Friday Random Ten and Links

First, the fun stuff. Take the iPod, hit "Shuffle Songs," and we have...

1) Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 3" - Part 2 was the famous "We don't need no education" song. Nothing special about part 3...

2) Les Miserables, "Wedding Chorale / Beggars at the Feast" - Now we're getting some fun mixes of tunes. I love Les Mis, and the Thenardiers are always among the most fun parts. Not musically great, though.

3) Sting, "The Hounds of Winter" - Probably my favorite track from Mercury Falling. Pleasant, quintessential Sting song.

4) Igor Stravinsky, "The Firebird: Infernal Dance of Kaschey's Subjects" - I love, love, love Stravinsky and especially the Firebird suite. This is a great, aggressive piece with a lovely flowing melody about halfway through that is sprinkled with brash repeated notes.

5) Harry Connick, Jr., "It Had to be You (Instrumental)" - Fun piano jazz. This is from the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack. It's all Harry Connick, which means it's all good.

6) Rush, "Leave That Thing Alone" - See, after I criticize the iPod for picking bad tracks, now it starts picking good ones. Counterparts is far and away the best of the latter day Rush albums. This is a cool instrumental jam from it.

7) Nickelback, "Someday" - Got it from iTunes. I like Nickelback enough to listen to their radio songs, but not enough to buy a CD.

8) Live, "Freaks" - Any song with a Henry Miller reference thrown in is a great song by my judgment.

9) Rush, "La Villa Strangiato" - Another Rush instrumental. This one from the late '70s/early '80s (don't remember). It's a 10 minute track of about 25 different musical styles. Great prog rock, though.

10) Miss Saigon, "What's This I Find?" - Thuy confronts Kim and Chris. I had the fortune of seeing Lea Salonga reprise her role as Kim on Broadway a couple years ago. It was part of the celebration of the musical's last 6 months on Broadway before closing. She was incredible. The rest of the cast... Well, let's just say that there's a reason it was closing.

Bonus track - Belle & Sebastian, "If You're Feeling Sinister" - I was going to stop at 10, but I let the shuffle continue and this came up. I had to include this one because of an hysterical line: "She was into S&M and Bible studies. Not everyone's cup of tea, she would admit to me." I smile whenever I hear that, because, well, I'm weird that way. I like mixtures of speciously conflicting imagery.

Now for the stuff that's not as much fun. Links to some serious stuff:

WaPo conservative George Will once again rips the Bush administration a new one for its complete disregard for the law.

Liberal blog Daily Kos has very disturbing photos from Abu Ghraib. Warning: some pretty graphic stuff. These are definitely not the timid pictures of people on leashes or human pyramids. But it is important to see what actual results from the leadership of our currently elected government.

And lastly, the Department of Homeland Security warns Sony that the rootkit style of DRM "protections" may result in legislation and regulation. I'm glad to see DHS getting involved, but I'd like to see some sterner language used.