A Gilded Planet

Ariel Gardner asked me to contribute a top ten list to his top ten list blog.  Go check it out, I promise you won't be disappointed. I compiled a list of the funniest Wikipedia articles that I have encountered. Number 4 on my list is Liver-Eating Johnson : ...[o]ne tale ascribed to Johnson [1] [2]  (while other sources ascribe it to  Boone Helm [3] ) was of being ambushed by a group of  Blackfoot  warriors in the dead of winter on a foray to visit his Flathead kin, a trip that would have been over five hundred miles (>800 Kilometers). The Blackfoot planned to sell him to the Crow, his mortal enemies, for a handsome price. [ vague ]  He was stripped to the waist, tied with leather thongs and put in a  teepee  with an inexperienced guard outside. Johnson managed to chew through the straps, then knocked out his young guard with a punch to the face, took his knife and  scalped  him, then quickly cut off one of his legs. [ dubious   ...

It occurs to me that in my last two betamax posts, I have made fairly showy references to two major rappers in a way that makes my love of hip hop rather conspicuous. It's true that I had a rather torrid affair with hip hop this summer. I discovered that Jay-Z is all of the following (using his words not mine): the "ruler,"  the "best-rapper-alive," an "American Gangster," a "black superhero," a "muhfuckin' renegade," as "real as it gets" (which is why they "feel him in the favelas in Brazil" since as you know "real recognize real"), made "from the cloth of the Kennedys" etcetera, etcetera. Here's a guy who apparently has the President of the United States "on the text" and is not afraid to tell the whole world about it. I have absolutely nothing in common with this giant who is from "the murder capital where [he] murders for capital" and yet I listen to his rhymes ...