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The Ballad of Dave and Eddie

Sometime in the mid-Nineties, NPR played a spoken word recording of a poem (?) called The Ballad of Dave and Eddie, about two friends who took California infrastructure into their own hands. I've never been able to find a copy of that recording, and the only reference I've ever seen to the work at all is in a 1995 back issue of West Coast lit magazine  Zyzzyva . I don't even know who the author is. I've reached out to singer/songwriter/poet Dan Bern to see if it's him. If not, I have no clue. I guess the NPR ombudsman is the next stop. However, I seem to have a copy or transcript in my archives; where I got it, who knows. For posterity, here it is. If I ever find an audio recording, I'll post that, too. It was fantastic. The ballad of dave and eddie by Dan Bern Dave and Eddie were at Venice Beach playing their guitars. They played for 2 hours and made 6 dollars and 37 cents in change. Then they got in Dave's car and headed back to Hollywood. They sat in ...
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The Insect Breeding Song

Summertime and the insect breeding is easy. That old song rings especially true for 44 species of moths and butterflies in Central Europe, according to an analysis by ecologist Florian Altermatt of the University of California, Davis. Warming has already boosted insect breeding Ah, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve enjoyed a nice singalong to the insect breeding song. Let me see if I can remember the whole thing… Summertime, and the insect breeding is easy. Cicadellidae are jumping, And the white-tailed zygaenid moth’s diurnal mating flights are high. Oh, your apis hoarding behaviour has a demonstrable increase, And the female has consumed the spermatophylax. So hush, little katydid, You’re morphologically unable to call. One of these mornings, You’re going to rise up singing. Then you’ll spread your wings And you’ll take to the sky. But until that morning, A variety of indeterminate environmental factors can harm you, With researches from the UC Davis Depar...
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Ford Contour: Looking Back at Six Billion Dollars of Used Car

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2000 Ford Contour Sport It is an unloved, small American car today, but the Ford Contour was designed to be revolutionary. It was designed to be the first new World Car in 50 years. For some carmakers, the phrase “world car” has a frighteningly compelling ring. Like perpetual motion machines, squaring the circle or mysterious black helicopters, in some minds it can be an obsession that drives you mad, and, if you’re Ford, to the brink of ruin. Standing next to a first (US) generation Contour today, your first reaction is “So what? It’s a used Ford.” Your second, if someone reminds you of the numbers, is: “This thing cost six billion dollars? Didn’t I rent one of these once? Did they actually sell any?” The answer is complicated. If we’re generous, we can call US sales one million (peaking in ‘98 with about 260,000 combined Contour/Mystique). But let’s not forget, this is a World Car, so we can add sales of the foreign market Mondeo (which was comprehensively reworked by 1...
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