The Bananaverse

Three years ago today I stood on a mountain and agreed to trade in my last name for a new one. I got cake and lunch and a waffle iron and a toaster and a new dress and jewelry and a trip to DisneyWorld. I guess it was fair.

Yeah, you know who you are. And if you don’t know, you will in a minute.

WTF is wrong with you? Why do you have this problem? How come you couldn’t be bothered to come to me and go “hey, look, this is the deal, and it makes me all snarly” instead of just behaving in this fundamentally unacceptable passive/aggressive manner? It wouldn’t be a big deal if you had a problem with me and it was just between you and me. But then you start reeling in other people and causing them to become embroiled in YOUR own…personal…drama… because you can’t be bothered with adult interaction like a regular person. That is where I draw the line. Have all the problems with me you want-in fact, I’ll send you an engraved invitation if you’d like. You can take umbrage all you want, because I give it out freely (whatever umbrage is). Just act like a reasonable human being, and have your problem with me REMAIN with me.

Do you think that it doesn’t work that way? It does, I assure you. I’ve gone to people with problems countless times, and it works out or it doesn’t. Either way I don’t have to carry on pretending to like someone or try to do the ignoring you dance. That’s how it is. You need to grow right the hell up and tell me just what I’ve done that is chafing the stick that resides in your ass and decide if it’s worth scrapping a friendship over. If it is, then fine, suck it up like a real person and get over yourself and talk to me about it. Telling everyone you know, for example, that I’m a mean old bitch and I have stupid hair, is not ok. Coming to me and going “hey, you know what? You’re a mean old bitch and you have stupid hair!” is much more acceptable. Then I can say either “Oh, well, I’m sorry, I had no idea. I’ll change my ways immediately!” or I can cheerfully tell you to remove the aforementioned stick, jam your opinion up your ass, and replace the stick to make sure your opinion stays there. Either way, your ‘issue’ would have resolution. Going about it like this is indefensible, immature, inexplicable, and just plain bitchy.

I wouldn’t care if you woke up one morning and decided I was evil incarnate and we couldn’t be friends. It would suck, but I’d survive. And I would think that you, of all people, would delight in drawing this conclusion and giving me the what-for. I also wouldn’t care if you came to me with a powerpoint presentation of all my faults and these reasons are why you can’t hang out with me any longer. That’d be ok too. However, you have chosen another approach. Which doesn’t really bother me either. It’s that you do not treat me the same as other people with whom you associate. So I suppose that it is good you are no longer my friend, since I don’t want to be friends with anyone who holds people to varying standards.

Let me leave you with this thought: While you may be very good at holding forth on all my faults, you are by no means perfect. And while I do not think people are better or worse than any other people, I have been told by spectators to your little drama that I come out of this looking like an adult reasonable person and you come out looking quite the opposite. So I hope you enjoy life in your little glass house while it lasts, because you’ve been throwing an awful lot of rocks.

So.

You’re going to sue me.

You find it an egregious wrong against you that my 80gb hard drive and I are in possession of music that I may or may not have paid an exorbitant sum to own. You are convinced that I am a guy in a college dorm room, hot to get my hands on the newest Limp Bizkit, and I can find it on the internet-at least, that’s what you’d have the rest of the world believe. You imply, whenever possible, that this is some sort of ‘gateway infraction’ and that soon I will be jacking cars and knocking over liquor stores by Christmas. You do interviews armed with sound bites and talking points that are supposed to generate sympathy, such as equating what ‘downloaders’ do with what the people piloting those planes did in New York City awhile ago. You insinuate and imply and now you are going to sue.

You say that this is your only course of action, since you are out of options-nothing you have tried yet has worked, and so it has come to this. This is a very “this will hurt me more than it hurts you” moment.

You are now exceptionally busy-conservative estimates say that there are nearly 60 million people using the dreaded p2p software that is now the bane of your existence. That’s an awful lot of paperwork, RIAA. I hope your legal department can keep up. More importantly, I hope your PR folks can keep up-those who are the biggest “pirates” or whatever you call them these days-are the ones, according to studies virtually everyone seems to notice but you, that are also the biggest purchasers of music. I remember this happening before, and if I’m not mistaken, when Metallica came out and said that they were really upset about Napster and don’t download their music, virtually everyone using Napster downloaded a Metallica song or two on principle. In the court of public opinion, these guys were schooled with the speed and efficiency that only public opinion can provide.

Now let’s look at some facts, shall we?

* CDs are priced higher than vinyl or cassette formats ever were. CDs are orders of magnitude less expensive to produce than vinyl or cassette formats ever were.

* Currently, the economy is not in very good shape. Most economists will tell you that the first thing to be cut when times are hard is discretionary spending. Entertainment tends to be discretionary spending, and when it’s nearly twenty dollars a shot for this particular entertainment, economics dictates perhaps going and renting movies instead, since it’s cheaper.

* File Sharing will not go away. I was obtaining music before Napster. I am obtaining music after Napster. Somehow the software companies are managing to survive even though there are a lot of people sharing their work as well.

* Now that the CD format has been around for a significant amount of time, the bulk of works that people had in other formats has finally been released, and therefore, upgraded.

* In 1973 there was a study done by Warner Communications that stated people who record more records to tape also buy more records. This is proven in a new millennium by surveys saying that those who download more music buy more music.

* According to numbers that you yourself released, you have not put out as many albums in the last few years.

I find it interesting that there are other more reasonable explanations for why your sales are down: People are finally done upgrading, you are releasing less content, economic factors. Why are these ignored? Why are you going to sue me? I wasn’t going to buy that Britney Spears album anyway, and since you won’t really release anything for a music fan who isn’t in high school, I buy other music now. It just doesn’t happen to come from the big Five.

