All Hail Crazy Frog

At last, the Crazy Frog album (based around a popular ringtone of the same name) has arrived at iTunes. I love Crazy Frog, solely because he/she/it kept the premiere single from the Coldplay album from debuting at No. 1 in Great Britain.

Given the choice between Chris "[Live 8 is] the greatest thing that's ever been organized in the history of the world" Martin (voted world's sexiest vegetarian in an online PETA poll) and an annoying ringtone, well ... I'd prefer the smart one.

Robert Moog, RIP

This man's influence on the course of modern music would be difficult to overstate.

MALapropos

This bites; Michael Graham has been fired from WMAL radio in D.C.

Honestly, I rarely tuned in. However, the day I did is the day Graham made the remarks that apparently got him fired ... which blows my mind, 'cause I heard him firsthand, in context. Essentially, his point was that the bombings in London put even more pressure on Muslims as a whole to stand up and take their religion back from the extremists, which I guess on some people's radios sounded like, "Go forth and commit hate crimes against Muslims." So CAIR got involved, as in, "When you CAIR enough to proclaim the very best fatwa."

Graham's already been relocated from the WMAL website to the WMAL Memory Hole, but ironically, the WMAL home page still features something called a "Threat Advisory" at the top-right. Threat advisory? Elevated? What's that about? Is there some sort of threat we should know about?



Did something happen?

UPDATE: Drudge has linked to the story now, and I have to disagree with his use of the term "rant." Again, I wasn't a regular listener and happened across Graham's "rant" by chance, but I'd love to have the audio, along with the CAIR-driven calls the following week. Maybe someone with forensic audio software could isolate the part where Graham encourages violence of any sort against Muslims.

Chuck'd

In honor of the recent release of Public Enemy's greatest hits package Power to the People, Saint Kansas once again is proud to present "Chuck D," by MC Cash Poor. Alas, the lyrics hint at a more progressive time when Chuck was rockin' the mic at Air America on "Unfiltered." Co-host Lizz Winstead was, you might remember, abruptly "disappeared" from the show and erased from the Air America website. Chuck too has since been cut to make room for another underrepresented white male voice: that of one Jerry Springer.

Right-click here to download (caution: naughty language), or scroll a ways down the old website to read the original accompanying post.

Stock Up Now

Another winner from Google Ads, as found on Iraq the Model:

Faction Comics

Would you believe the federal government gave me a $62,000 grant just to draw this?

In Space, No One Can Hear Bono Scream

Or can they?

So much for my plan to escape Bono's voice once and for all by launching myself into orbit.

Slings and Arrows

What an eye-opening week.

George W. Bush is too fit.

Judge John Roberts is too nice.

Five-Minute Journalism School

The Hill's Albert Eisele, for reasons I can't quite understand, has published a column today defending his making public immovable pressroom gargoyle Helen Thomas' comment that she'll kill herself if Dick Cheney runs for President.

Says Eisele, "the larger lesson here, and one that I’m surprised Ms. Thomas, who has been a Washington reporter since 1943 and retired as UPI’s White House correspondent in 2000, failed to understand, is that “off the record” is a virtually meaningless term, which is why this column bears the name it does."

In the same column, though, Eisele asks us to pardon his own prehistoric outlook: "Little did I know, being a creature of the typewriter/telegraph era of journalism, that cybergossip Matt Drudge would pounce on the item and transmit it to the farthest regions of the Internet universe."

So, the lesson here is, um, what now? If you publish it your paper, it's all good in the 'hood ... unless that meanie Matt Drudge picks it up and encourages people other than your co-workers (and maybe your mom) to actually read it. Damned Internets.

Seriously, kids -- drop out of "journalism school" today. Real jobs are plentiful.

Judith Miller Bullshit Watch

NPR's Morning Edition this morning reports that incarcerated New York Times reporter Judith Miller has taken advantage of her time behind bars to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago ... which is bullshit, and as likely to be true as any other claim that lands on the Times' front page.

Anyone who tells you he or she has read The Gulag Archipelago is lying. Bet on it.