Music Friday: "

I know I am way late. I forgot about it on Friday.

Saturday was spent watching travel baseball games, and then Sunday was an elimination game. We then traveled the 12-13 hours home on Sunday from Panama City Beach, Florida. 

I'm tired of driving. 

I'm tired of crazy-ass travel baseball fans, which I'm sure I'll recount later. And I'm tired of rainouts, which are likely to happen in Florida in June. 

Here's a classic from CCR. 

Music Friday: "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

Neutral Milk Hotel is one of those bands I heard about but never got their albums. Recently I got this one that's said to be tremendously influential among alternative rock circles. 

Here's a fun tune from the album. 

Random Notes from a Crank

If you're someone like me who gives a damn about our planet, read Ben Ehrenreich's "We're Hurtling Toward Global Suicide" in The New Republic. It a solid, sober article about the climate crisis and how one underlying assumption is highly problematic.

Most climate models and climate change purveyors still assume unlimited growth in relation to finite resources works. It doesn't. 

I've been watching the European Championship 2021 so far this summer, and it's been fun. Ronaldo's Portugal won the last one.

Here are the teams I'm rooting for. I like England's squad because they have mainly Premier League players, but I also Denmark since I'm part Dane and Wales because I like Gareth Bale and Joe Rodon because of their affiliation with Tottenham Hotspur. Denmark, unfortunately, had a massive scare with what happened to Christian Eriksen. 

If I'm a betting man, I'd put my money on France. They are the front runner in the competition. 

Music Friday: "Hurt"

My daughter is thinking about songs to choreograph her solo dances to, and one of her two solo songs she's thinking about is "Hurt" by Johnny Cash, which is a cover of Nine Inch Nails.

I recently rewatched the episode about "Hurt" on Netflix's Song Exploder. 

I am a huge fan of Johnny Cash, but I think I like the original better. 

Today I'm providing videos of both. 

Music Friday: "D.B. Cooper"

Todd Snider has a new album out this year, First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder. I recently acquired it, but I've only listened to it a couple of times so far since I haven't been on my computer a lot lately. 

Regardless, here's an old, great tune from his catalog. 

Musing of the Moment: "Incentivize" & "Utilize"

I highly dislike a certain word that has crept into many people's lexicons. That work is "incentivize." I like people simply saying, "provide incentives" instead of making a noun into a verb. 

I have another qualm, but it's in a different vein. I have a similar beef against the word "utilize" being used when a person could simply use "use" instead of "utilize." 

Why make things more complicated than they have to be?

These complaints reminds me of this classic riff on soft language by George Carlin.