Selfish Hedonist

Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Moments So Dear

Oh wait, I hate Rent. Well, I haven't actually seen it, and I will see the movie seeing has how Rosario the Great is starring in it. But I have a feeling I'll hate it.

And the lyrics of that song, meant to say something about how long a year is, or how short it is, or how we should appreciate what we have or some damn thing, are especially eye-rolling. But! We here at Selfish Hedonist needed something to celebrate the twelve months of political rants, vital action alerts, and semen musings that have comprised the blog you know and adore. So we picked that.

Yes, much has changed in the world since that first posting back in the day. (Actually, I'm pretty sure we had at least a few before that, but they seem to have been lost in the ether.) Unlike those halcyon days, we are today living in an Orwellian world in which George W. Bush is president YES PRESIDENT!, a senseless war is raging unchecked in Iraq, and Halliburton is getting no-bid contracts all over the place. Sigh. I miss the olden days.

It's been a rough few weeks for the SelfishHedonists but we're back in force now with three YES THREE! important links. I highly recommend you check out:

ARMY NATIONAL GUARD SWEEPS where you can give the Army National Guard your contact information plus your friends' information and in return you get three YES THREE! free music downloads from iTunes®. That's the equivalent of $2.97! Such a deal. And look how happy the young kids are there, rockin' out to their Trisha Yearwood, not a care in the world. I'm sure those three songs will provide much comfort in the place of a limb, or on their way to the funeral of a new friend. I was listening to NPR this morning (yes I hate them but it's better than those damn morning shows) and they had a story about an Army recruiter in the Chicago suburbs who was doing okay getting people to sign up, because, he said, he didn't lie. He was frustrated at the media's reporting of lies that some recruiters were said to be telling, as that became everyone's opinion of all recruiters, which wasn't fair. He was then overheard telling some high school kids that Iraq was a good place to be, because the traffic in Chicago was really bad and you were taking your life in your hands every time you drove on the Dan Ryan, and they just don't have that problem in Iraq.

Earlier in the segment, they recorded a (latina) high school girl who gave her brother's cell number to the recruiter. She herself wasn't interested. "What you guys do is so brave," she said. "Dying for your country and stuff?"

Number two. I'm kind of hooked on Kanye West's new single, "Gold Digger," feat. Jamie Foxx. If you know the song, or even if you don't, check out this title-says-it-all remix, "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People."

And then there's this.