A solution to a real problem

There are so many gross things to worry about on a battlefield. Jesus' General has a solution, bless his heart.

Coleoptera

I saw this bug yesterday on the patio near my freezing-cold office when I went outside to warm up in order to keep typing.

I'm no entomologist, but I'm pretty sure it's a beetle. Beyond that I've no clue. Suggestions are welcome. I've never seen anything quite like this one; it was sure pretty, though. And big -- it was not that much smaller than the palm of my hand.

It was not iridescent. You can't quite tell on the photos but it sort of fades from a yellow-orange to a yellow-green over the back of its carapace, and its head is a brighter orange but with some green as you move around to the underside.

I was just looking around on the net to see if I could identify it (no luck just yet) and I found out that fireflies (also called "firebugs" around here) are also beetles. Who knew? I guess I never really thought about it.

The light was kind of wacky and I had to mess with the color levels on the photo just so you can see anything at all, so the colors are not precisely accurate. It was breathtaking in its vividness and beauty, this beetle. I didn't have a tripod and I had to stand on a tippy little plastic chair to get close enough to even see the thing.

If you like bug pictures, check out Twistyfaster's Varmint Center over at I Blame the Patriarchy. She seems to have a lot more time for bug-watching, and Texas probably has better bugs.

UPDATE: It's an Eastern Hercules Beetle (Dynastes tityus)! Or, to be more complete:

phylum: Arthropoda
superclass: Hexapoda
class: Insecta
subclass Pterygota
order: Coleoptera (Beetles)
family: Scarabaeidae (Scarab Beetles)
subfamily: Dynastinae (Rhinoceros Beetles)
genus: Dynastes (Hercules Beetles)
species: Dynastes tityus (Eastern Hercules Beetle)

Thanks to BugGuide.Net.

It's everywhere

This sort of thing really toasts my tits. Via Shakespeare's Sister.

Our dog is a good dog

Just for the record, here is Stella. Her ears really are kind of big, aren't they? She lives across the street, but I take her for walks almost every day, since I usually get home first.

She's almost 10, and has had two knee surgeries and was attacked by a pit bull a couple of years ago, so she's kind of pokey. Walks sometimes take a long time with her, what with having to stop and talk to all the neighbors. And then sometimes we go to the pub on the corner; a few of the folks we know from the dog park take their dogs there afterwards. Plus there's beer and peanuts.

I think what she is trying to say here is: "I would like to go for a walk now, please. Put the freaking camera down already and let's go."

Teach your children well

I was walking Stella yesterday and we passed some boys playing on a neighbor's lawn. The one who lives in the house is kind of geeky & shy; for a while he was kind of chunky, but he's getting taller now & he seems to be leaving a lot of that awkwardness behind him. Well, this kid really loves Stella, and she loves it when he runs over and pets her and admires her ears and soft coat. When he has friends over, he always introduces Stella to them, and usually tells a funny little story about something she did while she wags her tail and basks in their admiration. Most of his friends are pretty nice, and Stella will usually hang out a little while before moving on to the next group of admirers.

But there was this one kid in the group that I hadn't seen before. He seemed slightly larger than the others (who, like most 11 or 12 year-olds these days are all a little taller than I am), and the first thing I noticed about him was the mean look on his face as he deliberately kicked the soccer ball directly at the stomach of the smallest kid. The second thing I noticed about him was his shirt:



The boys all came over and Stella stopped and wagged her tail.

"This is Stella," the neighbor kid said. "Isn't she pretty?" The bigger kid was hanging back a little and kind of sneering at the other boys who were all petting Stella and agreeing that they didn't know any other dog as smooth and shiny as Stella, and wow, her ears are so big, and of course Stella was loving it. So Mr. Big comes over with a stick in his hand; at first he's brandishing it at his side like a riding crop. Then starts waving it really fast, right in Stella's face. Stella stepped back and stared the kid down, and the other kids tried to grab the stick, and tried telling him to cut it out.

