Know Your Barry

1. He was born to a Kenyan father and American mother in Honolulu. As a child, he lived for four years in Jakarta with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. After high school, he moved to Los Angeles to study at Occidental College, and then transferred to Columbia University in New York City. He currently lives in Chicago. If elected as US President, he would be the first Hawaiian-Indonesian-Californian-New Yorker-Illinoiser to obtain the nation’s highest office.
2. In 1990, he was elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.
3. He met his wife, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, when he worked as a summer associate for the law firm Sidley Austin (where she was a full-time assocaite).
4. He taught constitutional law (part-time) at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 to 2004.
5. Is Barack Obama Muslim? No.
6. When Jay Leno asked him if he had smoked pot, he responded, ‘Not recently—that was in high school.’ ‘Did you inhale?’ asked Leno. ‘That was the point,’ Obama said.
7. Senator Obama has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 96.7 per cent of the time during the current Congress.
8. During his Presidential campaign he has been endorsed by authors Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, comedian Larry David, actress Scarlett Johannson, wrestler Hulk Hogan, and former Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry. Oh, and Oprah too.
9. The current favourite to be his vice-presidential candidate is Junior Senator Jim Webb, followed by Senator Hillary Clinton.
10. At Pleasant Valley Lanes, Pennsylvania, he took seven frames to bowl a 37. His shoe size was a 13½.

Footnote: After publishing this post, I received this attachment in my inbox, with the invitation to use it as I wished.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

You know the drill, even if you have only imagined it. You’ve turned away, and you’re about to walk out the door, when suddenly you hear music behind you, and this voice telling you, begging you, to ‘stay’, possibly accompanied by kneeling and other theatrics. So what do you do? Well, it all depends on the song that’s being played – with over 700 songs entitled ‘Stay’ to choose from (at least!), the choice is crucial. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a quick guide to some of the more well-known variations. So let’s go (or don’t go, it’s your choice, right?)

Stay – Frankie Valli

Mr Valli set the standard for kneeling and pleading and other theatrics with this overwrought ditty. With each subsequent appeal to ‘stay, just a little bit longer’, his voice breaks through another sound barrier. In between, he tries to soothe his intended conquest with assurances that ‘your daddy won’t mind, and your mommy won’t mind’. Uh… yeah, right. That voice is impressive though, even if it did spawn thousands of bad imitations.

Action: Stay just that little bit longer, but only if he has back-up singers.

Stay (I Missed You) – Lisa Loeb

If this song was written by a man, it would be two lines long: ‘I stuffed up. Take me back (grunt).’ Since it’s written by a woman, and what is more, an intelligent one, it spirals off in five directions at once, not having the decency to stick to utilitarian constructs such as verses and choruses and guitar solos and so on. At least it can be said that anyone who goes to this much effort must be a keeper. Or is that someone you keep because you’re just too scared to lose? Heck, who knows? Grunting is so much easier.

Action: First, take her hand and calm her the hell down. Then look her in the eye and say ‘Er… so you want to move back in, dear?’

Stay – Shakespears Sister

Shakespears Sister may be best remembered as a pop band (if at all), but this is one dark and unsettling tune. The lead (Marcella Detroit) tells her beau that ‘I’ll go anywhere with you, just wrap me up in chains’ and that, in his dreams, he ‘must only think of me, there can be no in between’. Yes, the poor woman is a little devoted. The Cruella de Vil interlude sounds a tad camp nowadays, but its existence is validated by the absolutely spine-chilling scream that erupts at the end of it. A beautiful song, but my god, don’t play it if you’re alone and desperate.

Action: Hold her in your arms, let her cry herself to sleep, and then run like the wind.

Stay (Faraway, So Close!) – U2

Of all the songs about sticking around and whatnot, this one has the most appropriate structure, since it’s basically all leading up to a single moment. For the most part, the band just ambles along, and every so often build up a little… (is this it? No…) Bono narrates in his empathetic tone about a woman (I’m guessing) who is in far from the best of relationships. While his intentions seem pure enough, the earnest one gives the game away by saying that ‘if I could stay, then the night would give you up’. (This could be it… no, we have to wait another verse…) For good measure, he recites a list of cities that he could whisk her off to in his private jet: ‘Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast, and Berlin’. Wait, here it is… ‘stay… with the demons you drowned, stay… with the spirit I found…

STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!’

