From the News of the Weird weekly digest:

After languishing for two years in the Irish legislature, the Nuclear Test Ban Bill of 2006 has recently been rethought and refurbished, according to a June report in the Irish Independent. Originally, the bill codified the United Nations Test Ban Treaty, adding some provisions specific to Ireland. Among those additions was the punishment for anyone detonating a nuclear weapon in Ireland: up to 12 months in jail and/or a fine of up to 5,000 euros [then, around $6,500], along with language that might even allow a person found guilty to apply for first-offense probation. The proposed punishment this time is expected to be considerably harsher. [Irish Independent, 6-27-08]

If you live in Northern Nevada, then most times you have to surf the ‘net to get real news stories with honest-to-goodness thoughtful analysis behind them. It’s not to say the folks up here don’t try, but there’s are only so many political brainfarts you can write about before they all sound the same. Same with droughts, housing problems, and gangs.

So wrapping up this always-wordy lead-in, there’s Peter Hartlaub’s article on break-up songs and he did a fine job, so fine, that it’s a pity I just present the list below. The man resists the Gannett-Newspaper-prone habit of paying attention to entertainment from the last five years and writes about songs from previous generations.
Please click on this link and read the whole thing.

In the meantime…

Share the pain: Breakup songs to die for:

5. “Cry Me a River,” Justin Timberlake (2002)

Psycho breakup line: “Girl I refuse, you must have me confused/ with some other guy/ Your bridges were burned, and now it’s your turn to cry.”

Why it’s a classic: I’m happily married, but if my wife ever got so mad at me that she felt the need to burn our mattress and spread crushed tomatoes all over the house, “Cry Me a River” would definitely be the song playing in the background. The fact that JT wrote this for ex-girlfriend Britney Spears only makes it more legendary. How glad do you think Timberlake is now that she’s someone else’s problem?

4. “Piece of My Heart,” Erma Franklin (1967)

Psycho breakup line: “You’re out on the streets looking good/ And baby deep down in your heart I guess you know that it ain’t right/ Never, never, never, never, never, never hear me when I cry at night/ Babe, I cry all the time!”

Why it’s a classic: This is the “Citizen Kane” of breakup sons. All breakup music must be judged by it. The Janis Joplin version is more iconic, but Erma Franklin’s is equally intense, and in some ways more direct. Joplin sounded a little wasted when she sang it with Big Brother and the Holding Company. Franklin sounds sober, which is much more scary.

3. “You Oughta Know,” Alanis Morissette (1995)

Psycho breakup line: “Every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back/ I hope you feel it/ Can you feel it?”

Why it’s a classic: Where to start? Pound for pound (or line for line) this is the most anger-packed breakup song ever. Even Amy Winehouse wouldn’t think to write a song this crazy. Morissette also frequently performs an acoustic version, which is even scarier, because you can hear the lyrics more clearly. Based on this, the government should have put Dave Coulier and everyone else she dated in witness relocation.

2. “Against All Odds,” Phil Collins (1984)

Psycho breakup line: “I wish I could just make you turn around/ Turn around and see me cry!”

Why it’s a classic: “In the Air Tonight” has a better urban legend, but this song - written after Collins’ breakup with his first wife - packs more emotional impact. He sounds like such a colossal wuss that you almost want to turn the song off to save him the embarrassment. But you still have to feel for the guy.

1. “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor (1978)

Psycho breakup line: “I should have changed my stupid lock/ I should have made you leave your key/ If I had known for just one second/ You’d be back to bother me.”

Why it’s a classic: It starts off with one of the best openings in songwriting history (”First I was afraid, I was petrified”) and never stops picking up speed. What’s especially great about the song - which was inexplicably written by two men - is the way the narrator grows from a shrinking violet to a self-assured take-no-prisoners love Terminator. Modern medicine will never come up with a better breakup cure than “I Will Survive.”

Why do you watch the Super Bowl? Is it the clash of titans, a bloody match of two finely-honed teams for the ultimate glory in football (which is repeated annually)? Don’t lie. We all know it’s the commercials.

Fortunately for you, SI.com gives us the list of the 10 Best Super Bowl Commercials. There’s Mean Joe Greene and his bottle of Coke, the Bud-wise-er frogs, and the Pepsi dancing bears. And Office Linebacker Terry Tate.

This was a stroke of marketing genius. Insert a large man with NFL-level intensity and anger into a white-collar, pencil-necked, Dilbert-like work environment and just let Terry be Terry. Take it away. dude, and notice there are no sacred cows. Everybody gets a little bit of his “loving.”

