• The Pixies' song Here Comes Your Man is the bomb. Literally.
    This one's from Stacy -- she links to a lyrics site where one of the commenters says that the lyrics to the Pixies' oddly Beatles-esque and poppiest tune is about Nagasaki.

    Here are the lyrics:
    outside there's a box car waiting
    outside the family stew
    out by the fire breathing
    outside we wait 'til face turns blue
    i know the nervous walking
    i know the dirty beard hangs
    out by the box car waiting
    take me away to nowhere plains
    there is a wait so long
    here comes your man

    big shake on the box car moving
    big shake to the land that's falling down
    is a wind makes a palm stop blowing
    a big, big stone fall and break my crown
    there is a wait so long
    you'll never wait so long
    here comes your man
    there is a wait so long
    you'll never wait so long
    here comes your man
    The commenter's theory that the song is about Nagasaki is based on the fact that the delivery vehicle for the A-bomb -- named Fat Man -- was a B-29 bomber named the Bockscar, which will have flown the mission 60 years ago this August 9th. Given lead vocalist Black Francis' (a.k.a. Frank Black, a.k.a. Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV) predilection for odd topics and science in his lyrics, I'd say that this commenter could be right.

  • Three Men, Three Views
    Lisa lives in Tel Aviv and writes very fascinating pieces about life there. In this entry, she talks to three men...

    • An Orthodox settlement leader who lives in Gush Katif
    • An artist who curates exhibitions devoted to Israeli/Palestinian coexistence
    • A foreign art curator

    You'd be surprised what each of them has to say.

  • Min Jung Writes About the 14 Stages of Blogging
    Nobody does the funny quite like Min Jung, who's figured out and documented the lifecycle of bloggers:

    1. “Start reading blogs.”
    2. “You start a blog.”
    3. “You become a stats whore.”
    4. “You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.”
    5. “You faux “retire” from blogging.”
    6. “You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.”
    7. “You decide to “get serious” about blogging.”
    8. “You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.”
    9. “You decide that you must meet other bloggers.”
    10. “You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.”
    11. “See step 5.”
    12. “You decide that as a result of step 10 and having repeated step 5 more than 3 times in the course of your lifecycle as a blogger, that you need to sanitize or reinvent your blog.”
    13. “You either lose your job because of blogging, are afraid of losing your job for blogging, or join a company that builds blogging tools.”
    14. “You decide to start an anonymous livejournal blog.”