Out for a bit

The Canes took the Habs and Jersey down in dominating fashion. The Sabres series isn’t going quite so well. But in lieu of paying attention to hockey over the next couple of weeks, or fixing that annoying left/right justify bug on the title page, I’ve got…

…other plans.

BTN’s going to be dormant for a couple of weeks. (Yeah, I know, what’s the difference from normal?) To keep y’all occupied, check out a few semi-new Flickr sets that haven’t been featured here yet:

• Arizona+MN 2006: visiting Amy, catching some hockey, and a layover-length visit to downtown Minneapolis in winter
• Hockeyfest 2006: mid-March, Quebec and Ontario, 3 2 games in 3 nights, with action photos courtesy new camera of awesomeness, plus geographical oddities you’ll only find on one of Josh’s solo adventures
• DC Sports Apr-06: more action from Canes-Caps and Nats-Mets

Back in a while… and you’ll probably get more pictures then too. Photoblog anyone?

Meme-tastic: 24 Questions On Music

Ripped this one from EDSBS, and it’s a lot of fun. I really want to see some responses on this from the readers.

1. A favorite political track.

Split this one down the middle between “Mr. Wendal” by Arrested Development and “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” by XTC. One’s an infectious homage to a homeless guy in Atlanta that can be played/sung with two drumsticks, a mattress and a Ziploc bag full of socks (not that I ever did this with youth group friends on a mission trip in Tennessee in 8th grade), the other a JFK allegory that I don’t completely buy but still enjoy (I can’t deal with the alternate Jesus allegory theory at all). Side props to R.E.M.’s “Exhuming McCarthy” as well.

2. One of those tracks that will make you dance on the dancefloor no matter what.

At the risk of being way too trendy, I have to get up to Matisyahu’s “King Without A Crown.”

3. The song you’d use to tell someone you love them.

I’m gonna reserve my answer to this one for H’s and my first dance.

1. A song you know would sell lots of VWs (or ipods, or whatever) if they paid for it. (One that hasn’t already been used).

Blackhawk, “Big Guitar”, or a slightly hopped-up version of James Taylor’s “Mexico.”

1. A song that forced you to sit down and analyze its lyrics.

Metallica, “Master of Puppets”: the song is written from the perspective of heroin talking to an addict, and drives home the hopelessness of that life through the utter contempt dripping from every word. The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra adds some genuinely chilling strings on the S&M CD to complete the mood. More recently, Franz Ferdinand’s “The Fallen”: it’s another Jesus allegory that I don’t fully agree with, but it merited thought nonetheless.

Read More »

Foursquare

Oh no! I’ve been tagged!

Four jobs I’ve had:

• computer programmer
• bus driver
• intramural sports referee
• network design consultant

Four movies I can watch over and over:
I’m not much of a movie person, but here goes…

• Sneakers
• Office Space
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• Miracle

Four books I could read over and over:

• Open Net, George Plimpton
• The Guns of the South, Harry Turtledove
• The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Tom Clancy
• Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby

Four TV shows I love:
This is going to require some cheating. I don’t watch much non-sports TV.

• Hockey Night in Canada
• ESPN College GameDay
• Pardon The Interruption
• Sliders (last regular show I watched… cancelled by Fox in 1997)

More Randomness!

The Fill BTN With Random Stuff ‘06 campaign continues this week, as we again wander North America through the text of a blog.

Up in the True North, Canadians elected a Conservative government for the first time since 1993 on Monday. Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper immediately provoked a minor spat with the USA by announcing plans to outfit three new naval icebreakers for Arctic duty; Canada claims sovereignty between the lines of longitude of its northernmost points of land all the way up to the North Pole, a claim generally ignored by everyone else on the planet; the Arctic was a submariners’ playground throughout the Cold War, and various countries have continued to sail below the icepack since. For my money, this is, as usual for Canada, a domestic political play thinly disguised as a foreign-policy dispute. Firing off a few small-caliber shots at America never hurt a Canadian pol, and Harper is in a tenuous position as the leader of a minority right-wing government that will have to work point-by-point coalitions with three opposing left-wing parties: the traditional rival Liberals who they forced out of power, the wacky near-socialist New Democrats, and the separatist Bloc Québécois. The Liberals in particular knocked Harper off in 2004 by trying to paint him as “George W. Bush-lite”, and cut into a once-big Tory lead this year the same way; being mildly irritating to us before he even gets into office is probably sound strategy. It’s vaguely disappointing, but Harper merits withholding judgement for now; if he can stay away from the spite that characterized Canadian Liberal governments’ transborder relations, he’ll be a major upgrade for both countries.

Read More »

Shootaround

Crossing my mind as I watch Canes-Isles:

• Marcus is gone, thankfully. May we never speak his name again.
• Nobody saw it but Center Ice subscribers, but the Flyers-Hurricanes game on Tuesday was a spectacular show, and a good example of how physicality is still part of hockey under the new rules, no matter what Steve Yzerman says. Philadelphia’s Michal Handzus was physically dominant at both ends of the ice for much of the game, the game wasn’t overburdened with penalty calls, and yet the clear violations were whistled where they weren’t before this season. By the way, I was thinking this even before the Canes lit the lamp twice in the third to tie it, then eked out the shootout win for their eighth straight victory. Sorry, Eric, but we’re definitely keeping Coach Laviolette.
• Jody points today to a very solid article out of City Journal discussing the “marriage gap”: the vast gap in out-of-wedlock birth rates between college-educated women and women who did not finish post-high-school education.
The piece defies short excerpting, so read the whole thing.

Thoughts? What’s on your mind?