was hatched.

Memory
This may never start.
We could fall apart.
And I’d be your memory.
Lost your sense of fear.
Feelings insincere.
Can I be your memory?

So get back, back, back to where we lasted.
Just like I imagine.
I could never feel this way.
So get back, back, back to the disaster.
My heart’s beating faster.
Holding on to feel the same.

This may never start.
I’ll tear us apart.
Can I be your enemy.
Losing half a year.
Waiting for you here
I’d be your anything.

So get back, back, back to where we lasted.
Just like I imagine.
I could never feel this way.
So get back, back, back to the disaster.

My heart’s beating faster.
Holding on to feel the same.

This may never start.
Tearing out my heart.
I’d be your memory.
Lost your sense of fear.
(I’d be your memory)
Feelings disappear.
Can I be your memory?

So get back, back, back to where we lasted.
Just like I imagine.
I could never feel this way.
So get back, back, back to the disaster.
My heart’s beating faster.
Holding on to feel the same.

This may never start.
We could fall apart
And I’d be your memory.
Lost your sense of fear.
Feelings insincere.
Can I be your memory?

Our poor old cocker spaniel, Dr. Mugsy West, has passed on. He was somewhere between 13 and 16 years old. He had been very sick for the last couple of months with a cough that wouldn’t go away and hard breathing that was draining his energy. This was on top of his heart and lung issues. The last few nights had been very bad with Mugsy having trouble breathing and coughing almost non-stop. We had tried everything but the cough wouldn’t go away and he was starting to suffer. We called the vet on Saturday but they were gone early for the holiday weekend so we waited one more day.

Today I brought him to the emergency clinic and the vet there agreed that it was time to let him go. Michel didn’t come with me because she would have been too upset so she stayed home with Mikey. They let me be with Mugsy at the end. The vet gave him the medication to let him sleep before the final dose and he quietly and gently dropped his head into my hand and his coughing and hard breathing stopped. She gave him the final dose and he was gone in seconds. The vet made a cast of his paw print for us.

He was a good dog. We only had him for six months but we tried to make his final time enjoyable. The house just isn’t the same without him. Goodbye old boy. You will be missed.

I am trying an experiment with Twitter using the book I am currently reviewing. The book is “Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa” by R.A. Scotti. This is the true story of the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. I am twittering as I read. Here are my first three entries:

Paris, 1911 – Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre! Did she run off with a mysterious lover? The French blame rich Americans.

Paris 1911 – Louvre reopens without her. Long lines to see where she was. Max Brod and Franz Kafka join line too. Louvre director fired.

Paris 1911 – Mona Lisa missing for two weeks. But the police have a suspect. Not an American after all… it’s Pablo Picasso!

So what do you think so far?

When I read this I nearly fell of my chair laughing because when I am going through user issues “could not reproduce” is one of the solutions I sometimes use although my reason for using it is a bit different than hers!

h/t – XKCD

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod. This pick is because I like the video more than the song although the song is pretty good too!

Plain White T’s is a rock band from Villa Park, Illinois. The current members of the group are Tom Higgenson (lead vocals, acoustic guitar), Dave Tirio (guitar), Mike Retondo (guitar), Tim G. Lopez (bass), and De’Mar Hamilton (drums).

The group has been around since 2000, but it wasn’t until 2006 that the group achieved mainstream success. The single, “Hey There Delilah” was re-released on their third album “Every Second Counts” in 2006 and reached number one on the US, Germany, and Canada Billboard charts and number two in the UK. The song was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Pop Performance by a Group. Recently they have been on tour with the Rock Band Live tour with Panic At The Disco, Dashboard Confessional and The Cab.

The album Big Bad World is the most recently released album from the band but it has not been quite as successful as their previous release. In fact, the album has received generally negative reviews from the music press. The one exception on the album is the song 1, 2, 3, 4 which has been compared positively to their earlier release. This song peaked at number 5 on the Billboard charts.

1, 2, 3, 4
Give me more loving than I’ve ever had
Make me feel better when I’m feeling sad
Tell me I’m special even though I know I’m not
Make me feel good when I hurt so bad
Barely getting mad
I’m so glad I found you
I love being around you

You make it easy
Its as easy as 1-2-1-2-3-4
There’s only one thing
To Do
Three words
For you
(I love you) I love you
There’s only one way to say
Those three words
That’s what I’ll do
(I love you) I love you

Give me more loving from the very start
Piece me back together when I fall apart
Tell me things you never even tell your closest friends
Make me feel good when I hurt so bad
You’re the best that I’ve had
And I’m so glad I found you
I love being around you

You make it easy
It’s easy as 1-2-1-2-3-4
There’s only one thing
To Do
Three words
For you
(I love you) I love you
There’s only one way to say
Those three words
That’s what I’ll do
(I love you) I love you
(I love you) I love you

The video for the song depicts vocalist Tom Higgenson in 18-degree weather around his hometown of Chicago as he plays the acoustic guitar for passing couples – captions identify each couple, along with tidbits about how and when they met. Due to it’s low budget viral nature and success, the making of the video was reported by CNN News, Chicago Sun Times, WGN News and The Bonnie Hunt Show.

If you are like me, you have been wondering what the good is of Twitter. Today I have discovered two amazing uses that have convinced me that Twitter is exactly what the world needs!

First – You have been worrying about that zombie attack, right? Well, if you live in Boston have no fear if you have Twitter. The Boston Police Department has promised that in the event of a zombie attack, they will get on Twitter and let you know!!! So have no fear about a surprise zombie attack you Boston residents.

Second – Have no time to read those classics because you are spending your time with other, more important activities (like being on Twitter)? Not to worry. Now you can read an entire novel reduced to only 140 characters! Here’s a few examples:

Pride and Prejudice
janeaustin: Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

Ulysses
jamesjoyce: Man walks around Dublin. We follow every minute detail of his day. He’s probably overtweeting.

