Gabbro B-Sides

Last week, Sean Carroll had the brilliant idea of using the Friday Random Ten as a traditional tarot reading. Although I expect it’s too much effort to do this every week, today I wanted to consider the question of What To Do With This Blog While I Am Away. If anyone has a definitive answer, it would be the little gnome that lives in my laptop. So! Onward!

1. The Covering (important influences around the question or current situation): The Pogues - The Sunnyside Of The Street
   

   Stepped over bodies in bombay
   Tried to make it to the u.s.a.
   Ended up in nepal
   Up on the roof with nothing at all
   And I knew that day
   I was going to stay
   Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street

2. The Crossing (current obstacles): Hugh Masekela - Bring Him Back Home (Nelson Mandela) - from the soundtrack to Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
3. The Crown (the best that can be achieved from the current situation): Wolfstone - Glenglass
4. The Root (past events that have played an important role in bringing about the current situation): Dust Rhinos - Hills of Connemara
   

   A gallon for the butcher and a quart for John
   And a bottle for poor old Father Tom
   Just to help the poor old dear along
   In the hills of Connemara.

   Stand your ground, for it’s too late
   The excise men are at the gate.
   Glory be to Paddy, but they’re drinkin’ it straight
   In the hills of Connemara.

5. The Past (events that have influenced the present, but whose influence is waning): Lúnasa - Taylor Bar, 4am / Ceol Na Mara
6. The Future (influences now coming into play): Lúnasa - O’Carolan’s Welcome / Rolling In The Barrel
7. The Questioner (my attitude): Amandla Group - Sobashiya Abazali Ekhaya
   From the liner notes:

   “Sobashiya Abazali Ekhaya” is the voice of young people saying “we will leave our parents behind and head for foreign lands in search of our freedom”.

8. The House (all y’all): Hedningarna - Mettsän Tytto (Forest Maiden)
9. The Inside (hopes, fears, and expectations): Chris Thile - Slime Rock
10. The Outcome: Stan Rogers - Plenty of Hornpipe

Apparently, Scandinavia will be too full of bodies for me to blog; that, and I’ll be too busy losing my shirt on a rooftop and learning to accept the fact that I’m going to stay in sunny California for the foreseeable future. I am apparently searching for my freedom. The complications to the situation appear to be about national politics; Gitmo is a reasonable modern analogue to Robin Island, although we have yet to see a figure comparable to Mandela. It’s a situation rooted in our national desire to avoid paying taxes by getting ourselves and the tax man too stinking drunk to care.

That’s the best summation of the Bush Administration I’ve seen yet.

Overall, the situation is changing from slip jigs at a bar to waltzes and reels, wherein I provide welcome and a keg. The best I can hope for is something quiet and contemplative, with a flute. I’m afraid that I’ll just get slimy comment spammers, but actually there will be hornpipes!

Fortunately I arrived at my conclusion in advance; I’m looking for blogsitters and guestbloggers! If you vaguely aspire to contemplative posts about Guantanamo Bay, but would like to actually participate in a snark-party interspersed with future-dated posts full of hornpipes, and help moderate the comments… let me know. I might also be able to arrange for some bribes prizes in the form of selections from the stuff that would otherwise go to Goodwill.

Search Requests

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I’ve also had a variety of search queries looking for porn about geologists - and they were all from Canada Thunder Bay, Ontario. Person from Thunder Bay, I admire your choice of occupational fetish!