the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Friday Random Ten
(bigger than any big idea)

The hardest part is
resisting the urge to skip
if bad songs persist.

1. New Test Leper – R.E.M. (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
“’Judge not lest ye be judged’ – what a beautiful refrain”

2. Peace on Earth – U2 (All That You Can’t Leave behind)
“They say that what you mock will surely overtake you,
and you become a monster so the monster will not break you.”

3. Worldwide – Adam Again (Dig)
“Don’t think I’ll ever understand it;
don’t think it matters if I do.”

4. Time Ago – Black Lab (Your Body above Me)
“All by ourselves, riding in the front seat, watch the sun come up.”

5. Good Luck Charm – Vigilantes of Love (Audible Sigh)
“The candles on the inside, they are flickerin’ out
with the things they don’t tell you about.”

6. Texarkana – R.E.M. (Out of Time)
“I would give my life to find it, I would give it all;
catch me if I fall”

7. Kid Gloves – Fountains of Wayne (Out-of-state Plates soundtrack)
“And the road wrapped around me, the long lonely highway,
gulped down by a Greyhound.”

8. Forgotten Years – Midnight Oil (Blue Sky Mining)
“How many dreams remain?
This is a feeling too strong to contain.”

9. Typical Situation – Dave Matthews Band (Under the Table and Dreaming)
“Why are you different? Why are you that way?
If you don’t come around, we’ll lock you away.”

10. Lonesome Johnny Blues – Cracker (Kerosene Hat)
“Trouble dumped out the trash, ransacked the place for cash,
and he wound up taking much more than I own.”

A list of those not listless: Andrea, Ashley, Ben, Ellen, Fred, Matt, Sherri

Favorite: 10 (an easy choice, even though I like many of these songs quite a bit).
Seen live: 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 & 10

Sliding scales

“Consider that success may mean something different to you than it does to others.”

(The above statement was part of a horoscope from the Philadelphia Daily News two weeks ago.)

I’m someone for whom the above quote is apt.

I’ve never really found the rat race all that compelling, never really thrived on chasing down the almighty dollar. I’m more in Emerson’s camp, closer to the belief that if one person has breathed easier because of my presence, then I’ve succeeded. To some degree at least.

Of course, that theory does no justice to the aggravation I may also bring along the way.

And perhaps this is just another way of re-hashing a question I posed a while ago, but I’m kind of interesting in what other people think success means.

Quest for privacy backfires

Apparently Rush Limbaugh is having prescription problems again, this time regarding the possession of a certain performance enhancer not specifically marked for his use. A snippet from the article:

“We believe there may be a second degree misdemeanor violation, which is possession of certain drugs without a prescription, because the bottle does not have his name on it,” Miller said.

A doctor had prescribed the drug, but it was “labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes,” Roy Black, Limbaugh’s attorney, said in a statement.

Privacy, huh – so how’d that work out?

(via Steve Silver, who wonders whether this violates Rush’s plea agreement.)

Fretting over the hen in the foxhouse

Today’s golden quote is actually a couple days old. It comes from Mark Bowden, writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, in Sunday’s paper:

How you feel about the trade-off between press freedom and national security is partly a matter of perception. The staunchest defenders of government power tend to see our leaders as honest, capable and benevolent. Skeptics are more inclined to believe them avaricious, bumbling and concerned primarily with keeping and expanding their own power.

There is truth in both views. Revealing the secret moves of our government sometimes costs us, but it also protects us. When the choice meant more, our Founding Fathers accepted the risks.

[Read more →]

For the southpaws - okay, and the northpaws, too

According to my Left-Hander’s 2006 Calendar, the only notable Southpaw with a birthday this week is Helen Keller (tomorrow). Still, pretty impressive.

On a somewhat related note, to reiterate the question I asked last week, there’s a new poll in the sidebar. Please feel free to participate by selecting the most appropriate response (or making one up).

Someone needs to speak with this guy

Dan Rubin capsulizes sentiment in reaction to the Brett Myers’ domestic violence story quite well. He ends his post with the line I adopted as this post’s title, which is just a small, small part of what Jim Salisbury had to say about it.

Seeing stories like this (and they are in no way rare) always leaves me a little befuddled. Of all the charges that seem rotate on the sports wires in recent years, domestic violence seems to be among the top two or three. And I’m completely aware that enforcement of the relevant laws isn’t exactly ideal even when dealing with Joe Wifebeater down the street, but it seems like in addition to the better lawyering they enjoy, professional athletes suffer nearly no professional consequence as a result of this particular infraction.

