Temperate T-Shirts

Anti-Bush rhetoric has reached such a fever pitch in this country that only moderate, well-considered and non-ironic statements can even presume to have an impact. With that in mind, may I propose the following updates to your left-leaning wardrobe.

President Bush Tends to Make Decisions With Which I Disagree

Republicans Have a Different Ideology Than I Do

Rush Limbaugh's Erstwhile Addiction to Painkillers May Be Indicative of Other Shortcomings in His Judgement

A Responsible Drawdown In Troops in Iraq Would Ultimately Be Best for All Parties Involved

Human Life Should Be Considered More Valuable Than Any Particular Commodity

Or perhaps:

Fighting Otherwise Unprompted Wars in Oil-Rich Countries Seems Suspicious


Might I further suggest:

I Generally Dislike People

Virginia Is Nice This Time of Year

ribble's Best Covers

I've been listening to odd foreign band Nouvelle Vague and thinking about some of my long-held opinions about what makes a great cover.

I think the key to a good cover is when a band reinvents a song in their own image. To do this properly, a band needs to have a strong identity coming in. In the best cover songs, I feel like I can recognize both the identity of the band and the contours of the original songs.

I first started thinking about this back in the late nineties when I was hanging out with an unrelated group of odd foreigners and listening to a lot of Ben Folde Five. Here was a guy with a diverse but very recognizable musical identity - I saw Folds at a college concert and he half-joked that his whole career he'd just written the same seven songs over and over.

If you can find some of the Ben Folds covers, though, they're pretty genius. It's the sort of thing where you start listening and then you say to yourself "oh, yeah! That's what this is!" (for the record, She Don't Use Jelly is one of my favorites.)

The best covers may be better than the originals, but it's like comparing apples and oranges. It's the same song in an alternate universe.

Googling the Republican Convention

Huckabee
Joe Biden Presidential Votes
(MSNBC was nice enough to clear this up for me: Huckabee got this out of nowhere.)

Republican Convention Live Blogging

Martha Cothren
(This one is true)

Guiliani
"We used to say if a frog had side pockets, he's carry a handgun"
(best guess I read: it's an answer to "if Kerry had won 120,000 more votes in Ohio, he'd be President now")

"Sorry about that war"
SNL "glimpse the future"
(You can read this here. Thank you, blog of Mike DeWolfe!)

Palin
Palin's accent
(Idaho? Minnesota?)

Private jets on ebay
(Buy it Now for $75,000)

Code Pink Palin

At this point, TiVo helpfully switches me to The Daily Show. Thanks, TiVo!