The hum of the Friday Random Ten

One thing about night, late at night, when it's a little windy outside. You can lie down or even stand and listen, the few cars passing on the street blending in with the wind. It's kind of peaceful.

1. Beck - Blackbird Chain
2. Fleetwood Mac - Same Old Way
3. Ernie K-Doe - A Certain Girl
4. Metric - Clone
5. Rasputina - My Orphanage
6. The Who - Our Love Was
7. Sun Ra - Tapestry from an Asteroid
8. Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Clubland
9. Fitz & the Tantrums - Break the Walls
10. Diana Krall - Devil May Care

We'll burn that cross when we come to it

Well I guess the Klan as such doesn't have as much of a presence in the UK, but this has gotta be intentional. Some guy knew he was going to be fired for some other reason - maybe boinking the boss's wife, I don't know - and slipped this promotion into the agenda. It's just too perfect.

Run dwn

Seen here is the announcement from Sunday afternoon that RIPTA was ending service for the day at five. While appearing in what is technically a newspaper it is pretty much pure press release. The reasons for the move are stated - mainly safety of the drivers and passengers - but not interrogated.

Whether or not RIPTA was justified, there seem to be some non-valid assumptions here. Mainly that passengers would be at or near home when the abnormally early stop time came. That they'd know ahead of time the stoppage was coming. So that if on the off chance they were out, they'd be on the available bus back home, and if they were home they'd know to stay in.

In reality passengers were stranded in places it was difficult to get home from in this weather. (Me, I was able to walk home, but it wasn't fun.) People waited at stops for buses that weren't coming in sub zero temperatures. And you can bet they were pissed.

Sunday night and all day Monday I've searched in vain for stories on customer complaints, or anything on public reaction at all. The story is certainly there to be told. But no local - or "local" - media outlets are telling it.

This is the essential problem with media consolidation. Providence is a decent sized market. But our one daily newspaper is owned by a Texan corporation that manifestly doesn't care about original content. The TV stations all belong to out of state conglomerates. The main alternative weekly went under a couple of months ago. And there's no "new media" innovator to take up the slack, certainly none with the requisite following.

How many stories fall into a journalistic dead space as a result?

3 the hard way

Three robotic monkeys playing along to fizzy Latin American novelty music. I think the brilliance of the Nairobi Trio is how close it comes to being unbearably creepy. It's just those occasional reminders that there are people underneath the masks that make it safe to laugh.

Friday Random Ten by the seat of the pants

Because I have something else going on Sunday morning - which for all I know will end up cancelled - I need to do grocery shopping tomorrow. Which will be mayhem, because we're expecting - wait for it - another blizzard.

Someday we'll look back on this and laugh.

1. Elton John - Come Down In Time
2. Pink Martini - She Was Too Good to Me
3. Dave Van Ronk - Motherless Children
4. Fleetwood Mac - Save Me a Place
5. The Band - Caledonia Mission
6. Aaron Neville - Over You
7. The Who - Tattoo
8. Fitz & the Tantrums - Out of My League
9. Sun Ra - Space Jazz Reverie
10. Imperial Teen - All the Same

Travel question

When customs officials ask you if you have anything to declare, can you still crack them up by saying "Only my genius"? Or do they hear that one a dozen times a day already?

For those who love puppets, guns, donuts

Hard to come up with something to say about this

Janky Donuts from Winston Macdonald on Vimeo.

I didn't make it to Boston to see this up close last year. Still, executing such a perplexing idea gets my respect.