Yes, that’s right. We’re slacking today. So without further ado, here is today’s much delayed roundup:

• Scott points to this Alex Ross post on music representative of 20th century composition. Ross includes Björk, Shostakovich, Philip Glass and Miles Davis. But, most criminally, Ross avoids what is arguably the most representative song of the 20th century: Ohio Express’s “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy.” The song has long been derided as bubblegum pop, but I feel that this song’s seminal message (“Love, you’re such a sweet thing / Good enough to eat thing”) is misunderstood. It represents, in part, the triumph of emotions over coherent sentences. Now in what other way can the 20th century’s advancement in technology be better represented? Particularly since many of the machines (such as the computer and the television) are so yummy when we first encounter them? And that the machines were, in part, utilized to generate so much fast food for the human population? Joey Levine and Arthur Resnick (the song’s composers) were prophets!
• Frances Dinkelspiel suggests that Telegraph Avenue’s counter-cultural movement may have contributed to the Cody’s closing. My feeling is that Cody’s shifted their main store to San Francisco because they needed to make some serious bank to catch up with the financial shortfall. The Stockton Street location is in the center of the Powell Street craziness and has something that Telegraph Avenue does not: loads of people from the Financial District coming in on their lunch hour.
• Over at the LBC, Dan Wickett’s interview with Gina Frangello is now up. A podcast interview will follow.
• Is modern society on the path to oblivion? Steve Connor talks with Jared Diamond.
• Wendi Kaufman talks with Joyce Carol Oates.
• There’s been a drop in books published. Only 172,000 books were published in 2005, compared with 190,000 published in 2004. Of course, this isn’t too serious of an issue. It was an election year and everyone felt that they had to write a book about politics. Rest assured, it will happen again in 2008. Nothing to see here. Move along. (via GalleyCat)
• Oh man, I am so fucked if “excessive use of adult websites” is compulsive behavior. (via Scribbling Woman)
• 10 Character Actors Who Should Be In Every Movie. I concur with Charlotte Rampling.
• Hope for the midterm elections?
• Love-Lines: tracking what the blogosphere loves with a funky interface.
• The Morning News offers an interesting article on circuit bending.
• Lord Goldsmith calls for Guantanamo to close. About five years too late.
• What readers want out of a news site in 2016. The major conclusion from WSJ readers? More telegenic reporters.
• Appalling.