The Friday Random Ten+5 gets all historical and stuff.

This week's +5 is pretty straightforward -- Five Historical Figures Whose Lives I'd Really Like To Live. I'm not going to get too deeply into the impetus for this particular list, except to say that it started with a conversation with Holly about the University of Virginia and an acquaintance of hers who really would've liked to have had sex with Thomas Jefferson. OK, I may have already said too much.

But anyway, here's my list -- of people I'd want to be, mind you:



Winston Churchill
Every time I think I might like to run for some kind of public office, I think of the fishbowl that my life would be in and start to think that it'd be more trouble than it's worth. I mean, eventually someone would go back and find out about all the drinking and debauching in my past and end up revealing what a horribly irresponsible person I am. So I reckon the only way to have a career in public office and still be able to enjoy all those things is to a) be a political leader at a time before that sort of stuff started getting immediately dragged out into the open and b) be such a hero that nobody would've cared anyway. Voila: Winston Churchill, who held the UK together and made it a bulwark against the spread of the Nazi empire even while he was sucking down cigars and pickling his liver to within an inch of its existence. Oh, and annihilating pretentious dinner-party guests with cutting bons mots. Plus he got to be called "Sir," which is worth it right there.



Al Capone
Sharp dresser, very shrewd business mind, and OK, yeah, he killed quite a few people, but ultimately all he was trying to do was bring sweet, delicious bootleg liquor to a country that had been cruelly deprived of it by a tyrannical, nannying government. So if you think about it, he was really kind of a civil-libertarian folk hero. OK, maybe not, but nevertheless, the Geto Boys wrote a whole song about how good it feels to be a gangster, so who am I to argue with them?



Ian Fleming
When writing the most famous series of spy novels in the history of English literature qualifies as one of the least exciting things you've done in your life, you know you've lived said life to the fullest. Before he wrote 14 James Bond books (AND Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), Fleming lived an entire lifetime's worth of adventure leading the 30AU commando unit in World War II; while he was writing, he hung out with JFK, married a widowed baroness, and carried her off to a seaside villa in Jamaica. "I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much," he once said. "In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much." I have no idea what the Iron Crab is, but it sure sounds like Fleming got everything he wanted out of life before said crab finally took him down.



St. John the Apostle
He was BFF with Jesus and wrote part of the Bible. Nothing else comes close to having that on your résumé.



Orville Wright
Along with his brother, invented powered flight. That seems like a pretty significant contribution to civilization. I'm picking him over Wilbur because a) Orville got to fly the plane first; b) he kept most of his hair; and c) he had a truly kickass mustache. Sure, facial hair is less aerodynamic, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

Thought about putting Cleopatra on there just so I'd get to say "Hey, I got to see Cleopatra naked," but it would also involve sexual relations with quite a few caesars, and those guys were freaks. Not to mention it would all end with a snakebite. To live that eventful a life, only to meet your doom at the non-hands of a reptile, seems pretty bush.

So. Here be the Ten:

1. Genesis, "Invisible Touch"
2. Animotion, "Obsession"
3. David Cross, "Welfare Dentist on a Bender"
4. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "Go Daddy-O"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "London" (Radical Blacklite edit)
6. The Chemical Brothers, "Not Another Drugstore"
7. David Holmes, "The Ballad of Sarah & Jack"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Get Up On It Like This"
9. The Clash, "Janie Jones"
10. Downright, "Drinking the Dregs"

Your own Tens, and your lists of people whose lives you wouldn't mind Quantum Leaping into for a spell, are welcome in the comments.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Stray bassetblogging, wheezing newspapers, and something even dumber than a Segway.

Sorry about the sparse posting over the last few days, folks -- work's gotten crazy, I've got a freelance job for the Roll Bama Roll fellows, I'm getting ready for an out-of-town trip this Friday, and oh yeah, I've been trying to find a home for a dog that I spotted wandering up the shoulder of I-20/59 on Saturday, a few miles up from the Mercedes-Benz plant. This is the dog we've unofficially christened "Greta":



I think I may be close to finding someone who's interested in taking her -- a few someones, actually -- but in the off chance that you've ever seen this dog before or might know whom she belongs to, shoot me an e-mail. But one way or the other, we're gonna find the ol' girl a home.

And I'm sure it can't be a moment too soon for her or for my two overactive Bostons, both of whom have been completely befuddled by her presence the last few days. Not that they're not getting along or anything, but the situation has rendered Champ even more neurotic than usual -- every time he looks up at me, I imagine Kevin from "The Office" stage-whispering, "There's ANOTHER DOG in this house, I just thought you should know."

Other links for you to peruse while I try to get this all sorted out:

· Dave from Maize n Brew put together a rather incisive post about the hastening demise of the daily newspaper and what this means for blogs. As a former newspaper writer myself -- not that I have any burning desire to get back into that racket, mind you -- I appreciate his cautioning that the crumbling newspaper industry is not something bloggers should necessarily be celebrating no matter how incensed they get at the opinion columnists or sportswriters who make their forehead veins bulge out on a regular basis. Check it out; it's a good read.

· And it's not like newspaper hacks are the only annoying ones out there, either, because even if all the newspapers go bankrupt, we'll still have knee-jerking drama queens from the major TV networks trying to force artificially constructed narratives down our throats. Granted, I was tired yesterday evening, tired enough to fall asleep before halftime of the NCAA basketball final, but I could swear I remember hearing at least two guys in CBS's pregame show talk about how supremely talented North Carolina was but pick Michigan State anyway based solely on the overwhelming majority of State fans in the stands and the whole "They're doin' it for Detroit!!!111!!" angle. Is that all it takes to get an analyst job on TV these days -- the ability to completely throw out established evidence like "facts" and "statistics" in favor of barely relevant intangibles? Shit, CBS, I can do that, and I'll bet I can do it for a lot cheaper than Jim Nantz. (In case you were curious, my barely relevant intangible was that I could never root for UNC because I applied to go to college there and they said no, so I can never root for them in anything, ever, therefore I picked State, but I guess it's all academic now.)

· If this is what GM thinks is gonna save them from the gaping, razor-toothed maw of bankruptcy, then I don't think a Sparty win in the basketball championship would have saved them anyhow:



I mean, a Segway is basically a little personal-transportation module for people who are too lazy to walk; this looks like a Segway for people who are too lazy to stand up while they drive it. (And to think some people laughed at the starship scenes from "Wall-E" with the fat, lazy humans wallowing in their floating easy chairs.) Man, I'm glad I unloaded my GM stock when I did.

· Finished reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs the other night for probably the 10th or 12th time. Go out and read that if you haven't.

· And finally, I shouldn't have laughed, but I did.



(Hat tip: Andy Sullivan.) By the way: Seth Rogen's "Observe and Report" comes out on Friday, and looks to be freaking hilarious. Let's all do out part to make sure it has a bigger opening weekend than fricking "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," shall we?

Get back here, dead horse! I'm not done with you yet.

Because I just don't know when to leave well enough alone, found this in the comments thread of the Fark.com post that linked to the Ayn Rand rant: an unauthorized sequel to Atlas Shrugged starring Bob the Angry Flower.


Click to enlarge.