72 Datsun Sets Standing 1/4mi Record

CNN.com: A senior British lawmaker confessed to making up the condition known as "cello scrotum" -- which relates to chafing from the instrument -- after reading about another musically-related ailment called "guitarist's nipple" in the British Medical Journal in 1974.

Elaine Murphy, who is a member of The House of Lords and a trained doctor, came clean about the prank she devised with husband John in a letter to the BMJ published on Wednesday.

Whew.

I don't think this bill (H. RES. 1411, from my Rep!) ever went anywhere, but if it had, today would be National Privacy Day! (update: it did!)

But let's just keep this between the two of us, ok?

Tom Toles

Photos of TV

Mousewife

Encyclopedia Bushfuckupica

H 2 O

Quartet played inauguration to taped music:

Whether you loved or hated the classical music played at President Barack Obama's inauguration, what you heard was a recording made two days earlier unless you were sitting within earshot of the celebrated performers.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill made the decision a day before Tuesday's inauguration after a sound check to use a previously recorded audio tape for the broadcast of the ceremonies.

Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said the weather was too cold for the instruments to stay in tune.

While watching, I sortof suspected something wasn't right about that performance, but I put it down to video/audio sync issues (of which there were plenty). Shoulda gone with my gut.

Rosanne Cash tells the story of her time playing the Clinton Inauguration, and includes this bit about her father:

My dad and I loved politics and we loved talking about world affairs. A presidential election was thrilling to both of us. In the last few years of his life he was obsessed with CNN and turned it on at 4:00 in the morning, as soon as he woke. He said he woke up wanting to know what had happened in the world while he was asleep.

We had a discussion about world leaders not long before his death in 2003, and I decried the lack of women in high office. “A black man will be president first, before a woman,” Dad said authoritatively. “People in this country are more prejudiced toward women than they are toward black men.” He paused. “But you’ll see both in your lifetime,” he said quietly.

Smart man. I always thought it would be a woman would be first - a Republican woman, specifically. I'm glad I was wrong about the Republican part, kindof ambivalent about the other part - either one would've been fine, in the abstract.

Sadly, I can't think of late-era Johnny Cash anymore without thinking about Sad Kermit's version of Johnny Cash's cover of NiN's "Hurt" (probably NSFW):