Songs for the barricade

In Uncle Murray's magnificent magnum opus, Man, Economy and State, with Power and Market, he introduces the character 'Jones', an acting man who must decide between watching a baseball game, playing cards, or taking a drive. These different possible actions keep moving up and down Jones's ordinal scale of most desirable thing to currently do, as he moves through the evening, in the subjective utilitarian reality of Austrian human action choice.

I felt a bit like that on the beach, today. My ever-revolving list of iterations were (1) Order a cold Heineken from the beach butler, (2) Go for a swim, (3) Order a burger with french fries, (4) Listen to a Walter Block podcast, (5) Avoid looking at the impossibly curvaceous, slim, golden-skinned, blond-haired girlfriends of what appeared to be a former company of Russian Spetznatz troops, discussing all sorts of 'business', on the beach.

Imagine men who are built like tanks, covered in tatoos and scars, and wearing grey vests and cut-off grey camouflaged beach shorts, and I think you'll get the picture.

Rather remarkably, it was incredible how many times listening to a Walter Block podcast won out over avoiding looking at the impossibly curvaceous and slim blond-haired women.

I must say, however, that these Eastern European ladies all seem much nicer than the leathery Western European ones, who appear to be able to work out your net income and capital property value at five hundred yards, with a single penetrating glance.

You feel like your wallet has been squeezed and molested, when they run their eyes (very briefly in my case) over you. Ah well, I'm probably only jealous that I don't appear to come up to muster wearing my Jean Baptiste Say "Markets Clear" T-shirt, gaining about a 3.42 nanosecond glance before my case is presented, tried, and dismissed.

Anyhow, enough of that nonsense.

While I was pondering whether to listen to another Walter Block podcast or go for another swim, I wondered about creating a song list for the barricade, when the revolution comes. Just like the Desert Island Discs program, I thought I'd limit myself to just eight tracks, to listen to when the balloon finally goes up. If you have an alternative list, I'd be pleased to see it:

1. 1973, James Blunt, All the Lost Souls

2. No One Knows, Colin Hay, Are You Looking At Me?

3. Shiver, Natalie Imbruglia, Counting Down the Days

4. You Get What You Give, New Radicals, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

5. Life is a Highway, Tom Cochrane, Mad Mad World (I watched this one performed live about a hundred years ago with English Bay, Vancouver, as a backdrop, while the Sun set into the Pacific. If you know Tom Cochrane, then you'll realise just quite how good that was.)

6. No Tomorrow, Orson, Big Idea

7. Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy, Big & Rich, Horse of a Different Color

8. Superman, Lazlo Bane, All the Time in the World

Prizes will be awarded if you can work out which song goes with each of the following women: Pauline, Caroline, Vanessa, Carol, Christine, Anne, Katherine, and Kathy, in no particular order.

Well, while you're on the barricade, you may as well have something to remind yourself why you're there.