This spawned a Terry-verse of commercials that never got old. I stumbled across the below during my intense research and had to watch it ten to fifteen times to ensure it is worthy of this blog. Then I had to watch it for the humongous…human sensitivity training sessions.

Terry is still working in Hollywood under the name “The Mighty Rasta” and has had roles ranging from “Prison Break” to “Bachelor Party Vegas.”

And I’ll let y’all know when I’m not sleeping on the couch anymore.

Connected to this entry is a space-filler article found in IMDB’s Movie and News Report for today. Must be a slow entertainment news day:

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams acknowledged Wednesday night that he and other reporters on the program have sometimes mispronounced Nevada as “Nuh-VAH-duh,” rather than — as the locals do — “Nuh-VAA-duh” — something that angers Nevadans who flooded the network with complaints. In a lead-in to a story by George Lewis, Williams said, “We haven’t always said it the same way and there is a correct way.” Lewis then warned presidential candidates campaigning in the state that they had better pronounce the state’s name correctly or lose votes. Valerie Fridland, a sociolinguist at the University of Nevada, Reno, told the Reno Gazette-Journal, “News anchors make a big effort to correctly pronounce the names of places around the world, so when they don’t do it in their own country, people get upset.” The Associated Press quoted Josh Guenter, pronunciation editor for the Merriam-Webster dictionary company as saying, “People in other states have become upset, but I’ve never heard of a national flap over it like this.” [Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to master the pronunciation of “California.”]

Say it right or pay the price. The below features one of the Bride’s co-workers and the building she works in.

The Nevada Appeal sends out an e-journal of their daily headlines.  Somebody has “some esplaining to do” about this morning’s journal.

Check it out after the jump:

Proceed at your own risk »

From Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle:

When Denver International Airport opened in 1992, it was hailed as an “all-weather” facility that could operate through the worst blizzard.

But when a snowstorm shut down the airport for 45 hours last January, the airport spokesman, Chuck Cannon, grew tired of apologizing and said he’d like “to choke the person who came up with the ‘all-weather’ term.”

It didn’t take the Associated Press long to dig up a 1992 interview in which the person boasting about the new “all-weather” airport was airport spokesman Chuck Cannon.  

Scott from Around Carson found Cory Farley’s blog online. His liberal views in a “blindly conservative” town (his words) are worth the read.

[Sidenote: that’s three posts here today. Happy now?]

While we wait for the bouncing Yahoo server to bounce upward and keep my stinking web site on-line for more than five minutes…

I spoke too soon with the “baseball plays the damn game” line. Team general managers recommended that instant reply be used to resolve disputed home runs to avoid problems such as Jeffrey Maier. The proposal has a tough going because it has to be approved by players, umpires, and owners, too, but when everyone realizes that MLB will be selling more commercial time, look for replay to be used for disputed calls at the plate and first base and balking and so on. Can scratching and adjusting be too far behind?

When you get a minute, check out Very Short Lists. I’ve been on their email list for a couple of weeks now and am getting some pretty fun links.

The headline that writes itself: “Clooney and Fabio Get Physical At Vegas Restaurant.”

Douglas County gets one and now Carson gets one for their freeway. Gonna suck for the out-of-control motorcyclist in northwestern Nevada.

Governor Gibbons met with legislative and local government leaders to outline the need for the 5% budget cut that’s most like likely coming in January. In an amazing piece of investigative reporting, the Appeal contacted Gibbons’ predecessors and each said they had to wrestle the same bear during their tenure in office. One of them, Bob List, probably lost his job because of the extreme measures his administration had to implement in order to keep the state solvent. I may complain about the Guv does his business but I wouldn’t want the job.

Note to Andy Reid: work didn’t help your family before your sons became addicted to numerous legal and illegal drugs. Do the right thing, sir. Become a freelance consultant and redirect that personal energy and devotion you give the Eagles over to what counts: your boys.

Look like the President will get himself a new attorney general in Michael Mukasey, even though the nominee was evasive on the waterboarding issue, stating that it wasn’t exactly illegal. Folks, torture may not be illegal (and why the hell not?), but it is immoral. When we give up the high road, we lose whatever justification and motivation behind starting the war in Iraq. Despite years of experience, looks like we learned nothing from Vietnam. Except how to leave our allies high and dry.

One hundred members of the 72nd Military Police Company of the Nevada National Guard from Henderson leave Saturday for their third deployment to Iraq. Go with God.

