Completely Unnecessary

Earlier this week, I made the mistake of watching Microsoft’s advertisement for their new product, Songsmith.

[Valleywag, which has some Songsmith remixes, urged me not to click the link to the video - I am passing on their warning. The horribleness stuck in my head and I actually sang it in the shower. You have been warned.]

The upshot of the product is that you sing into a microphone, and the program creates a midi monster to ‘match’ your vocal stylings.

Wrongsmith [via Metafilter] is compiling Songsmith remixes of popular songs and organizing them by artist.

I immediately clicked on The Clash (surprise!), and was treated to the most horrible rendition of Should I Stay or Should I Go that could ever possibly exist. Joe Strummer is rolling in his grave.

What’s great about Songsmith, though, is how incredibly it stuffed the song up. (I haven’t had any music theory since I was 14, so I’m just going by ear on this.)

It’s so off that at first I thought it’d gotten the timing of the beats wrong. But, no, it appears that it managed to figure out that Joe mostly comes in on the two beat (or just before).

It works for The Clash because of the sparseness of the music; overloaded with midi chords and beats, it sounds incredibly off.

Second, it’s misjudged the key, resulting in horrible, horrible shifts and key changes as it tries to accommodate both the song and Joe’s tendency to (intentionally?) go flat at the end of phrases.

Actually, possibly the worst part is Songsmith’s inability to recognize the end of verses and choruses. It just elides the whole song together and is awful.

The nadir is after the bridge (at about 2:16). It’s been jamming along on it’s own little midi piano thing, when suddenly the singing starts again. Ear bleeding ensues.

I haven’t listened to any of the others on the site, but I can’t imagine them being worse than this.

Update: Actually, Billy Idol’s White Wedding is pretty wonderful. Wrong, wrong, wrong - but, with the video, sublime.

And Wonderwall is laugh out loud funny, but kind of works in a weird way.

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Throughout the impeachment process, former governor Blagojevich kept hinting that he ‘knew things’ about his colleagues.

There’s no question that there’s plenty of blame (as well as lots of different kinds of blame) to go around in Chicago/Illinois politics.

But I wonder how much of governor Pat Quinn’s promise to ‘fumigate state government’ will be carried out by the state’s ex-governor.

Earlier this week, Blago casually dropped Machine boss (and father-in-law) Dick Mell’s name and the old garbage dump scandal into the same sentence.

And outside his house last night - despite saying he’d only make a statement, he couldn’t help grandstanding and taking some questions from the press - he asked the assembled reporters if they would come back if he had something to say.

Later, claiming that ‘the fix was in’, he casually worked these two sentences into his mixture of ramblings:

I’d like to tell you some of the inside stuff, some of the things they were trying to do, and I’ll talk about that later, if [you in the press are] interested.
…
And as for some of those friends of mine in the state Senate, Dr. King said, that in the end, you remember not the words of your enemies, but the silence of your friends.

Given what Blagojevich has to know - and may possibly mention in a criminal trial/plea bargain - a goodly number of Illinois and Chicago politicians surely broke into a sweat hearing those words.

We’ll have to wait to see if the ex-governor will one up Quinn’s fumigation bomb with a nuclear one.

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I’m a bit tired of blogging today, so I’m just passing you over to Jezebel, which has a nice photo of the signing and a transcript of Obama’s remarks.

It’s pretty great that this bill was Obama’s first - may there be more lovely moments like this to come.

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Wow, US parliamentary procedure is insane. There are multiple senators now escorting the Chief Justice from the chamber. Looks like a pretty solid old man to me; I’m sure he had it.

WAIT - they were crapping on about how much they wanted to get back to work and now they’re on recess until 4pm next Wednesday?

Well, after the hard work of being in session for two weeks, I suppose they need a week off.

Anyway, Rod Blagojevich was just removed from office.

Everyone was all sort of ‘good riddance’, especially Meeks (D-Chgo) who responded “absolutely!” when asked if Blago should be prevented from holding office in IL ever again.

So that’s that. A friend of mine said ‘Congrats, Gov Quinn!”, but I say wait until he’s actually sworn in.

For all we know, Blago’s taken all the state monies and kittens and is absconding to Canada to buy low-cost prescription drugs for old people.

Update: Apparently to combat any shenanigans, they stealth swore in Pat Quinn. He is governor! And only Alexi Giannoulias saw, as Alexi Giannoulias is happy to tell you all over your tvs.

