WORSE THAN A VEGEMITE SANDWICH: The flute solo in Men at Work's "Down Under" has been deemed a copyright infringement by Australian courts. The infringed work? "Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree." (And a YouTube purporting to show the ripoff.) I will say that my first thought upon hearing the story was surprise that "Kookaburra" is not in the public domain, and my second thought was that while I hadn't noticed it before, there is a striking similarity in the flute solo.

HUP HUP: In recognition of today's World Cup semifinal match, please say something nice about the Netherlands -- including but not limited to their customs as to who pays on a date, or their egg yolk plus butter plus lemon juice sauces -- or anything, anything you know about Uruguay.

KNOCK KNOCK. WHO'S THERE? INTERRUPTING VIENNA. STOP INTERRUPTING ME! There's good trainwreck tv -- I'm thinking of the night that Clifford the Crunchy Muppet sang his way out of Idol -- and then there's the kind of trainwreck that makes you wish you didn't own a television and could erase the ugliness from your memories. Last night's Bachelorette was the latter, as James Poniewozik explains. ("It was as fascinating, as tedious and then as get-me-out-of-here awkward as being dragged into the middle of any fight between two strangers.")

THE SEXLARATION OF INDEEPOUNDANCE: A day late and a pound short, a comprehensive list of double entendres and sexual innuendo in Thomas Jefferson's most famous work:

• human Events
• dissolve the Political Bands
• endowed by their Creator
• pursuit of Happiness
• laying its Foundation
• such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their ... Happiness
• long Train of Abuses and Usurpations
• pressing Importance
• called together ... Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant
• fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures
• opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions
• returned to the People at large for their exercise
• Convulsions within
• encourage their Migrations hither
• raising the Conditions
• erected a Multitude of new Offices
• eat out their Substance
• quartering large Bodies
• enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument
• plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts
• fall themselves by their Hands
• excited domestic Insurrections
• Petitioned for Redress
• Attentions to our British Bretheren
• disavow these Usurpations
• interrupt our Connections and Correspondence
• in General Congress
• appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions
• do all other Acts and Things
• acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, friends [if you know what I mean]

HEY, HEY, GIVE 'EM WHAT THEY WANT: Speaking of celebrity voiceovers, I just heard 10,000 Maniacs' "These Are Days" appropriated for background music in an television ad promoting a blood glucose monitoring system, and I couldn't help but wonder: are there other songs from the band's catalog which have similar commercial potential? (Probably not "Eat For Two.")

THE MIDSUMMER LIST OF GRIEVANCES: The 2010 MLB All Star Game lineups have been announced. Not only is Stephen Strasburg not on the team, but nor is he on the NL ballot for the final slot (while other NL pitchers are. Seriously, just as an email list-building exercise, how can you not have Strasburg on that fan ballot? But I still expect him to be a replacement for one of the Sunday starters.)

But other people did make the team, and we can discuss what a lousy job the selectors did again. Below the fold, from July 4, 1939, when one of the greatest stars of all said farewell.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776: When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the Present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.