It's time to take a stand!

No more countries, no currencies at all

I like the idea of a subjective trivia night. I've been thinking of how it would be organised.

It could be split into sections, like an ordinary trivia deally, along the lines of Films, Musics, History, General Knowledge Opinions, etc. Then, instead of questions like "What film won the oscar for Best Picture in 1976," you'd have "what film should've won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976?" "According to legend, how was Harold II killed in the Battle of Hastings" could become "Which historical personage should've been shot in the eye?"

Now the way I see it, each section would be judged by 2 or 3 people, each of whom would write one answer. Anyone giving one of those answers would get a point. Also, awesome answers would get a point. Terrible answers would either lose, or get a point, according to the whims of the judges. Some kind of penalty could also be given for answers that don't fit the factual constraints of the question, like claiming that The Queen Is Dead was the best album released in 1976.

Also, exactly who is judging each section would be revealed only after answers came in, so people can't tailor their answers to the judge. And then everything would devolve into this insane meta-game where people try to guess who the judge will be based on the style of the questions, or whatever. And this would be awesome. For everyone except the players. And, possibly, other people involved.

I'm not sure I could get this trivia game past an ethics board.

Come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain

Throughout the HSC, every year of uni, working on my honours thesis, and worrying about taking tutorials, I think I have never been quite as stressed as I am now. Now being when I'm trying to work on applications for overseas PhDs. All this writing of statements, looking for recommendations, gathering of supplementary material, figuring out deadlines, figuring out requirements, tailoring individual responses, negotiating websites, distinguishing between what can be submitted online and what must be mailed, figuring out how to even use the mail system... I'm really not good at any of this stuff. I'm out of my elephant. I can't breathe.

On the subject of which, next week The Mountain Goats will make everything better. They always do. Or, at least, have once before.

Also, it's plausible that I only feel this all to be more stressful than those other times because, you know, this is now, those were then. The bias towards the immediate, and all that. Though I think I was genuinely not at all stressed for at least those first three items.

Insincere musings.

Today, I'm wondering how much of a filtering role the kidneys perform when it comes to everyday food. I mean, we all know that the kidneys have big important business to attend to when we consume copious amounts of Alcohol, or other, you know, poisons...

But, imagine that we are a big head of lettuce. When some git eats us, and we reach his kidneys, do said kidneys go to work scrubbing away all our tiny bacterium and parasites, or rather are they all like "What? Oh, it's just lettuce again, forget this for a lark," and lettuce straight through?

Also, did I write all that just for that pretty bad, and maybe unoriginal pun? Probably, because I sure as hell don't give a damn about how the kidneys actually work.

If you want to know what got me thinking about all that: I just woke up from a midafternoon nap with a pretty bad taste in my mouth, so I went to the sink, sucked up a big gobful of water, swished it around, then swallowed. Then I thought, "heywait, maybe that stuff was lining my mouth for some reason. Maybe it wasn't meant to go past my gullet." Then I thought, "wait, no, I'm pretty sure the mouth doesn't perform any kind of filtering function."

Brendan Markey: Mildly grossing you out since... Whenever you met him.


In retrospect, I suppose the mouth kind does perform some limited filtering function, insofar as it stops me from swallowing things that are Huge, and things that taste godawful, like cyanide laced with eggplant.

Also, no matter how woeful my puns become, they will never compare with this. At least not for sheer gratuity.

All you see are zeroes, all you see are zeroes and ones.

I so can't be bothered doing all this applicationing stuff... Personal statements, writing samples, letters of recommendation, miscmiscmisc... So much stuff... So much dull...

In other news, I suspect that my starting to use Google Reader is the direct cause of everyone in the world ceasing to update their blogs.

Okay, okay, so I suppose the more reasonable explanation would be that the fact that I now excessively check whether there are any new posts anywhere makes it seem like there are less of them in total... Like, a subjective kind of dealy.

Actually, an even more reasonable explanation would be that I somehow failed to subscribe to Crooked Timber. Well, I'm not sure I missed it, but what the hell, let's add that again.

EXCITING POST BY BRENDAN TIEMS

Mediocre news ahoy!

Woo! I just got an Star rank in the 150cc class Special Cup on Mario Cart DS! Eat that Rainbow Road!

But as for ACTUAL accomplishments today...