As far as the “we have no other choice” viewpoint that you are currently promoting, this does not fly. Label attempts to compete have been lackluster to put it mildly. I have a very hard time believing that a confusing interface, oppressive DRM, and exorbitant pricing are really the best alternative you can offer. Apple has done wonders with their music store. When Windows users have access to this later this year, the iTunes Music Store could well do what you could not-give people an easy alternative at a good price point and then they wouldn’t download anymore. Considering the sales numbers from Apple, the demand is certainly there-and you’re only talking about a margin of computer users! Say 10% of internet users have Macs-and this is a very generous estimate-that means that one user out of ten propelled over five million purchases from iTunes, and that number continues to climb. Ten percent bought five million tracks. What can that add up to when it gets out to everyone? An end to your threats and lawsuits and overworked PR department having to defend a fundamentally unpopular position?

Honestly, the real losers in this entire boondoggle are the artists themselves. After researching royalties and what cut of the album price an artist gets, I came to a very sad conclusion about the state of the music industry. I am a fan of a British band called Depeche Mode, which consists of three members, one of whom writes the bulk of their music. They have released 15 albums in the US-some of them double albums, a couple of them live recordings. This is not to mention the various singles and foreign versions of their releases-of which I possess a fair number, all purchased new (instead of used where nothing goes to the artist, but that’s another matter). Based on the admittedly sketchy impression I have of the system used to pay artists, if I were to mail the band twenty dollars today, they would get more from me in that twenty dollars than they have in the fifteen years I have been purchasing their albums-and that’s even considering that it would be split between them! And do any of these artists get any say in not suing people? There are a fair number who have spoken up and do not want this to happen. So if the Recording Industry Association of America is not listening to those who actually generate the Recordings, then how can they do this? Oh, wait, what am I thinking? They’re just taking their cue from the US Government, who also disregards the right or even the reasonable and does whatever they desire.

I guess I still don’t understand why you think that suing me is a good idea. I’m not saying that I’m right to download music I don’t pay for, but I don’t think it’s right of you to come down on music lovers with heavy-handed indefensible tactics to try to stuff this genie back in the bottle. That will never happen. I am willing to meet you halfway-give me a better option. I’ll pay, that isn’t a question. I’ll pay for downloaded music. I have, actually. And I’d do more of my downloading in a paid format if it were possible. I’m just selective now that I get to hear things first. I was saved from buying the new Madonna album because I got to hear it first. However, by getting to hear the new Live album a bit early, I was even more excited to buy it when it came out. I would pay for music if it was music I wanted to hear-this is a very commonly held opinion. I know a lot of people who say the same thing. But given the choice between eighteen dollars and zero, there will always be the faction who exercise the free option.

I would like to leave you with this thought-If you are so fully convinced that one cannot compete with free, here are two words for you: bottled water.

Sincerely
Banana Lee Fishbones
Downloader, Netizen, Potential Terrorist

I was just at George Carlin’s site, and there’s a ticker at the bottom of the page that scrolls Carlinisms. This struck me as particularly meaningful:

Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music.

And I was reminded, watching the ticker, of a thought I had the other day after yet another minivan zipped into our lane and nearly caused an accident:

If there are so goddamn many soccer moms, why doesn’t everyone in america play soccer by now? It’s not like there’s baseball moms or something.

So there you go. Deep thoughts for today.

OK! I just re-read Chamber Of Secrets (I’m in the process of re-reading all five) and I want to know this:

How come, if Hagrid was cleared of opening the Chamber, nothing happened as far as his expulsion and snapped wand? Like, why didn’t he at least get a new wand or the chance to finish his studies, or something? I mean, they proved (fairly conclusively, imnsho) that it wasn’t him, and that it really never could have been him, and he wouldn’t have been in any trouble at all if anyone really knew anything about the chamber in the first place. They were just so ready to do anything to make it look like they were doing something, they did the totally wrong thing. Actually, come to think of it, that sounds really familiar…Anyway! It’s like three books later and still NOTHING! Not even an apology for accusing him or anything! Honestly.

Top 11 Signs your ISP has given you up to the RIAA as a dangerous KaZaA user:
11. All the files in your favorite MP3 play list are now “Lars Ulrich sings ‘Feelings’”
10. Your KaZaA rating changes to “Defendant”
9. Eminem insults your mother in his next single
8. Recording Industry Association of America president Hillary Rosen sends you e-mail messages with embedded .wav files of heavy breathing
7. All the spam in your inbox is from Motion Picture Association CEO Jack Valenti
6. You get a bill retroactively charging you 99 cents per downloaded track. Total bill: $29,700
5. A Tommy Mottola screen saver suddenly pops up on your computer
4. Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer picket your home with signs that read, “Piracy don’t pay my bills”
3. You receive a request from someone using outdated hacker wannabe slang claiming a friend said you could “hook me up” with the latest Snoop Dogg album
2. You suddenly have numerous songs from someone named Avril Lavigne
1. CD-shaped crop circles appear in your backyard

Here you go:

When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the fifth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.

I just watched a lovely story about Central Park on the Today show. Then there was a commercial, and now they are showing a story abut a little girl who started a lemonade stand and donates all her money to cancer research (she has cancer). They said that even though her sign says fifty cents, she has sold $100 and even $500 cups of lemonade. Her first summer as an entrepreneur, she made two grand.

Mostly I just really like getting two nice stories in a row. It makes this second story even nicer because it’s not a break from all the other crap that usually is supposed to be news. What a lovely story.

K, that’s all.

OK!

So the RIAA got a new spokesperson or president or whatever, because Hillary found out after all that nobody but nobody is flameproof and was a bit tired of being singed (that’s just a theory).

This new guy, Cary Sherman, recently said-well, I’ll let him tell you:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4703735,00.html

Sound of the underground
Edward Helmore
Thursday July 3, 2003
The Guardian

In the increasingly frenetic game of cat-and-mouse between the music industry and online music pirates, the recording industry believes it may be on the verge of victory.

