2. Tenacious D'Angelo: So-called "R&B Jesus" joins Wonderboy and Young Nastyman to form a band the likes of which have never been seen.

3. Marilyn Hanson: Well, they both look like females. With that in common I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find some middle ground between their respective musical styles.

4. Simon & Gwarfunkle: I think we all knew that sooner or later, the duo who gave us "Sound of Silence" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" would collaborate with the guys who brought us "Vlad the Impaler" and "Stalin's Organs."

5. BB King Crimson: What happened when the grandaddy of blues guitar accidentally ate the LSD brownies.

6. Megadeth Cab For Cutie: Indie pop-rockers get really, really angry.

7. Bob Dylanger Escape Plan: Snooty mathcore rockers take on social issues and poetic refinement.

8. Godspeed You Black Sabbath: Post-rock rockers explore their darker, more satanic side.

9. Michael Jackson Browne: singer/songwriter puts down his guitar and busts out the moves.

10. Fallout Boy George: As if Pete Wentz didn't wear enough makeup already.

Runners-up:
Barry Whitesnake
Rollins Band of Gypsys
R.E.M. People

On Wednesday I sat in on a songwriting session with Chris and a Nashville songwriter named Clint Lagerberg. They had already written most of the lyrics and Clint, an outstanding guitar player, had already laid down the guitar, bass, and drum tracks. The song has a bluesy, country feel to it and is quite catchy. When I got there they spent the morning finishing the lyrics. After lunch Chris spent the afternoon recording the vocals. If you think it's loads of fun to be a recording artist, try recording 50 different versions of each verse of the song. That recording of the song is just a demo that will be sent in to various artists as a potential song for their albums. Since neither Chris nor Clint are country artists, they're going to try to sell the song to someone who would be interested in adding a country radio hit single or two to their albums. I suppose that it didn't necessarily matter if every note of the demo was perfect, since the song is going to be re-recorded by a different artist, but the more polished a demo sounds the more likely it is that an artist who hears the song will like it and will want to buy it.

After supper we went to see the new Coen brothers' film, No Country for Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same title. I found the movie to be profound, but apparently I was in a minority, given the number of dissatisfied moviegoers grumbling the whole way out of the theater. I assume their dissatisfaction was rooted in the Coen bros' stubborn refusal to grant resolution to the film (I won't ruin the plot for you). The film grapples with themes of evil, death, and justice, and the apparent randomness of it all, and gives you about as much resolution on those issues as life itself does. It's more philosophical than the other Coen bros' work--The Big Lebowski delves into some philosophical issues but more so for humor's sake--and is much darker than O Brother or The Hudsucker Proxy. Give it a watch if you're interested--I raise both my thumbs to it, but be forewarned that it probably isn't going to give you an emotional boost.

For Thanksgiving we hung out with the family of Mitch, Chris's manager, and then went to a Redwings/Predators game, where Chris sang the national anthem. Around 10 p.m. Allen and I headed back to Greenville. We got back around 5:15 this morning, just in time for Allen to go to work and for me to catch a couple hours of sleep before work.

Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt. Basically, it's no fun being a poor Catholic kid in Ireland. Except McCourt says it far more beautifully and far more engagingly than that. N-F *****

Anthem, Ayn Rand. Fighting for individualism is the highest good, as
collectivism is the prime hindrance to human progress. Also, listen to Rush to hear stories of individualism set to anarchic time signatures! F ***1/2

Better Writing Skills. You should learn how to write good, so we're gonna give you a substandard work fit only for those who have recently entered the world of literacy! N-F *

Blink, Malcom Gladwell. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Like, for instance, the idea that snap judgments are very often dead on, with a mind-boggling precision even more reliable than carefully reasoned decisions. N-F ****1/2

Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, Michka Assayas. Bono is rock star demigod, yet Bono is human. N-F ***1/2

Business Etiquette, Ann Marie Sabath. The Golden Rule is a great rule of thumb for your business practice. N-F ***

Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale. If life's a drag, just become a different, cooler person. N-F (or F?) ***

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris. Sedaris is an alchemist who can create a story of pure gold that would be boring from the mouth of any other. $1000 to anyone who can find a topic on which Sedaris cannot be outrageously funny. N-F ****

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer. All attempts at summarizing in one sentence have failed. Just go read it. F ****1/2