The kid said, "This dog is stupid - he can't even chase a stick," and then he started threatening the other boys with the stick. A small scuffle ensued and moved up the lawn. I heard my neighbor defending Stella's honor: "She has better things to do than play fetch with you, ya big loser." I don't know whether the bully was disarmed by the other kids -- he was certainly outnumbered.

Stella, meanwhile, noticed her friend Arlo-Jeanne coming up the block, so we moved along.

But what's up with that "I pray like I play" bullshit on his shirt? Does he bully Jesus? Does he try to hit god with a stick? Is he petulant and hostile as he issues a list of demands every night before bed? Does he try to make the other children pray to his god at lunch time?

I wish I'd said something to the kid, but to be perfectly honest I was a little scared of him. He was bigger and he had a weapon. I just didn't want to argue with him.

And I really didn't want to meet his parents.

Catblogging: Another neighborhood feline

And here is another cat that doesn't actually live with me. I had to use the zoom lens to get this photo on account of he's very shy. We call him Marmalade, but he's not the only marmalade tabby loose in the neighborhood. Scruffy Marmalade passed on this spring, and there's another one we call the Real Marmalade because he was the first marmalade tabby we'd seen in a while. Sometimes we mistake this one for the Real Marmalade, but Scruffy Marmalade was unmistakable. And this one has more white on his feet and chest than the Real Marmalade.

This one is the most persistent of all the marmalade tabbys we've seen here, and the other cats (Elvis and Mrs. Mitty) seem to tolerate him OK. Which is not to say they like him, because they don't. But they do let him up on the porch once in a while to eat the food we leave out there. He hasn't so far let us pet him or get too close, but he does need to be taken in and vaccinated etc., so we are trying to get to know him better. He's getting a little more relaxed, and doesn't run off unless you actually move towards him. Sometimes he'll even come up on the porch until you look right at him or move suddenly, then he runs off and dives down into the storm drain across the street. That freaks me out a little for some reason, but all the cats do it from time to time. They don't seem to come to any harm. But really, what's down there? When I shine a flashlight in there it looks like a big deep drop-off, but they seem to get back out pretty easily. How do they do it?

Cats are pretty amazing.

Ornithology

Remember these metal wind-up birds that came with a key to wind them up, and how they were painted bright colors, and then they made that great ratchety noise while you wound them up? And then how you'd set them down and they'd bounce away all tippy and unpredictable, sort of pecking at the floor as they moved a little frantically at first but in an unnervingly bird-like way, getting slower and slower until they stopped?

I loved those, mostly for the key and the ratchety noise.

Just now I was sitting outside in a courtyard near my office so I could look at something that wasn't these monitor screens and the cinderblock wall behind them and the beautifully illuminated at this time of day, but still it's a damn brick wall outside my window. Someone had put a bunch of ripped-up stale bread out for the birds, and there was lots of bird activity going on. A lot of them had flown away when I arrived, but there was still a mama cardinal feeding a recently-fledged juvenile. She was going back & forth between the bread and the sort of sheltered area where the baby was, and putting food in its mouth. It still had some fluffiness to its feathers, the young one did, and kept flapping its wings enthusiastically but without much effect. It seemed pretty happy about the food. Now & then it would hop out of the sheltered area to see where mom was going, only to be shooed back out of the clearing & under the branches.

And then this big burly robin showed up and squawked a little at Ms. Mama, who mostly ignored him, but stayed between him and the baby. And then four or five little sparrow-like birds showed up, and the small clearing was full of these hopping, pecking, bouncy little birds, sort of swarming, almost, if birds can swarm. They weren't as brightly colored as those old tin birds, but they were every bit as dementedly mechanical as those wind-up imitations. Only they didn't make that ratchety noise while they hopped, and they didn't slow down at all while I was watching.

