The list comes from CNN, but I went ahead and got the youtube links for each track.

1. “She Blinded Me With Science,” Thomas Dolby
   
2. “Dare to Be Stupid,” Weird Al Yankovic – Of course Weird all has to be there.  I’d actually put something like “All about the Pentiums” or “White & Nerdy” on the list instead of this one.
   
   Weird Al Yankovic – Dare to be Stupid
   Uploaded by bolton. – See more comedy videos.
3. “Nerdcore Rising,” M.C. Frontalot – There’s actually a pretty cool documentary called “Nerdcore Rising” with a lot of cool information on the genre of nerd core.  Certainly worth checking out.
   

1. “In the Garage,” Weezer – Something by Weezer needed to be on the list.  They would be the fathers of geek rock for sure.  Them with Ozma was a great tour.
   
2. “Through Being Cool,” Devo
   
3. “Code Monkey,” Jonathan Coulton
   
4. “Particle Man,” They Might Be Giants
   
5. “Add It Up,” Violent Femmes
   
6. “One Week,” Barenaked Ladies
   
7. “Weird Science,” Oingo Boingo
   

For some reason, CNN only posted 9 rip-offs, so we have to come up with the 10th on our own…

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1001/gallery.americas_biggest_ripoffs/index.html

You know I don’t do the political rant thing often.  I always have my ear against the door, but barely ever do I walk into that chaos on the other side.  The past week has been too much for me, and I’m falling in.  I’m interested from a banking/economy, a current government side, as well as a presidential campaign perspective.  Honestly, and this will probably be the first time I’ve ever said it, you should be too.  There’s a lot going on right now, and it’s hard to keep a check on all the pulses.

Presidential Campaign – This is the easy one.  John McCain is an idiot.  He’s either too old to multi-task, or he’s too stupid to think clearly.  This dude is obviously not fit to be president.  We already have someone that quits to go relax, do we really need another?  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it shows.  Last week he says the economy is still strong.  Saturday a 3 page proposal is released to congress to review as a solution for the financial crisis.  Monday, McCain says stuff is going to hit the fan.  Tuesday, Mccain says he hasn’t read the 3 page document yet.  Wednesday, he cancels his appearance on Letterman and says that he wants to postpone the debate and his campaign so he can focus on fixing the crisis.  Ego trip much?   He ends up staying in New York until Thursday anyway, and manages to fit in a stop to Katie Couric.  By the time he’s in DC, an approved solution is already announced.  Worthless.  Even Senator Charles Schumer has said Bush needs to, ""respectfully tell Sen. McCain to get out of town. He is not helping, he is harming. Before Sen. McCain made his announcement, we were making progress."  This dude is a train wreck, and he’s not even in office.  Let alone the circus around Palin.  He obviously picked her for her shock value.  She’s been completely absent since.  Worthless.  Smoke & mirrors.  Sham.

Current Government - We’re starting to see the true colors of what goes on in our nation’s capital.  These people have no accountability, and they slack off their whole careers, and when it comes time to get your crap together and do something, they don’t know how to work together.  Henry Paulson apparently begged on 1 knee to the democrats not to tell the presses how bad the meetings went.  Bush is actually doing something it seems, at least trying to get everyone to work together and encouraging discussion.  What we have though are people from 2 different sides of the fence.  You have people with big business and money backgrounds (who, in my opinion should not be allowed to be in politics) like Henry Paulson, and then you have people that have pure legislative backgrounds who know nothing about the market crisis, or how to appropriately manage it.  You know this $700 billion number that’s been tossed around?  Ask someone where they came up with that number.  A Treasury spokeswoman says:

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

OMG.  Are we serious???  We have no idea what we’re dealing with here.  Enter malfeasance probe.  We’re actually going back to the businesses that are in trouble and looking for fraud.  That won’t take long.

Back on track to progressive thinking though, is this really what we want to do?  These companies knew their loans were risky, but they went in anyway.  Preying on poor people to meet their self-serving pockets.  If the government buys all these loans, it doesn’t just end there either.  Now we’re looking at the government serving a role it’s never had.  It actually has potential to MAKE money in this deal…but is this a good thing?!?!  It’s like a whole form of backdoor taxation that I do not approve of.  If you need me to spell it out for you, the government will pay, we’ll say, 1 trillion, for debts that are worth more than 2.2 trillion fully matured.  Do we really want our government acting for a profit?  That money is coming from home owners and normal people.  That brings a whole new level of shadiness and potential for cover ups that I’m not comfortable with.

