Cheaper than cheap
And since some people who click over here like free music stuff, there’s a free Cheap Trick show going on this weekend over at the doomed Willow Grove base.
the smedley log - suburban scrawl
Friday Random Ten XIX
(words that scream for your submission)
I wasn’t going to deviate from the usual random routine, but I was listening and realized that some of this week’s selections have really quotable lines. So now I’m stealing from Bob and pairing each song with a quote that occurs in the lyrics. Everybody spin now. (like Heliologue, Mark, Bob, Matt, Fred, Kim and Luna)
1. De do do do, de da da da – The Police (Every Breath You Take – the Singles)
“Words are hard to find.
They’re only cheques I’ve left unsigned
from the banks of chaos in my mind.”
2. Jesus in New Orleans – Over the Rhine (Ohio)
“…no matter just how bad it gets
it does no good to blame somebody else.”
3. Nanci – Toad the Wet Sprocket (Dulcinea)
“I can’t believe you. You bend your words like Uri Geller’s spoons.”
4. Rockville – R.E.M. (Eponymous)
“It’s not as though I really need you; if you were here, I’d only leave you.”
5. Gone to the Movies – Semisonic (Feeling Strangely Fine)
“Any other fool would be out on the roadway trying to spot her rusted pontiac.
She’s gone to the movies now and she’s not coming back.”
6. Valley of the Malls – Fountains of Wayne (Utopia Parkway)
“God forgive the passengers if we should fail
to find a penny fountain or a half-off sale.”
7. Running to Stand Still – U2 (The Joshua Tree)
“You got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice…”
8. All This Time – Sting (The Soul Cages)
“Men go crazy in congregations; they only get better one by one.”
9. White, Discussion – Live (Throwing Copper)
“and as the decibels of this disenchanting discourse continue to dampen the day,
the coin flips again and again, and again, and again as our sanity walks away…”
10. Resplendent – Vigilantes of Love (Audible Sigh)
“In desperate times you know everybody’s part, but it’s your own lines you’d like to forget-
-’til what you were meets what you’ve now become, grins and says ‘hey, haven’t we met?’”
And in a slight show of deference to Becky, here’s an actual song (not randomly chosen) that you can listen to (the OTR site actually has several free mp3’s available): Moth
Oh, the comedy
Matt unearths this instant classic of movie advertising, that, without re-scripting a single line, casts a classic piece of terror in a new light.
Proving once again, the shortest distance between two genres is “Solsbury Hill.”
Local blogger rocks the capital
AlexC from Pstupidonymous posts about his experience at the Harrisburg “Rock the Capital” rally yesterday. Apparently he caught a ride to Harrisburg with Libertarian state house candidate James Babb and former Libertarian Candidate for President (currently a Libertarian Candidate for Congress) Mike Badnarik.
He’s posted a couple photos to accompany his impressions of the event. I especially like the text on the T-shirt he picked up while there:
Help Wanted
Part Time Jobs
Salary Plus unbelievable benefits
$81,050 – $145,553
If you’re from Pennsylvania and you’ve been paying attention, you’ll get the joke, but you may not be laughing. Click here to read AlexC’s post.
Documenting the peace rally
Two members of my local blogosphere, Matt and Albert, attended the March for Peace in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, and were kind enough to provide documentation (including pictures).
Fruitless search terms: Styer Orchard, etc.
I was shuffling through recent keywords used to land on thesmedleylog.com over the past couple weeks, and I noticed that 29 out of the first 100 on the list were references to some variation of Styer Orchard (or Styer’s, or Styers Orchard, etc.), or otherwise referred to apple cider doughnuts.
I have written about both on this site, but due to the unfriendly search layout of my old blogging format (parts of April, 2005, and prior), I sense that people have lost patience with finding their terms. So I’m here to help.
[Read more →]
The frozen spoils
A work colleague of mine mentioned last night that she’s going to watch her son’s soccer game today; a tidbit that seemed to arise mostly because she was fretting that she hadn’t yet found him a pair of socks to hold up his shin guards.
Ah, youth soccer… the memories come flooding back to me. I was eight years old when I attended my first organized soccer practice. It was an in-house league; all the games were played out behind Walter Miller Elementary School, and I was #7 on a team sponsored by Gus’ 7-Eleven. Gus was our coach, and his 7-Eleven franchise was located less than a quarter mile up the road (it’s since been made into a commercial duplex of sorts, split right up the middle, hosting both a news dealer and a check cashing joint). After games, he’d often treat the whole team to Slurpee’s.