Belated catblogging

I have been remiss in my catblogging duties. Here is Mrs. Mitty. She is, like Elvis, not my cat. She lives more or less on my porch and across the street on the porch of my lovely ex-wife. I'd bring her into my house and adopt her & all, but she doesn't like to be inside. We bring her to the vet and make sure she is vaccinated & everything, and she has been spayed, but she does not want to be a house cat. The other day Elvis had an appointment for his shots, but he figured out what was going on, so -- to make a long story short -- we brought Mrs. Mitty instead. She wasn't all that happy about it, but she is much easier to put into a box than Elvis is. When we got back, though, Elvis was on the porch. Maybe we imagined that he was looking smug. But Mrs. Mitty hopped out of the box and gave Elvis this look like, "you owe me, you little fucker." He has since been taken in and vaccinated, and she'll go in for another round of shots this week. So even though I don't actually have any pets just now, the hassle and expense does not cease.

Oh, and I asked my lovely ex-wife once why she named this cat Mrs. Mitty. She said, "because it rhymes with pretty and kitty." How goofy is that? She is, as usual, right. Of course.

[Update: my lovely ex-wife told me the other day that she first thought of it on account of how Mrs. Mitty had two very pale mittens on her feet when she first showed up. I don't recall that, but I don't think I lived in the neighborhood then. She's obviously very solid grey now.]

Just click on this link, OK?

I Blame The Patriarchy is my newest favorite blog. Thanks to Lauren at Feministe for the link. I'll update the blogroll shortly.

Who says I'm not patriotic?

Susie over at Suburban Guerrilla was the first to remind me that it's Flag Day today. I've never been one to make a fuss about this kind of thing, but I'm getting tired of hearing all this "why does the left hate America?" bullshit. We don't hate America. We love it. That's why it hurts so fucking bad sometimes to watch what's going on around us -- in our name, under our flag, and ultimately on our tab. Of course it makes us mad. So here's an old AP file photo of Abbie Hoffman about to get arrested for loving the flag so much, and wearing it. He did federal time for that, which you might remember the next time you pass a shelf full of flag sweatshirts and flag buttons and all those flag snowglobe tchotchkes.

Plus, here's a happy flag day song from my favorite tribal love-rock-musical. Sing along, if you like.

Don't Put It Down

Om mane padme om
Om mane padme om

Folding the flag means taking care of the nation.
Folding the flag is putting it to bed for the night.
I fell through a hole in the flag
I'm falling through a hole in the flag
H-e-e-e-elp!

Don't put it down
Best one around
Crazy for the red blue and white
Crazy for the red blue and white

You look at me
What do you see
Crazy for the white red and blue
Crazy for the white red and blue

Cause I look different
You think I'm subversive
Crazy for the blue white and red
Crazy for the blue white and red

My heart beats true
For the red white and blue
Crazy for the blue white and red
Crazy for the blue white and red
And yellow fringe
Crazy for the blue white red and yellow

-James Rado, Gerald Ragni, Galt MacDermot
(Original Cast Recording of "Hair")

Has it really been three weeks?

I have to say carlessness hasn't been much of a problem this week, and I'm pleasantly surprised. I've seriously enjoyed riding the bike, though there was one work day when I was too rushed & tired, etc., and caught a ride with my neighbor & took a cab home. I'd wanted to work late anyway, and I'm a little bit of a weenie about riding after dark.

I did have a pickup truck for a while Saturday. I think I could like having a pickup truck. I got up early & took both my dysfunctional bike and my lovely ex-wife's functional bike (the one she's letting me use until I replace the dysfunctional one, bless her) to the shop. I'd finally conceded defeat vis-a-vis removing the pedals. A sweet young thing named Max or Zack or something with a lot of very pretty tattoos came outside with a really big wrench and, well, fixed me up in no time at all (for free, even). Here I thought it was an upper-body strength thing, when all I needed was a bigger fucking wrench.

Anyway, once I got the pedals swapped, I spent the rest of the morning swapping out all the other little doo-dads (mirror, handlebar-ends, speedometer, parcel rack, etc.), which was pretty fun. Except that I broke the speedometer cable connector, and now I have no idea how fast or how far I'm going. Not that it matters. At least I know what time it is.