What a climax. I don’t think they heard you in the Andes, Bono.

Action: If you like being treated like a queen, you probably won’t get a better opportunity than this. Otherwise, make your exit and try and avoid the falling debris.

Sway – Bic Runga

Oops, it’s called ‘Sway’, not ‘Stay’. How could I make that mistake?

Action: Be careful. Someone is trying to fool you.

Stay – The Blue Nile

After the party, the comedown… For me, this song has a distinct early morning feel; tired, sad, a little numb, but oddly comfortable. ‘Stay, I will understand you’ goes the chorus, which is a very mature rejoinder to the ‘damn-it-all-let’s-make-love’ subtext of similar pop songs. (Of course, the singer may still be after sex, but he has a pretty way of hiding it.)

Action: Have that second cup of coffee, and chat until dawn.

Stay – Oingo Boingo

As befits their name, Oingo Boingo take an otherwise maudlin concept and infuse it with horns and an infectious beat. Eighties pop tragics will find it near impossible to resist the bouncy chorus (‘Go, don’t you go-oh-oh, won’t you stay with me one more daaa-aaay-ooh?), despite the fact that the song doesn’t make much sense. It’s not a party, it’s not a classroom, it’s not a funeral, so what is it? Either this is a truly unique relationship, or Oingo Boingo have been indulging in some ‘weird science’ again.

Action: Dance until midnight, then decide if you want to catch the last train home.

Stay – Eternal

When I was a young boy, I was seduced by the pretty harmonies and good-looking chicks. Over a decade later, I can now see it as pure pap. But let’s not be too harsh; it’s obviously a song delivered by teenagers for teenagers. There is even a knowing wink with the line ‘they say that love will come and go, but your love’s indispensable to me.’ Insert a rap verse and it could still be a hit.

Action: Stick around until the end of the school day, maybe tomorrow even.

Stay Away – Nirvana

‘Monkeyseemonkeydo, arrrrii! Grabametobacool, arrrrii! Henalihensarime, arrrrii! Hairsenoroneisblind, arrrii!’

Action: I’d do as he says.

More Of The Same #3

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Six

The following concludes my exploration of the 25 best blogs, as named by Time Magazine. Since we’re getting down to the blogs that caught my attention the least (with one notable exception), I’m only going to have a quick look at them and rely mainly on the Time commentary.

TechCrunch is dedicated to profile new Internet technologies and companies. If you want to learn about 8hands, Fandango, Jookster, and sodahead, this is the place.

In contrast, Web 2.0h really? proclaims itself to be ‘a skeptic’s guide to emerging web technologies’. One of the (reportedly) most popular posts on this blog argued that newspaper bylines should be done away with, in line with New Media thinking. I like the idea, although I can’t say I notice the bylines anyway.

Wired’s Threat Level deals with privacy and security issues. According to Time, the Senior Editor was a hacker in the 1980s that spent 51 months in jail for fraud charges. On Threat Level, he uncovered 744 registered sex offenders with MySpace accounts, leading to one arrest. Click on The Ridiculous to find out about the producer who got busted for selling adult content to adults, and the Egyptian government’s plans to obtain royalties for replicas of the pyramids.

It’s a pity I’ve run out of steam by this stage, because The Daily Dish looks like it could be a good find. Time reckon that the author has the rare quality of admitting his mistakes, for example, his support of the Iraq war (take note, Hillary!) And supposedly he supported Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. I’ll come back when I have a bit more time on my hands, say, when I’m at work or something.

And finally, there’s Freakonomics, the blog version of possibly the greatest non-fiction book in human history. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Freakonomics, it aims to uncover the hidden side of everything through innovative use of statistical techniques. It’s fair to say that I’ve basically been ripping it off for the past eighteen months. But this little exercise has confirmed for me that Freakonomics has what I think are all the best qualities in a blog. It has a small number of contributors that between them contribute a few quality posts a day. It has a clear theme and vision of what it wants to do, without becoming a one-trick pony. It treats all subjects as worthy of notice, as long as they are of interest and are likely to provoke discussion. And despite the big names that write for it, it is not a victim to the cult of celebrity.

