The Magpie Bjournal

K.D. Lang – Hallelujah, Crying

Jane Siberry – The Walking, Calling all Angels

Glenn Gould - Bach - Goldberg Variations: Aria, Bach - BWV 828 - 1 - Overture

The Tragically Hip – New Orleans is Sinking, Blow at High Dough, Poets

Sarah McLachlan - Ice Cream

Rush - YYZ, Tom Sawyer, The Trees

The Barenaked Ladies - One Week, Brian Wilson, Lovers in a Dangerous Time

Neil Young - Heart of Gold, Helpless, Needle and the Damage Done

Bruce Cockburn - Deer Dancing ’round a Broken Mirror, Mama Just Wants To Barrelhouse all Night Long, If I Had a Rocket Launcher

The Guess Who - American Woman

BTO - Taking Care Of Business

The Band - The Weight, Up On Cripple Creek, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Spirit of the West - Political

The Reostatics - Claire, P.I.N., Power Ballad to Ozzy Osbourne

Sarah Slean - Lucky Me, Pilgrim

Joni Mitchell - Big Yellow Taxi, Raised on Robbery, Woodstock

Oscar Peterson - Hymn to Freedom, C Jam Blues

Lenny Breau - The Claw, Georgia

The Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane, ‘Cause Cheap is How I Feel, Blue Moon Revisited

Blue Rodeo - After the Rain, Trust Yourself

Holly Cole - Little Boy Blue, Cry (If You Want To)

9 Things I didn’t know:

1. Napoleon was really about five foot seven inches tall. Not overly-short at all.
    
2. The trains didn’t run very much more on-time during Mussolini’s rule than before or after.
    
3. Most meteors hit the ground cold. People who find fresh meteorites often report that they are frost-covered.
    
4. Horseshoe crabs have copper-based blood. Like Mr. Spock.
    
5. Water is blue.
    
6. The bible doesn’t mention anything about abortion. No opinion on the mater what-so-ever.
    
7. The bible never says anywhere anything about Mary Magdalene being a prostitute.
    
8. That thing about 72 virgins and martyrs isn’t actually in the qu’ran.
    
9. “The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.”, wasn’t said by Winston Churchill, but rather by his assistant - Anthony Montague-Browne.

There is a special paddle pool in the Stygian Abyss full of thousand-degree Kool-aid reserved for…

I just came back from the basement, I like the dry-musty smell down there. It’s not like I go to the basement specifically to smell it (this time, I was doing laundry), but I would have to say that that musty sort of basement smell is one of my favourites.

What smells do you like that are not traditionally found among the pantheon of “good smells”?

Here’s an interesting exercise; kind of a counting sheep thing. Next time you find that you cannot sleep, try remembering everything you’ve ever owned that had a clock in it.

Here’s what I came up with…

Microwave oven

Video cassette recorder

Pen

Digital receiver

Digital camera

Film camera

Stove

Coffee maker

Radio

Baseball (Yes, a baseball.)

Computer

Television

Thermostat

Calculator

Humidity Metre

What’s your list like?

During his booze and recreational / anti psychotic drug-fueled lifetime, L. Ron Hubbard achieved many things. Here is a short (and by no means complete) list of things L-Ron claimed to have accomplished, but as it turns out, were actually the ravings of a pathologically dishonest paranoid psychotic with an extra great big side-order of crazy.

Go figure.

Those of you who have watched any amount of anime will no doubt enjoy this extensive compilation of The Anime Laws of Physics. Although some of them aren’t actually laws of physics in the traditional sense, they are all likely to tickle the funny lobe of anyone who has watched more than a couple of Japanese cartoons.

That said, I’m sure that there are a bunch of laws that you folks can come up with that aren’t on the list…

Okay, I was surprised that I had only read nine of The Telegraph’s “50 Best Cult Books”. How about you, how many have run through your brain?

Roy Hinkley
Jonas Grumby
Eunice Howell
Mary Anne Summers
Willey Gilligan
Thurston Howell
Ginger Grant

Most people never knew their names, but that is no reason to forget those years they spent in the south pacific, fighting head-hunters, the Japanese and finally raising the American flag on Iwo Jima.

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Lack of Ewoks, and Anti-Ewoks
The first films were really, at their collective glittering core, movies about the Ewoks and the Jawas. Lucas’ original vision was all about little people. Bad little people in little grim reaper outfits, and good little people in little furry suits. Yes, there was Yoda too, but he doesn’t figure in on this on account of him being a muppet. More on muppets later.

The Sword Fights
Well, the new ones were too sword-fighty and didn’t have enough Ewoks taking out Stormtroopers with slingshots. I liked it when Sir Alec Guinness and the guy in the Darth Vader suit slapped each others sticks around for a while then Obi Wan dies. The more recent films’ fight sequences just seem to focus way too much on fighting. Like they trained for it or something.

Overly Balanced Tech
The new films have entirely too many tall people flouncing around using all too equal levels of technology. We already know that Jawas will sell your own grandmother for a snickers bar. They’re little nuggets of giant SUV driving menace. The Ewoks can defeat the most advanced future-Empire weapons and tactics with sticks, stones and little gerbil battle cries.

There’s nothing better than a little dude in a gerbil suit doing a pratfall.

So why, in the new films, in this supposedly less advanced period, don’t the good guys just enlist the help some little dudes with exploding cabbages or something?

Carrie Fisher on Drugs
Although one might be forgiven for not knowing this one, it is an important point to make. While it may be the case that many of the actors in the new films appear to be drugged, it has been reliably determined that they were not. In the old films, however, Carrie Fisher was self-admittedly on increasingly copious amounts of recreational pharmaceuticals. This added a dimension to her performance beyond the usual four.

I believe John Belushi once advised her to “slow down”.

And Speaking of Muppets
Where were all the muppets? And don’t get me started on the dearth of guys in big rubbery Gamorrean Guard suits. Where where the likes of that little Kermit-the-Frog thing and Max Rebo, the blue piano playing elephant? Musical numbers were really what the films were all about. That, and the whole Ewok / Jawa paradigm.

The Incest Thing
Among the things that the first films were all about was Luke’s pursuit of Leia. You see, Luke liked Leia – a lot. In that way, if you know what I mean. So, the original movies have an almost Disney level of creepiness when viewed through the lens of this twisted revelation. Where’s all that in the new trilogy?