I took a short ride, to see that everything was working, and was very pleased that the clipless pedals and the bar ends made the bike a lot more functional. I'm looking at some new tires, too, as this has big knobby mountain bike tires & is very slow on flat stretches, more so anyway than my old hybrid.

It was funny, in a way, that I didn't rush around trying to do all the (largely imaginary) errands I could have done, or go grocery shopping or something just because I had a car to use. I couldn't have taken two bikes to the shop without the truck, though, so I did that first thing. And then later on I wanted to stop by my office to pick up a huge pile of boxes to return with the truck to my friend. But nothing else that I really wanted or needed to get done seemed to require a car, so I went ahead and returned it. I was kind of frazzled by the time I did, because even though it was Saturday, it seemed like I was stuck in traffic over and over and over.

So I'm happy to report that I'm not sitting around pining away for lack of motorized transport anyway.

I did do a really stupid thing over the weekend. I really want to get better at bicycling, so I went with some neighbors & friends to this park with bike trails. Serious, technical mountain bike trails. I guess I didn't realize that these people were had serious wacko mountain biker leanings, and some pretty serious gear, too. Talk about bike envy. And I believed D., the one gal in the group, when she said that she had trouble keeping up with the guys, and it would be great if I came along. Hahaha. She was the first one out of the woods.

Let's just say that neither my skills nor my gear were up to it. I gave it a good try all the same, and made it through a pretty rough section of the trail before I bailed. I got kind of freaked out when I looked to my left and got this rush of vertigo on account of I thought I was looking out over a huge valley, full of trees, with mist rising, etc., with tree-covered slopes a long way off on the other side. I was doubly surprised because it seemed like we'd been going downhill for a long damn time and there just shouldn't have been a big drop-off right there. Well, what I was looking at was a pond, and it was only a few feet away. I thought about what a bummer it would be for my friends to have to drag my sorry injured unconscious ass up the hill & I took the next path out of the woods and went back to the cars. I ate some kind of food product & drank a lot of water & amused myself going up and down a couple of big paved hills.

My arms were numb for hours.

I think if I had been by myself, or at least not trying to keep up with others, I might have been able to enjoy it a little more. You know it's kind of sucking when you're looking forward to the uphills, because you're going too slowly to hurt yourself very badly, and you feel secretly relieved when you fall down, even though you're up to your ass in poison ivy, just because you can relax for a few seconds.

I will try it again sometime on a less, ahem, "technical" trail. After I get a fucking suspension fork. In the meantime, I'm working on adding a few more hills to my commuting loop, and taking a few more off-road shortcuts here & there.

I can see there's a serious danger, though, as I shop for a new bike: I'm running a pretty serious risk of turning into a total gear-head over this. Which would take it out of the "affordable transportation" realm and move it squarely into "expensive hobby." I don't need any of those.

Transportation Chronicles:

• Death of my Colt Vista
• Week Two
• Week One
• The moon is in FUBAR
• Girly Girls and Car Repairs
• Malicious Damage

Sunday shoe blogging: Mothra vs. the motorcycle boot

I was at my neighborhood pub earlier and my friend pointed out this beautiful moth on the brick wall. He had caught it outside and brought it over to the deck, and it sat still on the brick wall for quite a while before flying off.

If you look very closely you can see the fuzzy orange stuff around its legs, sort of ruffly almost, or like shoulder padding or something. I think it's a very pretty moth, and I love brick walls.

Plus I think these are some pretty sexy motorcycle boots. Extremely well utilized, from the look of this one, anyway.

The boot's inhabitant asked me not too long ago why I had so many pairs of shoes. I couldn't really come up with a good answer at the time. It's kind of a dirty secret for me. I still sneak them into the house, even though I've lived alone for most of the last seven years.

But, I mean, there are a lot of special-purpose shoes one has; one wouldn't wear one's motorcycle boots to ride a bicycle, or one's sneakers out dancing. But it is hard to explain. Sort of like, I mean, how many motorcycles does a person actually need anyway? Or guitars, for that matter.