That’s just like this blog, right? Wait, don’t answer that…

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Five

For some inexplicable reason, I’m up early today, so let’s zip through some blogs.

Let’s wake up to The Huffington Post. HuffPo seems to more closely approximate a newspaper website than a blog, with scores of articles on politics, media, business and entertainment. But then the question is this: why should I be reading this rather than, say, the New York Times? I assume you would eventually work out which columnists you prefer reading, and which to avoid, but it could be tough going working out which is which. Time picked out a few ‘highlights’, such as Alec Baldwin writing on why Hillary Clinton would screw up the US dollar. I’ll file this one under ‘maybe’.

Metafilter is even more of a labyrinth than HuffPo, since basically anyone can post on it. I thought that looking at the most popular articles would be a good way to go, but that seems to be just as random as the home page (or the ‘random page’ – I got an article about 70 year-old performing triplets). I think the key phrase here is ‘community weblog’ – it probably works from a social standpoint. However, most of the posts appear to be of more interest than some person’s photos of their cat, so I might come back to this one as well.

Unlike Gigazine, Beppe Grillo’s blog has an English version, renewing my faith in the homogeny of the world wide web. Beppe appears to spend a lot of his time fuming about the crooks in the Italian Parliament, and probably rightly so. Type ‘psychodwarf’ into the search engine to get a good sample of the range of his concerns – I have no idea who he is talking about, but it’s an excellent image nonetheless.

Engadget is, of course, a blog for all the latest electronic toys. Since I still have minor heart palpitations every time I try to use my VCR, I’ll give this one a miss.

Ace of Spades is supposedly the right’s answer to the Daily Kos, and that looks to be true to the extent that Obama has as much hope of being complemented on the former as McCain does on the latter. But it doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously, which makes it the more entertaining read at least. And the Top 10 lists are great, such as the Top Ten Euphemisms for Self-Abuse in Star Wars (yeah, I know, I’m really fifteen), and the Top Ten Signs Paul Krugman Has Lost His Freakin’ Mind. Like listening to Eminem and watching South Park, I don’t care if I go to hell for liking this.

I’m not Jewish and never will be, so I don’t think The Velveteen Rabbi is meant for me. But that’s not to dismiss it, because it seems to do what it does pretty well. There are poems, recipes, and various musings about Judaism, and while I would rather watch the football, I admire the author’s dedication.

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Four

Reading back over Part Three, I noticed that I said that the Daily Kos had more detailed arguments than your ‘average leftist blog’. What I really should have said was your average political blog, since the right can be just as reductive as the left can. Usually I would just take advantage of the edit function on Blogger to cover over my imperfect choice of words, but the post has been up for a few days now, so I guess I can’t pretend I never typed that. Anyway, let’s move on…

Gigazine sounds like it’s run by Family Guy’s Glen Quagmire (man, that would be a cool blog), but it’s actually a Japanese site about… er, I don’t know…

TROY: Lauren, how do you translate websites?!
LAUREN: Use Babelfish.
(Troy googles Babelfish, fiddles around with it for a couple of minutes, and…)
TROY: Cool, it worked.
LAUREN: It’s good, isn’t it?
TROY (after about twenty seconds, bursts out laughing): The English translation isn’t very good.
LAUREN: Is it in Engrish?
TROY: Yeah, you could say that.

Well, I’m sure this blog is a hit in Japan. According to Time, past features on the site have been David Beckham condoms from China, and a luxury sports car knitted from wool.

Lifehacker apparently has the answers to all of life’s little questions, which should, in theory, make it my new favourite site. A lot of the topics appear to be technology-related, which I neither have the patience or the nous to deal with. But some of the non-technobabble could come in useful. My advice would be to look at the subject headings in the archives and see what takes your fancy. I’ll definitely come back and explore further at a later date.

