Universe Closed Use Rainbow

[Doctor Rock]

Good moaning!

[Bizarro]

Go to Google, and type the following phrase and check out the autocomplete choices:

"I am extremely"

[Moetown]

I hate using the rainbow route. The lane is way too narrow, and the climb is really hard on my car's engine.

[Bizarro]

Warning: baseball talk...

Remember how Roberto Alomar went from one of the best players in the game to brutally washed up all in the space of a year, then retired, citing vague "medical issues"? Maybe, it was because he has AIDS.

[Bizarro]

Have we linked this before? It's been on This American Life, so it's not new. But it's funny to see it online.

An online poll set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people's least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners.

Amazingly, this "most unwanted music" contains little dissonance -- that would have been too easy. For the most part, they seem to have tried to assemble these elements in a listenable way.

Komar & Melamid and David Soldier's list of undesirable elements included holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children's chorus and the concept of children in general (really?), Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more. It's actually a fascinating listen, worthwhile for the opera rapping alone.

More, including a link to streaming audio

[Bizarro]

Dear gawd, my Dad just tried to sell me on a flat tax. Never discuss politics with your folks.

[Tripp]

What was his argument?

[Doctor Rock]

Dear gawd, my Dad just tried to sell me on a flat tax. Never discuss politics with your folks.

Gawd, he's one of those, eh?

What was his argument?

Yeah, this oughta be interesting, like in traffic accident interesting...

[Bizarro]

He said the only fair way was for everyone to pay the same thing. I tried to explain to him about the decreasing marginal value of income as it increases, but he said people who have more spend more. So I tried pointing out that the costs of certain things are fixed, no matter how much you earn. He said rich people just buy more expensive stuff. So I asked him if he thought that Manny Ramirez, who made $20 million last year, buys jugs of milk that cost 1000 times more than the jugs of milk a single mom earning $20k buys. Then he got mad and changed the subject.

[Bizarro]

At least I resisted my usual response to this argument, which is that flat tax is a scam from rich people good at math aimed at exploiting working people who are afraid of math and/or are just plain stupid.

Best I not go that route with dear old dad.

[Bizarro]

Continuing our ongoing focus on pot and extending yesterday's focus on balls:

Pot use linked to increased risk of testicular cancer

[captqitn]

These stories make me so thankful.    In a bizarre twist of events my father's politics have completely locked into mine in the past 10 years.

I'm not sure if he's changed, or if I just avoided those kinds of talks because of his devout catholocism, but I've grown proud to find that he's one of those christians that's into helping people.  

[captqitn]

Continuing our ongoing focus on pot and extending yesterday's focus on balls:

Pot use linked to increased risk of testicular cancer

blech, I know.   I like pot.  but I like my balls too.     balls.. pot.. balls.. pot...

[Bizarro]

My dad mostly just likes to complain about gay people. Not in an especially virulent way, more in a sort of "aging white man says THOSE PEOPLE are why he doesn't understand anything anymore" kind of way.

Still, it's irritating.

[Bizarro]

Weirdly, my cracker-ass born-again, veteran older brother is closer to my politics than Dad. Thanks unions!