I'm thinking you can't have too many, if you love them, and you can afford them without too much struggle.

FRT: Why Won't You Dance With Me? Edition

It's that time of the week again. I found this very cool Friday Random Ten graphic over at feministe and it looks so much like my accordion that I had to steal it (the graphic, that is). Anyway, here's the list:

1. "Dance This Mess Around" B-52s (B-52s)
2. "Alabama Song" Marianne Faithfull (Seven Deadly Sins)
3. "The Kind" Steve Earle (Jerusalem)
4. "That Don't Make it Junk" Leonard Cohen (Ten New Songs)
5. "Sin City" Flying Burrito Brothers (Sacred Hearts & Fallen Angels)
6. "Evil Town" the Pinetops (Above Ground & Vertical)
7. "After the Gold Rush" kd lang (Hymns of the 49th Parallel)
8. "The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood" Sandy Denny (Who Knows Where the Time Goes)
9. "The Happy Song" Otis Redding (Very Best Of)
10. "Androgynous" Crash Test Dummies (The Ghosts that Haunt Me)

The Night My Colt Vista Got Totaled

A long time ago, when I was living in a much bigger city and I had a car I didn't really need any more, I had these dreams. Sometimes I had them when I was asleep, but sometimes I was awake and it wasn't exactly a dream, but I'd hear that horrid sound in my head of crumpling metal. If you've ever heard it, you know what I mean. And I'd feel like I was in the car and being hit, not quite head on. Over and over, for months. It was clear, in the way that dreams are clear, that the metal being crumpled was that of my Colt Vista wagon.

God, I loved that sweet car. But it got so I was afraid of driving it. I had no fear of driving my lovely ex-wife's Ford Escort. I never heard those noises in my head when I drove her car, and it was never the Escort getting smashed up in my dreams.

So there I was, sound asleep on a January night, when my lovely ex-wife woke me up and said, "my car -- it's been hit -- did you hear that? -- go look," and I woke up just enough to say "oh it's the cats, never mind," and she said "please just look," & so I did. She couldn't see anything without her glasses, so it didn't seem unreasonable to me that she'd ask me to do it instead of getting up and looking herself. I went into the freezing cold front bedroom and looked out the window and saw her car in the crisp street light. Nothing wrong. And as I turned to go back to my warm bed, I noticed that my little car was up on the sidewalk, at a funny angle. And the front corner on the driver's side was all crumpled.

We went outside to take a look and the neighbors were already outside. It was like three in the morning, and a bunch of guys from next door had been playing poker and heard the crash -- all of them a) not white; b) under age; and c) totally shit-faced drunk. They'd gotten the license number and description of the car that'd hit me, and called the police, bless their hearts. In a neighborhood where it seemed sometimes like the police went out of their way to harass young men who were not white. Especially if they were drunk & from the reservation.

They did not, on this occasion, get harassed.

There was a hubcap on the street next to my car, and a few black paint flecks on it. A dented-up black car missing a hubcap was not exactly apprehended but rather found smashed into a telephone pole a couple of blocks away. It had the same license plate number my neighbors had called in. The driver, who was unhurt, was jailed. It was not her first, or even her third, DWI arrest.

Anyway, the car was totaled. It was well over ten years old at the time, with at least 200,000 miles on it.

The picture up there is a fridge magnet I made of a photo I took of it, smashed on the street, for the drunk lady's insurance company. The insurance check was about the same amount I had spent over the years fixing it (most of which had just gone for a new tie-rod end & half axle on the side that was smashed; I was just about to do the other side) -- way more than I'd expected, that's for certain. And it was a relief, to be honest, not to have to move it every time it snowed, or figure out where to keep it when I wasn't using it, which was almost all the time. But still. Did I mention I loved that car?

So why am I telling you this? you might be wondering.