To show how sorry I am for my previous leftist swipe, I’ll head next to the Treehugger site. (No, wait, the right can be just as enviro-conscious as… ah, forget it…) Being the sort of person I am (i.e. male), the ‘How To Green Your Sex Life’ section immediately caught my eye. Some of the tips seem distinctly unsexy to me (e.g. eco-undies), but I’m sure they do something for someone. Still, credit this blog for trying to do something useful, and apparently it’s one of the most popular going around. I’ll file it under ‘blogs I should visit’ (but will I? We’ll see…)

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Three

We’re up to number nine of my journey through Time.com’s 25 best blogs. If you’ve come this far, you may as well go a little further.

One of the most prolific blogs out there (65 posts in the last 24 hours!) has to be the media, gossip and pop culture blog, Gawker. Personally, I prefer the media and pop culture posts to the gossip, but there appears to be more than enough of all of them. Interesting features that I spotted were the ‘Gawker Stalker Sightings’ and the Open Caption threads (basically the same idea as the Cartoon Caption Contest on Radosh.net, but with a celebrity photograph instead). But what’s this… one of the main category headings on the home page is ‘Tom Cruise’. Surely there’s not enough Cruise posts to warrant a category of entertainment unto himself? Let’s refresh the site… but no, there it is again! Weird…

My partner-in-crime has suggested that I try the Daily Kos next, so any long-term damage I suffer as a result is on her head. The messages are fairly simple: Obama is a hero, McCain is a conservative and bordering on senile, and while I admit that the arguments are more detailed than your average leftist blog, it all pretty much amounts to the same thing. Of more interest is their dKosopedia project, a political encyclopedia which has useful articles on topics such as ‘How To Run For Office’ and the set-up of the US Government. If you were ever befuddled by what was going on in The West Wing, this may be the resource for you.

The Consumerist is a worthy match for Gawker in terms of prolificacy, in this case centering on the various ways us poor consumers are swindled. Posts from the day that I visited include: a man being refused an early termination on his lease for the apartment in which his fiancée was murdered, a Lonely Planet writer admitting to basing his book on information from his girlfriend, Sears refusing to refund the money for a television that they never delivered, and a Wal-Mart employee trying to coerce a customer by holding his credit card. Some will be pleased to learn that there are special sections on ‘Banks’ and ‘Airlines’. And once you feel that you an informed consumer, you can click on one of the flashy ads.

We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Two

Continuing my exploration of Time.com’s 25 best blogs:

I’m going with The Sartorialist next, because of its nifty-sounding name, and I’d forgotten it’s about fashion. The basic concept behind this blog is to take photos of what people are wearing on the street (as opposed to the catwalks), and then give others the opportunity to comment on the pics like one, giant magazine-flicking session. Y’know, it’s not too bad… the selection of outfits is usually pretty good, and I reckon I could browse around this blog for five minutes or so, which for me is, like, well… huge. For the truly fashionably-inclined, I could see this becoming just as addictive as Indexed.

To us Aussies, Bad Jocks sounds a bit strange at first, but fortunately it’s about the transgressions of sports stars rather than iffy underwear. Or not… I can’t say I particularly care about scandals of any kind, even the athletic variety. However, I did enjoy the list of all-time blood alcohol content rankings that Time mentioned, with former Detroit Tigers broadcaster Larry Sorensen reaching 0.48% (he also recorded a 0.36% and a 0.24%). Otherwise, this one’s not for me.

I find Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful Things) both intriguing and depressing; it’s got some interesting stuff, but it makes me feel nauseous to realise just how much junk there is out there. A random week: Cuban taser glove from 1935, motorcycles made from watchparts, tactical food fight spoons, Donkey Kong monster truck… I can’t take this abject pointlessness. Guess I’m not as postmodern as I thought I was.

Postsecret is another one of those one-trick blogs, but it’s a pretty good one: people send in homemade postcards with some sort of personal secret written on the front. In contrast to Bad Jocks, I find this blog oddly compelling. I think it’s because of the startling variety of ways people choose to express their secrets; of the postcards that I saw no two of them seemed anything alike. Definitely check this one out. And no, I don’t plan to be a contributor (or do I?)

Regret the Error is devoted to compiling various media stuff-ups, mostly from the US and UK, but I spotted some Australian entries there as well. Most of them are fairly humdrum to me, but the year-end highlights are good for a laugh. I think I’ll come back to this blog in about eight months.