friday random ten

Photo by Ryan McManus

friday random ten (08/12/2006)


1. "Run Away With Me" - Jens Lekman [USA October 2005 Tour EP]


2. "The 15th" - Angry Angles [Apparent Transparent 7"]


3. "Jayne's Blue Wish" - Tom Waits [Orphans: Brawler, Bawlers & Bastards]


4. "Pitter Patter Goes My Heart" - Broken Social Scene [You Forgot It In People]


5. "Unshined" - Racetrack Babies - [Summer Salt Santiago]


6. "This Better Go As Planned" - Calla [Collisions]


7. "Enemy Camps" - A Tiger Named Lovesick [Chimey Guitars & Rumbling Other Things]


8. "The One You Love" - Standing Waves [A Short History of the Standing Waves, Part 1]


9. "Apple (Suicide On Your Stereo Set)" - Annemarie [The Living Model EP]


10. "Do You Belive Her?" - The Raveonettes [Whip It On EP]

Bonus #11: "Piano Man" Ghostland Observatory



friday random ten (08/12/2006)

boo fucking hoo!

Culture Shock on Capitol Hill: House to Work 5 Days a Week (WaPo)

Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January.

The Horror.

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to.

"I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th."

The reporters groaned. "I know, it's awful, isn't it?" Hoyer empathized.

For lawmakers, it is awful, compared with what they have come to expect. For much of this election year, the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon -- and that was during the relatively few weeks the House wasn't in recess.

Link

"It's not fair! It's not fair!"

Helsinki Complaints Choir

The Guardian

The Complaints Choir of Helsinki is not the only complaints choir on the internet, but it is incomparably the best. A Finnish-German artist couple, Tellervo Kalleinen and her husband Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, asked visitors to an arts festival to submit their complaints about life, and then set the idea to music. They started in Birmingham, a promising city if you're looking for whinges. But the Birmingham Complaints Choir is small, and sadly pedestrian. "Birmingham has changed so much. I liked it more before," they start.

In Helsinki, the whole city seems to have entered into the spirit of the occasion; 100,000 people have already watched it on YouTube (Birmingham's performance has attracted only 12,000, which gives them something else to grumble about, I suppose). The Helsinki choir was made up of almost 100 people (most of them women) and their complaints, chosen from a field of 2,000, made a sad, delightful poetry.

Complaints Choir of Birmingham