Arbitrary lists, reminiscing, links and a baby monkey

So I was doing a quiz on sporcle earlier today, as is my wont, Rolling Stones' top ranked songs of the decade, and found the weird mix of songs kind of hilarious, what with the juxtaposition of LCD Soundsystem and Kelis (also: Clipse/Dirty Projectors, and others). Sure Rolling Stone's attempting to stay hip in a world where its irrelevancy would still be increasing, if it were possible to divide by zero. That is to say, Rolling Stone's relevance these days is best measured in imaginary numbers. I mean, Randy fucking Newman? At number 28? IN A LIST OF SONGS FROM THE AUGHTS? Damn you to Taibbi!!

Faux-outrage to subjective lists notwithstanding, I scored about 45 out of 100 songs -- a high number, if percentiles in the "see how you did" link are to be believed. I might feel guilty knowing that I know so much about the "good" songs from the past decade in the opinion of whomever at RS made that list. I mean what an arbitrary thing to be good at, and not at all beneficial! But I usually own the quizzes on there anyway, what with my own user account and occasional comment. Never made a quiz though, maybe I'll try. Suggestions?

Off track, back to the RS list, because I feel like meta-enabling myself and whoever else has made it this far. A few things: 99 Problems and Crazy in Love were at the same time, which greatly inflates their ranking. I know this not because I read the Rolling Stone article corresponding with that quiz, because it is probably not online, and their website sucks so back I refuse to look. That was on Pitchfork, whose decade best of had a striking (or not) amount of redundancy with this list. Although since they are separate publications, I suppose you can't really blame them for that. Finally, all the best music from the past 10 years can be boiled down to parts of indie/alternative rock, electronic, and hip hop. So there's that.

Point: Few things make the passage of time sink in my brain like a few of the songs on there, Stan for instance. It's been 10 years since the Marshall Mathers LP, no wonder the world is fucking crazy. There was a track on there called Kill You for chrissakes. I remember driving around smoking trees in a Rocky Mountain Sports Magazine car, in Colorado, listening to songs on that list. Namely the above and Outkast. And then I went to Vail for free! Those were some halcyon days, that's for sure. Ignition Remix=slapping random ass at The Keg, anyone?

Anyway, enough navel-gazing (or shoe-gazing? terrible). Here are some links:::::

"Heavy Artillery" by George Saunders from the New Yorker

Crazy story about stray dogs in Moscow

Letter to the conservative movement, by a conservative with more obscure references than a Bill Buckley obituary.

And finally, this baby Gibbon.