If thoroughness was high priority, I could mention many small crimes which a person might cruelly inflict upon his fellow man; but thoroughness is for another day, and now I willl mention only one: cooking a quantity of bacon to be used later in a recipe without also cooking a few pieces for the attending company to snack upon. A small but pursuasive punishment should be prescribed to dissuade such offensively bold behavior.

This is my sandbox. I'm not allowed to go in the deep end.

This one, and more, at the Ralph Wiggum Soundboard!

I haven't done this in a while. Pick two musicians, find the shortest path between them, a la "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".

So, let's pick John Coltrane and Junior Brown, because those were the last two artists my iPod played.

John Coltrane played with Miles Davis who played with John McLaughlin who played with Buddy Miles who played with Junior Brown.

The real test is to do it from memory, without the help of Allmusic.com, but I just couldn't find a link from Miles Davis to Buddy Miles. I tried to find a link from Jimi Hendrix (who played with Buddy Miles) to Miles Davis through Davis' associations with Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, etc., but couldn't come up with anything. Alas, I resorted to Allmusic, which, after much digging, turned up the McLaughlin/Buddy Miles link, allowing let me to skip Hendrix completely.

If anyone out there would like to try, here's one I've already worked out: Alison Krauss to Katrina & the Waves in three steps (Alison -> XX -> XX -> XX -> Katrina & The Waves).

This bee was dead, so i dropped him onto our African Violet for a close-up. Posing dead bugs ? Am I becoming the Joel Peter Witkin of the insect world...?

...from Something Awful! This time, System Of A Down:

They have all the rhyming skills of a middle-aged schoolteacher from Nebraska trying to show his students he's "with it" by busting out a funky-fresh rap. Oh, but they said "cock," so I guess they're as edgy as a giggling fourth grader. I don't know who's stupider, someone who writes those lyrics, or someone who listens to them and says "this is great!." Wait, yes I do, it's the person who listens to them. Those lyrics have gone far beyond the point of being justifiable with a claim that they're tongue-in-cheek. They're not tongue-in-cheek, they're finger-in-nose. Period. And did I already tell you that you're stupid if you like them? Okay, I guess I did.

Ahh... I love it.

Here's another good bit:

To add injury to insult, the vocal duties on Mezmerize are shared between irritating but capable singer Serj Tankian and irritating but extremely incapable whiner/screamer Daron Malakian. Malakian taking over more vocal duties speaks not of intra-band conflict, but of a disgusting lack of intra-band conflict. Why won't anyone tell the guy he can't sing? They need to sit him down and say “sorry, you sound like a twelve-year-old diabetic with bad insulin regulation. Sit this one out and let the singer sing or we're going to be even shittier than we were before, if that's even possible.”

And, as all the cool kids already know, there's more if you click the link...

Also from Something Awful: if you are a serious Harry Potter fan, or are at work, or have little kids nearby, or know what "Harry/Snape slash fiction" means and don't want to see it, or are the kind of person who likes to shoot messengers, don't look at this. If you looked anyway, shame on you.

(wondering, is there an Edward Gorey and Something Awful connection ?)