The Monkey Shuffle

Sysm gave hope to the attentionally challenged and to obsessive tune-hoarders alike this past March by vowing to listen to every song on his iPod before acquiring any more. Sadly, my iTunes play-counts indicate I haven't listened to over half the songs in my collection even once. Now that's a lie, because it doesn't count my MacAMP, Audion, and SoundJam imports. But I switched to iTunes in 2002, so at best that still means I haven't listened to those songs in four+ years. Since I recently passed my iPod storage limit, I'm thinking I should cull my song collection as well. Sysm stoically waded through his collection by Artist. Less sysmatically, I’m taking short dips sorted by Song.

This has given rise to some inspired simian simulacra of playlists that threaten to put my hand-rolled ones out of business:

Sesami	Shonen Knife
Set Phasers To Stun	Taking Back Sunday
Set Up	The Au Pairs
Set Your Receivers	Meat Beat Manifesto
Seven Months	Portishead
Seven Nation Army	The White Stripes
Seven Seas	Echo & The Bunnymen
Seven Years	Norah Jones
Seventeen	Sex Pistols
Sex	Berlin
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll	Ian Dury
Sex appeal	Ute Lemper
Sex Boy	The Germs
Sex Farm	Spinal Tap
Sex or Weight Lifting	Adam Sandler

The Dottle Line

This is Social Democrat (SPD) chairman Peter Struck (left) and deputy SPD leader Joachim Poss celebrating Poss's recognition today by the German tobacco industry as Pipe Smoker of the Year. By remarkable coincidence, the German parliament is currently considering federal anti-smoking regulations. Bans have recently been enacted in Spain and France, and now the very Ashtray of Europe itself is under threat. The SPD has a long and proud tradition of pipe-smoking spokesmen, but how long can it be before the pipe-puffing politician goes the way of muttonchops, salted lard butter-rolls, and the occasional invasion of France?

Just kidding. Salted lard butter-rolls aren't going anywhere.

Festival of Dark

I guess you just have to expect extra darkness this time of year, but we're off to quite a week so far. First, Augusto Pinochet celebrates Human Rights Day by finally croaking. Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kicks off his festival of Holocaust denial. Hey kids, don't miss featured speaker David Duke. No, really: David fuckkking Duke.

The main effect of this Iran Idiotarod will be a renewed circling of the wagons around Israel by the West, the brunt of which will be borne by the Palestinians. Ahmadinejad never tires of claiming to be Palestine's best friend. Personally, I'd soon tire of having a friend like that.

Indian Men Swell Less With Pride

I just heard a report on the BBC World Service about a comprehensive study in India which found that "more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms." Skeptics may rest assured that "scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers." But Indian men are not shrinking from this challenge to their national pride. According to Sunil Mehra, former editor of the Indian version of Maxim, they need not be concerned about measuring up internationally: "It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters," he said. "From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well."

A tip o' the Sardonic Jimmy Hat to the World Service presenter Judy Swallow who managed to make it through this entire story without so much as a slight pause. That woman has ice in her veins. With a name like that, she'd better.

Parthian Bull's-Eye

Kofi Annan said in a BBC interview broadcast this morning that the situation in Iraq has become "much worse" than a civil war, and that life for average Iraqis is now worse than under the regime of Saddam Hussein: "they had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets, they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying, 'Am I going to see my child again?'."

Asked for comment, President Bush said that Annan's remarks only underscored the bad feeling he had about graceful exits.