See, before my current car was pronounced terminal, I'd been getting bad vibes about it for months. Not specific recurring dreams, like with the Vista, and no imaginary crunching metal sounds when I drove -- and maybe I was imagining it all, or even it's possible I guess that I was just wishing for it to happen. But, I mean, there was the smashed window, and the battery, and -- it's just been one damn thing after another for almost a year with that poor car. And any time I went somewhere I was afraid something would happen to it. So maybe the bad vibe thing wasn't premonitory so much as it was bowing to the inevitable.

But what does it mean that now my bike is fucked up also? I had no premonitions or anything even remotely bad-vibe-like about the bike at all. And the bike-fixing guy made it sound like it would cost more to fix it than it would cost to buy a similar bike. But then again, he sells bikes. Nice bikes. Too bad I'm not going to buy one right this minute.

Why is everything so fucking complicated? And expensive? Is the universe trying to tell me I am supposed to stay in the house & never go anywhere? Make more money? Leave this town for one that's more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, with a safe and convenient public transit system? Do I just have to learn to fix my own damn bike?

I think I'll learn to fix my own bike. I like it here, and I like my job. And I make plenty of money. If I made any more money I'd have to give a larger quantity of it to the government, and I'm not sure I approve of what they're doing with it nowadays.

Transportation Chronicles: Week Two

Another carless week. Uneventful, mostly. I'm getting laughed at a little bit about not having a car. I had a very amusing conversation last night at the neighborhood pub with a corvette-driving fellow who kept saying things like, "You have to have a car," and I'd ask why & he'd say, "Everybody has a car," or "You can't just not have a car," and I'd say well I don't have a car now and he'd say "You won't last two more weeks."

Of course stuff like that makes me a little nutty. He's not the first to say these things, but he was certainly the most persistent. Poor dear, he doesn't know me well enough to understand that it's useless to try to convince me of anything, especially if that's the best set of reasons for why I need to buy a car that he could come up with. It's entirely likely that I will buy a car eventually, but I am really enjoying the opportunity to think about it.

I've asked a few people why they have a car, and they are quite literally astonished at the question. It's not one they'd ever asked themselves. Most of them had thought extensively about what kind of car they wanted; several felt vaguely guilty or slightly defensive -- as I did -- about not having the very most fuel-efficient or lowest-emission vehicle on the market, but they had never considered trying to do without, and thought it was kind of crazy to even bring it up.

I've met a very small number of people here over the years who have been unable to own or drive cars due to health problems, or financial and legal constraints, but it's rare, and all of them would buy a car and drive it if they could. I only know one adult person here who chooses not to have a car, though I've heard rumors that there are others.

But as I've said previously, this is not a bike-friendly town. Motorists are oblivious at best and downright hostile at worst. Our city planners are seeking to make the town a little more bike-friendly, and an article in the local paper a while back about a preliminary assessment of the most immediate needs (for example, paint bike lanes, re-orient storm-drain covers, add bike racks in key areas, etc.) elicited a surprising number of angry letters to the editor about how Joe Taxpayer shouldn't have to subsidize the insanely dangerous "hobby" of a bunch of damn yuppies from up north and how cyclists on city streets were a menace and if the city has so much money to spend how about better roads. And so on. The less bloody-minded among them seemed to favor building more recreational bike trails (the kind where you have to load up your bike in your SUV and drive to) outside of town. Because bicycling is exercise and should be encouraged, but it is NOT a mode of transportation.

This isn't a pedestrian-friendly town, either. Someone told me the other day that our little sprawled-out tri-city metropolis is a national leader in pedestrian deaths per capita. I can't remember if she said it was fourth or fifth, but it was way up there. It doesn't rank that high in anything else.

It does make me nervous to ride and walk around town a lot of the time. My neighborhood is nice for pedestrians, and my workplace is approachable on foot & by bike, but it is very difficult to go to most of the shops, banks, grocery stores, etc. that I frequent without a car. Even the bike shop I used to go to is kind of unpleasant to ride my bike to. Fortunately there is one near my house and another just opened up recently downtown that is not only accessible by bike; it's also got hours that favor a working person.

