On Mashup Monday: Four chords edition

Okay, so I'm an unapologetic fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (show and movie).

Oz: Well, other bands know more than three chords. Your professional bands can play up to six, sometimes seven completely different chords.

Devon: That's just, like, fruity jazz bands.

Oh, Dingoes Ate My Baby. Your problem is that you don't know four chords.

Axis of Awesome/Journey/James Blunt/Alphaville/Jazon Mraz/come on, people


I, V, vi, IV. There's your career; don't forget to thank me in your liner notes. (You too, Johann Pachelbel).

On a "victory" for "life"

Okay, so on Friday, your House of Representatives voted to, in the interest of protecting life, completely defund women's preventive health services. in the name of protecting life. In eliminating federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the House eliminates $330 million for services that have nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with providing essential health care to millions of women--many of whom wouldn't be able to afford any care at all otherwise.

To underscore the extent to which Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services, allow me to note that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. Regardless of your personal feelings about the Hyde Amendment and abortion funding in general, one unavoidable fact is that Planned Parenthood directs no federal funds to abortion services. So if your goal is to ensure that no federal money goes to fund abortions at Planned Parenthood, yay! You win.

But abortions account for a whopping three percent of Planned Parenthood's services. And that's one thing that bugs me about the ABC story linked above--in the first sentence, it identifies Planned Parenthood as an "abortion provider," which is like identifying McDonald's as a salad bar. It would be more accurate to identify Planned Parenthood as a provider of preventive care, cancer screenings, tests and treatments for STIs, contraception, and well-woman services, not to mention educational programs that help prevent unplanned pregnancies and promote health and wellness. But that's fairly wordy, and it lacks the dramatic punch implying an office full of white-coated Dr. Orloffs just itching to kill a baby.

On the apocalypse, nowish: 2011

Okay, so the recent unrest in Egypt has raised questions among some complete kooks about whether the End Times could be upon us. And that's always a reasonable question, which is why it's time to bring back… the Practically Harmless Apocalyptic Index! (wild applause)

Of course, as we've established in previous editions, it takes more than just civil unrest to portend the apocalypse. The book of Revelation lays down a clear…ish account of the signs that will appear to us before the battle of Christ and Antichrist and the eventual thousand-year peace. And we certainly haven't--

--oh, holy fuck, what's that?!



The explicit appearance of the Lamb's own pale horse notwithstanding, however, really we're still okay--we checked off pestilence and disease back in March of '05, so this doesn't actually move us any close to the end. We still need to account for:

- Counterfeit baptisms, bibles, Messiahs, and holy days--false prophets who possess miracle-working powers will proclaim the name of Jesus but not follow His commandments.
- The sky will roll back like a curtain.
- One-third of the sea will turn to blood, fish will die, ships will sink, and rivers will turn bitter.
- The Holy City (Jerusalem) will be trampled for 42 months.
- The Beast (the Antichrist) will emerge from the Abyss.
- Jesus will come back and throw the Antichrist a righteous beating.
- Peace will reign for a thousand years.

Sure, the Gulf of Mexico has turned to oil and the Church of Scientology is performing miracles of modern vitamin. But we're still lacking those few necessary ingredients to make a truly memorable apocalypse. Thus, despite an unannounced appearance by Death himself and his pallid pony, our Apocalyptic Index stands at 60.

On dangerous places and bad things

Okay, so I debated over posting about the attack on Lara Logan, if only because she's asked for privacy and even mentioning her on a blog kind of feels like violating that. But a strange and awful phenomenon has arisen that I want to address before letting it go.

Journalism is important. Sometimes it's done better than others, and sometimes things waving the Journalism flag are really closer to commentary or outright shilling. But journalism, at its best, shines that disinfecting light in places that need it. The first thing Mubarak did when the protests broke out was to cut off phone and Internet access, and why? Because it's easier to do horrible things to people if there's no one there to watch, and it's easier to pull one over on the rest of the world if they don't know what you've done. Whoever controls the flow of information controls the situation. Anyone from a citizen with a cell phone to a journalist with a camera crew can have a part in reopening that communication.