After an announcement by the Recording Industry Association of America last week that it will soon file hundreds of lawsuits against individual file-swappers, peer-to-peer application providers reported a small decrease in network traffic. P2P services say the decrease is unlikely to last.

After three years of paralysis, the music industry’s get-tough-on-consumers offensive is only the start of what promises to be a long war. As RIAA president, Cary Sherman, said, the association plans “at least several hundred lawsuits to start, but that’s only the beginning”.

But critics of the initiative warn that the offensive will ultimately be as self-defeating as the battle against Napster. The industry’s apparent rationale - that going after P2P users will drive consumers to legitimate services such as Apple’s iTunes - is no more likely to succeed, they say, because file-swappers (there are an estimated 57 million in the US alone) will gravitate to other services.

Alternatives to the big P2P services such as KaZaA and Grokster have already sprung up. EarthStation5, for example, offers anonymising techniques. Other services, like Nullsoft’s Waste, serve only small communities.

With the rapid adoption of broadband, swapping online files is growing more popular than ever. In the past six months, no fewer than 50 new of P2P file-trading software programs have emerged, many with technological advances that shield the identity of users.

Clearly, consumers are willing to shop around to avoid the authorities. Blubster 2.5, a service with improved privacy, has been downloaded more than 3.3 million times since June 17.

“RIAA will have a much harder time penetrating these systems, and if their actions result in internet users flocking towards them, they will probably regret overplaying their hand rather than trying to find a way to work with peer-to-peer networks to market and sell music,” says James Plummer, a policy analyst for Consumer Alert in Washington.

The idea of suing the public into submission instead of finding a way to harness the traffic is flawed, warn technology advocates. Since 1999, sales of CDs in the US have dropped by one quarter.

But the success of Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store - which sold 5m songs in the two months after it was launched - has given the music industry reason for optimism.

“What Apple’s done is really deliver to all of us a proof of concept here,” said Michael Bebel, president of Napster, now a legitimate, but struggling, digital music service run by Roxio. “There are definitely people out there who are willing to pay for online digital music.”

The battle for the legitimate online market for music is soon likely to intensify as Apple prepares a Windows-based service and rivals adapt their offerings to compete.

But few believe that any legitimate network can compete while the industry is so concentrated on fighting illegal downloaders. Last week, a new anti-piracy bill was introduced to Congress that will effectively bring the FBI into the fight against piracy.

Under the proposals, the crime-fighting agency would be required to develop software to deter illegal online traffic and be required to “encourage sharing of information on suspected copyright violations”.

“The message up to now has been, ‘No, no, no, no, no - be good kids, don’t do it,’ and everybody laughs at us, saying, ‘What are you going to do, sue me? Are you going to risk the bad press?’ I think we’re at a moment where maybe we need really bad press,” one label executive was reported as saying in the New York Times last week.

Still, the record industry has now set its course. If it cannot close down the P2P systems (a recent court ruling decreed services such as Morpheus and Grokster were legal even if used for illegal purposes), then their users must be punished.

As the RIAA’s Sherman warned last week, the association will “keep filing lawsuits on a regular basis until people get the message”.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
———-

And as an added bonus, scope this too:

TO CATCH A MUSIC THIEF
Record industry’s war on downloading gets draconian against file-sharers
by JOHN GORMAN

http://www.freetimes.com/issues/1110/columns-gorman.html

You’re either with or against the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). They’re the non-profit lobby controlled by the Big Five label conglomerates: BMG, AOL-Time Warner, Universal Music Group, EMI and Sony. Download music from the Internet and you’re a thief.

The RIAA has already threatened to pull the cable on independent Internet radio stations unless they fork over up-front mega-fees to SoundExchange, the collection arm of the RIAA. It’s fair to say that, excluding commercial stations that also stream, most Internet radio stations are giving airplay to independent and European music from smaller labels that aren’t members of the RIAA and can’t afford to buy their way onto the conventional radio playlists.

Immediately following 9/11, the RIAA’s chief lobbyist, Mitch Glazier — considered one of most influential on Capitol Hill — attempted to tack a hack-authorization amendment on last year’s anti-terrorism bill. If approved, it would have immunized all copyright holders for any data destruction caused by computer intrusions. The RIAA would like you to believe that file sharing is on par with an Al Qaeda terrorist attack, and is the cyberspace equivalent of North Korea’s
nuclear program.

The RIAA also launched its own terrorism campaign. They took Verizon to court, demanding the identity of a client that used their platform to download music. They randomly targeted and prosecuted college students from Princeton, Rensselaer Polytech Institute and Michigan Tech for running a music file-sharing service. With White House permission, the RIAA raided a group of renegade U.S. Navy sailors for downloading music.

That was followed by the RIAA targeting Fortune 1000 companies and warning their CEOs that employees downloading music on their dime could cause legal, security and efficiency problems.

The ringleader was former RIAA Chairman and CEO Hillary Rosen. Wrapped in a bizarre interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, she insisted the RIAA had the right to do whatever necessary to silence Internet radio stations that can’t afford pay her fee and hold downloaders hostage. Rosen resigned earlier this year and landed at CNBC, where she will, presumably, shill for entertainment industry.

Rosen’s campaign has now been taken over by new RIAA head Cary Sherman. His first order of business is to sue anyone housing a significant library of downloadable songs, which could be accessed by a file-sharing program. “Significant” was not clearly defined. The RIAA claims it will file several hundred lawsuits in the next six to eight weeks.

Music downloaded from the Internet is highly compressed and not even remotely close to a perfect digital copy. Music heard on Internet radio is down a few more notches in audio quality. In most cases, downloading has replaced radio as a medium for hearing new music. The majority of those who download music buy “hard copy” CDs of music they truly like. The percentages haven’t changed.

