Skatallica.

After getting Verve Pipe's "Freshman" and Train's "Drops of Jupiter" stuck in my head over the past two days, I decided I needed to bleed out the rash of loops that has plagued me lately. And the best way I know of to do that is to listen to Skatallica's debut, self-titled album.

Skatallica was not, as the name might suggest, a cover band that uses horns and downbeat to mutate (or mutilate) Metallica. Although Metallica is, to the best of my knowledge, from where Skatallica's name originated.

Don't get me wrong: Skatallica was a ska band, based out of Flemington, New Jersey and the surrounding municipalities that comprised the Hunterdon Central Regional High School district. The players numbered, I believe, seven. And were students at the aforementioned high school. They had several songs and played a few shows at a local "restaurant" called King Buffet. I attended most.

Skatallica cut one album. It was short (about 20 minutes) and had, roughly, eight songs. Including an authorized cover of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl." And one about an Italian ice franchise setting up shop in town. It was well made, given its humble origins.

The thing is...this album has some very catchy tunes, after a fashion. Catchy enough to drown out other catchy songs that might dwell on your cerebral cortex for days. But not so catchy as to actually become lodged there themselves. Useful.

I searched for any reference to Skatallica elsewhere on the Internet, but could not find a trace that the band ever existed. Which means, well-meaning though I am, I cannot point you toward a purveyor of goods that would have a copy of the above-referenced album for sale. I suppose I could post the songs I have--I do have a copy of the album from those heady days before the turn of the millennium when ska was king--but I would imagine some kind of copyright infringement lawsuit would result. Not from the band members, mind you. They would almost certainly be more pleased at seeing their name in "print" than they would be litigious. Rather, I suspect Van Morrison's high-priced attorneys would haul me into court before I could hit "Publish Post." Maybe if you ask me nicely, I'll send you a taste...

Two new stories.

US Treasury To Remove "In God We Trust" from Currency, Replace with "In Blank We Trust"

and

English Professor Gives Up, Admits "They" Acceptable Third-Person Singular Pronoun.

Still more songs in my head.

"Honey Pie," from The White Album.

"Dope Nose," from Maladroit.

New story.

Baskin Dunkin Wins Togo Presidency.

Gay marriage.

The debate over gay marriage is, at its core, a debate over the purpose of marriage. If you find marriage as a social construct designed to further the breeding process, of course you'll object to gay marriage. And sterile marriage. And marriage involving persons who were exposed to substances that may reasonably lead to birth defects. And post-menopausal marriage. Sure, I'm all for clarifying that "marriage" means "breeding factory." That is, I'm all for stripping my grandparents of their half-century old marriage license.

Of course, if you're all for classifying "marriage" as "love factory," I'm not sure I see what the problem with two guys getting hitched is...

Teflon-coated toilets.

After scrubbing shit from the sides of my low-flow bowl for the umpteenth time, I'm given to wonder why the crapper industry has yet to market a Teflon-coated toilet. I mean, we eat off Teflon, so it can't be something about Teflon and the water supply. And we already have steel toilets as an option, so it cannot be the Teflon-ceramic interaction that is holding them back. Why?

I did stumble across Halfbakery's treatment of the very same idea (after thinking it up independently). And could not find any downsides. And apparently the toilet cleaner industry has caught on. So what's up American Standard, et al.? Too busy trying to figure out how to flush golf balls to ponder the sticky factor?

Red Lake vs. Columbine.

Some people have suggested that the fact that the media didn't make that big a deal out of Red Lake illustrated its racism. [For those of you who weren't paying attention: a few months ago, this small reservation town in Minnesota was the site of some grisly images. This Neo-Nazi Native American 16-yr-old gunned down ten people at school, including himself.] And that may be partially true. But I think there were two factors that played more of a role in the muted coverage: 1) nothing new had happened, and 2) the media recognized it had over-reacted with Columbine.

Red Lake's problem is that it was old hat. The first few bodies that came back from Iraq got quite a bit of media attention; the bodies that came back last week didn't. Was it because the first bodies were racially superior to the second bodies? Not likely. In 1991, when the AIDS frenzy really got going in the United States, there were about 60,000 people diagnosed and 37,000 killed. Last year, after the focus of the AIDS epidemic has shifted to the third world (and therefore out of mind), there were roughly 43,000 new cases diagnosed and over 18,000 deaths. Was the 2004 lack of media attention because of racism? Oh wait. Maybe it was. Bad example.

Anyway. If Jeff Weise had opened fire on his classmates in 1998, there would have been quite a bit more coverage.

Red Lake's other problem is that the media's reaction to Columbine was an aberration. The story simply did not warrant the around-the-clock coverage it received. Teenagers shoot each other pretty often; about the only reason this should have had national coverage was there wasn't an identifiable, adult reason for Harris and Klebold's actions (as opposed to if they had shot up the school in a drug debt enforcement gone awry). So Red Lake's coverage looks paltry in part because it is being compared to an absurd circus.