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury. Censorship is bad. Wow, no author in the 20th century ever said that. Of course, the sheer volume of books written on the pitfalls of censorship just might be an indication of the need for such warnings. Bradbury's work is among the better anti-censorship novels. F ***1/2

Flaubert's Parrot, Julian Barnes. History is impossible to truly understand, a tale woven together by whatever threads a historian likes. It is like a net--"a collection of holes tied together with a string." Recounting a historical tale or seeking to find meaning in the events of your own life is really nothing more than gathering random, uncontexualized data and putting your own spin on it. F ****

For the Time Being, Annie Dillard. "God is no more cogitating which among us he plans to be born as bird-headed dwarfs or elephant men--or to kill by AIDS or kidney failure, heart disease, childhood leukemia, or sudden infant death syndrome--than he is pitching lightning bolts at pedestrians, triggering rock slides, or setting fires. The very least unlikely things for which God might be responsible are what insurers call 'acts of God.'" R/P ****

The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis. If you could choose heaven, where you give up all claims to what is yours, or hell, where you never have to relinquish the illusion that you can keep you think is yours, you'd probably choose the latter. R/P ****

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers. Extremely self-conscious and self-loathing accounts of raising your 8-year-old brother (after both your parents die) can be really funny. Complete with drawings of staplers, accounts of dancing puppies in the sky, staggeringly heartbreaking attempts to grapple with death, and the occasional touch of genius, Eggers earns the distinction of being unlike any other writer out there. N-F ****1/2

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson. Not all who wander are lost. F ****

Life of Pi, Yann Martel. Both reality (or your interpretation of reality) and faith (again, your interpretation of reality) are human constructs. A rationalistic interpretation of reality that insists on dealing only with "dry, yeastless factuality" (or your interpretation of reality) will miss out on deeper metaphysical truths. Or maybe it's just a story about a boy, a tiger, and liferaft survival. F ****

Long Day's Journey into Night, Eugene O'Neill. Human tragedy makes for a great play. F *****

Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. If you can create some sort of meaning in your life, some reason to keep on kickin', you'll probably keep on kickin' regardless of what happens. R/P ****

The Night of the Iguana, Tennessee Williams. Human contact is cathartic and therapeutic. F ****

The One-Minute Manager, Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. State your goals concisely (One Minute Goals™ waste less paper and less time), give credit where credit is due with One Minute Praisings™ (it's not just dogs that like to be patted on the head), and give firm but brief direction (because if your One Minute Reprimands™ were any longer it would throw off the symmetry of the book). The other theme is: Be sure to buy lots of copies of this book and distribute them to all your coworkers. N-F ***

reallivepreacher.com, Gordon Atkinson. Not all who wonder are lost.
R/P ****1/2

Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason. Occultist medieval documents are exciting. Also, obsession will ruin you. F ***

Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson. "Accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart." I.e., quit complaining about how screwed the world is and do something good. F ****

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut. If you're prone to buying into "The System," (War is good! America is shorthand for all that's true and just, regardless of the fact that we napalmed the non-military city of Dresden, full of civilian men, women, children, and our own POWs!), then you're (a) a fool, (b) likely to perpetuate the world's horrific cycle of butchery. F *****

Straight Man, Richard Russo. If you experience the tragedy of failing to meet the goals you'd set for your life, there's a simple explanation--you didn't have it in you to meet the goals. Also, such tragedy is quite funny. F ****1/2

The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell. Reality is often counterintuitive, because itty bitty things, seemingly insignificant make a big difference in the grand scheme of things, and Malcom will prove it to you. N-F *****
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom. Live your life to its fullest. N-F ***

Who Moved My Cheese, Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard. If you run out of cheese, don't sit there in anguish waiting for your cheese supply to magically replenish; use your brain to go find a different source. The other theme is: Be sure to buy lots of copies of this book and give them to all your coworkers. N-F ***

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward Albee. Imagination and denial are powerful tools for alleviating heartache. F ****

Categorized as fiction, non-fiction, or religion/philosophy.

2. The third resident of our house is a Himalayan cat. She is morbidly obese and cross-eyed. The name she has traditionally ignored is Polly, but we have recently renamed her Thor. I have decided that I like Polly/Thor because though she bites, she can't bite hard. One's friends should be either powerless or benevolent. Polly/Thor is both. No doubt her benevolence is directly related to the box of kitty treats on the shelf, but one can't be too picky.