What the RIAA refuses to admit is that downloading music and Internet radio are replacing commercial radio as the prime exposure of new music. Current music on U.S. radio is bought and paid for in advance. Station chains cut deals with third-party promoters peddling wares for the Big Five. Small indie labels no longer get radio airplay. They can’t afford the pay for play fees, and they’re not members of the RIAA’s Big Five club.

It costs at least $1 million to promote one song on hit music stations. That’s the retainer fee. Since all costs of promotion are liposucked from the artists’ hides, many are reluctant to give up cash with no guarantee of airplay. Heard Liberty X, Atomic Kitten or Sophie Ellis-Baxter on the radio? These acts had top 5 successes worldwide but elected not to enter the pricey pay-for-play game. In doing so they’ve shut themselves out of radio airplay in the U.S.

Commercial radio listening has dropped significantly and no longer serves as the soundtrack to American popular culture. Unlike the payola of old, today’s pay-for-play isn’t illegal. It’s not the cash under-the-table payments exposed in Fredric Dannen’s 1990 book The Hit Men. In radio new-speak, it’s referred to as “non-traditional revenue.” Chains report payoffs as taxable income. Since most station playlists are dictated by radio’s corporate offices, the Big Five no longer have the need for the expense of their own promotion staff.

A couple of radio chains claim they’re revisiting their current legal payola deals, but none have said they’re giving them up.

The RIAA blames downloading, not radio, as the reason for their flaccid music sales. They ask you not to confuse them with the facts that some of the best music being released is neither seen nor heard, due to the combination of legal payola and labels buying up every square inch of music retailer stores and even controlling what’s heard on the store’s speakers.

How about the reality that with broadband, it’s just as easy to download full-length feature films. That technology hasn’t hurt Hollywood. Every year’s box office tally breaks the previous year’s record, and that’s not even counting the record number of DVDs rented or sold.

Here’s another one. The Big Five? Next year at this time it will probably be down to the Big Three. Both AOL-Time Warner and EMI have their label divisions on the block.
———-

So what I want to know is this: If they’re going to file lawsuits until people get the message from the RIAA, when is the RIAA going to get the message that the people don’t like the setup now and that it needs to change? I mean, what other industry allows 80% (or more) of what people buy to be substandard? To say nothing of their 10% success rate on signed artists. Would you buy a car if the bulk of it appeared to be fresh from the junkyard, but the seats kicked ass? What about a loaf of bread if the bulk of the slices in it appeared to be bitten out of already or even just a bit moldy? No regular person would find any of the above acceptable, and yet the RIAA is actually trying to say that we (the people) are supposed to smile and pony up 18, 19, or even 20 dollars for a CD that is maybe 2 “good” songs (they think good = hit) and then ten tracks of filler. Why would I do that? Why would I smile and pay MORE to get LESS of what I’m paying for? I wish they would just realize that you know what? I love my music. And I’ll pay for it, gladly. In fact, I still do. I just don’t buy the same stuff I used to. Eighteen bucks is a lot of money for something I’m getting on spec. I freely admit I’ve downloaded the bulk of an album, or even the whole thing from time to time. I want to know if it’s worth getting the new Madonna album or perhaps the new Eve 6 (and the answers are no and yes, respectively). I have heard that song in that Mitsubishi car ad and gone in search of it. I have heard someone else mention a band or a song and picked up a few different songs or versions and if I’m impressed, I go buy it. I’m grateful for downloading because it has saved me from some really unfortunate music purchases, and allowed me to discover a lot of music I wouldn’t have cared about otherwise. Maybe instead of slapping down people who download music, they should be finding new ways to get my attention and keep it and do useful things with the internet, not just spy on people and wait to catch them. It’s like the RIAA has become that kid in class who will tell on you if the teacher has to leave the room. At first, everybody sort of didnt’ mind that kid, but once his strategy was clear, nobody liked him and just went to greater lengths to make sure he didn’t find out what you were up to. I mean, DUH!!!! It has been shown that generally, the more people download, the more music they buy. This would mean that for the most part, the RIAA is actually going to sue it’s biggest customers. Why would you do that? And how solid are these suits, anyway? I’ve ripped a fair amount of music before then selling the CDs off to resale shops. I bought it, I owned it when I ripped it, prove I didn’t. I mean, come ON. And what about those used CD shops? Jimmy Ray didn’t get any royalties or anything else when I bought his cd for a dollar from the used CD shop up the street. Neither did any of the other people behind stuff I’ve purchased used. So I would think that’s almost the same as downloading since none of the money I spent goes to the people responsible for creating it. Are they going to try to shut down Everyday Music for it? I don’t understand the difference. Maybe they get kickbacks from used CD shops, who knows? They already get kickbacks on blank CDs.

All I really know is that I desperately need some breakfast and I can hear Capn Crunch calling me from the kitchen, so I’m off to sail on his breakfast boat of tasty goodness.

I thought this was a terribly interesting article. Check it out. Sorry if the format’s a little effed, I think the curly quotes don’t translate all that well.

http://www.prosoundweb.com/recording/commentary/ck/exc.php

The peasants are acting like emperors!
MP3’s – The disgusting hypocrisy of record executives
By Chris Kathman
Live editor ProSoundWeb

For the last few years, top executives from all the major record companies have been giving interviews in which they criticize consumers for doing exactly what the execs have been doing for years - getting music for free. I was “in the loop” for a couple years, when I was writing about music for a free weekly, as well as a major daily newspaper, in Los Angeles, many years ago. And I can tell you, none of these characters paid for anything, ever.

The bookcases in their offices and their homes were (and are) filled with“product” that they receive for free as a matter of course. They would not dream of ever paying for recorded music, themselves, with very few exceptions. But now that the average consumer can download a ripped file from the Internet, you’d think it was the end of Western Civilization, from the way they talk.

