Oops!.. I did it again

Ever get an earworm? You know, those songs that get stuck in your head, sometimes for days? For the longest time Ms. Spears had a strangle hold on my brain. Chili's jingles also often plague me. For the exorcism of these malevolent musical maladies, I usually try to get a more appealing song to force the worm out. Too often though this humming to myself will not work, and I am stuck with it until I can gain access to a more apt aural antidote. The most persistent may require a full dose of Beck's Odelay.

Most of the time though, I don't mind the infestations, as they tend to be songs I enjoy (Mitsubishi commercials usually fall into this category). They can even help when there is no stereo around. Friendly earworms are always welcome on long motorcycle rides.

So what are some of your earworms, and how do you get rid of them?

(cross-poted to ABOHO)

Speaking of book clubs, do remember to complete this (inevitable) Brothers Karamazov Personality Test on your way out.

A blogger named "Slacktivist" has decided to do an exhaustive review of the Left Behind books -- start here and move forward. What's interesting is that Slacktivist is doing this not a book at a time, but a page at a time. Of course, I don't expect him to get all that far into the project.

Has anyone here read these? I haven't, but I've scanned them several times in bookstores, enough to be turned off by the prose and the ragged right-hand margins in the copies I saw.

The people have spoken. Well, the Brits anyways. In April, the Beeb's "Big Read" began the search for the nation's best-loved novel, and we asked citizens to nominate their favourite books. Find the results here and here. Top 21 are here and you can vote if you fake being across the pond.

And is this just an excuse to bump the Collab Book Club discussion up a little bit? You're damn right! So, I Claudius or Brief History of Time?

OK, folks, is Mother Teresa worthy of Sainthood? (Depending, of course, on your level of hostility toward the whole idea of Sainthood in the first place.) Here's a MeFi thread about her.

Time for the ever-popular "Caption This Photo of the President"!

Keeping with the automotive theme, is anyone else here, like myself, a big fan of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers? I love their show, especially the Puzzler and "Stump the Chumps!" Here are some of their classic clips.

Here's an article (a fairly commercial article, but an article nonetheless) about the return of the station wagon. So, what do we all drive, would we drive a station wagon, are minivans really inherently uncool, and what vehicle did we hate the most?

For the Cubs-fans among us: stuff that's happened since their last World Series championship. Wow.

OK, here's a question via Bookslut that I found intriguing. You're on a first date, you go to the person's apartment or home and while they're in the kitchen you glance at their bookshelf. What book's presence on that shelf would make you end the date as quickly as possible, tear up their phone number, and never contact them again?

(Yeah, lots of us here have wives already. Pretend. And if there actually are any women reading this blog still, because we've been so incredibly lax in keeping it up, feel free to answer too. It's not necessarily a "male" question.)

Stolen from MeFi, but an interesting question: What's the biggest mistake of your life so far? Here's how some prominent Brits answered that question.

OK, time for my periodic return to posting here, when I basically go, "Hmmm, I haven't posted to Collaboratory in a while...."

Anyway, there are nine announced Democratic presidential candidates. (Hmmm....nine of 'em....depending on your political allegiance, I guess the Dem Prez hopefuls are either the Fellowship or the Nazgul!) Of the nine, only six apparently have a legit shot at the nomination. (The odd ones out are Kucinich, Sharpton, and Mosley-Braun.) So, for those of you who might lean Democratic, have any of these guys tripped your trigger yet?

Because we all love lists, don't we? The Guardian Observer's list of the 100 Greatest Novels of all time (read about the list here). So, thoughts?

Is here where I fess that I've not read any of the top 16, other than excerpts of Gulliver's Travels? I have read 20 of the overall list though....

One aspect of the American economy that's starting to get a bit more than lip service these days is jobs moving overseas. It's a familiar tale, of course -- we all know about manufacturing companies shutting down factories so they can employ incredibly cheap, non-union labor in another country. But now it's the service jobs, the ones that have been keeping America's economy afloat as manufacturing has declined.

Is there anything that can be done about this? Should anything be done about this?

Put back right good postpones
and you will hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful voyage
which started starting from this tropical port
on board this tiny boat.
The companion was a powerful man of navigation;
the courageous and sure captain.
Five passengers placed the veil this day
for a three hours excursion.
a three hours excursion.

To obtain started in rough weather.
The tiny boat was thrown in the air.
If not for the courage of the courageous crew,
Minnow would be destroyed.
Minnow would be destroyed.

The boat failed on the shore of this
uncharted the island of desert
with Gilligan, the captain, therefore,
the millionaire, and his wife.
The star of cinema,
the professor and Mary Ann
are here on the island of Gilligan.


translation courtesy of Matthew White

TGIF

The Bush administration seems to be following an axiom that guided many of its predecessors: To keep negative headlines to a minimum, release bad news on a Friday.

On a Friday last November, the Environmental Protection Administration said it would relax enforcement of the Clean Air Act so older coal-fired power plants could renovate without having to install anti-pollution equipment.

On a Friday in January, the administration said it would consider removing Clean Water Act protections from up to one-fifth of the nation's streams, ponds, lakes, mudflats and wetlands.

The resignations of Army Secretary Thomas White and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill were announced on Fridays.

Last December, Census officials admitted on a Friday that the 2000 Census undercounted the nation by 3.3 million people.

Busy, busy, busy.

Starbucks Imperialism, the economics of

The ubiquity of American movies, brands and franchises around the world tends to make people draw certain conclusions about America and American power. These range from fanciful myths like "no two nations with McDonalds outlets will ever fight a war" to America as a voracious "cultural imperialist" that is determined to impose its trashy and decadent culture on the rest of the world.

All of these views seek to draw inferences either positive or negative about American cultural "values", either for 'em: they want "our way of life" or their envious of "our way of life" or agin 'em: America and American multi-national corporations are engaged in a war of aggression against "our culture".

There is, however, another interpretation which takes no account of the cultural significance of exporting American "values" and instead looks at the economics of the chains and franchises themselves. Australian economist, John Quiggin blogs that chains require a certain degree of cultural homogeneity in order get established and, to put it simply, the largest and most homogenous market in the world is the United States.

One of the traps for writers on 'soft power' is that, observing the proliferation of McDonalds, Starbucks and so on, they imagine that everyone in the countries they visit is a customer of these enterprises. This is, roughly speaking, true in the US, but the market share for these chains is smaller everywhere else.

I'm really fuzzy as to what exactly this guy's crime was. Are we moving toward prosecuting people for what they think?

(It's a guy who was prosecuted on child-pornography laws for journals he wrote which basically detailed fictional accounts of...well, ugly stuff he thought about.)

Via MeFi: It's Banned Books Week. As always, many of the titles on the Most Challenged 100 Books List are surprising: How To Eat Fried Worms? Well, I recall not liking it in fourth grade, but banning it? Yeesh....anyway, the Judy Blume quote at the top of the page laments books that won't get written because they might end up on this list. Maybe I'm warped, but I'm the type to try to write books that are likely to get on this list.

Anyway, read a challenged book sometime!

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