5:27: Jesus, ABC7 reporter Chuck Goudie freaking called Blago as they un-governored him. He switched over from the other line and said, ‘Hey.’

This fact was just reported on my tv.

I imagine the nail in the coffin for Blago was finding Chuck Goudie on his phone at that life-changing moment.

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[Ed. - this is a little ad hoc. I was just kind of jotting down notes as I watched, enthralled...]

Blagojevich takes the stage at 11:06.

11:07: Blago knows that the ladies of The View understand the intricacies of the impeachment process.

11:09: He calls the process, ‘an evisceration of the presumption of innocence.’

11:10: He doesn’t seem to be speaking with notes. He brought in a manila folder, but doesn’t seem to be using it or looking down at it.

He’s not under oath – because he’s acting as an attorney – so he can lie all he wants and it can’t be used against him in the criminal trial.

‘You can express things in a free country’

To the politicians, ‘You know what we have to do to go out and win elections.’

11:13: He’s pretty smart – he’s arguing that the impeachment case hangs on the presumption of guilt in the criminal case, but that no criminal allegations have been proven. Unfortunately, that’s only articles 1-8. There are five more just about abuse of power.

First up, healthcare for kids –

11:16: Um, now he’s just rambling about senators he’d met when he was a freshman congressman in Washington. He was super excited to meet senators, especially John Warner. He got John Warner coffee; he takes it black. Wtf?

I’ll put the rest after the jump, so it’s not taking over the page (I know, obviously, you want to read post after post after post)

(more…)

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It’s all about compromise in Washington.

House Republicans were all in a dither about the $200 million in contraception and health spending (that would have saved $700 million), so Obama (we hope) begrudgingly asked House Democrats to remove the offending item.

And in the spirit of collegial compromise, every single Republican voted in favor of against the bill (244-188).

Yay!

Okay - first, Obama and Pelosi should ram that contraception bill straight through the House and Senate - hanging every Blue Dog who won’t toe the party line on the way.

But when we’re done with that, we need to breathe.

House Republicans thought that Obama would break his vow to compromise. So when he accommodated them, they tried to slap him with it.

They’re hoping that Obama will call Democrat War on the Republicans so they can scream to the rafters about how they saw Socialist America coming and ooh how those Dems just can’t be trusted.

So the President should make sure to keep his bipartisan spirit, but also to remember that we can pass a goodly number of bills without Republicans (even Senate Republicans).

They can spend the next four years being vaguely obstructionist, but largely ineffectual or get on board, especially when an olive branch is offered.

If they choose the former, they better hope the economy takes Obama down with it, otherwise the voters will not look so kindly on Republicans (again) in 2010.

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I’m thinking of renaming my blog - ‘Girl Stuff as the Newspapers Died’. I am just a broken record these days.

Anyway, another day of ups and downs in Lady Land. Good news first.

The final version of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill passed the House today, and is on its way for President Obama to sign. If you haven’t read the backstory of the Ledbetter case, it’s insane.

Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for nearly two decades. She discovered, near retirement, that she made far less than men in her same position and sued for discrimination.

In May 2007, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 that Ledbetter’s case was invalid, since she had to sue within 180 days of the original violation (the first unequal paycheck). Of course, Ledbetter had no idea that she was being discriminated against for all those years, so that would have been impossible.

The new legislation extends the statute of limitations by making every paycheck a new act of discrimination, the 180 days extending each time a new check is issued. Huzzah!

But President Obama is going to need that feminine good will to forgive him for caving to Republicans on women’s health.

Obama and Pelosi have agreed to cut $200 million for low-income contraceptive and sexual health services in the stimulus package.

Aside from being a grand total of .024% of the stimulus (math thanks to Jezebel’s Megan), the money was going to fix a costly and time-consuming wavier that states have to get in order to use their own money to cover contraception.

Unfortunately, John Boehner (R-OH) has the soundbite of the fight:

“How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives how does that stimulate the economy?”

His argument against the contraception money has allowed a cavalcade of other conservative voices to fight the culture wars with this procedural money. For example, James Pethokoukis [via USA Today]:

This is wrong on so many levels, one of which is looking at children born to the ‘wrong people’ as economic burdens rather [than] gifts, the music makers, the dreamers of dreams. [Pelosi]sees them as a cost instead of blessed benefits. Wow.