Economy/business – Cluster ****.  That’s pretty accurate.  Already in the shadows is the fact that we’re letting Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs change their status from investment banks to bank holding companies.  While I don’t disagree with this solution, it’s scary.  By changing their status, they become regulated by the Federal Reserve, but they also have more access to borrow more money.  These are the last and largest investment banks and brings them into the 4th and 6th largest bank holding companies.  I’m worried about their practices, or their problems, becoming contagious and bringing down the bank holding or asset management areas of banking.  By association alone, the market is cracking.  BNY Mellon has very limited exposure to any of the bad debt that is in the news, but our stock, with everyone else, is falling.  We’re even throwing $425 million to help out Lehman’s crash because they’re stock is falling below $1/share.  We’ve got Wamu going under and being bought out so that they don’t deplete FIDC funds.  That’s nuts!  We’re going to be left with a dozen or so big banks.  It’s like a survival of the fittest scenario, only with a global scale economy.  If these companies get the bailout they’re after from the government, no one pays but the American people.  Some heads need to roll for sure, and they better have CEO next to their names.

I’m starting to hear about a new government plan now to insure the debts instead of just buying their out right.  That might be a little better.  This has been something on Barack’s campaign since day one.  I think that about sums everything up. 

I’m not writing a paper here, so i don’t care to cite anything, but I’ll give you a few links and tell you to watch the Colbert Report, the Daily show, and CNN.  I’m curious to see what NPR has to say too.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08270/915335-68.stm?cmpid=generalbusiness.xml

http://video.newsweek.com/#?c=40211&l=1785302026&t=1818133680

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122230704116773989.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Raines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08268/914648-100.stm

http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html

http://orlando.bizjournals.com/orlando/othercities/atlanta/stories/2008/09/22/daily4.html

i woke up at 9 o’clock for a 10am calculus recitation. just went about my normal business, nothing out of the norm. got to class about 9:55, and no one was there. then 2 people walked in. and all 3 of us were wondering where everyone was. then 1 guy walks in and sits down and says "did you guys hear what happenned in new york?" we just said no. he said that someone had flown a 747 into the world trade towers. i audibly laughed and said "dude, do you even know how big a 747 is?!?!? there is no way, those are the biggest commercial planes, that is just insane." and he said "well it was one of those planes anyway, maybe a 737 or something." so he lost all credability in my mind by not getting the facts straight. 10:10, our prof showed up, and she said, in her ukranian accent, "go back to your dorms, class is cancelled." and she confirmed that someone had indeed flown a plane into the towers. got back to my dorm, found out that another one had hit. filled my hard drive with 2 hours worth of footage from CNN.  Jackie Mattassa was going to Penn State and her and I were IM’ing back and forth and she said some kid had a heart attack in the commons and died. His parents worked in the towers.

so i went home to eat with the family today.  good times, J’aime was in, chris’ dad, Rabe was in, keren and deirdre had softball, but they came later.  I havent been home for a while, and it was good to see everyone again.  Keren had 2 of my shirts, that i completely forgot about, and i am so stoked to have back in my possession.  they are as tight as can be, but when has that ever stopped me?  i just got to get rid of my man boobs.  but still, i felt like i got free shirts tonight.  plus, i jacked a car til thursday. 

so i had to get home to get my guitar for cornerstone this week.  kinda nervous, havent played in a while.  and i dont know the songs.  we will see how it goes.

room is still a disaster.  this week i have to clean it. 

i had other crap i wanted to put up here, but i cant think right now.  dragon players just submitted 3 bugs to me, that are pretty big, so i gotta work those out. 

Chris reminded me it was Kurt Cobain’s death anniversary today.  Anyone remember that?  i didnt think so.  All you right handers would never even think of a lefty.  Infact, i bet you all had him killed.  or maybe it was the guitar manufacturer mafia, they thought they would have to actually produce left handed guitars, and have to sell them at reasonable rates if he became too successful.  it’s all a giant conspiracy i tell ya.  that, or it was courtney love. [shudder]

I missed this last week.  Apparently Bush gave some speech, and a kid started falling asleep in the background.  you have to have be able to watch real media files to see these.  David Letterman got flak from CNN for showing it.  With out further delay, here is Bush stimulating the minds of our youth.