Restore Sanity?

I'll try and write about the three movies I recently saw in the coming days. But first, a political rant, with Election Day almost here -- and, by the way, make sure you all vote. There's no excuse whatsoever not to vote.

I was amused by the flurry of Twitter activity today revolving around the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" held in Washington. Co-hosted by Comedy Central stars Jon Stewart (pushing sanity) and Stephen Colbert (in character, representing fear), it seemed to be a response to the rally of right-wing nuts back in August, and a plea for kinder, gentler political discourse.

I didn't watch it. Perhaps it was entertaining. (Yes, there were entertainers there, from Sheryl Crow to Mavis Staples to Ozzy Osbourne and the former Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam.) Perhaps it was more than an unusual vehicle to promote "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." But for my money, it was a waste. It's the same old "let's find common ground" message that has failed for the last 30 years, since Ronald Reagan took office and began his reign of terror. Democrats, liberals, progressives, whatever you want to call yourselves, you need to get this into your heads once and for all: THERE IS NO COMMON GROUND WITH THESE PEOPLE. They are out to defeat you and destroy you. They will never play nice. They'll pretend to do it, and then stab you in the back the first chance they get.

This is why the Republicans are likely to regain control of the House and, at the least, gain a number of seats in the Senate.

My iTunes Fits This Definition

In lieu of an iTunes shuffle baker's dozen, I give you a word of the day!

ca·coph·o·ny / kəˈkäfənē / Noun: A harsh, discordant mixture of sounds: "a cacophony of deafening alarm bells"; "a cacophony of architectural styles"

Being a bit frustrated by the lack of variety that the iTunes shuffle comes up with, I tried something different. I made a playlist of all the tracks that I haven't played this year (since I reset the count at the beginning of 2010). While I am listening to songs that haven't played before, within that playlist there still is a lack of variety -- songs from the same album or artist are still being played fairly close together. Right now, on a whim, instead of the shuffle mode I'm playing them in order of track length, from shortest to longest.

So basically it's things such as sound bites from cartoons (Bugs Bunny asking the immortal question, "What's Up, Doc?"), various spoken interludes from Janet Jackson albums (and others), quotes from "The Osbournes" TV show that were included on the "Osbournes Family Album" CD -- who can forget Ozzy saying "I love you all, I love you more than life itself, but you're all f--king mad!"), very short instrumentals in a handful of cases, some comedy bits from Joe Conklin...I ask you, is this not a cacophony?

I'm almost up to the tracks that are at least a minute long now. Eventually, if I continue to play the tracks in this order, it will be just a bunch of short songs. Somehow, that's a little sad.