Doggies (without pics)

This post should have pics, but I'm trying to knock out a post to appease the masses, while still not taking any sizable time-wasting from work... so there's no time!

I just wanted to share that we got those cord keeper thingies in the office recently. We didn't do this to make things look nicer. We did so to make sure none of the various dogs that have been known to hang out at the office pulled any monitors off of desks, as one almost did last week.

Today we have an Irish wolfhound mutt (the boss's sweet but timid dog) and a chihuahua. It's funny when the chihuahua chases the Irish wolfhound into an office.

My Hopeful Stratagem Prediction

Holy crap, I'm blogging! Yay!

I wanted to get this out in case signs of it begin at noon Eastern today.

If you were Obama, and planned to prosecute things from the Bush administration, and you knew Bush had the power to pardon people... would you

1. Say often that you're going to prosecute people, ensuring that Bush would issue blanket pardons, or
2. Say often things like "nobody is above the law," but hedge it with stuff about not looking backward?

I'm not saying I believe his administration will be prosecuting people for torture, but I can see an argument for saying what Obama and his appointees have been saying.

BTW, I think it's almost definite that there will be prosecutions in Justice over all the nonsense that happened there. Holder needs to clean house to get qualified people in there, so he needs to get the corrupt bastards out.

Best New-to-Me Music of 2008

Yesterday my friend Jeffrey blogged his favorite music of 2008. He inspired me to finally blog something. Here goes.

These are things I liked in 2008. I'm sure some of them will end up being from before 2008, since I'm about as far from hip as is possible. Also, some of this is probably supposed to be lame, or only appeal to one particular group to which I don't necessarily belong, or whatever. Again, I'm not hip; I just buy what I like. Feel free to let me know how much this bothers you in the comments.

I was going to make this a list of everything I bought in 2008, since certainly that wouldn't be much of a list... but it turns out Amazon's MP3 Download system was very effective on me. I bought quite a bit this year, probably coming pretty close to the most I've ever spent on music. Kudos, Amazon.

Anyhoo, without further ado:

10. The Reminder by Feist

As you might notice going through this list, if it's in a commercial, there's a good chance I like it. It isn't that I like it because it's in a commercial; I'm a DVR addict, and usually don't realize the stuff I buy is in commercials until after I've bought it. It's just that, apparently, the kind of music people think is good for selling stuff seems to be the music I like. I know that makes me lame, but I don't care.

Feist definitely falls into that category. Her video for "1234" was a piece of single-shot coolness that bought her a long-running iPod commercial. I think I managed to see that video before finally buying the album... on Amazon, so suck it Apple!

9. Oracular Spectacular by MGMT

Something about MGMT music just makes me happy. I think it's that it sounds like they're having fun playing their songs. Or maybe it's the association with the Rock-afire Explosion YouTube videos, like the one I linked above.

8. Carnavas by Silversun Pickups

I don't get the 10 seconds of interference at the end of "Well Thought Out Twinkles," but I love absolutely everything else about this album.

7. The It Girl by Sleeper

I think this is the oldest album on my list, but I had to include it. I don't remember how I randomly stumbled on Sleeper years ago, but I fell in love with them. Last week, I found out they had an album in-between the two I owned already. I don't know how I missed it, but I had to buy it.

6. Vampire Weekend by Vampire Weekend

They have a song about the Oxford comma (aka the serial comma), of which I am a huge advocate. Sure, they imply that I'm somehow strange for advocating Oxford commas, but their music is awesome enough that I got over their dismissiveness.

5. "Yes We Can" by will.i.am, etc

This one made the list even though, as far as I know, it isn't on any album (if you know of an album that has it, let me know; will.i.am deserves to get some cash from me for putting this together, since I've listened to it about a billion times). This video/song/speech explains in four and a half minutes why I was willing to devote so much time to getting that guy elected. The speech is beautiful, moving, and informative. Listen to it; he isn't just saying we want some glittering generality of "change" like his critics always claimed. He lays out, of course in broad brushstrokes in this few minutes, but still with a fair amount of specifics what it is we're working for. Together, we can continue to strive toward a more perfect union. Beautiful.

4. XO by Elliott Smith

I've listened to "Miss Misery" from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack many, many, many times while feeling down, and something about its sad beauty always cheered me back up. For some reason, I had never though to buy anything else buy Elliott Smith until this year. Sadly, I can't buy anything new; Elliott killed himself (probably; there's still some speculation that foul play was involved) in 2003.

3. Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow by Jonathan Coulton

The best thing about Rock Band is the new music it introduces me to. I really should have heard of Jonathan Coulton before "Still Alive" and "Skullcrusher Mountain" made it into Rock Band, but somehow I'd missed him. I've begun to rectify that with this album and the two versions of "Still Alive" from the Orange Box Soundtrack. He has a friggin' song about the Mandelbrot Set. How could I possibly not love that?

2. Costello Music by The Fratellis

Apparently the Fratellis had a song or three in commercials. Somehow I missed that until after a bartender friend played them at his bar. I went home that night and downloaded their album on iTunes; it wasn't on Amazon, so I installed iTunes and set up my iTunes Store account, because I had to own that album. Their music is just so fun.

1. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Soundtrack) by Various Artists

If you have not yet watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, go do so right now. I love everything about this thing. I'd heard some buzz about it before it came out, but I never expected the music to be as complex and interesting as it turned out to be. And it stars Barney Stinson, Mal, and that Guild geek chick. Could it possibly be more awesome? I don't think so.

Honorable Mention 1: "MyHope" by sweetafton23

For some reason she doesn't have an mp3 of this available yet, so I can't listen to this easily enough on repeat to figure out if I'd still love it... but I really don't have enough ukelele in my playlist. Mostly I love that people can just do this now, putting out music without a studio, let alone a label. Good stuff. Now let me give you money for your mp3!

Honorable Mention 2: "Keeping the Dream Alive" by Münchener Freiheit

I still can't find an mp3 of this (in English, at least), but I actually bought two somewhat crappy covers of it earlier this year when somehow it randomly came to mind. God I love this song. I have listened to this one on repeat (back in the early 90s), but it's not at all new to me; it's just something I dug up when I realized YouTube would let me do so. Thank you, YouTube!

Why I'm Both Happy and Pissed about Warren

Background: Obama picked a homophobic prick named Rick Warren* to invoke the sky giant at his inauguration. Rick Warren is the stereotypical evangelical asswhipe, who, for example, thinks that, if we allow gay marriage, we have to also allow incestuous marriages and pedophiliac marriages. 'Cuz, you know, homosexuality is exactly the same as incest and pedophelia in his eyes.

People are very pissed that Obama has invited such a jackass to his inauguration. There are certainly reasons to be pissed, but there are also reasons not to be.

1. Obama is able to use this outrage as cover to say things like this:

It is no secret that I am an advocate for gay and lesbian Americans.

Without this controversy, there's little reason for Obama to make such a statement, which, btw, is something no president-elect has ever said before.

2. The coverage is all about what a jackass Warren is. Some Americans knew before all this that Warren was a dumbass. Now, a larger percentage have heard about the quote comparing gay marriage, incest, and pedophilia. The coverage is making sure he continues to appeal only to the intolerant jerks that he already appealed to.

3. This is going to work on some percentage of people. Idiots who agree with everything Obama says other than the "fact" that he's Muslim can say, "Oh, if an evangelical idiot like me invokes God for him, I guess he must not be Muslim." Maybe they can leave the idiotic side of their personality behind and vote for the stuff that matters, and maybe they can even listen to Obama and learn something.

4. It's the part of the inauguration where they ask the sky giant to pay attention, and Obama picked someone who he does not agree with. In other words, Obama doesn't give a shit what the sky giant thinks. He's doing this for politics, and the religious side of it doesn't factor into his decision. That's great.

All that said, Warren is a big pile of idiocy. He was a big supporter of Prop 8, which was already a kick in the teeth to LGBTs on election day (I mean, it was also a kick in the teeth to those of us who think that kind of thing is evil, but not as directly aimed as it was at the LGBT community). So I can see how this makes people continue to think they aren't wanted. 

But here's the other part of all of this: it is our job in this play to be pissed off. Numbers 1-3 rely on as much of the left being pissed off about this pick for a meaningless post as possible. So, fuck Warren. And dammit Obama, why did you pick someone so bad that I'm considering digging through the Urban Dictionary to find an insult scathing enough to fit him. You should have picked someone who didn't matter at all.

* People keep calling this fucktard "Reverend" Warren. Fuck that. Reverend means "worthy of reverence." Why do we still use that term for idiots who clearly aren't worthy of reverence? Tell ya what, if people will agree to refer to people who work in education as "The Brilliant Jon Harmon," for example, perhaps I'll start calling these jerks "Reverends."

Today's Shared Google Reader Items, 12/15

I haven't done one of these recaps since Friday, but it doesn't look like I shared too much over the weekend, so this shouldn't be too huge.

Science and Medicine:

• I love this scale model of the solar system in Maine. I really want to get one of these together in the Austin area.
• Researchers in Australia have found that sarcasm is useful for detecting dementia. I dunno, I'm not sure I believe there are demented people in Australia.
• Researchers at the University of Toledo have reported the first case of sleep-emailing. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend turning on Mail Gogggles in Gmail Labs.
• Ferrofluid is awesome. Must... own... lots! I'm thinking some sort of system hooked to a speaker magnet would be very cool.

Software and the Internets:

• Apparently there's a Firefox-like open-source alternative to iTunes/Windows Media Player. The duplicate-finder add-on alone makes it enough for me to check out, at least for my home library.

Politics:

• It looks like I was also wrong about the pick for HUD. This guy sounds qualified, though, so I'm fine with being wrong again.
• The origin of the so-called War on Christmas, waged by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, has been traced to white supremacists. Not much of a surprise there, really.
• Obama's transparency has already infected the Congressional Oversight Panel, tasked with keeping track of where our $700 billion goes. Woot.
• Work on spreading this meme: Harry Reid is an ineffective Senate Majority Leader. Any failures aren't because we didn't get 60; they're because the modern filibuster is a joke. The filibuster is supposed to be there so you can block legislation you findunconscionable, not legislation that you want to vote no on.
• The first batch of answers from "Open for Questions" are up at Change.gov. Neat.
• The Illinois House has begun the impeachment process for Blago.