First lines, from blackcoat

blackcoat posted this meme.  I am spoon-depleted, and don't warrant that it's original to him or even the first place I've seen it.  It works like this:

Step 1: Put your iPod or whatever on random.

Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 [non-instrumental] songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.

Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.

Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.

I'm going to make one minor addition:  as I strike out lines, I'll tag them with who ... well, tagged them.  (EDIT:  And, per otherbill, I'll add the correct identification up top.)

(I run DigitalDJ on random-generation all the time anyway.  It occasionally surprises me how many double-shots it comes up with in a playlist, with almost 4,400 songs from over 200 artists in its database to choose from.)

( Have at it. )

Jane Smiley on George W. Bush and deserters from the Bush administration

I quote (article link from ozarque):

Bruce Bartlett, The Cato Institute, Andrew Sullivan, George Packer, William F. Buckley, Sandra Day O'Connor, Republican voters in Indiana and all the rest of you newly-minted dissenters from Bush's faith-based reality seem, right now, to be glorying in your outrage, which is always a pleasure and feels, at the time, as if it is having an effect, but those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1 (defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic.

Full text behind the link.  (EDIT:  Missing link fixed.  I told you all I was spoon-depleted today .... here's additional evidence.  I didn't realize I'd omitted the actual link until cymrullewes pointed it out to me.)

I should observe that I don't agree with everything Jane Smiley has to say here.  To pick out but one example, Jane is clearly an advocate of affirmative action; I consider it an ill-considered idea in the short term, and a really bad, directly harmful idea in the long term.  It's one of those things that Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time when there was a need to Be Seen To Do Something, even if it was the wrong thing, but which in the final analysis not only does not solve the problems it was meant to address, but has actually created additional problems of its own.

Nevertheless, occasional objections aside, most of what she has to say is pretty much on the mark.  We have the government that we have today as a direct result of the policies and practices that were Business As Usual in the corporate sector which has, for decades now, had a level of influence upon American politics out of all proportion to any actual entitlement for influence that it should possess.  Figuratively speaking, we allowed the fox to help write the specifications for the new henhouse, and now we're surprised that it's full of weasels.

Can I please have a WAIT loss program?

I spent about half of today waiting around.  After the kids got up and we found Wen the Eternally Surprised a pair of matching shoes, it was off to Merrimack for the second try to get my license remade with the little wheelchair icon that says yes, I really am authorized to have this disabled parking permit.  New Hampshire DMV even called me yesterday to tell me they'd identified and corrected the problem.

(You may now practise your hollow, mocking laughter.)

I'm sure you've already figured out that it was not fixed.  They couldn't do it this week, either.  Not only that, but as I was filling out the paperwork this week, I noticed that the replacement license they issued me last week -- you know, the one supposed to be identical to the one I'd just turned in for replacement, except with the wheelchair icon -- had the wrong date of birth on it.  It had 07/08/1960 instead of 08/07/1960.  "Oops."  And hey, waitaminnit here .... where's my motorcycle endorsement?!?

Well, of all the accumulated errors, the only thing they managed to get fixed today was the birth date on my license.  And because they had to enter a new birth date, hey, that means I must be a different person!  So we had to take a new picture.  Still, it's a better photo than the one on the original -- I don't look so exhausted -- so that's not a terrible thing.  It's actually not bad at all for a license photo.

Anyway, somehow they'd managed to completely erase all record from my license that I've ever had a motorcycle endorsement on my New Hampshire license.  They apparently have to go back and look up the microfilm of the original application in order to verify that I actually have the endorsement.  We sat around and waited for about another hour and a quarter or so waiting for DMV Concord to call back and say they'd found it.  So far, there has been no call.  In the meantime, I don't even know whether I can legally ride right now or not.  The clerk at the Merrimack DMV office couldn't tell me for sure.

We had to leave there about 1400E to head two exits down 3 for my appointment with my orthopedist at 1420E.  We got there with ten minutes to spare ... only to sit around for another hour and a quarter waiting for them to get to us, because the orthopedist was running late.  After an hour and a quarter waiting, I was in the exam room maybe ten minutes, tops.  The upshot of that was to get sent home with instructions to wait for a call sometime this week from his surgical scheduler, to give me a list of possible dates for surgery on my left knee.

Two and a half hours of sitting around waiting in two different offices, and very little to show for it.