perfidy

And, yes, I'm posting a mildly topical fake-blog item, just to nudge Sparky's junk (below) off the top half of the page. For the children.

There's a little lot near where I live now that usually has some sort of stand set up on it. In June it's fireworks. I've also seen sunglasses, cellular phone accessories, peaches, onions, and other things for sale there as well.

Over the weekend this stand caught my eye though. Hatch green chiles are common this time of year. But then I saw the adjacent tent and I just had to wonder...

Thank Goodness that Patton put up that li'l thing about Romanian IRS scammers, because I was about to go nucular in an attempt to spark some posting around here.
Namely, I was going to challenge my fellow ministers to kick this off the front page as quickly as humanly possible:

Comments are a service provided by the Ministry of Minor Perfidy to you, the gentle reader. This service is subject to revocation on a retail or wholesale basis at the whim of the Ministry. Only one individual has thus far incurred our wrath sufficiently to be permanently banned. Don’t be that guy.

Swear, curse and spit if it makes you feel better. Generally speaking, saying “fuck” a lot doesn’t improve the quality of your writing, unless you’re Charles Bukowski. I don’t think you’re Chuck, though. In any event, we won’t delete your post for foul language. As to general purpose offensiveness, we all have pretty thick skins and you’d have to be a real jackass to get a post deleted for that reason. So don’t be that guy.

Please note that any advertisement made in this space is subject to a fee of $500 per ad, per page view. Posting an ad indicates your agreement with this fee schedule. If you are a comment spammer, please immediately die a prolonged, agonizing and messy death. After you pay the fee.

To sum up: play nice, share your toys with the other kids, and pretend you’re having a nice conversation with friends at your favorite restaurant. Remember, we’re watching you. And don't forget that by submitting a comment you grant the Ministry a license to reproduce your words, name, likeness, address, phone number and sexual history in perpetuity.

In my time, I've seen examples of just about every scam possible via the Internet. It takes a lot any more to even get my attention as I'm one-button flushing my spam folders.

However, when someone goes above and beyond the call of scum-baggish presumption in reader/recipient stupidity, I think it deserves to be highlighted. I'm a "giver" that way.

Below, in its exact form, including the badly mangled HTML formatting, but minus the actual link to the scamster's site, the silliest and least plausible piece of spam I think I've received in at least a couple days:

Of course, I almost fell for it, because:

• The IRS always communicates with me by sending me email at my blogging email address, natch
• The IRS always speaks to tax payers that way, all courtly-like, and offers its "Regards"
• The IRS always gets things done in 6-9 days
• The IRS claims copyright on all of its email messages, just like normal citizens do
• While claiming said copyright, the IRS always makes sure the recipient knows that it's the "Internal Revenue Service U.S.A.", to avoid confusion with all the other Internal Revenue Services around the world.

It occurs to me that if we didn't have Russian, Romanian, and Slobovian hackers, we'd have to invent them, for our own amusement.

[wik] It further occurs to me that, in order to avoid appearing churlish, I should point out that if someone wants my $93.60 refund, let me know, and I'll pass along the link.

Heya kiddies, it's time for yet another installment of Johno's Hangover Food for Ambitious Drunkards! (I realize that this is the first time I've actually ever used that particular phrase, but look back through the extensive catalog of recipes I have posted to this site and you'll see that pretty much that's all I do.)

Check out these banana pancakes - I invented these this morning because I need potassium. And sleep. I need sleep. Y'see, I have a one week old infant in the house who's doing the usual sleep and eat and eliminate in no pattern around the clock whatsoever thing, and I've developed this persistent twitch in my left eyelid. Clearly a potassium deficiency, right? Right?

Anyway, these are incredibly delicious, like almost ridiculously good, and ridiculously easy to whip up on no notice.

Banana Pancakes
makes 4 big and thick pancakes, serving two. Doubles (or more) well.