The false piousness of their pronouncements on this subject really offends me. I assure you, back in the day, if somebody at Record Company A wanted a copy of the new LP by so-and-so and the such-and-suches, they would shout at the secretary to call their good friend at Record Company B and have it messengered over, with the fee for the messenger charged to the artist signed to Company B! Maybe it took a little longer than getting an mp3 off the web now, but my point is that they did not go down to their local record store and pay list price to nobly support the artist who they claimed to be interested in.

I made money selling the promos I received. It never paid my rent, it was more like a meal here and there, but I knew of other journalists who were much more handsomely rewarded for pumping up certain labels’ artists by being double or triple-listed on the promo mailing list. And, back then, many records were released each month, and there were far more record companies, so if someone got that privilege at five or six different publicity departments, it could really add up.

Basically, if you were connected to the teat, you waved your magic wand and any music you wanted came to you free of charge. It was, and is, a nice way to live, but now that the great unwashed can aspire to it, what a scandal, what a terrifying phenomenon. How dare these peasants emulate the lifestyles of the wealthy behind-the-scenes movers and shakers?!

The studies I hear about vary in terms of exactly how downloading affects/impacts sales. That poor little Eminem is doing okay, as far as I can tell. But one artist who I worked for told me his label believes that, without downloads, he would have sold a quarter or a third more copies of his latest CD. Of course, they might just be trying to cover up for how badly they worked his record!

I asked a college-age person I know how it worked among his contemporaries. His account was very interesting. He confirmed that most people he knows are on a dial-up and do not have a high-speed connection. “At the most,” he said, “they will download a track or two, and if they like it, they will buy the whole album.”

Then, among the smaller percentage of people who have high-speed connections, there are actually comparatively few who want to take the time to assemble an album worth of tracks and then burn it. If they are affluent enough to have a high-speed connection, they can also afford to just go out and buy the CD, and usually do just that.

There is another issue, when the venality of the majors is discussed, that the trade press has explored thoroughly but receives little play in the mass media. And that is, CD’s actually cost less to manufacture than vinyl records but are sold for a higher price. This was one that the industry smoothly and successfully snuck by a narcotized populace.

And I don’t mean by drugs. I am referring to just a generalized lack of questioning in most people today, who never seem to think that what movie stars get paid is obscene, or greedy, and never make the connection that that is why the price of their Coke at the theater is so many more times what some fizzy water and sugar syrup actually costs. The uproars of the Vietnam era have been tamed, it seems, and consumers toddle happily through a non-stop arcade of carefully crafted diversions.

Punk rock has made some gestures toward a more equitable business model, witness the $10 price tags if you want to order a Fugazi CD from Dischord Records’ website. You can get a double live album of Ani DiFranco for $25 from her Righteous Babe Records.

Will there be increasing numbers of recording artists who market directly to their fans? I believe there will be. But radio play is still very powerful if one wants to be a mass-market artist, and the major record labels and their promo people still have a lock on the biggest stations. You more or less have to play their game if you want major-league fame.

The execs get free CD’s now, instead of the vinyl LP’s of 20 years ago, but you can still go to a used record store and see the blizzards of promos that come in right after a new artist is launched. I just wish that the execs - with their salaries, benefits and expense accounts -would have the least little bit of humility and stop their grandstanding.

But, when you think about it, if they were humble people they wouldn’t have gotten the jobs they have! And their wild-eyed accusations have proven to be an effective PR technique, to distract and cover up just how profitable their sales of little plastic discs are, and also masking the truth of those shelves that they all most definitely have, full of assiduously collected freebies.

:: how jedi are you? ::

:: how nintendo are you? ::

…and it’s been long enough I’ll say it again. Pay attention! (like I never EVER say stuff.)

Rico by the Matthew Good Band is a Super Duper Song. There aren’t many. Any song that not only says fuck off, but says it repeatedly, well, you can’t find a song like that entirely bad. That, and he says “everyone’s gotta be something/me I’m loaded” which is just fine by me.

Matt Good, much like Wil Wheaton and a select few other celebrities of varying caliber, are not people whom I want to lick. They are people I want to like. Drink with and tell stories and tip strippers or whatever it is you do when you’re a celebrity of a certain caliber. Anyway. that’s all. Go get Rico. It will rock your socks, and STILL be sharp enough to slice through that tomato. Seriously.

I really enjoyed this article. Yes, it’s long, but it’s about hating people! And there’s some funny bits. Here you go:

You Are What You Eat
How To Hate Almost Anybody
By BEN TRIPP

We live in a political climate that engenders and encourages fear and hatred of just about everybody. At any time, our elected representatives are setting up numerous diverse groups to become targets for general detestation. So many segments of the population are hated nowadays that it’s getting hard to figure out who’s who on the hate parade, so I am taking it upon myself to clarify this matter. Otherwise, we get people killing other people because they think they’re somebody else, instead of killing them for being the unique people they really are.

There are three basic types of hate that can be applied to a people in general: race, religion, and orientation. This monograph is not intended to deal with personal hatred of an individual, that being a different kind of hate. If someone ravished your aunt Francis, or as occasionally happens your uncle Nigel, you may well hate the perpetrator (obviously this presupposes you have a healthy relationship with your aunt) for a specific and demonstrable reason. Saying “I hate that man, he raped my aunt” at the Gleberman’s holiday party is a perfectly reasonable expression of hate, as these things go, although what she was doing in that part of town is anybody’s guess. The kind of hate we’re dealing with here is the abstract hate of a large group of ‘persons unknown’ because they are who they are, as far as you know.