Bad Education.

Just got finished watching Almodóvar's latest, Bad Education. And I was quite impressed. In many ways, it resembled his earlier work. But its story arc was a bit more Hitchcockian. As was the music. But at the very end, just before the credits, he gives us three "what happened to the characters next" panels. Which is one of the most hokey mechanisms in cinema. Why, Pedro? Why?

IMDb, 2004 (Redux).

A few months ago, I decided to see what films were ranked by IMDb voters as the top ten. I decided just now to rerun that search. The list is as follows:

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
   
2. Hotel Rwanda
   
3. Before Sunset
   
4. Downfall
   
5. The Sea Inside
   
6. Million Dollar Baby
   
7. The Incredibles
   
8. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
   
9. Finding Neverland
   
10. Head-On
    

This differs from the old list in that Hotel Rwanda, Downfall, Sea Inside, Million Dollar Baby, and Head-On all jumped into the list; and Garden State, Ray, Motorcycle Diaries, Spider-Man 2, and Shaun of the Dead were all dumped. It's funny. I've now seen the entire list from December, but have not seen any of the newcomers. Soon enough, I suppose. They're all in my Netflix queue at any rate.

More songs in my head.

"One Day I'll Fly Away," from the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack.

"Hackensack," from Welcome Interstate Managers.

Some thoughts on abortion.

1) Why do some pro-lifers want to show pregnant women pictures of aborted fetuses? Sure, it would scare some off. But in the same way showing a heart disease sufferer pictures of open-heart surgery will queer her off getting that quadruple bypass. We get it: you think "abortion" is just another word for "baby killing." You aren't adding anything to the discussion by pointing out fingers and toes. If a baby has its fingers and toes chopped off, it doesn't suddenly become a non-person without rights; so adding fingers and toes to a parasite doesn't suddenly mean we've got a baby on our hands. Anyway, if we're gonna be honest about the scare tactics, why not show the baby delivery video along with the abortion video? Because we might get a rash of suicides among the pregnant and a sharp decrease in unprotected sexual encounters. Yeah, right.

2) I understand some of the exceptions recognized by some in the anti-abortion community. The rape exception and health-of-the-mother exception work for me. See Judith Thomson's Defense of Abortion if you aren't on board. [You may not be convinced, but at least you'll see there are rational arguments to be made.] But why would one recognize an "incest" exception? If we're talking about some form of coerced sexual encounter (e.g. Uncle Ernie and his twelve-year-old niece), I'm on board, but I'd put it in the "rape" category. If we're talking about mutations, I might see it, but I'd put that in the "health of the fetus" exception (not as widely recognized, but arguably consistent with the general pro-life stance). But otherwise, I have no idea what principle is being proffered. Could someone explain to me why a consenting adult female should not generally be permitted to seek an abortion, but should be permitted if the father is her consenting adult brother?

3) Many lifers use the phrase, "life begins at conception." Who cares when life begins? Chickens are alive. Do we give them the legal right to avoid having their heads chopped off as a result? The question is: when does personhood begin?

4) Many choicers want the right to abort to be absolute, right up to the minute before delivery. This is a particularly horrifying concept to lifers, and causes a lot of bad blood between the camps. Because if you pulled the damned thing out a little quicker, you've clearly got a baby on your hands. It convinces the lifers of their righteousness, and lends them support from the fence-sitters.

5) The cost-benefit analysis argument put forward by certain choicers (i.e. if we banned abortions, more back-alley abortions would occur, harming many women) does not really add anything valuable to the conversation. Lifers stand on principle, and you're handing them policy. It would be akin to arguing we should add an exception to the rape statute for married persons--an exception that exists in some places--because it would decrease the physical harm resulting from intra-marital assaults. [Basically, husbands would do less harm physically by beating their wives if they could get a little more action. Can you really show me this is not true?] To those who oppose rape on grounds other than its status as a type of assault--to those who stand on principle that there is something different and more heinous about rape--this benefit in terms of decrease in bodily injury to spouses is misguided, to say the least. Unless it gets to extreme levels (say, 20% of females will die every year if abortion is rendered illegal), no one who opposes abortion on the basis that there is something in a woman's uterus that is a rights-bearing individual will be at all swayed. So just stop it.

Can someone explain...

why I had to instruct Microsoft Word on the use of "fucktastic" as an adjective, but not as an exclamation?

Another story.

Tiger, Woods Assault Elin Nordegren.

New story.

Philadelphia Beckons Black Hats, Indigent Computer Owners.

Flat tax.

I seem to remember Steve Forbes and others suggesting a flat tax several years ago. I'm sure most proponents have ulterior motives (e.g. it would lower their tax rate), but the proposal's cleanliness and simplicity are appealing. While I think my proposal would have a graduated rate (see e.g. rate = 20*arctan(income - $15,000)), rather than a flat rate (see e.g. rate = .3), I would be in favor of doing away with those messy deductions and exemptions and whatnot (so that everyone within a particular income level pays the same amount of tax as everyone else, and the childless renter doesn't get hosed; and so that clever accountants will be forced to find new, more productive careers).