And in the limited social conscience of our collective sportsfandom, the stink of what should be a cardinal sin doesn’t seem to stay in our nostrils very long. Some of the biggest stars in the sporting world have had their names mentioned in connection with allegations of spousal abuse. It’s always possible that allegations like these could be false, but let’s imagine, for a minute, that all of them are well-witnessed (as was the case with the events on a Boston street corner involving Mr. and Mrs. Myers).

Does Major League Baseball need to do more? Do sports leagues in general need to be more active in speaking out (in both words and actions) toward domestic violence? Yes on both counts, in my opinion. At the very least, it might be nice to see a program that mandates a paid suspension upon being charged, coupled with the possibility of later losing the accompanying pay as well, should the charges be upheld in court.

But perhaps what’s most jarring is the inability of a professional athlete to process the situation well enough to know how not to respond when being asked whether he was embarrassed by the situation. The response of Brett Myers to this relative softball question: “I’m sorry it had to get public, that’s it. Of course, it’s embarrassing.”

Kind of says it all.

Friday Random Ten
(they don’t compare)

It’s that time again.
Just hit shuffle, let it play
and note the first ten.

1. Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart – Johnny Cash (Live at Folsom Prison)
“In the calendar of your events I’m last week.”

2. Russians – Sting (Dream of the Blue Turtles)
“There is no monopoly of common sense
on either side of the political fence.”

3. Karma Police – Radiohead (OK Computer)
“For a minute there I lost myself.”

4. Scenic Routes – Lost Dogs (Scenic Routes)
“Paint the common things with mystery and renovate our history.”

5. Running Away – Fuel (Natural Selection)
“So I thirst for the water I find myself wanting now.” [Read more →]

Not wanting to be left alone

I got a Left-Handers Calender for Christmas last year which I’ve been using more as the year goes on. It’s a fountain of lefty trivia, with a snippet of southpaw-related info facing each week’s calendar page, as well as notations on each date coinciding with the birthday of a noteworthy lefty. For instance, this week’s birthdays were:

• Lou Gehrig (6/19)
• Nicole Kidman (6/20)
• Prince William of England (6/21)

In contemplating why lefties like me feel compelled to cling to these mostly meaningless bits of data, I can only imagine the tendency might have been born of a sense of persecution.

I’m used to being singled out, even by my own family, for my peculiarity; only my father and I share the trait, and he was essentially forced to write righty as a child (back when schools still frowned on such incarnations of evil). Bless him though, because he continued to nurture his gift while the teachers weren’t looking.

Apparently, there is such a thing as a blog ring for left-handed folks, which I find heartening for some reason. I may have to join now. I’m sure it’s got to do with the compulsive reaction I always have when I first notice someone else using the left hand – almost giddy, really, and I can’t quite rationalize it.

I wrote about the recognition factor previously. I asked readers to tell me if they were lefty, but only two commenters turned up as lefties (well, two commenters and one commenter’s wife). Which is no disrespect, because the two lefty respondents were definitely worthy of the affliction, and both of them made just a little more sense to me once I found out.

Of course, I’ve got a few more readers now, so maybe I should cast the net again – see what I can catch. Anyone else?

Ace in the hole?

Over the past day, news has broken concerning the extinguished hunt for WMD’s in Iraq. Well, it’s news depending on whom you ask, and it concerns WMD’s depending on whom you ask also.

For the curious (and anyone not prone to taking Rick Santorum’s word for much of anything), click here for the declassified content of the report fueling tireless told-you-so’s from the partisan right. (To just view the substance of the declassified portion in JPG format, click here) [Read more →]

Where you’re from

-because tracking software only tells me so much, there’s a poll in the sidebar.

All we need is someone to tell us it’s okay

Omni touches on the Milgram Experiment. I remember seeing a piece on this particular exercise a couple years ago. I found it profoundly scary, even though on some level I was already aware of the phenomenon behind it.

Anyway, for a more detailed thought process on Milgram (as well as other fine examples of the human capacity for unwittingly loathsome behavior), read Omni’s post.

Esther (continued)

Here she is, finally, in all her redness…

Ducks like me

Stopped by the Core Creek Park around lunchtime yesterday, took a walk down to the dock at the Duchess Lane Picnic area, where the ducks were friendlier than even I’m used to (and I have a certain Dr. Doolittle effect on a lot of animals, so that’s pretty friendly). Maybe they expected food; I’m not sure. Whatever spurred their hospitality, it worked out really well because most of the close-up shots I got were done without any zoom whatsoever. I’ll have to take some food next time.

