Frequently Secretly

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Willie Nelson has a new song out. Normally, this wouldn’t be something that I’d take much notice of — while I don’t have anything against country music (and even have a little in my collection), it’s not my main forte.

This one, however…isn’t your typical country song.

Willie Nelson’s crooned cowboy songs before, from the signature “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” to “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.”

But never like this: On “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” the Texas country icon sings about love among men on the range. Available exclusively at iTunes today, the song aims to show Mr. Nelson’s support for gays, particularly to conservative country-music fans.

“The song’s been in the closet for 20 years,” Mr. Nelson said in a prepared statement. It was written in 1981 by Lubbock-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette.

…[Brokeback Mountain] may have provided the perfect opportunity to release this new song. But Mr. Nelson also has a personal connection to the tune.

Two years ago, David Anderson, Mr. Nelson’s friend and tour manager of three decades, told his boss he’s gay. Last March, while Mr. Nelson recorded a batch of previously unreleased songs for iTunes, he discovered the song in a stack of demos he had tossed into a drawer.

Singing “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” was Mr. Nelson’s way of telling a longtime pal everything was OK, says Mr. Anderson.

The song’s currently only available through the iTunes Music Store. Lyrics are after the cut.

(via Boing Boing)

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Olympics Opening Ceremony

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Prairie and I have been watching the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, but…it’s after 11pm, the torch still isn’t lit, and according to news reports that give a 3-hour run time for the whole thing, it’s not over ’till midnight, which is too late for us. It’s a little frustrating — this thing’s on a tape delay, why couldn’t they have started it at seven or eight in order to get it done with at ten or eleven? Urgh.

We’ve enjoyed seeing the first two hours of the show. Mostly.

Good things: The Italians have a wonderful flair for theatrics, and some of the portions of the show have been just wonderfully bizarre. The cow ballet earlier in the show, the sun and moon balloons with the aerialists, the dance piece…all very much fun. We were also enjoying watching the parade of nations, where it was rather amazing how many of the smaller republics that just came into existence over the past few years with the fragmentation of Russia and parts of Europe have been able to send delegations to the games. Not to mention North and South Korea marching in together!

Bad things: The show was scheduled to start at 8pm, and I suppose that in theory, it did. However, from eight until nine was just blather about all the athletes, and the actual opening ceremony didn’t start until nine. Commercials, commercials, commercials! Every. Two. Minutes. Ugh…no matter what was going on, they had to break for commercials, and while they at least took advantage of the tape delay for the parade of nations, they didn’t seem to do so for the rest of the opening ceremony. I’m pretty sure that at least five to ten minutes of the presentation disappeared so that we could sit through more SUV commercials. Ugh.

And last, but definitely not least — the commentators were horrid! Here we are, watching the opening ceremonies of the biggest forum for friendly international competition, and every time they could, the commentators were bringing up every horrid, unfriendly, divisive piece of trivia they could. Italy was singled out as the third largest member of the US’s ‘Coalition of the Willing,’ Denmark’s entrance was used as an opportunity to talk about the Muslim cartoon scandal (and even worse, when the commentator couldn’t think of anything to say about Estonia, who entered directly after Denmark, he just returned to blathering about the Danish cartoons)…it was horrid. Badly done, and so incredibly inappropriate.

Hooray for the Olympics, and good luck to all the athletes from all the countries. But a big, big thumbs-down to NBC’s approach to presenting tonight’s ceremonies.

Humor in Tragedy

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I’ve always had a predilection for black humor. It’s a trait that will occasionally raise its head at entirely inappropriate times.

Like today, when I saw the following headline (which has since been replaced on CNN’s site):

Tear gas, gunfire beat back cartoon protesters

All I could see in my head was a Toon Town riot, and I couldn’t help laughing. Wrong, and I’m going to hell…but funny.

(For the record, I think the local Muslim community is doing a far better job of responding to the cartoons than the rioters are. Also, until I read this article, I had no idea that the it was considered blasphemous to portray images of Mohammed. That little piece of information makes the anger at the cartoons a little more understandable to me — but I still in no way believe that the violence that’s taking place is the appropriate response.)

iTunes “Groove to Move” by Channel X from the album Technomancer (1996, 5:20).

Bruce the Wonder Yak

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Someone discovered a fun easter egg in Apple’s Final Cut Pro 5:

Open up “Final Cut Pro.rsrc” (/Applications/Final Cut Pro HD/Contents/Resources/Final Cut Pro.rsrc) in any text editor and you will stumble upon this hidden message:

If we can’t ship this puppy by then, we might as well be herding yaks. I’m glad it’s getting weird again. I didn’t understand it when it wasn’t weird. The C switch statement: Mmmmmm! Chock full of nooses! That would be like crossing the streams or something. Mmmm… Chicago style pizza! I’ve got my blankie, I’m good to go. A lot of this job is mental. “Mostly clockwise, sometimes reverses…” What’s the sound of one luma clamping? I just wanna be in the app! Oh, rough and woeful music which we have! Cause it to sound! The Yak is a delightful creature… rather like a visit with a bovine Confucious…

There’s a lot more there, I’ve snipped it for the sake of brevity. I think it’s a hilarious little random screed — and my guess is that they just took every little “in-joke” from the FCP programming team and tossed them all semi-randomly into a single text file. That’s what it reads like to me, at least — with the recurring Yak theme and the general random silliness of what’s in there, reading it reminded me a lot of some of my old brainstorming sessions with friends.

