Twisted Sister twisted

It’s hard to believe, but a conservative politician is now claiming Twisted Sister as an ally.

Jerrod Sessler, a former NASCAR driver running against Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) in the GOP primary discussed Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider on his Twitter account.

“Bummed to learn that @deesnider, the man with the perfect song written decades ago about the attack on traditional, conservative American values… ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ is riding the train in the wrong direction. How could it be that he sang for us but now fights for them?” he asked.

Hang on there. The Twisted Sister that the PMRC and various conservatives treated as an abomination that was corrupting the youth is now being cited as a courageous defender of the Right and the Conservative Family? Jesus. Have they even listened to the lyrics of the song?


We’ve got the right to choose and
There ain’t no way we’ll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We’ll fight the powers that be just
Don’t pick our destiny ’cause
You don’t know us, you don’t belong

Sure. That’s definitely a Republican anthem. Dee Snider is amused.

Poor Republicans. In their dreams, Twisted Sister, Bruce Springsteen, and Rage Against the Machine are all playing at their conventions, because they’re incapable of actually listening to the words.

We’ve come so far now that this has become representative of American family values.

If you care about good comedy…

Don’t watch this video by Christian fanatic Matt Powell. He’s trying to be “funny”, so he made a “prank” video. The “prank” was walking into various fast food places wearing headphones and shouting his order loudly. Then taking the headphones off and speaking normally.

That’s it. That’s all it is.

And then the comments! People are praising him for his brilliant work. Reading those brought home the fact that I’ll never ever understand the fundagelical brain. They’re totally alien.

If it’s not one thing it’s another

Oy, I am currently 100% caught up in my grading, have my lecture for Monday all lined up, and was looking forward to a pleasant weekend with no obligations for a change.

Then I get an email reminding me that my yearly performance review is on Monday.

Can I just go in and say I’m very, very tired and am counting the seconds to the end of the semester? How about if I just walk into the chair’s office and curl up on the floor sobbing? I’m hoping that’s adequate preparation. Just once this term I’d like to have a quiet day off, and I worked hard to get everything cleared away. I even scrubbed and autoclaved all the fly bottles! And put them away! I ought to be given a pass on this review just for that.

Friday Cephalopod: Lost in Space?

Last year, NASA launched an elite team of baby squid into space in a scientific experiment on the development of symbiotic interactions. These brave innocents went forth to advance our scientific understanding.

Yet now their fate is unclear. The summary of the experiment is now sprinkled with statements that “Data is either unavailable, restricted, or under review.” I need to know what happened. Perhaps, under conditions of weightlessness and intense radiation, the cephalopods quickly grew to monstrous size, melded with the computer equipment on board, and have been mimicking human communications ever since, and all the resupply missions since have been redirected to the goal of feeding the giant space squid colony? It could have happened.

Sorry, astronauts. You’ve all been squid chow for the past year.

Have you been waiting for Pink Floyd to weigh in on the Ukraine war?

Wait no more. The band has released a single in support of a fundraiser for Ukraine.

Here is the official video for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, Pink Floyd’s new Ukraine fundraiser feat Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Boombox. Stream / download from midnight at http://pinkfloyd.lnk.to/HeyHeyRiseUp

‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, released in support of the people of Ukraine, sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, all accompanying an extraordinary vocal by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. All proceeds go to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief.

The track uses Andriy’s vocals taken from his Instagram post of him in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square singing ‘Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow’, a rousing Ukrainian folk protest song written during the first world war. The title of the Pink Floyd track is taken from the last line of the song which translates as ‘Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice’.

The video for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ was filmed by acclaimed director Mat Whitecross and shot on the same day as the track was recorded, with Andriy singing on the screen while the band played.

Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren says: “We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers”.

Speaking about his hopes for the track Gilmour says, “I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds and morale. We want to show our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become.

The artwork for the track features a painting of the national flower of Ukraine, the sunflower, by the Cuban artist, Yosan Leon. The cover of the single is a direct reference to the woman who was seen around the world giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them to carry them in their pockets so that when they die, sunflowers will grow.

But hang on! That’s the band, which had an acrimonious split from their front man many years ago. What is Roger Waters saying? He has posted a letter from a Ukrainian girl, with his response, and it doesn’t surprise me at all. Waters is a radical pacifist who detests the “gangster” (he uses that word a lot) governments of Russia and the US, and idealistically wants the war to just stop and be resolved diplomatically.

I am not that optimistic.

A wrist is slapped!

It’s something, I guess.

The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday suspended Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council over reports of “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” by invading Russian troops in Ukraine.

It’s a token response to this (warning: grisly photos), but yeah, it’s something.

But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent as police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations.

As a team from the district prosecutor’s office moved slowly through Bucha on Wednesday, investigators uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what else we can do, short of escalating the war.

Prairie dogs speak

When my granddaughter lived in Colorado, there was a sprawling prairie dog colony just a few blocks away, and we’d take walks there. The prairie dogs were very attentive, and would react with a chorus of continuous yips and squeaks as we strolled through their neighborhood. Little did we know, they were having a conversation about us.

Con Slobodchikoff, PhD, has been studying prairie dogs for over 30 years. His studies have focused primarily on Gunnison’s prairie dogs, whose natural habitat is just outside the doors of Northern Arizona University, where Slobodchikoff is a professor emeritus.

After first observing how a colony of prairie dogs reacted to the presence of predators, he discovered that they didn’t just give the same alarm call each time – it sounded different depending on what type of predator the prairie dogs saw.

But that wasn’t the full extent of the calls’ complexity. Slobodchikoff also noticed that even though the calls signaling a certain type of predator would follow a distinct pattern, they contained small nuances that varied with each individual predator of that type.

For instance, the prairie dogs had a similar call for all coyotes, but there were subtle differences for each different coyote. Based on this observation, Slobodchikoff had a sudden insight: “What if they’re describing the physical features of each predator?”

A bit of experimentation soon proved his suspicions. After putting dogs, humans, and simple shape cutouts of all different forms, sizes, and colors within sight of the prairie dogs, analysis of the prairie dog calls revealed that the unassuming squeaks of alarm were rich with information.

“They’re able to describe the colour of clothes the humans are wearing, they’re able to describe the size and shape of humans, even, amazingly, whether a human once appeared with a gun… In one 10th of a second, they say ‘Tall thin human wearing blue shirt walking slowly across the colony.’”

I don’t want to know what those dogs were saying about me, but they better have been making flattering comments about Iliana. “Small cute human toddler, awwwww.”