3. I have fallen in love with “White Unicorn” by Wolfmother. The music snob in me recoils at the thought of heaping any praise on Wolfmother. The objections are numerous. The band is an unabashed Sabbath and Zeppelin ripoff, they’re still stuck in the 70s, their album cover designer is undoubtedly a pale pony-tailed Dungeons & Dragons expert, their guitar riffs are simple runs up and down a blues scale, their lyrics are truly ridiculous. Well, that’s all true. And it’s loud and stupid music. But it’s delightfully loud and stupid. “White Unicorn” boasts wonderful 3-chord thunder and a trippy organ-flavored bridge. Check it out.

4. I have ascertained through careful research that Richard Russo's Straight Man may be the funniest novel ever written. I'd write you a review but someone more articulate than I beat me to it a decade or so ago.

Songs appear on here for a variety of reasons. Some for their harrowingly beautiful vocals, some for their lyrical genius, some for their mind-numbing displays of guitar wizardry, some for no reason other than that I have taken an inexplicable liking to them. My taste is disproportionately weighted to the last decade and to the 1970s. For me those 2 decades in between are for the most part unnoticed and unappreciated, as are all the decades previous to the 60s. A total of 5 by Bob Dylan appear on the list (including 3 covered by other artists), and one by his progeny as well. Ben Folds appears 5 times on the list. Muse, Half Past Forever, and Sigur Ros all hold the distinction of appearing 4 times on the list. Those bands are special, and you should buy all of their stuff.

This list will change, probably daily. And I didn't evaluate the order very carefully. So if you wonder why one lame song is much higher on the list than some masterpiece of musical genius, there's probably no reason. And like Will, I've considered only popular songs for this list. And like Chris said, some of these songs are not necessarily my favorites now; they're just old favs that have a special place in my heart. Anyway, without further ado, here it is:

*Let others know who tagged you.
*Post 8 random facts about yourself.
*Post these rules.
*Tag 8 others to continue the meme

8. I enjoy the following words: fisticuffs, plethora, wunderkind, schadenfreude, androgyny (in a non-literal sense), tomfoolery. I find the following words obscene: moist, supple, slather, masticate. And while I'm talking about words I don't like, let me also add that the quotation-mark gestures should be used ever-so sparingly, if at all. And if you do choose to use them, make sure you keep proper form. The index and middle fingers of each hand should be the only parts of your body that move. Your wrists should not move, and your arms definitely should not move.

I now tag the following, and woe to them if they don't respond:

Chris Sligh
Brannon McAllister
John MacInnis
Jordan Gons
Brad Garrett
Jordan Poss
Jon Eckert
Derick Scudder

2) my inability to use fresh metaphors, if use them I must. I mean, it's one thing to make up some cool word picture that draws the reader/listener in, makes you look differently at the world around you. But "inky blackness"? I Googled the phrase (in quotation marks) and came up with 59,300 results. So my subconscious attempt at making the mundane poetic failed, fell flat on its face, disappeared into the inky blackness without even a wave or a goodbye.

So I'm looking out the window at the darkness. I don't like being by windows without blinds when it's dark outside. Anybody can look in and see me. Now I don't imagine that I'm being stalked or anything, because I don't have any money and don't know any Mafia and have never had much contact with the denizens of the dark spirit world who might later come back to haunt me and whatnot. But it's still a little unnerving. What if, while sitting here at this computer, drinking my coffee, what if I unconsciously pick my nose, or who knows what I might do, and someone outside is watching, an innocent passerby, or some protege of Hannibal Lecter, and (s)he sits outside in the darkness, watching, laughing, eating salted peanuts and making plans for my grisly death and wondering if I would go better with White Zinfandel or Cabernet Sauvignon. Don't tell me this concern has never crossed your mind, and if i hasn't crossed your mind, then maybe you need to wake up and stop being so naive because it could happen. Admittedly, it's not statistically probable, I'll give you that, but it is not outside the realm of possibility and, I can assure you, you would regret being tossed into some subterranean dungeon in the cellar of a suburban middle-class home while your captor dances around gleefully and artlessly to music from a bygone era, planning your imminent demise.

