I've downloaded M.I.A's tune Galang from the iTunes store....most who know me know I'm not a big hip-hopper....but this girl is good. I know by the end of the summer this song will be everywhere and you'll happily do without it, but you'll enjoy it now.

Download(for free this week) from Apple now, or check out her website

A editorial on Norm Colman's Senate Hearings reguarding the Iraq Oil for Food Program. From today's Strib:

Paul Scott: Norm's 'Celebrity Jeopardy'

Paul Scott

May 22, 2005 SCOTT0522

There is a recurring "Saturday Night Live" sketch where Will Ferrell plays Alex Trebek caught hosting a bizarro version of "Celebrity Jeopardy." The cerebral Trebek begins staggering under the scatalogical assault of Scotsman Sean Connery, parodied to full Highlander excess by comedian Darrell Hammond.

I thought of that sketch while watching our senator take on George Galloway last week. Except that by the end of the SNL sketch, Alex Trebek has our sympathy.

It is becoming possible that a local, national and now international disgust is mutating over the disingenuousness of Sen. Norm Coleman. (The Nation's John Nichols recently called him "a plain old-fashioned, drool-on-his-tie fool.") For those who first smelled a phony back when Coleman said he wanted to go to Washington to "change the tone" -- as if the naked hopefulness of Paul Wellstone was a tone that needed changing -- watching his inquisition of Scottish Member of Parliament George Galloway backfire so witheringly on Tuesday was like rolling in a tub of banana cream pie.

Maybe Coleman wasn't already choking on the hypocrisy of having asked for the resignation of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the oil-for-food fiasco, when Coleman stands mute over his the fact of his own party's leadership having so grossly mismanaged both the lead-up to 9/11 and the intelligence behind the case for war. Without the slightest apparent willingness to acknowledge such details, Coleman called to testify one of the chief critics in Britain of the invasion of Iraq, on oil-for-food charges he had already successfully refuted in the British legal system.

Even on a day when the Republicans initiated the so-called nuclear option, Galloway dropped into the U.S. news cycle like a haggis-filled A-bomb. A fierce debater from a land of men who invented hammer-throwing, a bruiser in a parliamentary system where the head of state is regularly treated like a son who smashed in the Acura, Galloway came to clear his name. And he was going to do this in front of the man previously famous for having brought Lawson Software to St. Paul.

He may be a lawyer, but Coleman is simply the wrong person to help the Republicans claim the mantle of justice-seekers. Crusading investigators are idealists. Coleman is a company man. He smiles. He hits his marks. He watches his waistline and he says his lines. Jesse Ventura was able to dispense with him during at least one debate just by pointing at tasseled loafers. In the end, it wasn't clear why Galloway's name was on some sketchy paperwork, and it wasn't clear that it mattered. When Galloway opened with a lengthy evisceration of the proceedings, the full Braveheart, Coleman countered with mumblings that sounded more like a tax audit -- as if he genuinely thought he was merely seeking facts, not political theater.

By mumbling his way through a litany of paperwork, when a strong case had just been made about a larger, more deadly deception, it was clear that the one thing Coleman had neglected to prepare for was the weakness of his moral position. He is in no position, with his president's war going this badly, to be sitting in judgment of those who have argued for the relief of the Iraqi people, and, unlike the path taken by Coleman, placed themselves in political peril by doing so.

Most of all, there was something immeasurably disappointing, as one writer to these pages observed, that it was not an American to be the first to drop the pretense of congeniality when facing the desperate diversions now underway in our Congress. There was something immeasurably sad about the fact that 200 years after we told the straight truth to an out-of touch England, it took a Brit to tell the straight truth to us: "In everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies."

Paul Scott is a writer living in Rochester, Minn.

Today I signed up for this new music service, emusic.com. LOTS of indie stuff, old stuff( like all the Sun Studios stuff ) and it's cheap. They give you unDRM'd MP3s....I got the plan that offers 90 downloads a month for a year(album and a half a week or so-plenty for me) for $19.95/month.

This weekend, I want to see Funny Ha Ha.

I know I've said this before but I love Visqueen. Buy "Sunset on Dateland". It's just that awesome!

Last night my friend Amanda Mitchell came over and we watched some of "Swimming Pool." Then she complained about her boyfriend's libedo, and about how she's getting laid far too little. Fuckin' A. Don't complain about your warm Diet Coke to someone stuck in the desert!

I LOVE IT when someone makes Senator/Mayor Quimby squirm: check this out from the BBC.

These are lofts going up in my neighborhood. Talk about overpriced.

What is the deal with lofts? Why does the builder of this site talk about the necessity of "features like exposed-duct heating and air conditioning"? When have things like this been features?

By the way, their lowest price unit is selling for $189k, is smaller than my place, and faces the highway. And my place has a pool, sauna, and no fucking highway next to you.

I hope that someday, when I'm ready to sell my place there will still be suckers like this to sell it to. I should get like half a mil.

I swear to God as I was riding the bus in to work today I saw Dave Navarro in a construction hat renovating one of the old U of M halls. I half expected him to take of his shirt, reveal is pierced and tattooed chest, and along with Perry Farrell(who would emerge from the on-site porta potty) bust into "Mountain Song" or some shit like that.

This was posted in the op/ed section of the Star Tribune today, referencing the recent bankruptcy legislation and the news that United Airlines is defaulting on their retirement plans:

Does this make sense: The federal government makes it harder for a person to file for bankruptcy, but it makes it easier for corporations to walk away from their responsibilities to their employees?

Marshall Wold, Maple Grove.

I bought a sorta-new Soul Asylum live CD via iTunes(it's titled "After the Flood:Live from the Grand Forks Flood" ). It's awesome.

I saw them in concert last summer when they played Glueck's in the warehouse district. Really cool. Marnie and I talked up Dave Pirner's dad for a while. Nice old man.

Shit yo! NASA has a podcast!

The Twins Stadium.

Yeah, I'm not really excited about it. In fact I'm kind of pissed.

It's not a huge increase in the sales tax(.17%) but it's over 30 years(so....it won't be done if the thing only lasts as long as the Metrodome) and that money could be used to help entities that actually need help, like, I don't know, people who aren't billionaires.

article from minnesotatwins.com

I hate this weather.

I've noticed that a few people seem to visit my site on a pretty regular basis.

I wonder. What do you get from reading my pointless drivel? What do I add to YOUR lives?

You know what you can add to mine?

COLD HARD CASH.


Thank You.