BLCKDGRD

Sounds

• Obscure Sound lists it's 50 top albums of 2007, each and every one with at least one cut. Extraordinarily generous.
• Here's Largehearted Boy's favorites of the year, with sound.
• Here's Gorilla vs Bear's favorites, with sound.
• All Song's Considered top ten songs, with sound.
• All Song's Considered top ten world music albums, with sound.
• Wil Herme's top ten, with sound.
• Said the Gramophone's favorites of the year, with sound.

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KEXP's listener countdown, with thoroughly no surprises in the Top Ten:

10	Wilco	Sky Blue Sky
9	Feist	The Reminder
8	The Shins	Wincing The Night Away
7	Spoon	Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
6	M.I.A	Kala
5	LCD Soundsystem	Sound Of Silver
4	Band Of Horses	Cease To Begin
3	The National	Boxer
2	Arcade Fire	Neon Bible
1	Radiohead	In Rainbows

Wilco and The Shins and Spoon and Arcade Fire and Radiohead don't make me dance, but I understand why they're here. LCD was in my top five, and Feist is bearing my love child, and M.I.A's "Paper Planes" is song of the year:

But stank on a magnetized disc, Band of Horses just sucks. Sucks.

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And FMF has been dark the past few weeks because new releases are held until after the new year, but lookee here:

Stereogum has a list of 2008 releases, including on January 15, NEW MAGNETIC FIELDS!!!! and new Sun Kil Moon in April and new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in April and new My Morning Jacket in a yet to be specified month...

There's a reason I ask for gift cards for xmas.

Mo' Better Fear

Do you realize that Chelsea Clinton will be 36 years old in 2016, clearing a certain Constitutional requirement? Just saying.

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• The most important column you'll read today.
• Bullshit as hagiography.
• Nut-squeezers coerce nut-squeezees to hire Irving Kristol's son to "balance" leftist propagandist Paul Krugman on NYT op-ed page. O, outrage! Take a second to scratch all your favorite sores.
• UPDATE: Remember when Krugman beat the shit out of Brooks after Brooks fucked up his assignment of making it OK to say Reagan's Neshoba speech wasn't race-baiting? Think about how fast that meme disappeared from rightwing house-organs. Just saying.
• UPDATE: Krugman calls out Greenspan. Cal Thomas' whiskers're twittering!
• I pledge not to breathe if elected president.
• Vomit/Excrement 08!
• Hedging bets.
• Busted for mushrooms at a Grateful Dead cover-band concert?
• Post political reporter evokes The Magic Negro!
• Toolio says the world is.... dangerous!
• 08 is not 68?   
• At bottom, a link to Scouser Alphabet.
• Swerve on swerve.
• Yes, and?
• Year in Sport.
• It's hard to claim one's party isn't a corrupt enterprise when it names a nineteen year old boy to guide it through civil war.
• McCain losing votes to Obama?
• Bio-pic about Abe Pollin?

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WHAT THE....

12/28 - DCRTV hears that Ledo Pizza's naming rights deal for all-newser WTOP's "Glass-Enclosed Nerve Center" comes to an end at the end of the year. A Bonneville source tells DCRTV that the newsroom will no longer have a sponsor. Instead, Annapolis-based Ledo will be an hourly sponsor of WTOP's sports reports. We also hear that, starting next week, there will be new music for the introduction of WTOP news anchors coming out of the CBS hourly news.

And here's DCRTV's top ten radio stories of note for 2007, to which I only add, The Globe still sucks.

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And Mocomofos, a reminder: Sibley, not Suburban, in an emergency.

And she's OK.

Bwock! Bwock! Bwock!

What if Benazir Bhutto did go back not only expecting but coveting martyrdom, not exactly co-conspiring but not exactly avoiding dangerous and uncontrollable situations?

Contrast and compare with Our Fearless Leader, who won't face a VFW crowd in Alabama unless every person in the audience has been brain-frisked for ideological purity.

Now listen to this fuckface:

Yes, our keepers understand and fan fear of emirs for propaganda value (and I don't for a second think anything but crocodile tears are being shed by the White House for their propaganda value), but I keep saying this:

One primary reason rightwing American bedwetters fear the Muslims is chicken-shit jealousy and cowardly envy.

By the way, does this country have a Secretary of State?

Not that she has any influence, but you'd expect the Cardassians in the White House to trot her out to a microphone during international crises like this one.

Theme Song Dec 07

Aargful and Aceless

I constantly fight the urge to meta-blog because it's both what I want to do and because it's what I want to do, so when articles like this one, Casual Blogging Not Just Lunch Money Now, appear in a major newspaper, I permit myself to indulge myself.

Ready? I'm throwing third:

Whew, that was fun. Left-handed and twenty-five years younger that metablogging makes you feel.

Now, let's enjoy the blogosphere's slow, lingering, pointless and (mostly) profitless death together, shall we?