Great Expectations
charlesdickens: Orphan given £££ by secret follower. He thinks it’s @misshavisham but it turns out to be @magwitch

Now what could be better than that?

My senator, Chuck Schumer, has often spoken out against torture committed by the Bush administration. But recently he clarified this view with the “what if the guy knows where the atomic bomb is” logic. It is this logic that the Bush administration used to justify torture in the first place. It may not have been an atomic bomb, but the claim that the torture victim knew something that could save many American lives was all the justification that the Bush administration needed. This logic sickens me. We executed Japanese officers for water boarding American soldiers. I am sure the logic of those officers was that the torture would save many Japanese lives.

Today in the paper it was revealed that the FBI arrested four men who planned to blow up two synagogues and shoot down a plane with a stinger missile. Their plot was foiled by good old fashioned police work. No torture was required.

This is the letter I wrote to Senator Schumer:

Dear Senator,

I recently saw your comments on torture and I am very disappointed. Although there is this idea (gained from the TV show 24, no doubt) that torture can gain confessions, we can see from the fact that we had to torture one person more than 180 times in a month that torture simply doesn’t work. How do we know that we are torturing the right person? How do we know that the information we receive is correct? I, for one, would tell you any lie you want to hear with the mere threat of torture. And if torture is such a good idea, why don’t the police use it against those they arrest to find where the kidnapped child is, for example? Perhaps because torture is immoral? Perhaps because torture is criminal?

I am sorry but the idea that torture is ever moral, is ever something we should do, is beyond the scope of what this country represents. I sincerely hope you will rethink your position.

All the best

Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
by Stefan Aust

I grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested in them. When I discovered this book by Stefan Aust I was excited about the opportunity to read it. I was soon very disappointed. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of interesting information in the book. The problem is that the author didn’t actually go to the trouble to write a book.

The main problem is that there is no structure to the book. There is no logical flow that makes this history of the RAF coherent. After struggling through the beginning of the book, I felt like there were pieces to the puzzle all over the place but no coherent image of what the puzzle looks like. The book doesn’t flow as a series of events or topics, in fact it doesn’t flow at all. The first 100 pages included more than 40 chapters. Each chapter reads like a brief essay that may or may not have anything to do with the previous chapters. One chapter might take place in 1971 and the next in 1965 and the next in 1967. A chapter might be two pages about a person who gets mentioned once (probably five pages earlier) and then not mentioned again. The biographical essays tell virtually nothing about a person other than straight facts but really give no help in figuring out how they ended up in a radical leftist terrorist group. We read about Andreas Baader’s escape from prison without knowing what he was in prison for because that doesn’t happen until later. The book reads more like a bunch of notes randomly thrown together as if the author didn’t feel like actually editing his notes into a book. As a side note, there are many characters who are mentioned occasionally so a cast of characters such as found on Wikipedia could have been helpful. Also, a map showing the key cities and towns mentioned and their relationship to East and West Germany would also have been helpful. Also, the author mentions Berlin quite often without making it clear if he is talking about East or West Berlin.

This could have been a very interesting, perhaps even a great book. There is plenty of good information scattered around the book. Also, a better translator who could assist the American reader would have been helpful (not everyone will know that the GDR is East Germany – it has been nearly 20 years since Germany was reunified). The great book on the history of the RAF is still waiting to be written. Meanwhile I would avoid this book unless you have a true thirst for knowledge on this topic and are willing to put up with the poor structure and writing.

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod. This week we are digging into the ancient archives.

The Pixies are a post punk, alternative rock band formed in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986. The members of the group are Black Francis (vocals, guitar), Joey Santiago (guitar), Kim Deal (bass) (also known for being a member of The Breeders with her twin sister Kelley), and David Lovering (drums). Kim Deal joined the group because she was the only person to answer an ad that Francis and Santiago had placed for a bass player (an instrument she had never played). The Pixies were never a huge success but their music had a profound impact on many other groups of the early 90’s including Nirvana. Kurt Cobain said that Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt to rip-off the Pixies. The group didn’t get to enjoy the alternative rock boom of the 1990’s as they broke up in 1993.

The songs of the Pixies are described as cryptic and offbeat with the music being highly melodic. Black Francis wrote most of the songs and his topics included UFOs, surrealism, mental instability, violent Biblical imagery, physical injury, and incest. The group broke up in 1993 because of tension between the members especially between Black (who wanted total control of the group) and Deal (who wanted to include her own songs on the group’s albums). The group reformed in 2004 but have not released a new album.

The album Doolittle was the second album released by the Pixies. It has been a very steady seller and has been said to be one of the most influential albums of all time. A 2003 poll of NME writers ranked Doolittle as the second greatest album of all time. The album has been certified gold. Two of the Pixies biggest singles came from this album, “Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone To Heaven.” The song “Monkey Gone to Heaven” is a combination of environmentalism and biblical numerology. The song reached #5 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and was ranked the fifth best single of 1989 by Rolling Stone magazine.

Monkey Gone To Heaven
There was a guy
An underwater guy who controlled the sea
Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
From New York and New Jersey

This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven

The creature in the sky
Got sucked in a hole now
There’s a hole in the sky
And the ground’s not cold
And if the ground’s not cold
Everything is going to burn
We’ll all take turns
I’ll get mine, too

This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven

Rock me, Joe!

If man is 5
If man is 5
If man is 5

Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6

And if the devil is 6
Then God is 7
And God is 7
And God is 7

This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven
This monkey’s gone to heaven

Here is the video of the Pixies performing the song live in 2004 on the David Letterman show. It just shows that even old guys and gals can still rock.