But I'm happy to have made it through another week without any accidents or incidents to report. I haven't been late to anything nor missed any opportunities for fun due to not having a car. I've had to plan a little better, make a few time allowances, and neither of those things is particularly easy for me, but it's all to the good.

It's not that I'm so bloody-minded that I don't want to accept offers of help from my friends, but I want this whole thing to work without having to depend on that.

By the way, I highly recommend Robert Hurst's book "The Art of Urban Cycling: Lessons from the Street" to anyone who regularly rides in town. A former big-city bike messenger, this guy advocates a sort of hybrid cycling philosophy and strategy that is all about getting where you need to go without hurting yourself (or anyone else).

The Transportation Chronicles.

• Week One

Catblogging

I don't actually have a cat, but this is Elvis. He lives across the street from me now. He used to live with me, after Stella first found him in the park, starved and injured and almost dead, poor little thing -- and not even five weeks old. We didn't think he'd last the whole day.

That was about eight years ago.

I was working from home then, and home was an apartment not far from here where cats were not allowed. So when my friend went to Nicaragua for a couple of weeks, Elvis and I stayed with her dog, Stella. The two of them became inseperable very quickly, and he stayed there, very happily ever since.

Isn't he a beautiful cat? [Update: You might need to turn the brightness up on your monitor to see him. It's really hard to photograph shiny black mammals.]

Friday Random Ten: Audit my coolness edition

Well, it's one of those ideas going around today that I just can't resist. Norbizness started it, I think. It's the usual Friday Random Ten, but annotated and with a "coolness" score for each. I'm not sure I really have any clue about this coolness thing, though. I've been accused of listening to weird shit on purpose, just to be cool or something. But that's cool, right, to listen to stuff that nobody else knows about? And anyway, how am I supposed to know what everybody else is listening to? Maybe I'm a total geek. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

It should probably tell me something that when I look at everyone else's random ten lists, I don't even know most of the stuff that they have (and it doesn't seem to matter how old they are).

I don't really have a point of reference here, so maybe youall will help me by leaving coolness ratings (a 1-10 score, ten being the coolest) in the comments. Besides, self-assessments are notoriously unreliable, aren't they? I'll just give myself all tens because I mean, if it's on my iPod, I think it's cool. And there's only so much room on here, so I can only put what I really want to listen to on it. And even if it's not cool, I think it's cool to listen to stuff you like, no matter how cool it is or is not. But that's just me. Oh, I guess I'd be a little embarrassed if one of the three Indigo Girls songs on there comes up, but I do like those songs; it's just that they remind me of a sort of clueless and embarrassing time in my life.

Besides all that, I'm not really sure how good an indicator one's music collection is of one's coolness or lack thereof. I've met a lot of total assholes and dorks with really cool record collections, if you know what I mean. But, hey, everyone else is doing it, so here you go:

I'm just going to start with the song that's playing now, and I'll stop at ten or when we've heard from Leonard Cohen, whichever takes longer. It shouldn't take too long, though; there's an awful lot of LC on there just now:

1. "Simple" by the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, on their release "Shy Folk."I totally love these folks. Unfortunately they are not performing/recording together any more, and most of their stuff is out of print. They're Canadian, and as I recall there were a bunch of them on stage. Horns, keyboards, drums, guitars, Fabulous vocals from Kate Fenner and Chris Brown. And this is a great song so I'd give it a 10 out of 10. See what I mean about self-assessments?
2. "Sometimes I Cry" by Buddy & Julie Miller, on Buddy Miller's "Cruel Moon." Now I happen to think that Buddy and Julie Miller are really cool, and Julie is a fabulous songwriter. Insanely talented and if you read the liner notes of things you'll find them all over the place. As far as coolness goes, they're pretty much Nashville insiders and that's pretty cool, right? This isn't one of my absolute favorite songs of theirs, but it's nice and sad and it's raining out. It might not be cool to listen to them, though, on account of this Americana/ alt-country thing is maybe not so, you know, cutting edge anymore.
3. "Dealing With the Distance" by the Cash Brothers on "A Brand New Night." You know what? I don't know a thing about these guys, and I don't have the liner notes right here with me so I can't even tell you when this was made, or where, or anything. When I uploaded it the other day, the CD data base classified them for me as "rock" but I don't think that's very helpful. It's a little more alt-country or Americana or roots-like than that, but not really that either. The lyrics are a little too complicated for me to really call it pop, but it's got a certain pop flavor & texture to it. But I really dig it a lot, whoever the hell they are.

