Meade wants to live in a shipping container.

He's always sending me stuff like this.

We do have a plan to move into a smaller dwelling sooner or later, but it's disturbing to realize that for Meade, that means living in something made out of a shipping container!

As long as I've enlisted you in helping me (or Meade) with this problem, help us decide where this shipping container/house should be. And no, we're not going to ship ourselves wherever this place is.

Song choice: "The Gift," Velvet Underground.

ADDED: Meade says living in something like that is a dream he's had since he was a little boy reading about the Boxcar Children, which he says was about a family of orphan children, who lived in a boxcar. And then there was "My Side of the Mountain," which was — I'm transcribing Meade in real time — "about a boy who — I can't remember the reason — runs away from home and lives in a hollow tree up in the mountains, and he adopts a falcon who... she'll be friends for life/she'll be just like a wife... and he lives on acorns. I liked the book because it gave practical advice... How to trap rabbits. It was like 'Survivor'... a survival manual... told by a 10-year old boy."

"Copyright time bomb threatens music labels."

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Under a US copyright law from 1978, artists who sold themselves to the recording companies could reclaim their copyright, and the precious royalties that go with it, in 35 years. All they need to do is file "termination claims" at least two years in advance.

As the deadline approaches the ageing stars of rock'n'roll are reaching for their lawyers. Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Bryan Adams, Tom Waits and Kris Kristofferson are already reported to have filed claims with the US Copyright Office. Other music legends seem ready to join battle.

The record labels are attempting to fend off the devastation by arguing that the albums were "works for hire," which, under copyright law, would mean that the artists were employees working for the record companies and the companies therefore always owned their work product.... sort of like what The Byrds were singing about in "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n Roll Star":

So you want to be a rock and roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time and learn how to play...

Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent man won't let you down
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware

Ha. That was back in 1967, when the idea that you were involved in making something plastic was supposed to be horrifying. That's why this was supposed to be so funny:



That's "The Graduate," which came out in 1967. 1967, that was a hell of a year. A year for shunning plastic. The Summer of Love. I was 16. Where were you?

Now, it's 2011. Do we have any sympathy for the record companies today? Their product isn't even plastic anymore. You know they've lost a lot of money in the switchover to digital. Or do you align with the artists? Are they still artists, these people who sing and play on the recordings?

What Alfred Hitchcock tells us about whether Obama should show us the bullet-ridden head of Osama bin Laden.

Here's the fantastic "I think you're evil!" clip from Hitchcock's "The Birds":


I Think You're Evil! by movieclips

I looked that up because Titus invoked it in the thread about whether the bin Laden death photos should be shown: "I want to see them and he better look like Suzanne Pleshette in The Byrds." Titus is a comic commenter who says all manner of outrageous things (and misspells to amuse us). (By the way, did you know that the rock group The Byrds came out around the same time as the Hitchcock movie, and they adapted the movie slogan: "The Byrds is coming"?)

Anyway, if you've seen "The Birds," you have the feeling that you stared straight at a stark depiction of the character Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) with her eyes completely plucked out. With the clip at your control, you may have to go back a few times before you can be sure how much you really saw. I mean, I think I went back about 10 times, and I'm still not sure! But you see almost nothing. Similarly, in "Psycho," you feel you see the knife cut into Janet Leigh multiple times, but, in fact, you never see that.

The vivid, lingering image of the eyeless Pleshette is a product of imagination, and in our imagination we already have the picture of Osama's blasted face. Why should we prefer the opportunity to stare at the destruction? If "The Birds" were made today, we probably would get a long look at gruesome special effects, and it would, undoubtedly be a much worse movie with far less emotional impact. We might even laugh at it. How would we react to the real photo of bin Laden? I don't know. Maybe we'd feel a thrill, followed perhaps by shame at our brutishness. More likely, we'd stare to the point of familiarity and arrive at some clinical distance.

Why would Obama want that? Like a remake of "The Birds," it's beyond unnecessary.

Paul Soglin over Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in the Madison mayoral primary.

It's a big deal around here:

In a remarkable comeback, former Mayor Paul Soglin won the Madison mayoral primary by a narrow margin over two-term incumbent Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, assuring a general election for the record books on April 5....

Cieslewicz is seeking a third four-year term. Soglin, who to the mayor's surprise entered the race late on Dec. 22, held the office longer than anyone in two stints in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

Back to the 70s!

The mayor ran on his record — a top bond rating, more cops and fire stations, rebuilding the Central Library, automated trash collection, his vision for a new economy and challenges presented by Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled state Legislature.

Of Soglin, [UW polisci prof Charles] Franklin, said, "He's maintained a political base in the city that's truly remarkable when you consider how long his career has spanned. And of Cieslewicz, Franklin said, "with two terms in office has failed to make the office securely his own."

I happened to get a picture of Soglin the other day when I went down to the demonstration:



Somehow this song plays in my head....

A little bit of courage is all we lack
So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back

Things singers sing that they do that they actually never do.

I'm starting a list:

1. Hop a train.
2. ...
3. ...

I need some help with this one. I don't want fantasies, but real things that are intended to make the singers sound gritty and deeply in touch with life, but you know damned well they don't do.

(Here's the song that was playing....)

Finches rock.

Celeste Boursier-Mougenot gave the birds their guitars. (Via Jac.)

Maybe I'm the first to think: The Fynches.

Have you got a song that you use to eradicate another catchy song from your head?

I do. I've had it for years. It's "5D" by The Byrds. I've used it, effectively for 40 years. (And I'm still wondering how it is that I could come out to here and be still floating and never hit bottom but keep falling through, just relaxed and paying attention?)

And what's the last song you needed to eradicate? (I dislike the term "earworm" for some reason.)

Chez Althouse, the song in need of eradication is something you will hear if you play the clip that follows, which you will do at your own risk.




That's the comedian, JP Inc., who opened for Neil Hamburger, here in Madison last Thursday.

And here are photographs of President Barack Obama wearing what, if you were foolish enough to play that clip, you will now be calling — not "mom jeans" — Randy Normal jeans.