Those were the days.
[Read more →]
Friday Random Ten XVIII
(drugs to help you see God)
Time for this week’s installment, and since I am pressed, I wrote down the songs while listening and have just gotten around to posting this. No time to link to each artist, as I’ve been trying to do, but I did remember a few friends: Bob, Fred, Heliologue, Josh, Kim, Luna, Marisa, Mark and Matt.
The list:
1. Amity Gardens – Fountains of Wayne (Utopia Parkway)
2. Song 2 – Blur (Blur)
3. Vertigo – U2 (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb)
4. Overcome – Live (V)
5. Let Me Know – Bonehead (5-track EP)
6. Most of All – Fuel (Natural Selection)
7. Why is the Devil Red – Lost Dogs (Scenic Routes)
8. My Cherie Amour – Stevie Wonder (The Definitive Collection)
9. #34 – Dave Matthews Band (Under the Table and Dreaming)
10. I Will Never Be Normal (After This) – Bill Mallonee (Dear Life)
Disclosures:
- Now that’s just creepy: Song 2 coming in at 2
- Most impossible song to pull a quote from: 9
- How about two angry/conflicted breakup songs right in a row: 5 & 6
- A good week for artists I’ve seen live: everyone except 2 and 8
A look at the man behind the broom
My post on the PA Clean Sweep event I attended last week, complete with some input from Clean Sweep founder Russ Diamond, is now up at Philly Future.
Why I love terrorists
or it is no virtue at all.”
-G. K. Chesterton
(This post has been brewing inside my head ever since I read Funky Dung’s post about the 9/11 Mass last week.)
I’ve heard people ask others on occasion, “Why do you love terrorists?” Granted, it’s usually more of an accusation than an honest query, and even if it were a genuine question, it’s never been directed my way. Still, over the past few days I’ve realized that claiming to love such loathsome individuals shouldn’t really seem that crazy to many Americans. So I decided to answer it, because, well, I do love terrorists.
When I’m at my best, I love all sorts of evil people. I’m not ashamed to say so. I’m only ashamed of those times when I let my anger get in the way of what I believe. And why? Because of the words I’ve heard since I was a small child: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you.” (-Matthew 5:44)
I know it’s not a popular sentiment, and it’s not one that comes easily to me either. But in falling back on everything I’ve been taught since my earliest days in Sunday school, I realize it’s the right sentiment for anyone who follows Christian teachings. According to those words, I’m supposed to love everyone, terrorists included.
Her sister didn’t work and had never married.
What’s that title about? Actually, it’s the result of the following low-effort meme from Bob’s blog:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
Bob thought it would be cooler if he didn’t tell you which book he found his sentence in, but I wanted to reveal the book I found mine in, only because I’ve enjoyed so much of it. It’s a book I received for Christmas last year called, The Best American Essays 2004.
Oddly enough, since I’ve been reading it intermittently (which is made so much easier by the anthological nature of the book), this is the first time I’ve seen page 123, much less been aware of even one sentence on the page. But maybe now I’ll read that particular essay.
Exercising good judgment in sports
On the tail end of a weekend where I watched the Phillies score ten in the ninth (for the first time in well over a century) and the Eagles trot out a linebacker to kick a point-after, I needed something more level-headed to anchor my understanding of the sports world.
Reading this handy interpretation of baseball’s mystical infield-fly rule (as Judge Roberts might explain it) may have done the trick. (Via Suburban Guerrilla)
Talk about a good market forecast
Via A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, I found a strange instance of life imitating parody. It starts with this news mention of the latest shaving option from Gillette. Makes me think maybe the folks at Gillette are stealing marketing ideas from The Onion.
Seriously, I gave up on the blade proliferation movement right around, let’s see, two. For me, even that seemed just a little obsessive. But then again, I’m also a former Dorito fanatic who still longs for something a little short of Nacho Cheesier. Really, simple nacho cheese was good enough for me.
And so was one blade… so why is our society such a sucker for “more”? It doesn’t actually have to be higher quality, just so long as there’s more of whatever it was we were getting before. I’ve never really understood it, though.
