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Imagine, if you will, surfing through Youtube from music video to music video and finally ending up here; Paint Box, by Pink Floyd. As the video loads, I read several of the comments: “Syd’s great! David’s great! Syd’s lip-synching! He’s not; you suck!” Standard stuff. Now, when the video finally loads, and I’m prepared to see an old Pink Floyd video that I may or may not have ever seen, instead I see….Christopher Walken! Sitting in a chair in a deserted hotel! It all looks kind of familiar. I figure this will be one of those videos in which the scene cuts back and forth from the band to the actor. Fine.

Now the music begins in earnest, and Christopher Walken is dancin’ around like all get-out. I have the volume set really low because the hour is wee. It’s pretty amusing, really, and still kind of familiar, like I saw this video a single time long ago. But the music… the music is completely unlike any Pink Floyd song I’ve ever heard. “That can’t possibly be Syd Barrett,” I say to myself; “It must be Gilmour. It must be after Roger Waters left, and they’re doing some weird one-off job to help out their dear friend Christopher Walken.”

I watch the entire video, and it’s pretty funny. But the song simply can’t be from Syd days, or even Waters days, like some of the posters are saying. I know that much. And David Gilmour sounds really odd, like he’s intentionally disguising his voice, and the music sounds completely unlike any Floyd music I’ve ever heard. And how on earth did the posters’ conversation about lip-synching get started? All I saw was Christopher Walken shimmyin’ and flyin’ around. Did I look away from the computer at some point? I don’t remember that.

Really: what’s the story behind this video? It’s got to be from some album from the ’90’s, when I didn’t care anymore. And what’s Floyd’s connection with Walken? Who’s reviving whose career here?

So after the video ends, I wander through Google, just to connect some unconnected dots. I google through to another “Paint Box” video on Youtube. It loads up, and…it’s black and white! With jangly sixties noises! There’s Syd! WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SEE?

This is what I saw, somehow in place of the actual Pink Floyd video. And for seven or eight minutes, I’d convinced myself that I was watching some odd David Gilmour-produced thing that somehow escaped my attention when it came out. I haven’t been that disconnected with reality in a long time, and the return to earth was bone jarring.

In conclusion, it takes a special kind of idiot to confuse Fatboy Slim with Pink Floyd.

Apparently they still show this in biology. We called it ‘the tRNA Sutra.’ Or maybe I just called it that, I can’t remember.

Just 11 years after this film was made, we considered it an oddity created by a Martian culture. I remember being saddened that the film could not possibly be made ‘now,’ that nobody had been that earnest or unselfconscious in a long, long time.

Very, very weird to see this again.

One of the comments at Youtube:

smartgun (2 months ago):
“Because of the advances in virtual 3D modelling and CGI we’re missing out on seeing other important scientific processes explained via the powerful medium of hippies.”

This will either slap you to the ground in a fit of nostalgia (if you remember it) or do something else I know not what (if you don’t).

Manual lays out rules for Guantanamo trials – CNN.com

Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, a legal adviser to the Office of Military Commissions, told reporters that the manual provides for a “clear prohibition of evidence obtained by torture” if it was obtained after December 30, 2005.But if it was obtained before that time, and if the judge determines that it is reliable, it may be admitted, he said.

I’ve never seen the fact of torture admitted before by those in control. We live in interesting times.

Bush: If you don’t like my Iraq plan, tell me yours – CNN.com

President Bush on Saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new Iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in Baghdad.”To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” Bush said.

While it would be nice to have a plan that would get us out of Iraq, allow Iraq to achieve stability, and maintain (rebuild) our reputation for decency, I fear that plan is only possible in W’s (or maybe Tom Clancy’s) head. I fear it can no longer happen that way. That’s why the congressional opposition is not proposing it. What they’re proposing is a plan that gets us out of Iraq, which is really the only viable planning left those who have to pick up the pieces. Sorry. It’s as if my son came to me and said “The cat pissed on the kitchen floor after I kicked it. I propose we add more piss to the kitchen floor; the added piss will enable the whole to congeal more quickly so we can clean it up faster. I don’t see you coming up with any piss-cleaning ideas.”

Here’s a couple ideas: a) Get a mop, and b) you’re fucking grounded.

First phase of Iraq war plan to begin early February – CNN.com

Democrat Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois asked Rice:
“What leverage do we have that would provide us some assurance that six months from now, you will not be sitting before us again saying, ‘Well, it didn’t work?’ ”

Rice replied, “The leverage is, we’re not going to stay married to a plan that’s not working in Baghdad.”

First, it’s a little late to have a “first phase of Iraq war plan.” A little tardy. Second, Rice’s reply to Obama is meaningless, in that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s like someone asked her “How can we be sure you won’t eat the meatloaf?” and she said “You can be sure because the meatloaf will be eaten if I do.” It’s nonsensical; it’s a political koan. Third, this escalation is going to happen whether I rant about it or not, whether I think it will be a horrible debacle or not. Given that, I don’t think it’s awful to hope against all evidence and common sense that it will work. It won’t work, it will be a horrible debacle, but W has the authority, the power, and the mindlessly compulsive pig-headedness to do it anyway. So here’s hoping it works.

The end of the Bush era can’t come soon enough.

Nice work from Terry Jones if you have a spare 59m 04s.