Here we are on the first business day of Autumn 2007 and, would you believe, the 1000th entry in this blog. If you survived this long, you’re stronger than you think. Slap yourself on the bum and have a second helping of the Rocky Road on me.

The Sixties live again in civil discourse and demonstrations. This works for me. Even the appearance of racial prejudice and inequality is the gangrene at the heart of our democracy/republic, and it’s much closer to home than the Deep South and could very well happen here. Take a browse through the comments on the Nevada Appeal web site and you’ll see racism for what it really is: fear and hate. (Jena link from Reno and Its Discontents)

BTW, got hard, cold facts for the Appeal letter writers: Hispanics are the fastest growing minority in America and over time, many if not most will be legal descendants. Fairly soon, they’re going to exercise their numbers at the ballot box and it’s not hard to believe they’ll remember the vitriol before anything else and act accordingly. Let’s stop hiding behind “anonymous” comments and get this discussion out into the open. One way or the other, Karma always win and Prejudism always loses.

The Reno Gazette-Journal, looking for something to do, talks about growth on the Carson City’s north side, no doubt brought about by the relocation of Carson-Tahoe Hospital, and the opening of Wal-Mart and the freeway, so they say. Or maybe the growth has something to do with Nevada being one of the top two fastest growing states in the Union for years now (Arizona the other). Hispanics, senior citizens seeking no state income taxes, and gads of California escapees are the incoming masses, but that somehow escaped the RGJ’s reporter. If you want three-dimensional reporting, try a non-Gannett newspaper.

How about them Cubs? Watched the last home game at Wrigley and the place was crazy. The fans were on their feet on third strikes in the first inning. With a 3.5 game lead going into the final two regular-season series of the season, I’m almost ready to believe the North Siders are going to the postseason…almost…but I ain’t this crazy.

Another NFL player suffered a severe injury during the Indy/Texan game and is on the road to recovery. When Dale Earnhardt Senior was killed on the track, NASCAR to their credit instituted changes to the way drivers are protected during a crash. Perhaps the only way the NFL will do something similar is when they lose a marquee player. And that day may happen sooner than we all expect.

President Bush got it right and wrong. He believes Hillary will be the Democratic nominee but believes she’ll lose the general election to the Republican nominee. The Dems have four exciting candidates in Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and Richardson, while the Republicans have candidates with some serious flaws with Giuliani’s record and past. He gives a well-organized opponent a lot of ammunition. Wait…Democrats organized? We’re screwed.

Along those lines, here’s something cousin Nancy found. The jokes will write themselves:

Political attitudes may be all in head - Being conservative, liberal or in-between is wired in the brain, new study suggests

The differences between liberals and conservatives may run deeper than how they feel about welfare reform or the progress of the Iraq war: Researchers reported Sunday that their brains may actually work differently. In a study likely to raise the hackles of some conservatives, psychologist David Amodio and others found that a specific region of the brain’s cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives.

On this day in 1988, Canadian Ben Johnson was the fastest man alive by winning the 100m sprint in world record time at the Seoul Olympics. Whoops, he doped up. DQ’d. Carl Lewis won. Here we are, nearly twenty years later, and we’re still creeping forward on resolving drug enhancement in sports (hello, Floyd Landis). The PGA and other golf tours just recently mandated drug testing for all golfers but Tiger Woods (joke). Maybe things will be finally fixed in another twenty years or so. Hope springs eternal.

UAW’s strike against GM is old school union at its best. I understand that the union wants decent health benefits for its retirees, but does anyone have a system in place to adequately meet the medical needs of 340,00 elderly and the thousands of baby boomers heading into their golden years on a monthly basis? Especially at these prices? You read it here first: affordable long-term medical care for the elderly will supplant abortion, gay marriages, immigration and every other political litmus test within twenty years. And the elected ones will have to listen because the elderly are the majority of voters. Give it time.

I’m getting to be an old grump. I watched non-sports TV yesterday and wondered what is America’s fascination with all of the crap that’s passes for entertainment. That box forms our national identity because, I swear, it seems our morale seems to rise and fall with American Idol. (This coming from the same guy who gave up two hours of his weekend watching and loving one of the worst movies ever made.) We are a conundrum, we Americans.

I’ll jump on the bandwagon: the Philadelphia Eagles’ throwback uniforms were the ugliest things on two legs. Having said that, I hope they come back next year because people love to hate and hating uniforms is harmless by comparison.