Was this a very dangerous assignment? Absolutely. But so was Logan's time in Afghanistan, and so was her time embedded with the U.S. military. She's a war correspondent--CBS's chief foreign affairs correspondent, in fact, so the idea that they'd rather send in an intern rather than a seasoned reporter who happens to be blonde and attractive is laughable. She wasn't walking down a dark alley with money taped to her back--she was on the job, a job that happens to be a lot more dangerous than most. That generally attracts admiration, although I suppose when you're an attractive blonde who's just been gang-raped it's easier to criticize.

On dickitude

Okay, so currently, The Boy is celebrating the day with his fourth uninterrupted hour of WoW. My celebration was going to involve a considerable amount of fried chicken and not sharing, but some unexpected dental work this morning has left me unchewing; I might have to go the too-much-ice-cream-and-farting-under-the-covers-all-night route instead.

However you choose to observe it, Practically Harmless wishes you a very merry, very obnoxious Be a Dick Day.

On Mashup Monday: Global harmony edition

Okay, so I can't think of a time that could better use a dose of the world playing beautifully together. And nobody says it like lolcheerio33 in the comments for this video: "It's not a Youtube Symphony without a toy piano, a saw, a beat-boxer, and a storm trooper."

The whole world / Internet Symphony No. 1: Eroica


I can't decide if my favorite is the little-ittle girl behind the timpani or the en masse harp glissando at 2:50. No idea when the next open auditions are, but I figure I should start getting Abbey in shape now.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Okay, so this week has been kind of a serious one: The posts of note were about the State of the Union and the opposition response, we faced down dumbassery from Bill O'Reilly and no fewer than 173 Representatives, and The Boy had a birthday that we'll just wasn't 29. So I invite you to take a minute and revisit this post.

See? Wasn't that nice?

What's good (for the two-week period ending 2/4):

- self-righteous unintentional hilarity. "Where do the tides come from, huh? Answer me that. See, you can't! That's bec--Oh, really? Huh. Uh… well… Where did the moon come from, Mr. Smartypants?" When you screw up, your two options are to own up to it and look humble or keep digging and look like a bigger douche with every shovelful. Quit digging. Well, not you, Mr. O'Reilly.

- home warranties

- Roger Ebert vs. a Nicholas Sparks movie starring Miley Cyrus. He's actually pretty gentle with Ms. Cyrus; the last three paragraphs are the winners.

- the source of Ebert's Cormac McCarthy comment (at the link previous). It's one of those you-laugh-or-you-cry things, and I choose to laugh, and the reason why is "'A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That's what I write." That is the reason why.

- Bach's Toccata and Fugue on a giant foot piano

- the state of the salmon. Okay, funny/sad.

- Baby Monkey (Going Backwards On A Pig). Oh, hell, here's the embed:


- someone else who doesn't get Bieber's 'Bama Bangs. The money quote: "At my age, I have to wonder: Who the heck is this kid, and why can't he get a haircut?"

- a template for every awful Facebook discussion you've ever witnessed. I'm always The Thoughtful One, I swear.

- the Big Top Cupcake cake mold. It is (God willing) going to turn out a huge, enormous cupcake for The Boy's birthday tonight. I haven't even used it yet, but I'm calling it a Good, because even if I screw things up and the cake is horrible it's still a huge, enormous cupcake, and that's awesome.

What's bad:

On responding to the response

Okay, so I promised a note on the opposition response to the State of the Union address, but there isn't much to say. What's frustrating to me about the opposition response is that it isn't really a response--it's a pre-recorded speech that only addresses the issues raised in the SOTU if the issues raised in the SOTU are the ones predicted by the opposition in the preparation of their response. And while that's a bit annoying when the speech is predictable and/or lacking in substance, it's particularly frustrating when there's stuff I'd like to hear them actually respond to.