Ummm... Drawing a blank here...

Ummm...

Well, Roger Crisp sent me an email, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I got nothing else.

In the declining years of the long war

Blaaarg!
Marking, applications, coughing, whatnot!
I gotta email that guy... Oh, and that other guy, with the crisps...

Incidentally, the Vincent Price episode of The Muppets was as excellent as I expected. Man, that guy has a voice and a half. And such a flair for self-parody...

Bork bork bork

I bought the first season of The Muppet Show about a year ago. I'm not sure if this requires justification, but I can say that I am a big fan of The Storyteller, Labyrinth, various other Jim Henson productions... Also, it was rather cheap, and I'd always wanted to see some. I've been informed that I watched the show when I was young, but, unlike The Storyteller, I don't at all remember it.

Anyway, I watched a bit soon after I bought it, and it was excellent, but then my viewing got interrupted. I just restarted this week, figuring it would be something nice to return to after finishing Twin Peaks... And it's still excellent! It's not quite so juvenilely-targeted as I suspected before buying it, but then I'm probably not the greatest judge of that, seeing as I have been known to enjoy such shows as The Fairly Odd Parents, Angry Beavers and Danny Phantom.

Every episode features a different guest-star, and that is often the weakest part, especially when they start singing or dancing. On the other hand, there's also always a scene of Kermit casually talking to the guest star, which is often pretty good. Either way, it varies depending on the person in question; the episode I just finished watching contained Candice Bergen, so naturally it was excellent. Paul Williams and Bruce Forsyth were also pretty good, and there's a Vincent Price episode in this season, which I'm rather looking forward to.

Other awesome things include Statler and Waldorf (who appear fairly hilariously in the DVD menu), and Rowlf the Dog, who is wonderfully charming. I'll embed a particularly excellent clip of Rowlf, if I can pull off the embedding thing.

Unfortunately, one of the worst things about the series/DVD is... Laugh Track! It's pretty hideous, often inappropriate, and just a bit too loud. Stilllll, what can you do.

Anyway, I recommend you watch this, whoever you are:

Obligatory "How's abouts that election, eh?" post

So, to hide the immensity of that post below: How's aboust that election, eh?

How's aobust that Obama, eh?

How's ausbot that Franken, eh?

How's Proust that electoral college, eh?

Shame about those California ballot propositions though. Oh, and all the others ones too, of course, but, you know, we expected better from California.

It's not as flat as we had feared.

It's been a week since I posted something!
UNACCEPTABLE!

So here's some commentary about this album I bought a few days ago, Exotic Creatures Of The Deep, by Sparks.

This is apparently Sparks' 21st studio album, with their first coming out in 1971. So that's a pretty long career. Now as you could see from my last.fm profile, I've listened to a lot of Sparks. It helps that there is a lot of their music to listen to, and that their style changes so significantly over time, that it doesn't get too sameish. But, that said, I haven't listened to them all that much for the last year or so, for whatever reason, so I didn't exactly rush out to buy this album, as I did with their previous, Hello Young Lovers. This helped keep my expectations somewhat reasonable, and so, basically, I'd say the album probably meets them. Though I can't quite tell yet whether the album will grow on me (as Lil' Beethoven did) or start to irk me (as Hello Young Lovers partly did).

Musically, it's moving away from the faux-classical-pretensions of Lil' Beethoven, and the occasional metal-inflections of Hello Young Lovers, and introducing a few more... Electronicish elements. It still uses a lot repetition, as in those last two albums, but perhaps... Not quite so much. I feel I need to resist the temptation to just go through all the 11 major pieces on the album and comment on them all... But maybe I won't.

No comment on the album art.
(Because I can't work out whether it's Alright or Woeful)

The first piece on the album (besides a short intro) is Good Morning, and it's probably my favourite (at the moment). It's kinda poppy and interesting and reasonably clever. It also clearly highlights two major differences between this album and Sparks' previous two. Firstly, Russell Mael's falsetto is back. The vocal style of Sparks was really marked by that falsetto for most of their early career, but then it completely disappeared in 2002, on Lil' Beethoven. It came back a biiiit on Hello Young Lovers, but mainly in the occasional backing vocals. But it's returned with avengeance on Exotic Creatures Of The Deep, which I am tentatively going to call A Good Thing.