   [update: There's no excuse for ignorance. I looked the Cash Brothers up here on the internets (duh). They're Canadian, so forget what I said about the Americana thing. But they really are brothers & they're not related to that other guy by that name. This CD was released in 2003, and they have one other one out from 2001 called "How Was Tomorrow? The "news & notes" section of their website says that they are working on new material. I look forward to hearing it]

4. "Pancakes" by Lucinda Williams, from a live concert sampler called "Born To Choose." Nice tune from Ms. Williams - I'm not sure who the band is that she's performing with here but it sounds more or less like the usual suspects. Never heard this song on any of her other releases, but it's kind of goofy and good. Now I know that buying sampler or anthology or especially tribute discs is not supposed to be cool according to certain schools of coolness theory, but I really like them. Even if there's only one thing on there that interests me, there's often more that I would never have otherwise heard.
5. "The Road" Patty Larkin, from "Perishable Fruit." Patty is very cool, in my opinion. She's funny, and every time I hear her live, her guitar playing is even better than the last time. Plus, she's really kind of hot. "Perishable Fruit" is one of my favorites from her, and this is a great tune.
6. "House Where Nobody Lives" by Tom Waits on "Mule Variations." A sweet sad waltz, and a nice spare arrangement. Makes me want to dance all slow. Tom Waits is automatically totally cool, right? Or is it not cool to like somebody who is totally cool? Even if you've liked him for more than 20 years?
7. "Mickey Mouse March" by Aaron Neville & Dr. John. This is from a CD called "Stay Awake," produced by Hal Wilner. It's a whole collection of Disney tunes by a bunch of people (including Tom Waits doing the most terrifyingly demented performance of "Heigh Ho Heigh Ho it's Off to Work I Go") and it's great. I like this song too. I like Aaron Neville quite a lot, actually. Dr. John, too.
8. "6060-842" The B-52s. Well, this is just such a cool song, no question. But on the other hand is it cool to still be listening to stuff that was wildly popular when you were in high school?
9. "Do Right Woman" by the Flying Burrito Brothers, from "Sacred Hearts and Fallen Angels, another of those anthologies I'm so fond of. I'm sorta nuts about Gram Parsons. Not much more to say about that.
10. "Dark Hand Over My Heart" Richard Thompson, on the "voltage enhanced" disc of "You? Me? Us?"" I know a lot of RT fans who aren't all that fond of this disc. And there's this one friend of mine who has a taste for really slick, highly produced Europop -- this is the only RT record he seems to even sort of like. But I do like this release quite a lot all the same, both the "nude" and the "voltage enhanced" discs.
11. "Fuvom Azenekem" by Marta Sebestyen & Muzsikas, on their first release, called "Muzsikas." It's not my favorite CD of theirs (I think I like "Apokrypha" best), but it's the music of my people. You've heard her if you saw that movie the English Patient, which I didn't actually see, but I guess her songs were featured prominently on that soundtrack.
12. "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen, on "The Future." I told you it wouldn't take long for a Leonard Cohen song to come up. This one came out in 1992 and this song seemed so hopeful for a while there, about how democracy is coming to the USA. Now I'm not so sure. "The Future" seems a little more realistic:

    "Give me back the Berlin Wall
    Give me Stalin and St. Paul
    I've seen the future, baby
    It is murder"

So there you have it. Go ahead and tell me I'm a geek, or whatever.