1 cup (4.5 oz) white whole wheat* flour, or 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbsp melted butter
2 small or 1 large banana, mashed

Combine all dry ingredients and whisk together. Combine all liquid ingredients except banana and whisk together well. Add banana to liquid and whisk thoroughly again.

Pour liquid ingredients into dry and stir with a whisk ten times only - ten! only! to combine. Lumps are OK.

Cook in half-cup amounts on greased pan or griddle with surface temperature 350 degrees.

I repeat: these are CRAZY GOOD.

*King Arthur offers flour milled from white winter wheat, which lacks some of the bitterness and whole-wheat character of regular red whole wheat. This makes it much better for pastry applications where the nutrition and added flavor complexity of whole wheat flour is desired - cookies, pancakes, biscuits, waffles, and if you use some trickery, even pie crust.

American Wheat Ale

5 lbs wheat dry malt extract (50% wheat, 50% barley)
2 oz Hallertau Mittelfreuh hops, in 1/2 oz plugs
White Labs WLP 001, California Ale Yeast

Brought 3/5 gallons of spring water to boil in kettle. Added extract and 1 oz hops at boil.
Added 1/2 oz flavor hops at 30 minutes
Added another 1/2 oz hops at 15 minutes

Pitched yeast at 68 degrees - fermented itself up to 72 and was done in about 3 days. Racked to secondary and let settle for 3 weeks before kegging.

This beer is fantastic. Smooth, creamy, with that clear hop flavor and faint tartness that California yeast brings. Oddly for a wheat, it's crystal clear and golden, not as pale or hazy as I might have expected. Well, I might have added some Irish moss to clarify; I just don't damn well remember. Nice sweetness, beautifully balanced bitterness with a great touch of noble hop flavor and a little aroma. I swear I'm getting some creamsicle notes off this, and it's really wonderful. I'll be making this one again, no doubt.

I don't know who the hell Ronald Jenkees is, or where he came from, but this freaky mothereffer has his shit together. Such a geek! Such incredible beats!!! How soon till H.O.V.A. calls Ronald up for his next inevitable comeback? How many of our readers thought that last sentence was total gibberish?

Support your local independent musicians, y'all!

(found via boingboing)

Too Bitter Porter

So, what I was after, was a nice dry porter with a good dose of spicy herbal hops in the flavor and nose. What I got was horribly overbittered and a good beer ruined. I ended up tossing the last half of this batch from the keg to make room for the next brew I did. So, that's pretty much a disaster.

5 lbs light dry malt extract
3/4 lbs crystal malt, 60L
1/4 lb chocolate malt
1/4 lb black patent malt
.8 oz Galena hop pellets, bittering (12% AAU)
1 oz UK Fuggles hop pellets, aroma and flavor
1 oz Tettnanger Tettnang hop pellets, aroma and flavor
2 packages SAFale 33 dry ale yeast

Steeped grains in 1 gallon of spring water and brought 3 to boil. Sparged grains in hot kettle water and added steeping water. Galena and DME added at boil
Hop addition:
Galena 60 min
1/2 oz each Tett and Fuggles 20 min
1/2 oz each Tett and Fuggles, 5 min

Pitched yeast at 72 degrees. Fermentation began slowly but wrapped up in three days. Racked to secondary and let rest for three weeks before kegging. Force-carbonated with CO2.

Almost, but not quite, a good beer. Actually, quite good with heavy food, but just too much bittering hop. A damn shame.

It's so sad.

The New York Times Magazine has a deeply depressing ten-page spread this week about the New Savior of the Music Bidness, the One Hero Who Can Save Us All From Certain Penury and Unemployment From Our Phoney Baloney Jobs... Mister Rick Rubin!!

Yep, Rick Rubin. Helluva record producer. Helluvan ear on that guy. LL, Run DMC, Slayer, Anthrax, the Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash's comeback, Neil Friggin' Diamond's very good comeback... that guy knows music for sure. But to save the music industry? Rick Rubin?