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• Krugman on the progressive moment.
• Ruth Marcus discovers teenagers have sex, and even more shockingly, greedy capitalists sell sex for large profits! Oh my!
• Body found near my few attempts at farming (in those rural days).
• You just thought traveling to that side of the river sucked.
• Feinstein dances on Garyland's grave!
• Quotes of the year.
• Albums of year as voted by All Song's listeners. Meh.
• Toolio knows something about micromanaging, and projects!
• While The Forehead lectures you on proper godding.
• Please note that this Post article doesn't mention that Bush's signing statement included a sentence avowing his right to utterly disregard the bill he just signed into law.
• NYT list of notable deaths in 2007, and as I type this NYT reporting Benazir Bhutto assassinated.
• Leading candidate for stupidest, most condescending, and shallowest column of today!
• Rafsanromney v Huckadinejad! (h/t Cernig).
• Important stories in 2007 you never heard or heard but neglected: Gay Nebraska!
• Yet another fabulous photoshopped Star Trek allusion!

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Dunk the Dope for a Dime - the most important thing you'll read today.

It's striking how quickly that Glenn Greenwald/Ezra Klein kerfluffle on Teh Left disappeared from the chattering Left's elite blogs. Let that be a reminder of what's permissible to say.

Day After Xmas Blog-Strategy

Reads For a Long Two Days

Shopdropping!

....

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• Doghouse deconstructs MoDo.
• Any of the Above v None of the Above.
• Bill Belichick as Barthes.
• Please, tell me this isn't what I think it is.
• Tom Friedman's best column.
• Hoover's detainment plan? Better than Liberals.
• On hair and privilege.
• Three Wise Atheists of Scienceblogs.
• Notes on Populism.
• More notes on populism.
• Santa's Sweatshop.
• Stupid question.
• Subjective and Inadequate Year in Review!
• The Delusion Style in American Punditry.

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• The Millions impressive compilation of bests...
• DC City Papers music writers best of....
• The Best Novels You've Never Read (read Wright's Polka)
• KEXP DJ's top ten lists.
• Mountain 7's best music part one...
• James Wood on the new Coetzee.
• Books of Year Symposium.

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And a favorite for Merry Atheist Consumerist Day!

O, For a Return to the Glory of the Caner-Medley Era

Well, if THIS doesn't get this guy blogging again, I'll take him at his word the hiatus just might be permanent.

UNRELATED UPDATE!

Yes, it was a penalty, even if Giggs dived it almost away, but more importantly, it's not to late to buy MY United THEIR United's Ronaldo for xmas.

Harry Reid Plays Hardball!

Harry Reid was interviewed last night on News Hour by the ridiculously spineless Ray Suarez.

Reid must be a bastard brinksman to own the power he does, so inept and ineffectual a public spokesman he is, so I'm tempted to believe him when he self-pityingly claims the pigbrained Republicans and the fuckfaced president who commands them did stonewall the Democrats' as their sole policy initiative this past year. Call the freaking waambulance.

Here's the outrage: Ray Suarez did not ask Reid a single question about the destruction of the CIA-torture tapes, not a single question about FISA, not a single question about Reid's opposition to Chris Dodd's filibuster on telecom immunity, not a single question about Guantanamo or waterboarding or any other matter pertaining to the moral soul of our illusions to what we once quaintly called "American Exceptionalism."

I'm guessing those lack of questions was Fighting Harry Reid's hardballed condition for appearing on News Hour.

He's one tough bastard.

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• Why conservatatives love Obama?
• Pwogwessives? A view from the crate.
• Greenwald is now an enemy of the new pwogwessive elite.
• Speaking of pwogwessive bloggers consolidating power.
• Pwogwessive heroes? Scabs.
• What will pwogwessive bwoggers say?
• The reproduction of the class system.
• The babyjeebus and welfarequeens.
• Any of the above versus none of the above.
• Notes on populism.
• Thank god I'm an atheist.
• I'm sick of clintonitus, but not as sick as I am of clintonoscopies.

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Bartleby is an option I admire but can't inhabit. The blogworld is no more democratic than a kindergarten sandbox. So?

I again am pleased to announce that I still blog for my and my friends' amusement, and I'm perfectly aware of that small demographic's finite numbers.

The consolidation of power in Leftblogistan operates on the same rules of power as the power it purports to abhor. Yawn. It's a call to resist, not a call to quit.

Will You Root For Liverpool and Arsenal and Real Madrid?

Yes, yes you will.

Champions League Knock-off Draw:

Celtic-Barcelona
Lyon-Manchester United
Schalke-Porto
Liverpool-Inter Milan
Roma-Real Madrid
Arsenal-AC Milan
Olympiakos-Chelsea
Fenerbahce-Sevilla

Because a final eight without one Italian team would be the bestest New Year's wish ever.

Inter or Milan or Roma?