You let your mind out somewhere down the road

Links you can use. For good or evil. Links like a dandelion spreading its seeds on the wind,  links like sugar, Johnny Applelink, Malcolm Gladwell's Link.

You know, links you might find mildly or wildly interesting.

David Cay Johnston gives us a Tale of Two Healthcare Plans. Warning: contains graphs, charts and the mention of taxes.

Paul Krugman (who had a cameo in Get Him to the Greek, much to my surprise and delight because if I have to sit through a film featuring Russell Brand and a scene where his character demands that his handler smuggle drugs up his butt (the handler's not his own), then I'm going to need some sort of smartypants liberal elite elixir to provide some balance. One can't sue Hollywood for brain atrophy, can one?) Where was I? Oh, yes, Paul Krugman. His piece on obstruction and exploitation. Also known as <redacted>.

I'm trying to not curse. It's an experiment, an exercise in self restraint.

Which reminds me, I'm listening to the audio version of Frank Delaney's Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland and have laughed uproariously while driving to and from work. Which is saying something because lately I have been in one pissed off and holler mood. To crack this marble face takes some true comedic talent.

I bring this up because in the book, there's a character who seasons every sentence with a sulfuric dash of that oh so versatile word fuck. When the narrator reports any conversations he has with said cuss monster, his mother insists he use flock instead of the other very bad word.

To wit:

...why in the flock does she need a flocking ladder to get to the flocking flowerboxes when I flocking told her that I would flocking help her in a few flocking minutes.......

It is perfect, of course, with the Irish brogue.

Douglas Coupland offers some advice to writers. Specifically, to young writers, but who's to say what's young anymore? I'm not biologically young, but my writing is young. Anyway, it's a bullet point list so it won't wear you thin with paragraphs and contains some points I haven't seen elsewhere in my search for enlightenment about writing (a procrastination tactic familiar to writers the world over.)

Gwynne Watkins interviews Amanda Palmer.

Super8. Have you seen it? Sophie interrupted her own raving about it to ask me to watch it with her. I said I'd watch a few minutes and then probably get back to whatever it was I'd been doing. Two hours later, I was still glued to the television. It held my interest enough that I didn't multitask once during the entire viewing and it made an ELO fan out of Sophie.

Bra Recycling. Surprisingly, I don't mean turning bras into charming chapeaux. Although one could, I suppose, but let's leave MathMan out of this.

I'm reading Rachel Maddow's Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. Talk about taxing my ability to remain curse word free. I'm only up to the part about how Reagan funded the Contras in Nicaragua and have already worn out the phrases holy shit, motherfucker, Jesus Christ, What the hell? and I'll be damned.

Please just stop. For all that was good and holy in Mrs. Johnson's 7th grade language class, please. Stop.

And finally Fred Armisen on Alec Baldwin's Here's the Thing. Via the incomparable Bob Lefsetz. If you've been asking if you should keep chasing your dream, you must listen to this.

What's making you click these days?