Please.

The thrust of the article is that Sony has made Rick Rubin the co-Head of Columbia Records, in the hopes of injecting a little of that wyld-ass energy he's got into the proceedings, and in the process transmogrifying the ailing Industry into something leaner, meaner, and more efficent at siphoning money into the pockets of shareholders.

Now, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with that, really. The job of a corporation is, indeed, to "maximize shareholder value." So good luck with that. But check out some of the "hot" "new" "ideas" that Rubin and his co-Head, a middle-aged run of the mill British record exec named Steve Barnett

(I once worked for a sharp and dapper gentleman, a young pretty thing and a rising force in the Industry, who had a taste for shiny suits, expensive haircuts, and the saddest upscale parties I've ever been near, lame affairs where the lower echelons sucked down furious premium cocktails on the company dime while a D-list hipster celebrity like Tricky or the guy who played drums on that Bjork record lurked sulkily in a padded banquette until enough minutes had crawled past that he could reasonably said to have performed the favor of appearing. This particular person had a penchant for arranging the firings of underlings who, in his estimation, were not partying hard enough at company outings. This man had executive power and the trust of a wealthy aging blowhard who once was a person of some consequence in music, at least until he was let go.

...but at least let go more gracefully than the one who was sacked after refusing to leave his hot tub to take an urgent call from the CFO, with an unfortunate sequence of words by way of instruction to his minion, such words being unfortunate due to their inference as to the character and moral standing of the CFO, and their audibility in the conference room at the other end of the line, the minion having failed to put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone...

... the wealthy aging blowhard mentioned two paragraphs prior recently being heard to remark an interview, "I love iPod. I think iPod is great...")

...a run of the mill British record executive named Steve Barnett have cooked up to save Columbia, save Sony, and save the World.

This summer, Columbia Records began a program called Big Red. The company invited 20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of Miami to work on various music projects. The interns concentrated mostly on the digital marketing and promotions departments in Columbia's offices in Midtown Manhattan, which are on Madison Avenue in a granite skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson.

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rubin's co-head at the label, and Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red — Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience. "The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I — and Rick — already knew," DiDia told me afterward. "The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."

Well, duh. But wait! There's an idea here!

At Rubin's suggestion, [Barnett] has also set up a "word of mouth" department, which will probably employ some members of the Big Red focus group along with dozens of other 20-somethings. The "word of mouth" department will function as a publicity-promotional arm of the company, spreading commissioned buzz through chat rooms across the planet and through old-fashioned human interaction. "They tell all their friends about a band," Barnett explained. "Their job is to create interest."

Wow. Damn. The secret to rescuing one of the greatest labels in the history of the world, and the flagship of one the big five... four... three sir! record companies is, pay some teenagers to go on the internet and pretend to give a shit about bands to their friends.

Shit! If only someone'd tried that eight years ago, set up a guy as, I dunno, the "internet marketing manager" and given him money and access to interns eager to tell their buddies all about the next big never-gonna-be, an', an', indie companies that you could pay to get content on dorm-room televisions, an', an' on campuses and into high schools and skate parks! If only every label in the world had tried that exact strategem back at the advent of the decade, the ship mighta been wrenched around by that critical arc minute to swing it juuuuust wide of the iceberg!

Oh, wait. They all screaming goddamn well did.

Brilliant, gentlemen.

But what else have they in mind?

Rubin has a bigger idea [I bet he does (-Johno)]. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now."

So, say I'm somewhere like, I dunno, my buddys fire pit in Northeastern Ohio. We got a bale of primo bud and a cooler full ale. And we wanna rock the fark out to Motorhead. All we gotta do is... wait... dude, do you get broadband out here?

But at least Barnett sees reason here:

Steve Barnett is nervous about the subscription model. "Smart people have told me if the subscription model is not done correctly," he said, "it will be the final nail in our coffin. I've heard both sides of the argument, and I'm not convinced it's the solution to our problems. Rick wants to be a hero immediately. In his mind, you flick a switch and it's done. It doesn't work like that."

