WE'RE NUMBER SIX!

Okay, so maybe this humble blog isn't exactly setting the world on fire -- no book deals, no angry denunciations from the ever-defensive mainstream media, no journalists forced to resign in the wake of stunning exposes revealed here. But this site is up to #6 -- with a bullet! -- on a little site the folks on the Internets like to call Google. Perhaps you've heard of it.

No, really. It's number six -- that is, if you do a Google search for mud trucks. And judging by my server logs, there are a lot of people out there doing just that. (It beats the one lost depraved soul who was searching for a "wireframe image of Lucinda Dickey," the one-time star of several seminal 1980s movies about breakdancing and ninjas. But that's a different story for a different day.)

Of course, I have only myself to blame. You see, what all these mud truck aficionados are finding when they hit this site is this brilliant essay, which I wrote while I was in college. You've got to give the people what they want, after all. And coming soon: Lucinda Dickey fan fiction! (Lucinda stopped breakdancing and crouched into her ninja stance. "I think there's trouble," she said. "Where's my wireframe image?")

Or not.

RECOMMENDED: THIS AND THAT

Well, ever since the evil editors at Amazon.com laid down the smack, I've needed some sort of outlet for my brilliant critical interpretations of our cultural effluvia. Or something.

First up is Arcade Fire's Funeral, the best new album I've heard in some time (it's also the only new album I've heard in some time, so take that with a grain of salt). Their music has been pretty much universally compared to Roxy Music, but I hear bits and pieces of all kinds of 80s influences here -- everything from the straightforward pop drive of the likes of Simple Minds or U2 to the moody eclecticism of David Byrne. Yet it's not at all imitative -- it's like they've co-opted chunks of the DNA of the 80s wave sound and recombined it in unique ways. I'm not exactly sure who their audience is, but I'm enjoying it.

Next up is the Battle of Algiers, which has to be one of the few movies to ever have been banned by the French. Centered around the urban insurrection during the Algerian war for independence,the movie, which was made in the late 1960s, wound up being redistributed last year after it was revealed that folks in the Pentagon screened it following the invasion of Iraq (though the object lessons of the movie suggest that perhaps they should have screened it beforehand). In truth, it's not particularly fair to make direct comparisons between Algeria and Iraq, but depending on your poltical leanings and/or proclivities towards wearing tinfoil hats, there's quite a bit to chew on here. It's also a well-done movie that, unlike most of the war films before it, definitely avoids black-and-white portrayals of what was a complicated historical situation (about which the film assumes some level of knowledge on the part of the viewer).

Well, that's certainly an eclectic combination of music and cinema. Something tells me the old Dark Side of the Moon-Wizard of Oz trick won't work here.

RESTON'S DOPPLEGANGER

I always suspected that my idyllic, planned community of Reston(tm) had a darker side (though I'm sure it's actually an HOA-approved shade of russert brown). Little did I know, though, that it has an evil twin.

Located on the other side of Washington, D.C. in Maryland, Columbia has all the same hallmarks of a master-planned community -- the goofy, sylvan community names, persistent earth tones, questionable contemporary architecture, etc. Only, instead of a fake downtown, they plopped a generic shopping mall into the middle of "town," right next to an outdoor music venue where you can still hear all your favorite hair bands from the 1980s.

Sure, all this speaks to the banality of evil. But Columbia apparently isn't at all shy about its wicked ways. While Reston has street names evoking sunrises, sunsets, and Wiehles (whatever they are), Columbia has Satan Wood Drive.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be so smug -- as this handy search of Google Maps can attest. Who knew I was just 19 miles from that well-known locus of nefarity, NBC News?

WHAT COLOR IS MY PARACHUTE? APPARENTLY, MAUVE

Regular readers know about the helpful job postings that continually get e-mailed to me, whether I want them or not. So what am I to make of the two listings that found their way to me today? All I know is that together, they pretty much say it all about the state of my chosen metier, ca. 2005:

WRITER/EDITOR, WAL-MART WORLD

I'll bet the commute to Beijing's a real bitch. Actually, this part was particularly intriguing:

The magazine has a circulation of 1.2 million domestic associates. It is produced by a two-person staff, which includes an Editor/Writer and a Creative Director.

If my math is right, that's a edit staff:circulation ratio of 1:600,000, a figure that would make the GM at even the smalllest, crappiest daily newspaper drool. And as if that wasn't bad enough, then there was this:

FACT WRITER, FOX NEWS CHANNEL

You read that right -- not a fact-checker, but a fact-writer. I'm seriously thinking about sending them a resume, using the name Winston Smith.

I WON'T QUIT MY DAY JOB

But from time to time, I actually get paid to dispense liberal doses of snark. (Note: Free but annoying registration probably required; try 'kos@dailykos.com' as a username and 'kos' as a password).

VIRGINIA IS FOR H8RS

At last, I have just the perfect thing to put on my Xtreme SUV as I tool around Reston(tm): a personalized license plate honoring traditional marriage. But don't thank me. Thank the Virginia General Assembly:

The capitalized "TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE" plate, showing two interlocked golden wedding bands over a red heart, would join scores of others for supporters of everything from fox hunting to Holstein cows.

Holstein cows? I mean, to each his own, but that's just creepy. What's next? Dogs and cats living together?

MAYBE WHAT THEY NEED IS A LITTLE MORE COWBELL

Well, Washington has a new daily newspaper, and already I'm underwhelmed. You see, I assumed I lived in one of the demographically desirable Zip codes that will get the new DC Examiner mass-mailed to them. Then I remembered I live in Reston(tm), which has more SWAT teams than Scan outlets.

Oh, well. So far, I've missed out on such thought-provoking and only vaguely Onionesque editorials as "Hope Blossoms Where Bush Plants Democracy" and intimate personality profiles of the likes of Celine Dion -- both of which make me feel a bit relieved that I'm not in the right demographic. In fact, it seems like they're chasing the elusive wingnut audience championed by The Washington Times (a point-by-point comparison from a much funnier writer is here.)

Even so, the Post has got to be feeling some pressure, particularly when it comes to attracting younger readers. To wit: it ran a story this past weekend analyzing in excruciating detail a Saturday Night Live skit. From 2000.

Someone wake me when this newspaper war is over.