What we got instead was basically your standard political speech, recorded and played after the president was done speaking. And because this year's SOTU took so many rather unexpected paths, Paul Ryan's for-real response made him sound like he'd been sleeping through the speech, and Michele Bachmann's me-too speech made her sound… very much like herself.



The For-Real Response: Paul Ryan

OMG OUR ECONOMY IS SHIT AND IT'S GOING TO MORE SHIT AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND WE'RE GOING TO BE GREECE AND OUR DAY OF RECKONING IS AROUND THE CORNER OH MY HOLY FUCK!!!

On the state of the state of the union

Okay, so I watched this year's SOTU the day after the event itself. We don't have standard television (and not in a snooty, Jesse Eisenberg, "I don't even have a TV" way--we watch an assload of TV, but we stream most of it), so I ended up watching it later on YouTube. That gave me the opportunity to read a lot of commentary on it beforehand, which I probably shouldn't have done but did anyway (so there), and that had me looking for undesirable things in Obama's speech: extreme socialism, extreme kowtowing, a sense of giving in and giving up.

I didn't see any of it.

Now, you all know me. You know my politics and views. You know that Barack Obama has been my pretend boyfriend since the 2004 DNC. But you also know that I tend to be (I think) fairly reasonable and discerning. And with this speech, I discerned… a pretty good speech. It was an appropriate balance of optimism (dare I even say hope?) and realism, it made solid proposals that were backed up by ways to make them happen, and it really, really showed a lot of respect for our country.

A few things that jumped out at me, briefly:

(Okay, a whole bunch of stuff that jumped out at me, at length:)

America the Beautimous

On more cuteness--because there will always be more cuteness

Okay, so commenter B says: “But now you have used up all your saved cutesy links. What will you post tomorrow?”


Bazinga.

On the state of our union

Okay, so I have a breakdown and/or analysis of Tuesday's State of the Union on the way, but one thing already sticks in my mind: That speech is so much less fun when you know there won't be any references to human-animal hybrids.

Thom Yorke/Talib Kweli - The State of the Union


And as a note--just because our current president isn't a babbling numbskull in the style of our last president doesn't make the Wounded Warrior Project any less in need of support. Any suggestions for a Barack Obama-themed SOTU drinking game are very much welcomed.

On rhetoric and romanticised revolution

Or, But Words Can Never Hurt Me

Okay, so I'm sure you know that Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, along with 18 other people, at a neighborhood meeting in Tucson. The shooter was a scattered, rambling, unsettling anti-government type; the victims included a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge who died while shielding a man with his own body.

When a tragedy like that takes place, the immediate instinct is to figure out why, God, why it happened--and it's a reasonable one. This tragedy had an easy focus: Sarah Palin's PAC had posted a map online pointing out Democrats who had supported Obama's health care reform bill. Each was marked with crosshairs; Palin introduced the map by saying, "Don't retreat, instead--RELOAD!"

That a woman targeted with crosshairs should end up shot is horrible but more ironic than suspicious; we have no reason to believe that Jared Lee Loughner was trying to follow Palin's instructions when he went after Giffords. But at the same time, it's significant--while Palin's map may not have been the instigator of this act, it definitely contributed to a growing culture of violent imagery and threatening political rhetoric.

Regardless of the Tea Partiers' own culpability for such rhetoric, it's easy to start with them. They're the ones who adopted the imagery of the American Revolution, which was a violent protest that went far beyond the dumping of tea into a harbor to actual and extensive bloodshed. In a time when objections to things like taxes are generally bloodless and handled by men in suits, Tea Partiers play the role of oppressed colonials who can only accomplish their goals at the business end of a rifle. In the hands of a Revolutionary War re-enactor, that's quaint; in the hands of an unorganized and impassioned crowd scattered across the nation, feeding each other's fervor and whipping themselves into a self-righteous frenzy, it's dangerous.