Race is an easy method for hating people, when available. But what with all the mingling that has gone on in the past few centuries, it’s easy to get things wrong. Let’s start where everybody starts and talk about colored folks. If somebody is really, really black, easy enough. But Colin Powell–what race is he? He’s half turnip, at least. Tiger Woods: Coon or Gook? And if you hate someone because they’re a heathen Chinee and then it turns out they’re from Korea, who looks like a fool? It’s Chink this and Ching-Chong that and all along you’ve been hating a Zipperhead! Race is not a reliable criterion for hating anyone. After all, there’s a Jew or a Spaniard or a dusky Moor in almost everybody’s background somewhere, and if you don’t know about it, it’s because Grandma’s secret died with her. I recently found out I was half Zulu–what an eye-opener that was. Now I have to find a new golf course to join–but at last I know why my golf partner rubs my head for luck. Thanks, you’re a wonderful audience. So if race doesn’t work, what about religion?

Again, the problem is figuring out who’s who. For example, all those broads or bims with dots on their heads–you can hate them for wearing dots on their heads, but what’s the point? Better to learn they sport the tika or bindi because they are Hindus. Now you have a handle on something hateworthy! After all, Hinduism is a religion, and what better reason to hate someone than the way in which they commune with the supernatural? Unfortunately, since Gwen Stefani started dotting her eyes it’s become fashionable outside the trekker/bellydancing set, so the bindi is no longer a reliable indication of anything. Hindu men are even worse because they often don’t wear anything particularly noteworthy. Some of them sport turbans, but who doesn’t? Sikhs, Muslims, old-fashioned Hindus and chemotherapy patients all wear some variation on the turban, and many of the cats actually blowing themselves up on buses lately don’t wear them at all–they wear the keffiyeh, or head scarf, traditionally held on with a bit of string, or as John Cooksey (the noble Republican congressman from Louisiana) describes it, “[A] diaper on his head and a fanbelt wrapped around the diaper” See? There’s hate in action! And as usual, it doesn’t work. Because he was describing the keffiyeh, but talking about Osama bin Laden, who wears a kind of spiral-wrapped chiffonet. Best to just hate them all. But that’s so damned un-American, or used to be. Worse, many religions do not require any outward appurtenances such as turbans, yarmulkes, or hooks through the nipples (Hindus again, but only on holidays). Apparently many persons of religious feeling express their faith only through spiritual communion and modes of living. How queer is that? Clearly, religion ­even in combination with race–is not a reliable indicator. That leaves us, speaking of queer, with orientation.

Orientation is also a piss-poor way of sorting your enemies out. The Fedex man who comes to your house is gay, did you know that? I didn’t know it either, until I’d been making out with him for ten minutes and suddenly realized he knew what he was doing. You can never tell. And by orientation I don’t just mean sexual preference. We’re talking gender (you can hate all women, for example, as many men and Dr. Laura do) political allegiance (Republican, Democrat, or Disenfranchised) and lifestyle (no-goodnik artists! Working class bastards! Bourgeois pigs!) But so many people behave in more or less the same way, regardless of the way they’re wired. Women who act like men and vice-versa are fairly common, although Jaye Davidson and RuPaul still turns heads. My best pal is as gay as a goose and he’s far more butch than I’ll ever be, and I’m profoundly heterosexual–I have three women a day (that’s on average; sometimes it’s ten women one day and then a week off. The Fedex guy was a fluke.) I know a long-haired Republican who smokes cheeba and does crystal therapy and a wild-eyed Marxist who look exactly like Alan Greenspan. Orientation is useless in the hate department, because you have to really get to know people to find out whether to hate them or not, and by that time you like them. So how are we to hate anybody? I suggest food. Eating habits are a dead giveaway.

There’s been a lot of talk about different kinds of Muslims. It’s probably easiest to just hate them all, and if that means hating the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens, so be it. The Muslim eating habits are pretty easy to spot. All Muslims are supposed to eschew alcohol, or at least not drink it (not everybody can sneeze on command). They’re not supposed to eat the flesh of swine (this includes all pig products and anybody from the Senate) or any animal that has died of natural causes. Basically the Muslims may eat foods which are halal, which means kosher, or in other words, exactly what their arch-enemies the Jews eat. It’s probably safest to hate both the Jews and the Muslims, rather than fiddle around trying to figure out if anybody’s drinking Manischevitz instead of grape juice. Certainly this is the compromise most people make. But at least we have learned that anybody who won’t tuck into a mess of jambon a la choucroute is either Muslim, Jewish, or vegetarian, and therefore safely within the categories of people worth hating. Note that Jews are also not supposed to eat badgers, so if you go to a badger restaurant in the hopes of hating some Jews you will be sorely disappointed.

The Sikhs can be spotted in the average dining situation because they regard kosher and halal meats to have been slaughtered in an inhumane manner and prefer a vegetarian diet overall. This is why cows and sheep are vegetarian, although not all cows and sheep are Sikhs, so maybe hate them also to be on the safe side. Sikhs may, however, eat some meat, as long as it’s jhatka, meaning killed as fast as possible, preferably so the head flies across the room. Roadkill is not included in this definition, which may be why so few Sikhs eat armadillos. But you can reliably identify and hate a Sikh by the way he won’t eat veal, so go to a veal restaurant and hate anybody who got the salad as an entrée. Sikh and you shall find. Hindus, on the other hand, may eat almost any damn thing, which makes them much like the detestable Belgians. Except Hindus have one universal proscription, which is beef, whereas Belgians consume upwards of an entire cow per capita every year. So you can easily hate Hindus and Belgians separately. Many Hindus are also vegetarian, and thus can be hated for that alone. Buddhists are generally supposed to be vegetarians as well, although they cheat, especially Zen Buddhists who know that there is no meat. Only the illusion of meat. We’re on a roll now. You can hate Catholics simply by observing who gives up meat for Lent, or occasionally cream buns, although this minority is already hated by the other Catholics so it’s not worth pursuing. And of course if you’re anything other than Christian, you may identify and hate Christians simply by observing who favors cheeseburgers and pork fried rice.