So, what you're sayin' is, your highly paid guru who has no office, no shoes, no phone number you can reach him on, and an oracular perspective on the Future of the Industry, is halfway fulla shit. Noted.

But this is where the antics spill over into full-on Larry/Curly/Moe madness. Check this shit out!

Barnett has other ideas, which he is discussing with Rubin. For instance, asking Columbia artists to give the record company up to 50 percent of their touring, merchandising and online revenue. This is unprecedented — even successful artists like the Dixie Chicks make a large percentage of their income from concerts and T-shirts.

So let's break this down good so even the dim kids in the back of the class get it. Artists signed to major labels get this much money from album sales:

• Zero.

If they go reaaaaaaly far, shift a few million units, that number can rocket all the way up to

• A little.

Artists, every artist, from the overly earnest hairy-legged songbird down at your local coffe joint, to Buckethead's wife's excellent band, to Cheap Trick, to the Rolling Stones, Prince, and Barbra herself, make money in these ways:

• Touring and appearances
• Merch (t-shirts, keychains, beer coozies, etc.)
• Whatever b.s. online revenue streams they can dig up.

If the artist also happens to be a songwriter, or to control their own publishing, they may also get decent to spectacular paydays off of that as well, and forego some of the above. (The rap and electronic worlds also have their alternate revenue streams, but at the end of the day they amount to a new flavor of touring, merch, online B.S., publishing, or songwriting.)

So, basically, leaving aside songwriting and publishing which are separate pillars of the business, with their own contracts, deal structures, and support agencies, the magic bullet that's gonna save Sony/Columbia from disappearing up their own anii while simultaneously collapsing in a fiery heap while offstage a muted trumpet plays "waaah-waaah" is, WE'LL FIND OUT WHAT MONEY OUR ARTISTS ARE EARNING, AND MAKE THEM GIVE IT TO US INSTEAD!!!

(While, one presumes, twisting their moustaches in glee and twisting their monocles deeper into their eye sockets, the better to see the young immigrant boys they hired straight off a plane at JFK for a nickel wrestle each other to their deaths. Sweet suffering Jesus; there's villainy, and then there's incompetent cartoon villainy.)

So, while the money man is looking at grade-skool level larceny as a viable corporate survival strategy, what's the GURU up to, Stu?

[Rubin is] always on a quest to find just the right thing, whether it be a book or a building. Recently, he hunted down the brand of water that claims to have the greatest level of purity (Ice Age); he pored over architectural manuals to determine what kind of hinge would have been used in 1923 (for his house); and when Johnny Cash was ailing, Rubin discovered a kinesiologist whom Cash credited with extending his life. And so on. Rubin has always been passionate, even compulsive, about his interests.

Gentlemen, I say with mingled regret and pleasure that you all deserve everything you get.

[wik] Oh, and another thing about that "Big Red" focus group? Isn't it a truism that kids these days (kids these days!!) have finely tuned bullshit detectors that can see right through most forms of marketing known to man and many which haven't even been invented yet? And a bunch of teenagers on the intarnets getting paid in free.... what.... free CDs??? Free "subscriptions" to whatever music download service Sony pukes up?... are going to somehow outwit their peers?

I've seen it a hundred times. Pimping music is wonderful and even fulfilling when you can really believe in the quality of the record you're working. Then it's no so much like whoring, and more like evangelizing. But nine times out of ten, you're actually getting paid to pretend that some giant steaming turd is really a tasty sandwich, when everyone from Prague to Paducah can see the difference. And that not only sucks the soul right out of you, it's how record companies and their hacks become hacks. The stink of hack clings to the hacky hacks like cigar smoke and drug store perfume clings to the upholstery in the $20 lapdance room out at the Moonlight on old Route 11. And you don't really come back from that.