But then I started thinking about it, and remembered our Constitution might actually have something to say about this. In our First Amendment, we have a little thing called the Free Exercise Clause, which forbids Congress (and through the Fourteenth Amendment, the States...well, not really, because the Supreme Court screwed up many years ago by neutering the Privileges or Immunities Clause, thereby necessitating the strained and silly practice of incorporating piecemeal the rights contained in the Bill of Rights through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses...but that is a discussion for another post) from passing laws that "respect" the free exercise of religion. And I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that taxing an individual's contributions to a religious charity "respects" her "free exercise." Which may mean that the Constitutional mandates deductions for charitable contributions to religious institutions. But then we run into the problem of consistency; why is a donation to a Catholic feed-the-hungry organization not taxed, but a donation to a secular feed-the-hungry organization is? So we'd create more deductions. Also, we'd likely have to stop taxing the income of priests. And churches themselves. And we'd get people demanding their non-profit is every bit as good for the community as that church, and demand similar treatment under the tax code. And I think we'd end up, within a few years, precisely where we are: with a complicated tax code.

So in the end, I'm not sure the benefits of a "flat tax" style simplification revolution is a truly viable goal. Instead, maybe we should be focusing our efforts on a Constitutionally achievable goal: dismantling the military.

Santayana's famous quote.

George Santayana is said to have written, "Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes." This quote has been analyzed and mistranscribed to death. And its point is valid.

But, like another incomplete famous phrase, "Ignorance is bliss," (which ought to read "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise"), Santayana's quote is incomplete. The full Santayana quote, like the full Gray quote, appears on its face to have a very different meaning than is usually thought. Santayana actually wrote:

"Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes. But those who remember their past too closely are condemned to relive them."

Which seems to imply a certain level of distance from one's past is healthy. The charge may be described as "the past is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." Or something.

New story.

Congress Requires Hackers to Label Viruses.

The songs in my head.

Sometime yesterday evening, "Meet James Ensor," a song by They Might Be Giants, entered my head on loop and would not leave. Blessed or cursed? Who can tell.

Which reminded me I still have to kick Rivers Cuomo's ass for writing "Susanne," "Jamie," and "O Lisa," all of which have made my partner question my loyalty at one time or another. [Incidentally, if you'd like to listen to Weezer b-sides, aborted projects, bootlegs, and early song versions, check out weezernation.]

Icarus.

moe., the excellent troubadours from New York, have a song called "Plane Crash" which analogizes air travel with drug use. When one overdoes it, one is "too fucking high."

Which got me to thinking about Icarus, the child of Greek mythology. As the myth goes, Icarus was imprisoned on Crete by Minos. In an attempt to safely escape, Icarus attempted flight. His wings were created with string, feathers, and wax. His father Daedalus told him not to fly too low, lest the feathers sop up too much seawater, and not to fly too high, lest the wax melt. [Aside: is it not interesting that Greeks thought higher altitudes would yield higher temperatures?] Which is usually considered a cautionary tale of hubris.

But after comparing to "Plane Crash," is it not a possible alternate reading of the myth to think of Icarus' flight as a cautionary tale of substance abuse? That Daedalus was instructing his child in his first encounter with, say, opium? Under this reading, Daedalus was considering a life with too little opium hardly worthwhile (cold, wet, salty, and filled with fish; life will drag you to your grave earlier with too few little pick-me-ups), but a life with too much could lead to death (by being "too fucking high": overdosing). When taken in context, this reading seems unlikely; but if modernity has taught me anything, it is to coopt the stories of our ancestors to achieve questionable conclusions. And, it must be noted, this reading is not that ridiculous. After all, the baseline "hubris" reading cautions both against excess and insufficient pride; the "too fucking high" reading cautions both against excess and insufficient pleasure.

So next time someone asks you how Icarus died, reply, "he was too fucking high."

Monkey Throw Feces.

In other news, Monkey Throw Feces has topped 3000 downloads on Download.com. Currently, MTF is number 12 in overall comedy downloads, but it looks as if Sunshine Kitty Experience is about to overtake. And I cannot imagine Patton Oswalt staying beneath for too long either. Oh well.

Narnia.

I recently started rereading the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis' sprawling set of "children's" novels soon to hit the big screen. I was first exposed when my father read them aloud when I was very young; I seem to remember reading them myself repeatedly until shortly after puberty.

I remembered the blatant and moderately unwelcome religious overtones. But, given the author's pedigree, I was never all that surprised. But having just launched into The Horse and His Boy--either the fifth or third book in the series, depending how you count--I was surprised to note the not-terribly-subtle racism that oozes from the text. It just reminded me that not too long ago it was perfectly acceptable to put pale skin hierarchically above dark skin.

New story.

Pope Delays Death By Day to Encourage Hoaxless News Coverage.