Mice on a Plane

The BBC is reporting on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight on which approximately 80 live mice were accidentally released in the cabin. You know what the best way to take care of a mouse problem on a plane is? Snakes.

Top Ten Albums of 2005

Hello all, and welcome to my third annual retrospective on the best music of the year before. (See also: 2004, 2003). 2005 was a great year for music, and 2006 looks set to be even better. Here it is:

10. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
More goodness from Vancouver-based New Pornographers. It's not a great advancement on their first two albums, but it still has lots of memorable, catchy tunes, and a few really good ones too, like "Use It" and "Streets of Fire."

9. Spoon - Gimme Fiction
I have to admit, I probably would have forgotten all about this album if so many of its songs hadn't been featured in the movie Stranger than Fiction, which was probably my favorite movie of 2006. Spoon is consistently awesome.

8. Gorillaz - Demon Days
Yeah, I know: they're cartoons. But they're cartoons who perform songs by Damon Albarn. It's full of great songs.

7. My Morning Jacket - Z
My first reaction upon listening to this album was "WTF? This doesn't sound like MMJ!" It took a while to grow on me, but I eventually took it for what it was: innovative and high quality music by one of my favorite bands.

6. Magnolia Electric Co. - What Comes After the Blues
The Magnolia album before it was better. The Magnolia album after it was better. But this one was still pretty darn good. I just can't say anything bad about Jason Molina.

5. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolf
A collaboration between two of my favorite musicians, Matt Sweeney of Chavez (probably the most underrated band of the '90s) and Bonnie Billy, a.k.a. Will Oldham. Good, country-ish stuff.

4. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
I'm always a bit skeptical of the up-and-coming trendy local band, but these guys really have it. Not to be confused with another up-and-coming trendy Montreal band, the absolutely awful AIDS Wolf. Gee, I hope none of the wolves in the parade have AIDS.

3. David Thomas Broughton - The Complete Guide to Insufficiency
This was one of those albums that makes your jaw drop with its originality. It makes your jaw drop a lot more when you actually see DTB perform live, and quickly realize that the album was recorded live, in one take, without any backing musicians. It's a little hard to explain: he sings and plays acoustic guitar, and he samples himself and then uses his own previous performance as the backing track, slowly building from a lone voice to a chorus. If you get a chance, see him live! As well as being innovative, the music is also beautiful.

2. Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
This is probably my most mainstream choice of the year, but it had to go in here because it's one of those albums that's just good. Every song on it is good. I don't even care if you make fun of me for being emo.

1. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
If this band is the only good thing last.fm ever suggests to me (which, so far, it is), signing up will still have been the best investment of time I've ever made. I haven't been this excited about a band in years. This record is not just a collection of fantastic songs, it also holds together as a fantastic album, the best I've heard since Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea from 1998 (which is one of my three favorite albums ever). Listen to it if it's the last thing you do. Sad and beautiful.

Year's Biggest Disappointment:
Beck - Guero
I was hoping for something as good as Mutations. I thought at least I'd get something as good as Sea Change. Instead, I got something that tried to sound a lot like Odelay and came off just plain unoriginal. Other than the first single "E-Pro," this album is totally forgettable.

Honorable Mentions:
Sufjan Stevens' Illinoise! made everyone else's top 10 list for 2005. I think it's a good album, but after a year of hindsight, it didn't quite make the cut. Billy Corgan's The Future Embrace was a hell of a lot better than I'd expected, but still not top 10 material. And Holopaw's Quit and/or Fight was also pretty freaking good, but there just wasn't room.

It's not just a crime against animals, it's a crime against fashion!

Via the BBC, here we see a controversial photo of an apparently stoned-off-her-ass Madonna wearing an un-PC and hideously ugly Chinchilla fur coat. Aside from pseudo-eco-terrorists PETA and the fashion police though, who really cares? If Madonna had paraded around decked out in leather, would anyone have even noticed? If she had gone to a restaurant and had a steak dinner, would we care? This last point is a bit disturbing from an animal rights perspective: meat from a cow (or a chinchilla) can be eaten once, but a coat made out of a cow (or chinchilla) can be worn for many years! Protesting the manufacture of durable goods from animals is a waste of time as long as people eat meat. (Don't get me wrong, I say wear leather and eat steak.)

I'll tell you why: chinchillas are cute and cows aren't. This is the same reason Paul McCartney was out on the Gulf of St. Lawrence ice floes protesting the seal hunt instead of the cod fishery: Baby seals = cute. Cod = ugly.