I'm staring out into the darkness because I'm sitting at my desk trying to write something and it feels rather writer-ly to look out the window at the inky blackness, stroking my chin and furrowing my brow (the cliches just keep rolling in, 25,700 and 31,400 Google results, respectively). I really wasn't sure what I was trying to write, but the lack of a clear sense of purpose has never stopped me before from beginning a task (it usually only stops you from finishing a task). Feeling a wee bit odd at the moment about recent developments in life, and being quite buzzed from the multiple cups of coffee I've had, I charged to my desk and began scribbling furiously, leaving behind an illegible trail of the strange things churning through my brain. I made myself more coffee, for one can never have too much of it, and continued with my frenzied scribbling.

This has become a regular occurrence now, this frenzied scribbling that usually amounts to spinning my wheel and going nowhere. That's another cliche (98,400), but it sort of gets the idea across, sort of hints at the half-articulated ephiphanies (Google found no matches!) scrawled on scraps of paper that now litter my desk.

Language is a heartlessly flirtatious wench, teasing the ambitious into believing the notion that they, with a couple millimeters of pencil lead and a few pieces of 8.5" x11" standard ruled paper, can capture the turmoil of the human soul. I almost said "the human condition" instead, but "the turmoil of the human soul" had far fewer Google results (1,710,000 vs. 1). Anyway, this notion is false. It is a big lie, foisted on you by the wily advertising schemes of corrupt notebook paper cartels. It just doesn't happen, or at least it rarely does.

You let yourself think that your writing tool of choice can capture a veritable snapshot of the failures, and dreams of mankind, and failures of dreams, and maybe even dreams of failures, of mankind. But it doesn't happen.

Words fail to capture what one wants to say, or if they do capture what you want to say, they probably do so in the form of a time-tested cliche ("time-tested" = 1.3 million matches), some metaphor or proverb that is so wonderfully mimetic of reality and so horribly overused.

So apparently I've been hoodwinked, cheated, suckered, and so I sit here, inarticulate and finite, and running out of coffee. If I weren't so tired I'd launch into a postmodern spiel about the inefficacy of language (839 results) and the endless, windless sea of semantic relativity. But instead I'm going to my room, where there are blinds shielding me from public view, where I can read the night away without thinking of cannibalistic voyeurs or the inevitable failure of writing.

To the dining hall: Thank you for everything. I know sometimes things were rough between us, like the time I spit out the Hawaiian Chicken or all those times when I said nasty, cruel things about the meatloaf. And I know I bailed out on you many nights to go eat at the Pita House or Zaxby's or Chicora Alley, but I always came back to you. Those restaurants were just culinary flings, I never truly loved any of them. Over the years, you've become a part of me. Literally, I mean. My digestive system broke down the foods you gave me and absorbed the nutrients, fueling my cell production. The chicken broccoli bake has made me who I am today. Of course, I don't want to ruin the mood or anything, but in the future, as I eat food elsewhere and my cells reproduce themselves, eventually I will be composed of entirely new cells, none of which will have been fueled by Dining Common food. So I guess you won't be part of me forever. Still, thanks for the times you've given me--the memories are all in my mind. Now that we've come to the end of our rainbow...well, never mind.

To my dormitory room: I hate you. I hope you're ravished by a fire.

To the science building: See my parting words to the library.

To my office: I'm sorry for constantly leaving you in a state of fire hazard, what with the scented candles burning right next to the thousands of papers, bills, quizzes, and notes littering every flat surface in the office. I'm also sorry for being so cold and distant and repeatedly refusing to come visit you during my scheduled office hours. Please don't take it personally. I hope that the last 7 hours straightening and cleaning out the office has been good bonding time for us.

Well, that's it. It certainly provided a sense of closure to get that all off my chest.

Let this be a lesson to any of you who want to travel. Air fare and youth hostels cost money. Lots of money, you hear? You think you're just going to save up your cash and go to Norway and have fun? Well what about if when you get back your brother is on some popular television show and he flies you out to L.A. to watch him sing and you have several days in the city and you want to go do stuff but lack the financial wherewithal to do so because you spent it all on lutefisk and Norwegian bus tickets? What will you do then? I hope all you readers out there, particularly those afflicted with insatiable wanderlust, heed this cautionary tale.

Last night I went to a party for all the people connected to the show. I had vowed to never solicit photos from celebrities, but when I saw Jerry Springer I couldn't resist. Actually, I didn't exactly recognize him, but when someone pointed him out I knew a picture had to be taken. I considered shaking his hand and thanking him for remembering that we Americans like, no, we have a right to mindless entertainment. You know, what with all these educational shows and issue-oriented crime dramas runnning rampant, it's nice to know that there is still programming that kill brains cells rather than stimulating them.

