I was looking for a good video for this song and came across this incredibly over-the-top panegyric. Glad to see overblown music criticism is still alive and well in the UK.
In other open thread fodder, I got my Balloon Juice Pet Calendar. Goddam do you people have a lot of cats and dogs.
El Cid
Someone else who equates Fox News with MSNBC: Senator Jay Rockefeller (D):
pablo
Fight the Power!
What we need is a Prop. 4!
am I Loko?
JPL
Rockefeller is just trying to be fair and balanced. Yadda, yadda, yadda.. both sides do it. Fox news is a propaganda machine and they fought for their right to spew lies in a courtroom and they won.
Laura W.
The equine, bullfrog, ferret, and farm animal demographics were grossly underrepresented, weren’t they? I thought we’d have more avians as well. Not to mention that my Lard Ass (who is the Tunch of the Comet Goldfish kingdom) was the only fish? She can be admired in Jan. and April. At least the Lapins turned out in good numbers.
Thanks for the pimp, and the purchase, MM!
Just Some Fuckhead
@El Cid: Yep, it’s all the fault of the right and the “left”. They are just fucking everything up for the sensible middle that prefers an unchallenged rightwing narrative.
debit
@Laura W.: You’re lucky I didn’t send in pictures of my bike, which I love almost as much as my pets.
Rosalita
and our collective menagerie made for a great calendar! I was pleased to see my Bitsy (RIP) immortalized (Feb).
JPL
Kristof has an excellent column in the NYTimes on our Hedge Fund Republic link
Laura W.
@debit: It would not have been the only bike. Did you see the one in Dec. keeping the dog company in what looks to be the garage? A professional photographer Juicer sent that in. It’s gorgeous at full size.
Oh look! It’s directly underneath Fuckhead’s new kitten squatting in Max the dog’s water dish!
(Glad you were tickled by the bonus Oliver shot. When I saw that in a thread, how on earth could that not be included?)
TheMightyTrowel
You know what else is alive and well in the UK? Tory asshats. Not only did the Tories appoint known bigot Theresa May minister for equalities and women, they sitting smugly by as she guts the equalities act under the broad heading of ‘sort your own problems out’ and ‘f*ck the poor’. MFing tories.
JPL
@Laura W.: I haven’t ordered my calendar yet, but will do so soon. Moxie is terrified of cameras. I’ve been trying to take pretend pictures and rewarding her with treats but to no avail. Any ideas?
mistermix
@Laura W.: That is a great shot.
Don’t miss the October sheep, keeping company with two cats whose eyes look like green balloons in the lower left.
p.a.
more of this.
Amir_Khalid
Just got back from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. IT IS NOT TO BE MISSED. Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince both sacrificed a little too much of the story’s richness in order to accommodate the main plot, but this one has everything that needs to be there.
Plus, it’s a reminder that even when the Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry for now, all is not yet lost.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
For some reason, this cracks me up. The William Hung of American politics thinks delusional, untalented people should be forced to face hard truths about their lack of fitness for the careers to which they aspire
Laura W.
@JPL: Well that explains why there were no Moxie submissions. I wondered about that often. As to why Charlie is MIA, I hope Stuck has a good excuse.
@mistermix: How about the sheep up to its neck in snow in Sept? Have to give a shout to the lone snake, right under the horse, in the bottom center of March. One man sent in a photo of a dog, cat and a MASSIVE iguana (I think?) all sitting on the carpet together but it was too blurry to use. Truly a one-of-a-kind, interspecies caucus.
Tom
I love My Maudlin Career… took a while to warm to it, but it was a deeply rewarding wait.
Origuy
There is an article in the latest Archaeology magazine about the Veterans Curation Project.
The Corps of Engineers has thousands of boxes of archaeological material from years of excavation on their projects. The VCP is employing veterans, many with PTSD, to record and catalog this material.
Oh, and it’s funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
TheMightyTrowel
@Origuy: That’s a great article! Thanks for posting! I’m going to add it to my weekly archaeology/old things round up tomorrow!
Amir_Khalid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Simon Cowell, an upholder of the highest standards? The same Simon Cowell who reckons he’s more significant for Sony Music than Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, because of his “stars” whose hits will be forgotten before the decade is out?
Cowell doesn’t give a damn about good music, he only cares about what he thinks will sell. He would be just another A&R guy if he hadn’t hit on the notion of crowdsourcing the talent-spotting part of his job. In his own way, he’s a kind of grifter too. I suppose that makes him Sarah Palin’s ideal judge of standards.
I will give William Hung credit for this: at least he was aware that a complete lack of ability was the basis of his brief celebrity. Sarah lacks that self-awareness.
MobiusKlein
If John actually got to San Francisco, he could have visited a REAL camera obsucra –here
The videos you can find of it on youtube don’t do it justice.
Chasseur
camera obscura is really fantastic though. my maudlin career is basically a great pop country album.
DFH no.6
Camera Obscura was one of the highlights for me at Coachella this year. Enjoyed every song, and the friendly crowd of stoned kids (mostly) in the tent seemed to be of the same mind.
Just a fun, sing-alongable pop band in the classic sense (and I’m also a sucker for any and all Anglo-accented female singers, from Dusty Springfield to Lily Allen and M.I.A.).
They made up for the disappointingly lousy sets by Florence and the Machine and Grizzly Bear (both of which seemed plagued by sound system problems) as well as Corinne Bailey Rae’s, which was just wrong for that festival (she needs a smaller, more intimate venue).
DFH no.6
And fuck politics for now – after nearly 60 years on the planet, many hundreds of hours canvassing for candidates, and many (too many) thousands of dollars donated, I find myself pretty far these days from even cautious optimism, to say nothing of idealism, and I don’t want to move all the way to outright cynicism.
Should have taken the blue pill, I suppose. Not individually, but collectively, Americans richly deserve what we are getting from our masters.
Music and pets, kissing my girl, playing catch with my (now grown) son in the warm sunshine, fruit (grapefruit, for me) right off the tree and good one-hit weed. Fuck politics for now. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
shortstop
Best compliment I’m likely to get all week. It made me smile.
snds4x4
I sent in the picture of my pet Southern Flying Squirrel, betcha it’s not on the calendar.
pseudonymous in nc
Paul Morley. Obviously.