If the party is question is Asian and therefore possibly not Christian, you can dispense with religion and simply hate them for having epicanthic folds or using chopsticks. What could be easier? If you’re blind, you can hate black people by asking them if they’d like a glass of milk. Many persons of the African persuasion are lactose intolerant and will therefore politely decline the offer, although many Asians suffer the same condition, but who cares? They’re all worth hating. The surest method for blind hatred of black people is to shout “All niggers must hang!” and hate the first person who punches you in the head. For my sighted readers, remember you can hate blind people and they won’t even know.

Food is even a reliable indicator among Europeans: you can identify and despise people from the UK because they hold knife and fork in the wrong hands, the French because they favor fifteen different kinds of glass at a single place setting (water, beer, white wine, red wine, etc. and that’s just during the appetizers), and the Swiss because they dip everything in molten cheese and nibble it on the end of long forks. Australians and New Zealanders, who are not strictly European but resemble Europeans in low light conditions, can be identified by their unusual ability to drink an entire hogshead of beer at a single swallow. With Germans it’s fifty gallons. You see? Ethnicity and race are easy harbingers of hate if you watch what people are eating!

Finally, persons can be identified and hated by orientation through food preferences, as well. Starting with sexual orientation, homosexual men are forever on the Atkins diet, as are many straight women, so although this won’t help distinguish them you can safely hate both groups. Anyway, what’s the difference? They all eat cock. Except lesbians, of course, who can be identified because they don’t. Simply demand oral sex from any woman and if she doesn’t agree to it, she’s a lesbian. This traditional diet-based criterion is still effective at determining why a particular woman should be hated. If you’re a woman, I hardly need to explain why you should hate a man on dietary grounds; it’s not what he eats but how inept he is at eating it (get it? See, that’s a joke about I’ll just keep going, shall I? Or not.)

Beyond carnal matters we have lifestyle eating modes: you can pretty much hate anybody who is fat, skinny, on a diet, or not on a diet, because they’re all out of control and disgusting; there are the vulgar drunks who consume alcohol and the repulsive puritans who do not. Artists subsist on stolen cheese from their last gallery opening. Working class people eat whatever they are given, and eat all of it, too; reprehensible, but not as putrid as the middle class that eats only half of it because it’s fattening, or the impossibly abhorrent upper classes who eat all of what they are given, and then eat everything everyone else was supposed to get, too. Political orientation is also revealed through food: Republicans pay $2,000 a plate to eat vinyl chicken, while Democrats pretend to like Jim Carville’s barbecue recipes, and most Independents have been reduced to eating dirt. The Greens are all vegetarian; you can tell who they are because they look freaked out in burger joints. Anarchists are easily distinguished because when they go to a burger joint they pile all the booths in the middle of the floor and set them on fire.

I think that covers pretty much everybody. You can figure out who to hate in a reliable fashion simply by observing what they eat. The only real shortcoming to this method is the danger that you might be eating something that indicates you should be hated too, but at this point, jump in and be hated. At least the food’s good. Wait, though–have I missed someone? The Aleut, who eat walruses and whale blubber? The Samoans, who apparently eat elephants? What about elephants, for that matter? In fact I did leave one group of people out, a very large group, and one worth hating more than all the Dagos, Bat-Gwais, Spics, Canucks, 9-Irons, Abos, Bazis, Bohunks, Yids, Eurinals, Pakis, Eggplants, Towelheads, Gyppos, Hatchet-Packers, Dinks, Nips, Camel-Jockeys and Swedes put together: let us here note the non-voters, who can eat shit and die.

Ben Tripp is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he’ll flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel at earthlink dot net.

1. I just (seriously, moments ago) finished reading The Tao Of Pooh and it’s really interesting. Short, easy to understand, and terribly informational. I imagine it’s a lot like this book which I have yet to read. However, now that I’m done with Pooh, I can move on to Piglet, which I own but never got around to reading. Now I think I shall. If you know any good books on Taoism and stuff that are good places to go from The Tao Of Pooh and The Te Of Piglet, I’d appreciate the recommendation.

2. It’s nice outside. I’m going to go do some stuff outside when I’m done here.

3. I want to make a huge hollywood movie. Not so much because I have this burning desire to create a film, but because then when it’s released on DVD at least it might have a decent freakin commentary track! I have been working my way through some of the commentary tracks and for the most part, they suck. I don’t think you should be allowed near a commentary track if you don’t have an inherent love for movies. You can totally tell who’s into it and who isn’t. For example, the cast commentary on FOTR is interesting to hear. Say Anything has a nice commentary as well. Any Kevin Smith movie is the standard to which all other commentary tracks must be held. Goonies would get my highest marks except that Sean Astin had to leave in the middle (and I’ve googled and googled and never found out why…). I think it was the SpiderMan commentary track that just pissed me off. he wouldn’t say anything useful! And the commentary tracks where they have the sense to turn up the dialogue when nobody is speaking really helps because you can sort of keep your place in the movie that way, which if you aren’t very familiar with it, is nice. Stand By Me, incidentally, has a beautiful commentary track. If you haven’t watched it this way, call me and we’ll put it in the player.

4. My finches are finally starting to chill, I think. But if the nest is gone we need to get something else to live there I think. They keep going up there like they expect to land on something and they don’t.

5. To Wong Foo isn’t as bad a movie as I remember. I think I had some misguided Priscilla plagiaristic bitterness or something, but it’s kind of a nice film. J.Ro got it with a gift certificate of some kind and we watched it last night. It’s no Priscilla, but it doesn’t seem so much like it was meant to be, even if they do seem a lot alike. NOTE: If you enjoyed LA Confidential, Memento, Agent Smith, General Zod, or Elrond, you simply MUST see this film. For real, yo.

