Hummingwolf at Home

Discovered last night that there are still some people who have not seen this one, so there is obviously a need to post the link: political video you must see. If you are not entirely sick of American politics yet (and, gosh, why would you be?*), then do go watch. It could be vitally important to your future.**





* Mommy, what's sarcasm?

** It isn't, but it could have been.

Since I haven't been writing much lately, it seems like a good time to link to things I posted years ago. Summer is for reruns, right? Anyway, I referred to this in a discussion elsewhere last night, so feel free to re-read (or not, as the case may be): Care and feeding of your pet peeve.

Oh, since animangel and I talked about being in the path of a hurricane tropical storm a while back, here's What I Did On My Isabel Vacation, by Hummingwolf. And for amusement value, there's an old entry about housemate interviews.

And for people not interested in my old posts, you can take a trip back to the eighties instead: Icehouse, "Street Cafe" video. Or maybe you'd like to watch "Icehouse" by Flowers, the group who renamed themselves to Icehouse, meaning this song is better known as "Icehouse" by Icehouse from the album Icehouse.

Once again, technology is confusing me; and once again, it is certain that people are to blame. However, one has to wonder what, exactly, those people had in mind.

See, I can understand the motive behind most instances of web scraping: money. If you haven't got an original idea in your head, or if you haven't the inclination to put all your original ideas into practice, then it is so much easier to have some webcrawler go out and gather other people's content for you so you can put it up on your site, find out how many people click on links to your site when they do searches for something interesting, and collect the ad revenue. It is not a terribly ethical thing to do, but it certainly is understandable. What I don't get is the motivation for sites that collect the content and then change many of the words to something else so that it's barely recognizable as English--particularly when those sites do not appear to have any advertising on them.

Yesterday I found a prime example of what I'm talking about, and as a child of the '80s, I find it a most amusing one. Back in 2006, somebody posted a list of the songs on a compilation called Hit Mix 86 - continuous mix of 1986 hits. A cute little scraped blog posted a mutilated version of that entry a couple of days ago called "Fetch a blow Reembody 86- durational confound with regard to 1986 hits"--text-only Google cache here. In the new entry, "I" was replaced by oddities like "Psyche" or "Herself;" the band Sly Fox became "Slide Reynard," "Ready Sly dog," and "Privy Charmer;" and Paul Hardcastle's name became both "John Hardcastle" and "Clement of Alexandria Hardcastle."

As a longtime Nik Kershaw fan, I would love to hear him sing his hits "Wouldn’t Subliminal self Come True-spirited" and "Ruach Won’t Hampering the Glim Decline By use of Subliminal self" (formerly known as "Wouldn't It Be Good" and "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"). I was never a fan of Samantha Fox's song "Touch Me, (I want your body)," but hearing Samantha Wolf sing "Touch down You, (Ego neverness your corpulence)" would be a highlight of my life--particularly if she's doing a duet with her twin Samantha Sweet talker, known for her hit "Correspondence Other self (Himself Ullage Your Expansion)." Oh, and it's been a long time since I've heard Kate Howling wilderness singing "Steady Heavenward That Blister." Does anybody else have any opinions on other classic tunes in the mix?

~~~~~

Unrelatedly, rialian posted a link to The Nature Institute's site about Nontarget Effects of Genetic Manipulation. At least, I think that's unrelated. Now that I think about it some more, I wonder what would happen if the bot that made the mutant page above were involved in creating transgenic organisms.

Lately I've been listening to lots of new music, trying to acquaint myself with more of the trends of the 21st century. Last night, the part of my brain responsible for earworms took its revenge by repeating not one, not two, but three songs from the '80s which I almost certainly have not heard since the '80s. I found lyrics for all three songs online, so they must have been real recordings and not the product of my fevered brain, but is there anybody who isn't me who remembers a single one of them?

( Here there be lyrics )

While I'm here, I'll post some older lyrics I should've posted yesterday: Ides of March's biggest US hit, from way back in 1970--"Vehicle"!

Hey well, I'm a friendly stranger in a black Sedan
Won't you hop inside my car?
I got pictures, got candy, I'm a lovable man
And I can take you to the nearest star

I'm your vehicle, baby
I'll take you anywhere you wanna go
I'm your vehicle, woman
But I'm not sure that you know
That I love ya (love ya)
I need ya (need ya)
I want ya, got to have you, child
Great God in heaven, you know I love you
( Yes, children, the '70s were a scary time )

(If you're terribly interested, the Ides of March lead singer & songwriter (who also co-wrote all of Survivor's hits and a few songs for .38 Special) tells the story of "Vehicle" on his site. It's kind of cute, actually.)

Listening to an '80s station on Launchcast, I skipped over a Starship song (even though I have a high tolerance for cheese, I do have standards), and "We Built This City" was immediately followed by Siouxsie & the Banshees' "Cities in Dust."

Maybe I'm too easily amused.

In other news, I'm still tired and hurting and more than a little bit antisocial. Hopefully will be up to updating and responding to e-mails tomorrow or the next day.

Haven't heard this song in a long time. It somehow still has the power to both inspire and annoy me.

( Lyrics for those who wonder what I'm talking about. )
This needs to be said: My friends are wonderful. The rest of my life stinks, but my friends are jewels beyond compare.

Once again optimism rears its ugly head. Good grief, what will it take to kill it once and for all?