Friday Random Ten XVII
(hold me now — I feel contagious)
Time for Friday Random Ten—A sampling of fellow random ten-ers to be enclosed in parentheses following this sentence. (Feministe, Heliologue, Bob, Matt, Fred, Mark and Kim)
1. We Do What We Can Do – Sheryl Crow (Tuesday Night Music Club)
2. You – Marvin Gaye (The Very Best of Marvin Gaye)
3. Hackensack – Fountains of Wayne (Welcome Interstate Managers)
4. Invasion Hit Parade – Elvis Costello (Mighty Like a Rose)
5. Red Light – U2 (War)
6. Fairpoint Diary – Over the Rhine (Films for Radio)
7. Cheatin’ – Gin Blossoms (New Miserable Experience)
8. Wash It Away – Black Lab (Your Body Above Me)
9 Hemorrhage (In My Hands)/Acoustic – Fuel (Something Like Human/Enhanced Version)
10. No Surprises – Radiohead (OK Computer)
Disclosures:
- Best faux country & western stylings: 7 (I always seem to enjoy country-like songs, even as regular country music bores me to tears)
- Song that reminds me of no one I went to school with: 3
- Artist whose website clued me in that Elton John still has good taste in music: 3 (story here)
- Artists I’ve seen in person: 3, 5, 6,7 & 9
Dreaming of the sea
a steady gaze upon the door
like she’s forgotten what they use it forI try to ask, but she’ll rebuke:
“You’re not from here, you’ll never get the view”spending lifetimes afraid to flee
the self-made confines, dreaming of the seaI had the thought, just like the rest
inside a moment far short of my besttoo human not to tell her so
and deal in theory past the things we knowbut consequence is far more real
than mere advisers ever have to feelI should’ve listened, should’ve seen;
I should’ve let her linger in the dream.
I scribbled this one down last night, sort of stream of conscious, though, so don’t beat yourself (or me) up if it doesn’t make sense.
– just a little off-the-cuff material for someone I hardly know, another person I know well, and someone else I’m sure I should’ve known better.
PA Clean Sweep getting together in Bucks
As I mentioned over at Philly Future, there will be a meeting tomorrow hosted by the Bucks County chapter of PA Clean Sweep. It will all begin around 7 pm, and will be held at the Blue Fountain Diner in Langhorne.
Sounds like a great chance to learn more about Operation Clean Sweep. Read the Philly Future post for a little more detail.
Farmland drive-by
(Click for larger image)
I took this photo the other evening as I was driving home. It’s a field up near Wrightstown, PA. It looked stunning in the fading light (around 7:30 at night). With my limited photographic acumen, I guess hoping for its depth to transfer to a digital image was a little unrealistic, but I think it still came out well. It reminded me of a poem I read a long time ago in a college literary review.
The poem was called “The Land.” I wish I had a copy of it handy now, though I’m not sure it would be right to post it. The poem lamented the transformation of land in most people’s minds, from something that had intrinsic value to something that existed to be owned and developed. At least I think that’s what it was about.
How a chief executive should respond
I won’t suggest that the federal response to Katrina is the only problem to be addressed, nor will I say the simple gesture of accepting responsibility makes full amends for the failures that have gone before.
A simple truth is that when you are the chief executive of anything, you need to have the strength to accept the responsibility for what happens on your watch. Whether you lead a huge corporation or the world’s most powerful nation, the buck has to stop somewhere. With executive privilege comes executive responsibility, and I’m relieved to see that the President seems to realize this.
Which isn’t to say that this closes the door on more political squabbling concerning to what extent the federal government failed…
Those arrogant bloggers…
I read an Accidental Taorist post, apparently inspired by this Tomorrow Could Be Boring post. They each address the idea of bloggers as arrogant beasts of the web.
I wanted to absolve myself of this charge, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. I realized that anyone who’d think themselves so vital to the public interest that they’d even bother to air their opinions publicly has to have a bit of self-importance flowing through their synapses (or wherever it is that the self-importance would happen to flow). For that matter, anyone who happens to have an opinion they feel the need to share, whether online or off, also must have a little bit of arrogance to them. But maybe that’s a curse of democracy. You tell everyone their voice matters, and sometimes they actually believe you.
Just a thought.