Nearly everything here is immortalized in song. I suspect that my traveling companions are gradually growing to hate riding in the car with me, as a single glance at a map or a street sign starts me singing:

"...until the sun comes up on the SAN-TA MON-I-CA BOU-LE-VARD!"

"And I'd like to take a minute just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called..."

"BEVERYLY HILLS!! That's where I wanna BE! (Livin' in Beverly). BEVERLY HILLS--"

Jon. Quiet please.

Right. Sorry.

[a short period of time elapses as Jon scans the map]

"in the citaaaaaay, the city of Compton, we keep it rockin'--"

JON.

Sorry.

[more time elapses as Jon fixes his gaze on the passing scenery]

"Now let me welcome everybody to the wild wild West, a state..." Oh yeah. Sorry again. No, you're right. I do this constantly. Oh, absolutely. It needs to stop. No more singing, Scout's honor.

Since I'm bored and broke in a hotel room off Sunset Boulevard, I checked Wikipedia to see if there's a list of songs that reference the streets or regions of L.A. There is none. At least not yet...

Dachau was one of the early concentration camps and served as a model for many others. More than 200,000 people were imprisoned there over the years, almost a third of which were Jews.

This was my second time visiting. The place was quieter than I remembered. A few teens bustled around, wading through the silence with cumbersome attempts at jocularity, apparently unable or unwilling to comprehend the staggering list of evils that "Dachau" is shorthand for. Excepting the pockets of white noise that those folks filled, the place was shrouded in silence. I guess that's probably the only appropriate answer to the questions of *why* and *how* that inevitably inevitably pop into the minds of the stonefaced observers. A people who claim divine choice were chosen for the crematoria of German concentration camps. Kinda kills conversation.

It's not for everyone. If you're already depressed or are prone to long fits of staring into oblivion and attempting to comprehend the unfathomable darkness of the human heart, then maybe you should skip Dachau. Otherwise, though, it’s worth a visit. Humanity has an obligation to itself to continually remind itself of what we’re capable of.

Samuel Pisar, a survivor of the concentration camps, plead for this awareness of the darkness of the world’s recent history: “In the autumn of their lives, the survivors of Auschwitz feel a visceral need to transmit what we have endured, to warn younger generations that today's intolerance, fanaticism and hatred can destroy their world as they once destroyed ours, that powerful alert systems must be built . . . above all against the folly of man. Because we know from bitter experience that the human animal is capable of the worst, as well as the best--of madness as of genius -- and that the unthinkable remains possible. "

Next week, or maybe next month, or maybe whenever I get around to it, I'll try to jot a few notes about my trips to Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

Admittedly, their music is not easily accessible. The songs are long--often 8 or 10 minutes, and none are in English. In fact, on their recent albums, none are in any language. Birgisson sings in something call "Hopelandic," which mimics the phonemes of Icelandic but isn't a real language (hence my use of the term "pretentious"). Their second to last album was called (). Yes, that's right, two parentheses. None of the tracks had any titles. Listeners may be weirded out (or mesmerized) by one of the recent singles, Glosoli. The track sounds like a dove from the Arctic Circle, cooing tenderly in some unintelligible Scandinavian tongue while ambient guitar tones swirl lazily through the atmosphere to the lethargic pace set by the Valium-stoned drummer. Despite their stubbornly (and sometimes pretentiously) inaccessible elements, they're not entirely lacking in popular sensibilities. The synths and guitar echo might be a tad reminiscent of Coldplay or U2. But the rest of it is is about as non-pop as it gets.

Should you desire to test the waters before diving in, you can check out some of their songs on YouTube or MySpace. Check out Glosoli and Hoppipolla from their most recent album, Takk. Two songs from their 2001 album Ágætis Byrjun, the title track and another track entitled Svefn G Englar, are available from the free downloads on Amazon.com. Tell yourself some sort of wishful lie before you dismiss them 2 minutes into the first song; convince yourself that they're high-culture cutting-edge movers and shakers, that they are musical innovators who have dared to defy MTV and offer something that's not "radio-friendly," that their work is the aural equivalent of the Icelandic landscape, that they are the 21st century inheritors of minimalism. You might start believing it.

2,305 Words on "Sweet Child O' Mine". (2,305 words on "Sweet Child O' Mine")

I like the second one a good deal more, but the first is well-written and thought-provoking.