Unfortunately, the only way to prove it's beneath me is to let you, the reader, see how easily my "embarrassed laugh" can be triggered:
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Carnival of the Recipes #135, the "Dinner and a Movie" edition is up at Blabber Heads.
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Buckethead recently sent me a link to an interesting article in The Consumerist on how one regular innocent music fan found himself driven to desperate piracy by the perversity of the record industry.
In short, this music fan, who has given in his estimate about $20,000 to the various labels in revenues over the years, found himself stymied by the DRM on the most recent Luna album.
Last week while I was busy importing my CD's into iTunes so I could listen to them on my iPod (a most tedious task), I hopped on the internet. iTunes was busy importing a Luna CD, one of my favorite bands, so I decided to see what they were up to since they disbanded a few years back. After a few clicks in Google, I found a blog site describing a posthumous, internet-only release of a collection of covers the band had recorded throughout their career. While I already had many of the songs (they were often featured on b-sides and imported singles, etc.), I couldn't resist tracking down this compilation. As I read further on the blog site I encountered a link to a .zip file containing the entire collection ripped as 128kbps mp3's.
While I must admit being tempted to simply click away and download the collection, I though to myself, "Well, if I buy the music it's only $10, and this way I will get high quality .WAV files. Besides, it's not like Luna were getting rich off of their careers, they could use the money..."
So I headed to Rhino's online store, purchased the music, and downloaded the files.
A little later that evening, I tried to move the .WMA files into iTunes, when I received an error message telling me that iTunes could not import them because they were copy protected. I downloaded the files again (which took another 12 minutes) and again, the same message.
So I called Rhino customer support and after an 8 minute wait spoke with a representative. She informed me that the files were indeed copy protected so that I could only play them on specific music players, most notably not iTunes.
"You don't understand," I said, "These files were not copied or pirated, I actually purchased them."
"Well" she responded, "You didn't actually purchase the files, you really purchased a license to listen to the music, and the license is very specific about how they can be played or listened to."
There's much more there, about how Rhino eventually advised him to keep trying illegal maneuvers until he found a way around their DRM to make the files work with iTunes.
Now, leaving aside the perversity on display here - do the right thing and get giant hassles in return - I am appalled that Rhino, of all labels, hasn't gotten their act together in the eight-odd years since Napster first came on the scene. Eight long years of missing opportunities, making mistakes, and alienating the same public that should be their partners in sharing awesome music together.
And yet, the song the labels sing now is exactly the one they sang when I left the music business four years ago: electronic files are murder; physical media is the past, present and future; consumers are licensees, not purchasers, of the music they consume; and what the hell is with this tech-mology stuff anyway? And that's a death warrant.
Some of you will remember a couple years ago that a Harvard Business School professor did a huge study of the effect on downloaded music on retail music sales (recently published in the Journal of Political Economy as "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis." At the time, he found that the effect was exactly "none." Declines in music sales could be explained through other means, for example the proliferation of other forms of media entertainment competing with music for the public's attention and dollars, as well as the end of the long era in which record and tape owners were upgrading their old media catalogs to compact disc. Indeed, downloaders either tended to download music they'd not have bought anyway, or to treat downloading as a way to sample new music that they then might pay for. In fact, the evidence suggested that there was a significant 'long-tail' effect at work - the million-sellers lost some sales to downloading, but the download-assisted boost in sales of the other thousands of half-forgotten albums out there more than made up for the decline at the top.
Whether or not you agree that downloading in and of itself has a minimal net negative impact on record sales, the facts are that CD sales are down 20% from last year. It now takes far fewer sales to have a #1 hit than it did even three years ago. Right now, indie band The Arcade Fire have the number-two album in the country. What!?! They're fine. They're alright. But they're just The Arcade Fire, and their new album has gotten a lot of good press. Whoop-de-doo. Since they haven't shot platinum yet, I can only surmise that they the overall sales pool is indeed shrinking. Further evidence: abrasive 80s revivalists !!! (that's pronounced however you want - "bang bang bang" or "chick chick chick" are the ones I've heard) are also in the Billboard Top 200. Now, I've heard !!!'s new album, and yeah sure it's fine. But I'm a little bewildered as to why a band whose closest antecedents are cult heroes like Wire and Television and whose name isn't even pronounceable on the radio have a charting album.