Bush’s hit list

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What follows is a list originally posted on Yahoo and copied here because Yahoo tends to remove news articles two weeks or so after they’re posted. I also reformatted the list to make it easier to read.

These are the proposed cuts in Bush’s 2007 budget. A lot of things in here make me wince, but it’s the education sections that really make me mad. I want my 24.6 seconds back.

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Unfortunately Michael

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More fun with Google: Unfortunately Michael…

Unfortunately, Michael discovers Nellie’s hands-on approach is more than he bargained for.

A pity, as I’m not normally one to object to hands-on approaches from women.

Unfortunately, Michael is unable to accept any story ideas or manuscripts…

Ever. At all. They’re all totally unacceptable, every single one of them.

Unfortunately Michael deals with Kevin because he knows that his mom will NOT and that is NOT fair to Michael!!!

Heh. My little brother’s name is Kevin. At times when we were growing up, I probably thought that this was very true.

Unfortunately, Michael and Helena’s relationship just wasn’t as good.

Especially since I don’t remember ever having a relationship with a Helena. Couldn’t have been very good at all.

Unfortunately Michael’s umbrella was tied to the wall to stop it blowing away…

…so while the wall stayed nicely dry, I was drenched.

Unfortunately, Michael did not live to see the television series based on the pilot…

Yes, you heard it right here. This website is written by a zombie. THE UNDEAD!

Unfortunately Michael barely had time to show his skills in fighting…

I’ve got skills. Nunchuck skills.

Unfortunately, Michael became obssessed with getting Walt back and went back into the jungle.

And since that fateful day, the Jungle Cruise tour has been haunted with the sound of my voice crying out, “Walt! Mister Disney! Where are you? Come back to me!”

The music isn’t too bad but unfortunately Michael just makes it sound amateurish.

All those years of choir gone to waste. Such a shame!

But, unfortunately, Michael died before that happened.

See? UNDEAD! UNDEAD! UNDEAD! (with apologies to Bauhaus).

(via Eric Meyer)

iTunes “I Got You” by Vitamin C from the album Vitamin C (1999, 4:01).

The IT Crowd

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Cory’s right — The IT Crowd is great.

Creator Graham Linehan has produced a cast of characters who exemplify everything I loved about Father Ted: complete, over-the-top silliness, likable villainy, and great comic foolishness. The setup for the show is as silly as Father Ted’s: two IT geeks in the basement of a large, abusive corporation get a new boss, a woman who lied about her IT experience on her resume. What follows isn’t funny because of its intricate plotting, but because of its willingness to lard absurdity on absurdity, so that each episode gets progressively weirder as it progresses (for example, in episode two, there’s a screamingly funny running gag about a fire that’s broken out in the basement, which has to be hidden from the abusive CEO when he comes down to check on everyone’s morale).

British humor and geek jokes (lots of ’em, too, from Flying Spaghetti Monster posters to RTFM t-shirts to EFF ‘Fair Use Has a Posse‘ stickers…essentially the entire set dressing) combined. Bonus points for basing the theme song off of Gary Numan‘s ‘Are Friends Electric?“, too. Fire up your bittorrent clients and enjoy!

iTunes “Are Friends Electric?” by Information Society from the album Darkest Hour, The (1997, 4:27).

ENG101: In-Class Writing: Analysis: Ed Schools vs. Education

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My second paper for my ENG101 class. This was an in-class essay analyzing an editorial by George Will, “Ed Schools vs. Education“. We’d been given the article the week prior, so we’d be able to prepare and bring along anything we needed (short of an already-written essay) to prepare.

Final grade: 100% (plus a smiley face and the notation, “Couldn’t have said it better myself!”).

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The Ciccones: Lies

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Here’s a mashup worth listening to: The Ciccones‘ “Lies” (6.5Mb .mp3). While most of the all-Madonna mashup album is fairly hit-and-miss, this is by far the standout track. Over the music for “Live to Tell“, audio quotes from the justifications for the Iraq war are juxtaposed with the song’s original chorus:

A man can tell a thousand lies,
I’ve learned my lesson well,
Hope I live to tell the secret I have learned,
’till then, it will burn inside of me.

Cute and clever.

iTunes “Lies” by Ciccones, The from the album Immaculate Concoction, The (2005, 5:45).