There's something profoundly toxic about political reporting, and this is clearly part of it.
I'm with Bunny, Roomba costumes are better than cat ones, since roombas don't feel chafed, confined, choked or humiliated.
Please, cats prize their dignity.
I never liked "The Internationale" that much, but I have a soft spot for "The Workers' Flag." Besides, it's set to the same tune as "O Tannenbaum", which is a corker.
I learned those two songs, plus a really scurrilous parody of "Onward Christian Soldiers", from my great-uncle's IWW Songbook, a cherished family heirloom.
I'd like to go to a ball game and hear "The Star Spangled Banner" sung at a normal speed, not slowed down to an impossible drone, preferably sung by one or more good clear voices -- a barbershop quartet, maybe.
I also know the words for "To Anachreon in Heaven". Pretty obscure if you don't know your classics, but funny if you do.
One of these days, this country will be invaded for real, like by an army, and then we'll all be singing the often-suppressed third verse ("No refuge could save / the hireling and slave / from the terror of flight / and the chill of the grave!"
As for "Ode to Joy" (actually, I prefer the earlier title "Ode to Freedom"), Tennyson's poem "Locksley Hall" sounds very nice sung to it: "'Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer / And the battle-flags were furled / In the Parliament of Man / The Federation of the World".
James, if General Pace had contradicted REMFsfeld back when General Shinseki piped up, he'd have gotten the same kind of bum's rush from the same bunch of bums. Now, though, I really do believe that the tide has turned against the regime.
Serge, prohibiting domestic violence hasn't ended it, but prohibiting murder didn't end that, either.
J Thomas, those black students inside the bus were not the ones making it tip over. OTOH, I loved Katherine MacLean's _The Missing Man_, especially her invocation of my favorite statistic, Gross National Value.
Jo, destroying public schools to keep the black kids from going to decent schools withthe white kids is called cutting off your nose to spite your face. It happens.
Michael Turyn, so far as I know, Peter Lorre never did sing "My Old Flame", but I understand that Boris Karloff once went on American Bandstand and sang "The Monster Mash", which Bobby Pickett, of course, had recorded in a "Boris Karloff impression" voice.
There's an interesting sort of irony beyond postmodernism in such a performance. I'd like to hear it sometime.
-- John M. Burt (no relation)
No, the Bush Administration-Style Response would be more like:
1) Ignore it until it becomes a problem.
2) Lie about it until it becomes a crisis.
3) Contract out the actual response to a Halliburton subsidiary.
4) Attack the patriotism of anyone who asks what happened to all that money, and why isn't the vaccine available yet.
5) Invade somewhere. Anywhere. Just so long as it has nothing to do with the problem.
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| 2005 | 3 |
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