I will probably get tired of saying this some day, but not yet: The idiots who run the music industry are slowly strangling their baby by steadfastly refusing to pursue creative ways to adapt to changing realities and partner with their audiences to create new means of selling and buying music. Instead, they are suing the dead and prepubescent children, lashing out at the exact same people they should be embracing, the exact same people who are the key to their future. (Except the dead guy, of course, but he did leave behind children who are currently being sued in his place.) They are even forcing out executives, like EMI's Ted Cohen, who have advocated forcefully and articulately for the industry to stop shitting where it eats its dinner.
For a while, I felt a little bad about all the old-school executives who knew music and only music, who I assumed were ignorant of computers and digital media and only needed some time to get used how things work today. Then, I thought, they'd turn it around and stop it with the lawsuits and the rootkits and the $18 compact discs and the single-vendor licensed media files. But I'm now convinced I was giving them far too much credit. No, those money-grubbing bastards deserve every ounce of pain and humilation that is undoubtedly coming to them.
[wik] Just a final observation. A computer recently came through the tech support shop where I work, that contained more than 12,000 files purchased from iTunes. Can you count with me the ways in which this person has used his money unwisely?
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What does it say about me that my initial reaction to an email from the Humane Society titled "Cruel seal hunt just a week away" is "Huh. Wonder if I can get some time off from work?"
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Regarding Tom Delay:
"I just think we need to break loose from what was happening with the Republican Party in the post-Reagan era," said Pauken, citing a number of concerns including the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The money quote, for my money, in an article from Saturday's version of my hometown paper, the Houston Barnacle. A complete piece of crap reactionary lefty rag, from an opinion perspective, but one which provides occasionally readable editorial content.
This story? Simple proof that not all conservatives toe the line (or tow the line, depending on your metaphoric preferences) of the former supposed face of the Republican Party, it's defenestrated House Majority Leader. Further, simple proof that not all conservatives are prima facie stupid. However, an argument could be made that since only 4 of the 33 board members of the American Conservative Union resigned rather than sit on a board with the porkmeister from Sugar Land, TX, 88% of conservatives are still in need of a clue.
I blame the small sample size for overstating the remaining stupidity of conservatives, and hope that some of the remaining 29 adherents reassess Delay's significant negative impact on policy, conservative and general, as well as his cheesy and embarrassing complicity in the descent of the former Republican majority into petty graft and corruption. I remain convinced that he's been wrongly indicted in Texas, but that's just a technicality, really. He should have been indicted instead for sheer arrogance, and his apparently solid belief that those who voted for him and his party are naive morons.
At least 12% are not, or so projections might indicate.
[wik] Oh, Christ. From this morning's email, an easily-ignored solicitation to get me to buy a copy of the shit-witted Delay's new book, "No Retreat, No Surrender".
I really don't consider this a book about Tom DeLay.
...says Tom Delay, referring to himself in the third person.
And of course I talk about the so-called "scandal" that led to my indictment by a politically-motivated prosecutor. The sad truth is that
the Democrats plotted to destroy me personally because they couldn't beat me any other way.
...says Tom Delay, back to referring to himself in the first person, and providing a hint that he doesn't know what "about" is about.
Rush Limbaugh was kind enough to contribute the book's foreword, and Sean Hannity graciously wrote a preface.
Sad, really - Limbaugh is a fine radio entertainer, and on those rare occasions when I listen to him, it's for the entertainment, not the politics. Hannity? Loud-mouthed professor of indignation, and not even a good entertainer.
Please, Mr. Delay - Retreat. Surrender. Get the fuck off the stage. Please.
[alsø wik] Embarrassingly, I find myself being agreed with by the Houston Barnacle's opinion page.
