Canadian-born ALANIS MORISSETTE is back with her first studio album in 4 years. Flavors of Entanglement, released this week, comes days after her 34th Birthday. Morissette is best known for the bitter post breakup song "You Oughta Know" from her widely acclaimed 3rd album Jagged Little Pill. While the song won the 1996 Grammy winner for Best Rock Song, most of the hype surrounding the song involved the mystery man Alanis was bashing in the song, directed at an ex who left for another woman.
The new album falls along the same track of Jagged Little Pill as it is largely reflective of a broken relationship. But, this time there's no mystery as to who she may be crooning about. Morissette revealed to ET that her breakup with RYAN REYNOLDS is the subject of some of the songs on the album. Her ex-fiance is now engaged to SCARLETT JOHANSSON. While not as angry as Jagged Little Pill, Flavors of Entanglement speaks to disappointment, longing and starting over. Songs like "Straitjacket" and "Moratorium" decry the hurt that Alanis may still be enduring in her most recent love loss. But, she tells Newsweek she's "really happy for him."
Underneath it compares a volatile relationship to the world's troubles in politics and war. The provocative lyrics explore the results of a lack of communication: "Look at us waging war in our bedroom, Look at us jumping ship in our dialogues. There is no difference in what we're doing in here, That doesn't show up as bigger symptoms out there."
Earlier this month, crushing rains left 20 people dead and over 20,000 stranded when overwhelming rainfall left five feet of standing water in the low-lying areas. This is on top of already taxed landscapes that flooded when melting Himalayan glaciers burst the 200 rivers that web across the country last year. Bangladesh under water is seeming like a real and permanent possibility.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — whose claims are usually conservative — said that Bangladesh is heading to lose 17 percent of its land and 30 percent of its food production by 2050. That's like California and New York drowning, and the whole Midwest ceasing production of food.
If this happens, more than 20 million Bangladeshis will be without a patch of land to stand on. Though hardship in the country isn't entirely recent: since 1971, Bangladesh has endured over 200 disasters that have left a total of 500,000 dead and affected a total of 500 million people.
And I haven't even said anything about the plague of rats that's consuming all of their food. A plague of rats. I wish, wish there was more room for stories like this in the general consciousness — shouldn't we be hearing about this every night? Not to dwell on the gloomy, but just knowing about this makes the answer to this question pretty clear to me.
Reuters - The Polish prosecutor's office is
investigating allegations that there was a CIA prison in Poland
where al Qaeda suspects were questioned and guards might have
used methods close to torture, the prime minister's top adviser
said on Friday.