On a visit to the warehouse: Aww, Munchkin edition

Okay, so I want you to know that even during my unintentional and oh-so-brief blogging hiatus, I was still thinking of y'all every day. I have all these links that I've filed away as something that I need to blog about, and now I have… a whole bunch of outdated links. (Wah-waaah.)

But they're still awesome! So here's your first link dump, featuring every cute thing that's happened in forever.

Gawker: Black Bear Feasts Inside Home, Rescues Stuffed Bear On Way Out

A black bear on Tuesday walked into a New Hampshire home, ate two pears, some grapes, took a sip from a fishbowl and grabbed a stuffed bear on the way out of the house. The stuffed bear was later recovered.

"Don't fear, my glossy-eyed compatriot! We're making it out of here together!"


Jezebel: Adorable Marines Rescue Adorable Kittens In Afghanistan; Cuddling Ensues

Brian Chambers, Chris Berry and Aaron Shaw have adopted kittens they found while on duty - and sent them back to the States to wait for them with the marines' families (with the aid of these groups.) Says Chambers, "At only 3 weeks old, their mother had disappeared and they were left alone to live rough and fend for themselves like the other cats in this area. We looked after them both and they lived in a box in the office, after a week they were allowed to roam around during the day and sleep with us in the hooch at night."

PFC Fluffy McCuddlepants, reporting for duty! (Kitteny salute)

On Mashup Monday: Miracles edition

No, not that kind. Actual miracles.

Okay, so this is so cool to me that I feel like I should save it for a special occasion, but it's also so cool to me that I couldn't not share it. So here's something inspirational for the ultimate Mashup Monday.

Norwegian Recycling/Everyone ever - Miracles

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Okay, so I've been trying to come up with something witty, topical, and timely to head up this week's TGTBATFRT, and I've come to the conclusion that I got nothin'. I did try, though. Like, hard.

Sooo... how 'bout those Trekkies, or whatever? Right?


What's good (for the week ending 1/21):

- memories of a Mexican beach vacation to stave off the cold. And if you were my friend on Facebook, you'd know all about it. And if you knew all about it, you'd hate me forever, so it's probably best that things are as they are.

- new hotness. I'm cranking this baby out on a new MacBook Pro, and I gotta tell you, it's a thing of beauty. It's so shiny. And it's got a bomb-ass processor and a beefy hard drive. And it's shiny.

- new glasses. It might not seem like a huge thing, but when you've been wearing the same pair of glasses you've had since college, getting a pair that has the proper prescription and fits your face is a lovely thing. (I have been getting my contacts taken care of regularly, kthx.) They're a little bit naughty-librarian and a little bit put-my-hair-in-a-ponytail-and-wait-for-the-captain-of-the-football-team-to-ask-me-to-prom-on-a-bet. I'm calling it a good thing.

- being back on the job. It's nice to get back to the blog, even if I'm still not doing it at the rate I've been meaning to. Thanks to all of my reader who's nagged me about it.

- Clairol Perfect 10 Hair Color in Auburn Flash


What's bad:

- the Tea Partiers. I know, it's a really awful thing for me to say as a liberal and a more-or-less-moderate, and I'm supposed to… do something, I don't know, but I'm tired of them. In the beginning, it was kind of cool, at least in concept--I've never really followed them on their politics, but I liked their spunk. Now, it's completely misguided, and suddenly a bunch of old white guys are running around waving Obama signs with Hitler mustaches and blurting out idiotic Glenn Beck talking points every time a camera points at them. The whole thing in Tennessee is only the most recent example--guys, if you're going to name yourselves after a vehement and dramatic protest against unfair taxation, you need to try to stay at least a little bit on-message to not sound like some wandering kook with a committee. Or if you're going to back this particular horse, call yourselves the Revisionist Historians or something.

- My. Big. Redneck. Wedding. Great. Because our fumbling governor and ban on sex toys and bingo haven't made us look dumb enough already.