6. I’m going to make more chicken/pasta salad today. I figured if I did that, there might be less cooking to do later on.

7. I need to go see my family. I miss them, and now there’s a new one that I haven’t even met yet!

8. I have a lot of things to do this afternoon and if I’m going to get ANY of them done I need to get on it and quit sitting around. blar.

9. One of the things I wish to do this afternoon is FINALLY set up Movable Type and get that whole thing working properly.

Damn, She Sells Sanctuary is a kick-ASS song. I see a “Turn it up! Turrrrrn it uuuuuup!” (like Grandpa Simpson) compilation in my future. Maybe I should create CDs and sell people mixes or something. I’ve got a good ear for a lot of diverse stuff that all fits a theme. Me and J.Ro could go in to business together. We could sell them with his pr0n decoupage projects and Scooter’s Helper Loompas (A cross between an Oompa Loompa and a Helper Monkey). Yeah! Then I don’t have to listen to another dumbass tell me about my overqualifications or how they got 90 squillion resumes for this position. blah!!!!!

I’m off to be productive today, goddammit. Shutting up. (:

go to google and type weapons of mass destruction and then click the I’m Feeling Lucky button. hee hee hee!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this lately, but Matthew Good (whether part of the MG Band or just solo) is the purveyor of some of the most powerful songs I’ve heard in I don’t even know how long. Discovering Matt Good is the most momentous discovery I’ve made musically since I found Depeche Mode. It’s odd indeed to feel like someone took a nice stroll around your head and then wrote some lyrics based on what they found there.

If you have yet to investigate Matthew Good, quit surfing the web and go find some of his music. I recommend purchase, but if you have to obtain it another way, do so. That’s how I found him, incidentally. His band covered Enjoy The Silence and did it justice (speaking of DM).

…but here they are:

what decade does your personality live in?

quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd

(:

It always scares me when I m suddenly plucked out of my today and dropped in another time of my life. I don’t know if other people get this or not, but it’s so accurate and so swift that sometimes for a second when I’m blinking it’s like the split second that my eyes are closed I can actually see some sort of typical surrounding from that era.

I got that just now. I got a copy of Wil’s book (which is, by the way, a helluva lot better than a lot of things I’ve read by people with far more fame for having written things) and the story about his aunt still gets me. I was reading that and being reminded of my own great-aunt and aunt who both passed away over the last year, and it gets to me every time I read it, but I was reading it anyway. I don’t think it’s fair that a book should make you cry right off the bat, but I’m not any further than that one story so maybe he makes up for it by making me laugh extra hard or something, I don’t know. Anyway. My CD was playing, Counting Crows: Storytellers, the acoustic version of Round Here. I can’t explain this feeling to someone who has never experienced it, but suddenly I was back in La Grande, in my grandma’s old house, with my dad and my brother and his raging pot habit and thinking about how desperately I wanted to be out of there, which sucked because I left Boardman in order to improve my situation and this certainly wasn’t an improvement, and how that album was the soundtrack to that era, and that song always made me so sad. Nothing says despair like

She looks up at the building
and says she’s thinking of jumping
she says she’s tired of life
well everybody’s tired of something

That Adam Duritz, he can really inspire a cheerful fuckin mood, eh?

Well, I was virtually projectile vomiting earlier today from a raging migraine, so add the advil/excedrin based hangover to this really fucked up emotional moment and I need to go sort myself out now before I go out and about this evening, arr.

So! Today there were sack lunches sponsored by M$. It was not a bad exotic turkey wrap thingy, I suppose. So on the wiki (I’ll find a good link later) someone posted the EULA, or EndUser Lunch Agreement (you agree to a EULA with every piece of software, but it’s an EndUser License Agreement). My my my but these geeks are snarky! Here goes:

Since Microsoft is providing the lunches at OSCON 2003, we wanted to replicate here the EULA that goes with them:

Microsoft’s EULA (End-User Lunch Agreement)

Definitions:
“Microsoft” (also referred to as “we” or “us” or “god” in this document) means the Microsoft company which is issuing you this lunch under the following agreement. “Lunch” means the actual foodstuffs and materials required to both obtain and transport it. “You” means the entity which has entered into the lunch agreement.

General Use Rights And Restrictions:
We are providing you a license to eat the lunch we are providing. We are not actually selling you the food or related items. At any time, if we determine that you are in violation of this agreement, we reserve the right to ask that you return the lunch that you have consumed.

As this lunch is, in fact, a Microsoft product, you are not allowed to create open source software while creating this lunch, or, in the same meal, consume any food that was provided by a person or persons associated with the open source or free software movement. However, you may, in the same sitting, eat other foodstuffs provided by Microsoft or one of its authorized partners.

Intellectual Property
In agreeing to this license, you consent that any ideas you have related to software development while consuming this meal become property of the Microsoft corporation. Any ideas you have that are already subject to a different copyright or licensing regime shall regardless become part of Microsoft’s intellectual property, as this agreement has precedence.

Assumption of Risk
As a party to this lunch agreement, you forfeit the right to sue us based on any problems related to the consumption or digestion of the provided lunch, except in the event that you are fed the lunch involuntarily by a Microsoft employee.

Unintentional Lunch Consumption without Agreement
In the event that you are reading this after you have consumed the lunch, and do not agree to the terms herein, please disgorge the meal immediately and return any unused portions to the on-site provider or your local authorized Microsoft Certified Solutions provider.

In the event that immediate disgorgement is not possible, please wait a day and return the resulting waste material to our shipping and receiving department at Microsoft Headquaters in Redmond, Washington. Note that there will be a $10 processing fee if the product is returned in this fashion.