Notice the anti-abortiony-speak going on here. That’s not at all what was being suggested, but the Right to Life crowd has done such a good job of moving the abortion debate onto the birth control debate, that the language is now interchangeable. Running this google search brings up plenty of links arguing that Obama’s stimulus plan will fund abortion.

Many are arguing that the ‘war on abortion’ has now turned into the ‘war on sex, by way of the war on contraceptives’. It’s hard not to see that in Boehner’s objection to the contraception money (one of several items in the bill not directly tied to stimulating the economy, but somehow generating the most outrage).

The point was to save the states money by eliminating a federal hoop (which, if you’re a states’-rights, low-tax Republican should seem like a good thing…), but if it’s about limiting access for women, Boehner’s all about federal oversight. Sex is for marriage and procreation.

Which brings me to my last (possibly NSFW) point. Georgia’ s Coweta County has banned, “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.”

Notes the Newnan Times-Herald:

The county’s old ordinance specifically exempted condoms from being considered as a stimulation device. The new ordinance makes no such distinction, and would appear to apply to items such as ribbed condoms and various lubricants marketed as having a “warming” or “tingling” sensation.

Hmm, to whom are those products generally directed? Ah yes. Jezebel’s Tracie comments:

…we’re fairly certain that the holy rollers and misogynists that are so concerned with regulating how women stimulate their genitals aren’t nearly as strident when it comes to the sale of Viagra and other drugs that treat erectile dysfunction.

[I assume that, like me, Tracie tried to check on that for sure and got stymied by the unholy number of Viagra links that were not about Georgia's laws regarding the product.]

Point is, if you ladies would just stop having the sex (especially the unwedlocked, pleasurable kind), everyone’s life would be much, much easier.

Screw that. I say check your paychecks instead.

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There’s little more that can be said about Katherine Hepburn except to note again that she is freaking awesome.

This 1979 60 Minutes interview is 5+ minutes of sheer greatness. Kate riding a bike down Manhattan streets, cantankerously abusing the 1970s film industry, brushing off all Morley Safer’s compliments.

The wonderful thing about Hepburn is how at ease she is in her own skin. The way she sits in the chair- legs apart, leaning back -  expresses her unpretentious confidence in herself, even as she unflinchingly analyzes her avoidance of the Academy Awards.

The Great Kate [Jezebel]

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If the Senate removes Blago from office, it’s really going to put a damper on my afternoon crazy schedule.

Blagojevich’s latest presser consisted largely of cowboy metaphors, the governor arguing that the Senate impeachment trial was similar to an Old West hanging. (If there’s video up later, I’ll try to post it because you actually need to hear how long and how hard he flogged his simile.)

The main thrust of his prepared (?) remarks was that he was prevented from calling witnesses and from challenging the charges. Blagojevich demanded his ‘constitutional right’ to a fair trial.

If they can do this to a governor, they can do this to any citizen in Illinois.

Except, of course, ‘they’ can’t because his impeachment trial is a political procedure, not a criminal procedure.

Insanely, he took questions and the first one pressed him on exactly that point. Blago ducked and weaved, but didn’t manage to have an answer, except to demand again a fair trial.

He hit his stride late in the question period, claiming that he is being targeted by lawmakers who view him as an impediment to their cynical tax rise on the people of Illinois. He argued that if the people if the state allow him to go down like this, it will have a chilling effect on future governors actions vs the legislature.

Rod is the only thing standing between us and our other elected officials (and their 66% tax hike).

Um.

Oh yeah, he also called upon Illinois newspapers to help his cause for a ‘fair’ trial. He urged the Chicago Tribune, in particular, to lead the charge, citing the Tribune’s Supreme Court case against ‘Minnesota mobsters’ and other crooks.

This man’s irony gauge needs a lot of adjusting.

Speaking of the Tribune, they have some good quotes I didn’t catch all of:

Ending his 43-minute interview, Blagojevich likened the current drama surrounding him “to a 21st Century Frank Capra movie… how the good guy was up against the establishment… But he stood firm for the people. That’s what this is about.”

Obviously.

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President Obama will rescind the Mexico City Policy - otherwise known as the ‘global gag rule’ - today.

I was hoping he’d do it yesterday, but apparently not using symbolic dates to deliberately piss off anti-choicers is part of this whole post-partisan thing we’ve been hearing so much about.

Hmmm.

I am an ideologue on this issue, but I guess I’ll let the president slide this one time.

He’ll probably sign the Ledbetter Fair-Wage bill next week once the language gets worked out in Conference. (Omg, we get him for at least four years!)

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