This song also shows the direction the album is going to take lyrically, which is again a return to their habits of old. Sparks have always been known as writing comic lyrics, little witty lines, that kind of thing. It's this that unfortunately sometimes gets them pegged as a novelty act, which I maintain is pretty unfair. But again things kinda changed with Lil' Beethoven, in which they discovered repetition, and so their lyrics were often very simple. They still had this hint of humour; for instance, take the song Your Call Is Very Important To Us. Please Hold. Now obviously there's something comic in the idea repeating that line a few hundred times, but it doesn't constitute their classical wit or cleverness. But on this new album there's something of a return to form. Obviously, if I try to pull out any lines to demonstrate this, they'll sound completely lame... But how about this bit anyway:

Please spare me derision
I'll do my rendition
A lengthy recital
Of every song with foolish in the title

It helps if you imagine it being sung in intense falsetto, I assure you.

Anyway, I'm inclined to call this lyrical direction a Good Thing too, but here's the confusing part: in both these cases, I'm seeing that Sparks are moving away from what they did in Lil' Beethoven, returning to an earlier style, and I'm calling this a Good Thing... But then, I think Lil' Beethoven is the greatest album they've made. In fact, I'm still fairly inclined to think that it is one of the best albums ever made (by anyone), certainly in the top 10. These last two albums have been slightly disappointing insofar as they aren't as brilliant as Lil' Beethoven. So to see a move away from that as good is weird. But then, part of Lil' Beethoven's brilliance was that it was so different to their preceeding work, so to just do the same thing would also be disappointing. Anyway, whaaaatever. To some of the other songs:

Strange Animal: It's got some interesting, self-referential lyrics... And some nice sounds... But it's just a bit too repetitive, the chorus is dull, and the melody is... What's the word... Rollicking? But in a bad way. Anyway, it's not too bad, but I see this song getting on my nerves before too long.

I Cant Believe You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song: This is the biggest disappointment on the album for me. It's a good concept, but the song ought to be so much more subtle than it is. The main problem, I think, is that it only works on the level of the lyrics, which could be so much better anyway. It basically just juxtaposes a whole lot of trite romantic lines like "I'll be true, forever true" with... The title line. The problem here is that most songs of the type that are being critiqued here are not composed merely of trite romantic lyrics, but also contain trite romatic melodies and musical hooks. So basically there isn't as much crap to fall for in this song as there should be. This brings to mind I Married Myself from Lil Beethoven, which comes across as a perfect parody of excessively romantic music, while still sounding awesome. Anyway, enough unfavourable comparisons to that particular album!

Skipping a few (pretty good) songs, we get to (She Got Me) Pregnant: In Practical Ethics this semester, Caroline West mentioned a game that can be played with a issue of Cosmo, where you read everything in the letters section, switching the masculine and feminine pronouns. The humour arises as the letters completely stop making any sense, as they run against all our most basic beliefs about gender roles. Anyway, lyrically, this song is kinda like that. Musically, it has this wonderful intensity, with overlapping harmonies and angry pianos, thus making it the song most liable to be stuck in my head for the last few days.

Lighten Up, Morrissey: Best song name on the album, and actually not just a cheap-shot at The Smiths. I suspect it was written in response to the revelation a year or two ago that Morrissey is actually a fan of Sparks. It's sung from the perspective of a man who is unable to impress some girl because he fails to measure up favourably in comparison to Morrissey. This actually makes it thematically similar to a 1982 Sparks song that uses Sherlock Holmes in place of Morrissey... Though on relistening I suspect that song is more about a person who desperately wants to be Sherlock Holmes, and so wants his partner to pretend that he is. Anyway, both pretty cool songs.

This Is The Renaissance: Amusing and sounds great. My second favourite on the album so far.
The Director Never Yelled Cut: Not great, though I've just realised I'd been missing the point of the lyrics.
Photoshop and Likeable: Pretty good.

So yeah, I'd give that album a 3.5 stars, or something.

I also bought the newish Jonathan Richman album, Because Her Beauty is Raw and Wild, but I haven't given that much of a listen yet. Hooray for buying new albums by artists from the early 70s!


(Hey, turns out there's an actually decent Exotic Creatures Of The Deep review at this Coke Machine Glow site that everyone goes on about. It even uses the word Contrapuntal. That kind of thing is beyond my prowess.)