Ironic songs, lewd poems, and cute drawings dominate on this day of vaguely apocalyptic news.

From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers

You know when a random-seeming song pops into your head? It happens to me all the time. I’ll be walking along, or sitting and working, and I’ll notice that a song has been playing in my mind. When I stop and pay attention to the lyrics of that song, I’m sometimes amazed at their relevance to the moment. I’ve realized that this mental radio station is how my subconscious gets signals to me while I’m awake. At night that deep part of my brain takes over and shows movies, but during the day only the occasional audio track can break through. I’ve learned to pay attention when one of these comes on.

The Talking Heads song “Nothing but Flowers” has been stuck in my head since Saturday night, when Bike Norfolk rode in the Grand Illumination Parade downtown. We pulled a 500lb float with a tandem bicycle, surrounded by a troop of beaming bicyclists in costumes. A generator on the float powered the colorful Christmas lights, our digital movie projector, and the sound system. We played a loop of ten bicycle themed songs, including the Talking Heads song.

We made it almost all the way to the end of the parade, just past Brambleton Ave, before the generator ran out of gas. Then, suddenly, instead of the pounding cacophony of Queen’s “Bicycle Race,” instead of the eye-catching glow of our lights, I noticed the sounds of everything going on around us. Our float was nearly silent, moving under human power, and lit only by the lights around us. Marching Bands, unamplified, rocked up and down the street, and people yelled and cheered. As long as our music had been playing, I’d heard none of it.

There was a factory,
Now there’s just mountains and rivers.
You got it, you got it.

Today’s news is all vaguely apocalyptic. Here’s some highlights, arranged into a very poor (and strangely lascivious) poem:

Let us not embrace, but instead settle for an enhanced pat-down,
Your moving elections will cause no erections,
But I’ll go to bed with wild weather.
Your fake $100 bills won’t get a dance from me,
I reject your insanity,
The city mourns the death of a tiger,
While the pirates await their fate.

Now, some reflections on these newsisms.

Pat me down, or film me naked?

There’s been a lot of talk about enhanced pat-downs. Maybe a little too much talk (Sorry, Bono). We have a new choice when we travel by air these days: submit to having our picture taken with x-vision that can see through our clothes (and the TSA promises these revealing images will not be kept, except when they are), or allow a stranger with latex gloves to tickle your hairy parts. Here, in the age of YouTube, we can see an uprising coming in the form of a viral rebellion. The terms “porno-scanners,” “TSA nutsack fondling,” and “security theater” have entered common parlance. The Pilot story on the new TSA practices quotes a local woman saying, “They can put their hands all on your breasts.” Some believe that the invasive physical touching is just a way to intimidate people into submitting to the scanners.

Obviously, the TSA is looking to put this all in perspective, to help people understand that the new regime of airport screening procedures is both necessary and rational. Luckily, youtuber SpinRemover is here to reveal the true agenda. Watch for the phrase “deploy the butt explorers.”

Philip Bay Wanted to kill at least 30 people

And he’s not crazy. Jury sez so.

“They are pirates”

Five Somalis, captured at sea after they fired on a U.S. Navy frigate Nicholas, are awaiting a verdict in their trial for piracy. The whole concept of trying foreigners for crimes committed against Americans seems a bit of a sham. Although they have been provided with lawyers to defend them, the jury has no interest in doing anything but convicting them. Plus, there’s the fact that the defendants all confessed to being pirates under questioning.

It seems likely that these guys are, in fact pirates. But still, it seems like there should be an international court for this sort of thing. A “Court of the Sea” with internationally agreed-upon bylaws and such. That would give this trial, and future trials that will inevitably come (there are a LOT of Somali pirates out there), a greater air of legitimacy. The underpinnings of the international system get contorted when one sovereign entity applies laws and punishments to members outside of its natural authority. We would certainly be upset if a Somali court convicted U.S. citizens of a crime and imprisoned them there for life. But of course, these guys are pirates.

Toddler gives thumbs down to maternal carrying style

Walt Taylor is an artistic treasure. His blog CrackSkullBob is a trove of his drawings and thoughts. This one, depicting a drawing of a mom carrying a non-plussed kid, reminded me of an article from The Onion. Check it out, and you’ll find yourself exploring more.