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North Carolina, birthplace of renowned presidents Johnson and Polk, and stuck with these slogans like lots of tiny, tiny albatrosses around its neck:
- We’re “Tar Heels,” because “Shit Heels” was already taken
- Tobacco is so a Vegetable
- Five million people; Fifteen last names
- We're part of Dixie. Don't let the “north” fool y’all
- If it weren’t for plate tectonics, we’d be in Morocco
- Let’s just be clear, our state is named for the King Charles who got beheaded, not the gay one
- The better, norther Carolina
- The first carton's free
- First in Flying Pirates
- You can't prove tobacco causes cancer
- Sure, we've got weird, blue-skinned, inbred mountain dwellers, but at least we don't still fly the confederate flag! Oh wait…
- The Scuppernong Grape State
- The Anti-Buccaneer State
- Gateway to Tennessee
- We're cheaper by the carton
- Join us in creating the Greater Carolina Co-Prosperity Sphere
- We’re moving to Virginia
- Under Chapter 11, thanks to the tobacco lawsuits
- Slavery, tobacco, as long as it involves the suffering of others, we're for it
- We're bigger than South Carolina
- The Turpentine State
- The New Jersey of the South
- We didn’t do any of the work, but we’ll gladly take credit for inventing the airplane
- Where white supremacy and NCAA basketball go hand in hand
- General Sherman Cheated
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And the other:
Punchline:
"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."
Joke:
"Talking Dog For Sale."
He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
"You talk?" he asks.
"Yep," the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says "So, what's your story?"
The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for
eight years running."
"But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in."
"I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. "Ten dollars," the man says.
"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"
"Because he's a liar. He never did any of that shit."
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From today's email, an oldie whose punchline snuck up on me.
Punchline:
The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."
Joke:
The boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex before, so he takes a trip to the pharmacist to get some condoms. He tells the pharmacist it's his first time and the pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour. He tells the boy everything there is to know about condoms and sex. At the register, the pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he'd like to buy, a 3-pack, 10-pack, or family pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he thinks he will be rather busy, it being his first time and all.
That night, the boy shows up at the girl's parents house and meets his girlfriend at the door. "Oh, I'm so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in!"
The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl's parents are seated The boy quickly offers to say grace and
bows his head. A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer, with his head down. 10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.
Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend leans over and whispers to the boyfriend, "I had no idea you were this religious."
The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a pharmacist."
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You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures.
via Long or Short Capital, from its ongoing series "Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing"
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You may be painfully aware of the Ministry's ongoing series, "Great Mottoes for Lackluster States." We felt that it was unfair for the United States to get all the abuse, and Loyal reader #0018, Nicholas has cheerfully stepped up to the plate and contributed, exclusive to the Ministry of Minor Perfidy, a list of slogans for his homeland of Australia:
- Yes, we have beer.
- If not the Great Southern Land, at least a Pretty Good Southern Land.
- The land of broad expanses, and expansive broads.
- More didgeridoos than you can shake a hollow stick at.
- Now with electricity!
- Come see our bridge.
- No worries mate. At least not after you've finished the other 6-pack.
- Hotter than a monkey's bum.
- More than just a string of beaches, but seriously, who cares?
- Go to the beach and let it all hang out. Well, your stomach, anyway.
- Boasting the best marsupial to tourist ratio in the world.
- Marry an Australian girl, and Bob's your uncle!
- Instead of a Starbucks, we have a pub on every corner.
- Kind of like a cross between Canada and Hell.
- Our national dish is charred meat.
- Texas is small and densely-packed by comparison.
- Cricket - There's no better excuse to drink continuously for 5 days.
- Home of The Big Sheep, The Big Pineapple, and other Humorously Large Items (such as the Prime Minister's eyebrows).
- Did I mention we're all descended from criminals? Hey buddy, nice camera.
- More Wombats per square kilometer than anywhere else.
- Visit Woolloomooloo - It's our Mississippi.
- Strewth!
- England's Alcatraz.
- The land our Prime Minister once called "the arse end of the world". In one of his more polite statements.
- Our national emblem is the cooler.
- If you go home sober, you were somewhere else!
Getting into the spirit of things, here are a few additional slogans which may or may not reflect the true nature of Australia:
- It'll never fly
- Not just a nation, a continent
- Demographically, Australia's people are like soap scum around a sand-filled tub
- We'll fight in any war that has English speaking people in it
- The Greater West Oceania Co-Prosperity Sphere, What'd ya think?
- That's not a knife, this is a knife
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