Redemption Song by Bob Marley

Quite possibly the best song ever...

Old pirates, yes, they rob us;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill the book.

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs;
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill the book.

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.

I am Draco Malfoy

Whoa. Snape I understand (mrs. iandoh agrees) but Malfoy? Probably I rated myself too high in terms of pride and defiance...

Draco Malfoy 90% Severus Snape 90% Ron Weasley 80% Hermione Granger 80% Remus Lupin 80% Albus Dumbledore 75% Sirius Black 75% Lord Voldemort 70% Harry Potter 65% Ginny Weasley 65% Your Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...? created with QuizFarm.com

Intense nature video

Last night I watched Rain Forest, Selva Verde: The Green Jungle from PBS' Nature series. Immediately, this ranks as one of the best wildlife documentaries I've seen (and I've seen a lot). I think it's out of print, but may be available from your local library.

• I love sloths. Cute, slow, deliberate, and surpisingly successful in a very strenuous environment. Sloths move so slowly that their fur is always wet, as a result green algae grows on them as additional camoflague. Of course, I've always enjoyed the fact that sloths come down to the jungle floor only to defecate and only once per week. But did you know that special moths permanently live on sloths, and lays its eggs in the sloth's feces?


• The jaguar is hands-down the world's most beautiful cat, although cheetahs and snow leopards come close. Oh, tigers too but i digress. From the video I learned about the smaller but no less striking margay, the only cat with a prehensile tail.


• It was nice to hear the sounds of the jungle once again, and to see my dear friends the oropendola Cowbirds try to lay their eggs in the oropendola's beautifully weaved nests. But as justice would have it, sometimes the oropendola doesn't care because the cowbird chicks are more likely to attract a parasitic maggot that feeds on the chick from the inside out. In the video, you can see the maggot moving around under the chick's skin, pretty sick stuff. Check out the oropendola's pretty song.

My favorite photos on Flickr

Do I have good taste? Decide for yourself by viewing my favorites on Flickr.

You can also view my, umm, works (and a few of mrs. iandoh's) at http://www.flickr.com/photos/iandoh/

Web site finds

In order to maintain my reputation as a stalwart Web surfer and finder of strange stuff, I offer a few choice selections...

• Interactive baby name chart (requires Java). For the men out there, it's more fascinating than you think. A companion blog is great reading, too. To quell all rumour and speculation, I am not in the market for baby names at this time.

• Flickr color picker (requires Macromedia Flash plug-in). Aggregates Flickr photos by color, with a nice little slider for lightness. There are actually a number of different color pickers which draw from different photo pools: Crayon Box, Squared Circle, Graffiti, Flickr Central, Doors and Windows, Macro, Textures, Urban Decay, Catchy Colors, Stock Repository

Playlist catchup (Nov 2004 to Jan/Feb 2005)

Highlight: Franz Fanon's psychological and sociological insights in The Wretched of the Earth. Colonialism, oppression, and the inexorable march toward violence. Applications about and interesting to think about in light of Iraq or modern America. Not easy reading by any stretch (as I'm only halfway through), but indelible once absorbed.

Runner-up: In the Bedroom. Loaded with meaning, undercurrents, and incredible acting.

Quite behind here in listing these, in no particular order and almost certainly incomplete...

• Carlos Fuentes: Aura (book)
• Carlos Fuentes: Where the Air is Clear (book)
• Philip Pullman: The Golden Compass (book)
  
• Franz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth (book)
• John Eldredge: Wild at Heart (book)
• Chester Brown: Louis Riel, a Comic-Strip Biography (book)
  
• Modest Mouse: the moon & anarctica (music)
• The Velvet Underground: Velvet Underground with Nico (music)
• Leonard Bernstein/NYP: Roy Harris and William Schuman Symphonies No. 3 (music)
  
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (movie)
  
• The Incredibles (movie)
  
• Dodgeball (movie)
  
• The Bourne Supremacy (movie)
  
• Cold Mountain (movie)
• In the Bedroom (movie)
• Starsky & Hutch (movie)
• Shark Tale (movie)
• Napolean Dynamite (movie)

October 2004 playlist

Moving this out of right sidebar, too much of a hassle to edit playlists there...

• Perahia: Schubert Impromptus (cd)
  
• Kocsis/BFO: Bartok Piano Concertos (cd, out-of-print)
  
• McCoy Tyner: Live at the Village Vanguard (cd)
  
• Traffic (dvd)
  
• Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth (book)
  
• Andras Schiff: Bach Goldberg Variations (cd)
  
• Peter Serkin: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 29 (cd, out-of-print)
  
• Daniel Clowes: Ghost World (book)
  
• Stephen Kovacevich/LSO: Mozart Piano Concertos No. 21 & 25 (cd)
  
• Scott McCloud: Reinventing Comics (book)
  
• Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics (book)
  

The opposite of compassion

Someone asked me, "What do you think the opposite of compassion is?" I nervously replied, "coldness".

He then went on. "Most people think that the opposite of compassion is apathy, callousness, coldness. But I think it's competitiveness."

Whoa, this is a different way of looking at it. In modern American culture, competitiveness is held to be a virtue. We like to think of ourselves as compassionate (read: good), but is our core competitiveness a stumbling block to compassion that thinks not of oneself?

He recommended that I read a book by Henry Nouwen entitled "Compassion".

Las botas de Punta Lobos, Baja

Las botas de Punta Lobos, Baja
Originally uploaded by iandoh.

This is hilarious

I've been reading Erik Trinidad's weblog about his round-the-world trip. Extremely funny, definite inspiration for me.

Anyways, I'm now on day 63 or so (he's been on the road now for close to 450 days) and came upon this post. Since I love Peru, I had to mention this post.

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/theglobaltrip/updates/001195.shtml

I've got flickr

Hotel Trail, Joseph D Grant Park
Originally uploaded by iandoh.

Click on the photo to see some very descriptive photo notes.

Remembering Elliott Smith

Very nice writings about Elliott at http://www.elliott-smith.net/translation.htm. A cue to listen more closely, and hear afresh.

The site is also available to Chinese readers at http://www.elliott-smith.net.