No-one who sees a system as "natural and inevitable" can really examine it

In the comments, here.

You can find that, along with "Attila The Stockbroker", "Rash of Stabbings", "Ultimate Spinach" and many other interesting entries, at The Canonical List of Weird Band Names.

Mexico may be about to do just that.

Wow.

The Lonely Planet Guide To My Apartment, at The New Yorker.

EXCURSIONS

A short trip in almost any direction will bring travellers to one of many unique Starbucks outlets. Or try one of the nightly walking tours to the sidewalk in front of the brownstone across the street to watch that redhead getting out of the shower with her curtains open. And tourists are often sent around the corner to visit the A.T.M. machine in order to stock up for the rigorous financial demands of a trip to My Apartment.

If you're at all interested in songwriting, I encourage you to go read the Anatomy Of A Song at bobby lightfoot and the orchestra of sweet regret. Right now, he's on part 9. But, dig around a little on his site and start at the beginning. It's a fascinating look into the way some people write and record songs.

And then there's this bit from part #6:

The little voice inside insists that the entire exercise is futile and will provide nothing of value, simply another lovely bauble to reside on a shelf. While this is likely true we do not let such thoughts stay our hand. We remind ourselves that beauty is an end in itself and that creativity is a divine energy. We remind ourselves that the gift of talent is to be enjoyed greedily, sensually, and that it is, like all that is sensual, a thing of the moment. We do not disparage the talent. And above all other concerns, we remind ourself that we are a machine of the universe, designed to take in carbon and process it into beauty. A mill does not question the validity of grain; a printing press does not question the worth of books and we do not pretend to understand our place in the scheme. We simply appreciate that it is good to occupy it and that it is a priviledge and a gift of unimpeachable generosity.

Steve's Beatles Page can tell you things you never knew about Beatles' songs. For example, in "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", at 3m, 37s there's a "Fluffed bass note"; and at 2m, 47s in "Ticket to Ride", the "First bass note in double time ending is quite sharp"; and in "Norweigan Wood", from 2:01 to 2:08, the "song slows from 118 bpm to 109 bpm, and stays like that."

I checked a few of them and was surprised I'd never heard them before; they can be pretty obvious.

Recently, my McAfee anti-virus installation has been telling me that there's a new update to download every time I log-in to my computer; the auto-update thing wakes up, goes to the net and discoveres it needs to update itself. So I let it download and update, and everything is fine - until I log-in again, when it tells me ther are new updates available. It's been happening non-stop for days - too frequent to be actual updates, in my estimation. So, I got on a web chat with McAfee tech support and told them I thought something was wrong. After a few minutes of silly questions from the tech person, he hit upon a solution: disable automatic updates.

Yes, I guess that will probably stop the auto-update from telling me there are new updates to download. Thanks so much, "Michael" with the lousy English.