The Ten:

1. Ramsey Lewis, "Do What You Wanna (Mr. Scruff's Soul Party Mix)"
2. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, "Andante" (from Violin Concerto in D major)
3. Dean Fields, "Irish Bars"
4. Heather Nova, "Paper Cup"
5. Chicane, "No Ordinary Morning"
6. Giuseppe Verdi, "Libiamo" (from La Traviata)
7. Dirty Vegas, "7 AM"
8. Billy Idol, "Hot in the City"
9. Linkin Park, "Figure.09"
10. Frank Sinatra, "The Lady is a Tramp" (with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.)

Your opinions on stuff, and things, and your Tens go in comments.

On Mom's basement: the final frontier

Okay, so a little bit of week-wrapping-up levity comes in the form of a deeply offensive news article that requires a tremendously sincere apology. Because if there's one thing you absolutely don't want to do, it's piss off Trekkies.

It's the owners' manual that any self-respecting starship engineer in the year 2151 wouldn't be seen without.

…

Haynes, whose iconic range of automobile user manuals help teens and devotees alike keep their cars on the road 10 year after it is sensible to do so, have published a DIY guide to the most famous space voyager of them all.

The 160-page guide covers the entire range of USS Enterprise models, from Captain Jonathan Archer's original NX-01 from the most recent series through to the NCC-1701 under the control of Captain Kirk and her replacement, the NCC-1701-E.

Think Trekkers out there would welcome such a clever and topical Trek treat? FUCK YOU, YOU'RE WRONG.

Your Mom's Lunch
OMG, could this article be any more wrong. The Enterprise-E did not replace Kirks enterprise. The excelsior class Enterprise-B replaced kirks ship after Kirks ship was lost at the Genesis plant at the hands of the klingons. Upon their return to McKinley station after traveling back in time to get some whales… [tl;dr -Ed.] …This ship was lost at the aforementioned viridian star system. Then….came the enterprise-E. This article wreaks of failure.

I KNOW, RIGHT? JESUS EFFING SPOCK. WHAT DO YOU SAY, TREKKER OF MELBOURNE?

On the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of man (and woman)

Okay, so some people take weeks to screw things up at their job. New Alabama governor Robert Bentley managed to do it in about four minutes. In a speech at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, on Martin Luther King Day, he let all non-Christian Alabamians know exactly where they can get off.

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said. "But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister."

Bentley added, "Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

What the fuck? (Sorry, Jesus.)

Practically Harmless regular B has made a valid point: "Like I want to be his sister…" And I recognize that in the Deep South, winning souls for Christ is practically a contact sport and Bentley sincerely is concerned for our salvation. But I can't not take a little bit of umbrage here, not because I'm worried about my own soul or my own treatment at the hands of the administration but because he's the governor. He was just after pledging to be the "governor of all the people" and "color blind," and then he had to delineate who is and who is not his brother.

On obscuring the truth about history

Okay, so the state of Tennessee has had a rather rough relationship with the educational system going way back. (History buffs may remember a certain trial about a certain teacher and intimations about a certain primate.) Well, they're back, and this time it's social studies they're after.

A coalition of Tennessee Tea Party groups has formulated a list of "demands" focused on the state's educational curriculum and political agenda that they want the state's legislature to heed this session.

…

Hal Rounds, spokesman for the group, recently claimed at a news conference that there was "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the Founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

Now, I'm not sure exactly what Hal is getting at here. If it's his contention that it's the criticism that's made up, well, there's plenty of very real criticism out there on those subjects. And if it's those specific claims that he says are made up--the displacement of Native Americans, slavery--there's pretty good evidence for those things, too.

I'm not saying that the Founding Fathers were all bad. Our very country exists because of their role in our independence from Great Britain. Our system of government (humanly flawed though it may be) is due to their hard work (and some strategic borrowing of ideas, which is how these things get made). Said Fathers even made significant contributions to concepts of human rights and liberties that we still reference today--think about Thomas Jefferson's writings on the separation of church and state and James Madison's on immigration. On the whole, they were stand-up guys who made a lot of hard decisions during a hard time, and much of it has turned out well.

