saturn return to sender

The only time I actually appreciated those little music players on peoples’ myspace pages (I usually instantly turn them off) was a few months ago when someone had Lily Allen loaded. I was kinda charmed, went to her myspace page. She’s bouncy and eclectic. Clever funny lyrics, obviously talented, with a couple of irresistably catchy tunes. I left with intentions of checking her out later, but forgot.

But then I heard her on All Things Considered yesterday. “Oh right, that chick!” I thought. Caught her name, thought “wonder if I’ll remember this time?” About 10 minutes later I walked past a newsrack with The Onion and saw that she’s in this week’s A/V Club. Okay: obviously it was time to revisit.

Currently, her myspace page renders completely uselessly on both Firefox and Safari (o, myspace, how I love thee), so I can’t listen there, but NPR’s site has a few tracks. But not LDN, which is utterly irresistable.

She’s also interesting as one of the first (if not the first?) musician to break into the business in a big way just by setting up a myspace page. (Though obviously she had the resources to make recordings first, somehow.)

This is so me.

I just laughed out loud.

Also funny.

And I was just thinking of Bill Nye this morning because I was confusing him with Jim Nye of the Idyllic Music podcast. “Is that seriously The Science Guy?” (No.)

I can’t stop laughing at this. I don’t know why. I think I would do this if I temporarily lost my mind.

Apropos. I should try this in WoW. I think all my guildies are in their teens.

Yes.

People nearby are staring at me now. I think the stress is getting to me. Surely all this won’t seem as funny next week?

Oh my god. No. Noooooooo!

Grrrph … Must … Stop … Looking! (And embarrassing myself…)

Just saw This Film is Not Yet Rated (cf at Wikipedia). It’s a fun and pointed rebuke of our violence-happy, sexually-repressed, corporate-owned culture machine.

I agree utterly, completely, 100% with Darren Aronofsky: if you show violence without blood, your movie should get an R rating. “The only people who can handle that intellectually are adults.” If you show violence realistically, with blood, suffering, etc, (cut to gruesome scene from Saving Private Ryan) you should get a PG-13 rating.

In fact this movie contains one of the more pithy summaries of the state of our culture I’ve heard. Director of Gunner Palace Michael Tucker is discussing the MPAA’s rating of his documentary about the everyday lives of soldiers in Baghdad. His film was rated R for “language and drug use.”

“This is not fiction, this is reality,” he says. “These are real soldiers, they’re living in a war zone … We’re not instructing people to bleed off these obscenties. This is just their life.”

Their attempt to get a PG-13 rating was called “a waste of time” by the MPAA. (Though according to imdb, the appeal was eventually successful, on the shockingly logical premise that a person old enough to be recruited by the army should be allowed to see a documentary realistically portraying military life. That notwithstanding … )

When the Americans liberated Buchenwald, and they saw these images and these heaps of people … Is that PG? Is that PG-13? Is that R? People need to see that. When a little girl’s running down the road in South Vietnam, you know, burnt by napalm, and she’s naked … Is that PG? Is that PG-13? Is it R? I mean, you can’t rate reality. And if you can’t deal with it, then don’t send people to war.

I couldn’t possibly say it better.

Wait. Lemme get this straight. You’re saying that … what. The global temperature … is getting warmer? Am I completely off here?

No, that would be news to me.

Okay … uh-huh. You mentioned greehouse gases and … you know I don’t want to be blunt, but you did use the word “blame” somewhere in there. Is that what you meant? Uh-huh.

Well, maybe I’m mis-interpreting here, but it’s almost like you’re saying that there will be terrible destruction because of all of this. It’s like you’re obliquely implying that we’ll lose millions of lives and billions of dollars, by conservative estimates.

I mean, I don’t know: I don’t want to be putting words in your mouth, you know?

Yeah … Uh-huh. So … action is needed. Right.

Yeah … No, I’m sorry. I just don’t really understand what you’re trying to say. Maybe we should talk about this later.