A Few Good Memes

Via FuzzyCo (which was via Whatever…)

“1. Open up the music player on your computer (if you have one — the music player, I mean. Clearly you have a computer, because otherwise you couldn’t read this).

2. Set it to play your entire music collection.

3. Hit the “shuffle” command.

4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. That’s right, no skipping that Carpenters tune that will totally destroy your hip credibility. It’s time for total musical honesty. You can put the list in the comment thread, or write it up in your blog or Journal and then post a link in the comments.”

Here’s mine:
Professor Wormhog - Umphrey’s McGee - um2002-12-31
Part 2 - Same Day Service - Endless Adolescence
Cruel - Tori Amos - To Venus and Back (Live, Still Orbiting)
Penny Lane - The Beatles - 1
Jyamchen-Ma - Monks of Drepung Gomang Monastery - Gomang Chants
Once an a Lifetime - Talking Heads - Remain In Light
Cannonball - The Breeders - Last Splash
3×5 - John Mayer - Room for Squares
Don’t Know What to Do - Betty Boo - Boomania
Rodeo Clowns - G. Love and Special Sauce - Philadelphonic

Amusing that “Cruel” came up on my shuffle like Whatever…’s

Fuck the South. We’re part of the new Urban Archipelago.

Found at Christion Exodus:

ChristianExodus.org is coordinating the move of thousands of Christians to South Carolina for the express purpose of re-establishing Godly, constitutional government.

Hallelujah, I say! Put all the fundies in a box, I say. Then I don’t have to vote for them, read about them in my newspaper, or even recognize their nation in international treaties. I can even block their country code from my DNS lookups!

And, we’d finally get some of that cheap labor I was hoping for.

My brother- and sister-in-law would have to move elsewhere to sail and live on the ocean, but I suspect they’d make that kind of sacrifice to get the fundies out of their hair too. I’d miss visiting Charleston, but the USA has plenty of other beauty. Give it a few years and tourism to the United State of JesusLand, South Carolina would be cheap anyway.

I think about this issue a lot, so even though the debate is a difficult and over-done one, I feel a need to get my thoughts out, especially since I do feel fairly alone in my thoughts on the issue. I decided to write this after reading a post at Pensieri di un lunatico minore where he talks about 2 “camps”.

The post left out a “camp”. Those who feel women should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies as long as it brings no harm to (and certainly doesn’t kill) another person. The person inside a woman’s uterus is alive. No one has a right to kill it. Even if it is going to be born into a life of poverty and despair, it should not be killed.

I agree that unwanted pregnancy leaves women (and others) with two horrible choices - to raise an unwanted child or to kill it. I have been unable to come up with any justification for the latter (other than self-defense in the case of immediate danger to the woman). I wish I could come up with some justification as I feel like a pariah amongst people whom I would consider “progressive” otherwise.

I am not a Christian, so I can’t address that perspective. As far as adoption, I was in the process of filling out (and paying for) an adoption when our son came unexpectedly (and after a great deal of effort that we had nearly given up on) two years ago. I still hope to adopt at some point.

I agree wholeheartedly on tackling the underlying causes and making the debate, if not moot, at least somewhat less pressing. Unfortunately, our nation (and it seems the entire planet) is lurching to the right and an end to poverty is nowhere in sight.

It’s a shame that so many other rights have been witheld from women (and still are) that those who support women’s rights but oppose abortion are left with not much of a platform upon which to stand.

I think we should have let the south secede when we had the chance. Now they’ve gone and infected Ohio and Indiana, turning them from red states to blue. Had we let them secede when we had the chance, we’d have yet another third world nation we could exploit for cheap labor. Though I doubt we’d be co-opting their music like we do, say, Africa or Latin America. There’s just not enough substance to country music to warrant ripping it off. For an even more lucid version of this meme, see BoingBoing

What I have the hardest time swallowing with the war in Iraq is the idea that we are actually bringing democracy to Iraq. If we were truly bringing democracy, then Iraqis would be free to start a weapons program, elect to wage war on Israel, and drop a nuke on them. Our democracy did just that (on Japan). Is the Bush administration really advocating this? No, they’re not. I think “democracy in Iraq” a Republican code word for “control of oil in Iraq.”