On Mashup Monday; Quasi-Triumphant Return edition

Okay, so I just got back--just got back--from an open-mic night at a really fun new-ish venue here in town, and the only thing that still sticks in my mind is that during one song, a friend of a friend leaned over and started singing "Smooth Operator" into my ear. And it was. It totally was. For the rest of the song, I kept expecting the guy to bust out with, "Coast to coast, L.A. to Chicago..." Later, said FoF noted that that's one of the worst things that can happen to a songwriter--you're up on stage, and halfway through the song you realize you're actually singing someone else's song. At that point, all you can really do is segue into the other song, pretend it's an homage, and then go back to what you were singing. I don't think this guy realized he'd borrowed from Sade, but I'll never forget it.

Anyway, that's why Sade (via Señor Coconut) is sharing screen time with Vanilla Ice. And God bless them both.

Vanilla Ice/Sade - Smooth Operator


My contention is that, in the end, the common musical denominator is "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but that will take further research.

On the Good, the Bad, and the Friday Random Ten

Okay, so this past weekend was beautifully icy. I know a lot of people don't feel that way--say, homeless people, first-responders, and that dickwipe who kept bitching because his charter flight out to Arizona for the game (ooh, dude, you've impressed me…) might not take off--but I always love to put on my blue, fleecy comfy pants, pull a dog over my feet, and drink a cup of cocoa whilst being glad I don't have anywhere to be. So that's one of the things falling under the category of

What's good (for the week ending 1/14):

- Snow. Or "snice," at least (which makes me think of smizing, which I suppose I was doing at the sight of all the snice). Even though it wasn't the fluffy awesomeness of real snow, it still made for snow falling from the sky and cold, white stuff all over the ground. Not really good for sledding (which is a shame, because we live at the top of one hell of a hill), but Dave seemed to find it acceptable.

- Getting a day off. Being so far south, Birmingham happens to be completely unprepared for things like snice, and so the city shut down most of Sunday and all of Monday. We were prepared, of course, with propane for the grill and ingredients for French toast (which is, I assume, why people always snap up bread and milk in preparation for a storm). Stew was made (not from the bread or milk). And as I remained snicebound on Tuesday (see below), I got another day working from home.

- A sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Whether it's seeing something I wrote go through editing unchanged or shaking hands with a client as she gushes about the work you've done, that is the ultimate and undeniable shit, and I will clutch this feeling to my bosom and nurture it like a baby bird.

- French toast by the fire while the dog sleeps, the cat snores, the flurries flurry, and idiot drivers slide up and down the hill outside our window.

- Maybelline Color Sensational Lipgloss in Sugared Honey


What's bad:

- Getting stuck at home. One of the problems with icy roads is that those which can be traversed by a four-wheel-drive truck (which we happen to have) are unmanageable on two wheels. As mentioned, this got me a free day of working at home on Tuesday, but it's also left me dependent on The Boy for transportation until all the ice is melted (which will probably be by this weekend, thankfully).

- Being a freaking Ophiucus. What the eff is an Ophiucus? Can someone tell me the personality traits of an Ophiucus? 'Cause if they include wondering what the eff an Ophiucus is, they're right on.

(Wait, it's the "snake bearer"? Okay, that's kind of cool.)


The Ten:

1. Queen, "I Want to Break Free"
2. John Coltrane Quartet, "Acknowledgement"
3. Paul Oakenfold, "Ready Steady Go"
4. Michael Bublé, "Dream A Little Dream Of Me"
5. Sarah Vaughan, "Misty"
6. Darren Hayes, "Unlovable"
7. Hector Berlioz, "Au cimetière" (from Les nuits d'été)
8. Dave Matthews Band, "Rhyme & Reason"
9. Johnny Cash, "I Walk the Line"
10. Glasvegas, "Geraldine"

How about you? Where's the worst place you've ever been trapped by weather? (Easy: Toronto, 2008, and I still haven't gotten the smell of the arrivals lounge out of my nose.) That and your Ten, go in comments.