Click on the above photo to see the full-size original on which the glorified thumbnail is based, or click here to view my updated Flickr collection, which includes several other duck photos from yesterday.

Your opinion on the restless tagline

[Read more →]

Love’s austere and lonely offices

As I sneak my Father’s Day post just under the wire this year…

The following is from a Father’s Day meditation I posted two years ago:

My father’s not a loud man, not one to boast, even when he’s right and everyone else is pretty much wrong. In my youth I mistook his humility for weakness, but now I realize that the measured approach he took with life’s little twists and turns is what helped him not turn and run when times were tough. He taught me, among other things, that love requires humility (sometimes even humiliation) and that strength is more often demonstrated through patience than through brute force.

He has always been on the quieter side of things, revealing a sense of manhood that can’t be mimicked with the chest-beating machismo so often mistaken for manliness. Physically, he’s always been a strong man, but his intellectual depth and perspective are what have impressed me most as I’ve grown older, and some might even say, wiser.

Or in the words of Robert Hayden: [Read more →]

Lessons from the seventh row

“I’m thinking of a word that has been knocked up and over-used.
You could say it’s lost all meaning from so much abuse.”
-Over the Rhine

First the girl.

She was eternally sunny, like the summer afternoon I made her acquaintance on a rural hillside. She was driven by passion, but still slightly guarded. She noticed things that other people didn’t, and she wrote them down – she said it was just to remember. As opposed to me. I wrote things down partly to remember, but also to exhaust the mental faucet that ran forever in my head (- if they were the demons, writing them down was a sort of exorcism).

She wove craft bracelets and necklaces, she wore pants referred to as “clam diggers” and she re-animated crinkled straw wrappers with a drop of soda while sitting in the seventh row of any given movie theater.

I thought she was a distraction, but she became a friend. One that would weave in and out of my life for the next half of it. [Read more →]

Friday Random Ten
(in a chest with key)

My list lingers below, but first, some other spinning fools:
Ben, Brian, Coffee Girl, Ellen, Kate, Luna, Marisa, Matthew, Sherri

1. Flies and Blue Skies – King’s X (Dogman)
“There are flies and blue skies,
and the just and the unjust all walk side by side.”

2. Imitation of Life – R.E.M. (In Time: The Best of 1988-2003)
“You are the greatest thing, the greatest thing since bread came sliced.”

3. Best-laid Plans – Guilded Lilies (0)
“I’m running from the voices in my head
that tell me I should run from you instead.”

4. Bothered – Over the Rhine (Ohio)
“Don’t be bothered by your fears;
I’ll try to bottle them like my mother’s perfume.”

5. Rainin’ – Sponge (Rotting Pinata)
“You got what you wished for;
is that what you really wanted?” [Read more →]

Tattered but resurgent

I almost completely forgot to mention that a friend and fellow Philly blogger has finally returned to our midst.

Matt has once again donned The Tattered Coat and stepped back out onto the ledge of the blogosphere with a revamped look.

Welcome back…

Esther

I realize I’m a day late, though I know you won’t remember it well (if at all), but I was glad to hear about your arrival.

Here’s hoping someone sends me a couple pictures in the not-too-distant future…

Societal poison

Unfortunately it seems there’s an atmosphere in this country that condones character attack in lieu of information.
-Gran Kestembaum

I’ve been trying to remember to track down the transcript from Monday’s edition of Larry King Live ever since I half heard the above quote. Gran Kestembaum, for those who are unaware, is a New Jersey woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; she was responding to a question about Ann Coulter’s now infamous (as most Ann Coulter screeds are destined to become) remarks about certain 9/11 widows.

Kestembaum wasn’t among Coulter’s specific target group, but her thoughts on the issue were impressively measured, and might I add, exactly in line with my thoughts on the matter.

I’ve not been especially interested in writing about Coulter’s latest PR campaign, mostly because I believe her to be a societal gnat, albeit one with a very loud megaphone. But she’s also a prime example of what may be most at fault for the large-scale societal disenchantment with political discourse. (But don’t get wrapped up in thinking I only blame conservative gnats – there’s enough examples of useless invective to go around.)

What I really mean to say is though I really like that lead-in quote from Mrs. Kestembaum, I profoundly regret the truth in her statement.