scottsimpson.net

Over lunch, I couldn’t help but overhear the oddly-dressed man adjacent to me ranting to his companion about the rampant commercialism of America. His blue shoes and vest spoke volumes of his staunch position against the mainstream. “All I’m a-sayin’ is that we’s got brotha’s dyin’ over in I-raq, and you see that woman? She throw away enough food to feed two people!” [he spoke suchly; I am not exaggerating] “…what we need is to get back to the nat’ral world, back to mother nature… get rid of all these companies with unequal labor practices that is starvin’ people overseas.” This from a man in blue shoes. And what’s even more ironic? He’s sitting in Jack-in-the-Box.

In a similar vein, it seems that Michael Jackson is weighing in on the piracy issue. While I tend to dislike agreeing with him, I’m forced to admit that he has a point. Jailing music pirates (Arrrrr!) seems a tad heavy-handed. It is commonly known that the music industry (since it’s one thing that walks around and does stuff) blames piracy and cd-burning for ‘lackluster’ sales. Isn’t lackluster such a wonderful euphemism for ‘crappy’? I offer another alternative: perhaps the music industry has been producing, uh, ‘lackluster’ music. You see, I draw a line through the music world. On one side is the pop music and commercial froth that I consider to be akin to pop-up ads on websites (Backstreet Boys, *NSync, Aaron Carter, BBMak, Jewel (v2.0… yea, she sold out), Britney, Christina, etc.) … entertaining, but not something I’d ever think about paying for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pop fiend… pop culture has its own wonderful things, mostly plastic and disposable. On the other side of my Music World Line are such artists as deserve payment (John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Sting, anything classic, anything with true artistic merit). These I pay for, and I believe others should pay for them as well. My solution: let the froth fly free and let the substantive stuff be the only music that it is criminal to pirate. True, this becomes rather subjective, but everybody knows I live in an idealist world anyway. So it works in my world, and I like my world because everybody knows me there. Alternatively, perhaps the RIAA could step out a little bit and propose the following: a distributed for-profit music sharing network. Call it MyTunes or something snappy. The idea: users buy music, but then can resell it (bulk of profit going to the industry, but users get to keep a few cents) Instead of a centralized server, lay this over KaZaA or whavever the kids are using these days to keep the user base (6 million users automatically!) Current pirates just have to pay for a license, and the industry still gets their money.

But ever am I reminded of the mantra of the hackers of the early 80’s… Information wants to be free.

Um, what was I talking about… I forgot. Oh well.

Elsewhere on the globe, it has been proposed to make Jerusalem the capital of the world.

A band calling themselves ‘Burka Blue’ signed with a Dusseldorf label. Three afghan women in blue… maybe Blue Man Group is looking for wives?

‘lackluster’ pop song of the day: Aaron Carter - Clapping Song
(yea, guess what it’s about…)

General

So I have these songs from Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I” stuck in my head (”Auto da fay? What’s an auto da fay?”), which I guess is better than having something else stuck in my head, say, like someone else’s tongue. The previous link comes courtesy of Google News, which, in the great Google tradition, uses a sexy algorithm to scour the web for new things. It seems like a good idea, but beware the disclaimer: “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.” Vox populii, vox Google. I wonder if they’ll start up a porn site… GoOgle.com
In other news, someone needs to explain to me why anyone would pay to shoot at naked women. I have enough trouble getting women to talk to me, what could possibly influence me to shoot at them? Perhaps this is some sort of NRA dating procedure. Speaking of women and senseless violence, Jessica Lynch is evidently returning home today. While it’s a tragedy that she or anyone was injured in Bush’s Iraqi Foray, it seems the media has overhyped her return just a tad. What of the other injured US servicefolk in Iraq, Liberia, Afghanistan, etc.? Sources on both sides of the fence tell global news services that the Lynch rescue was staged; ‘rescuers’ were seen with video cameras, shouted ‘go! go! go!’, and were firing blank rounds. The ‘rescue’ came days before Lynch was scheduled to be picked up by an ambulance anyway, by agreement of the Iraqi doctors and US forces.

In happier news, the dam that is the USAPATRIOT Act seems to be cracking. It’s a happy day when Republicans come out against an Ashcroftian mandate. Ha, look at the punnery in that sentence. Mr. Ashcroft would turn such a nice shade of red. Anyway… the siege continues, though not successfully in all places. But it’s a start. A review of injustices has begun. It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant people can be. In one instance, an official “…was said to have “rudely” asked a person being detained if he ‘wanted to kill Christians and Jews.’ “. It is my opinion that everyone should take some sort of educational course in world religions, maybe followed up with a refresher on Common Sense. The world isn’t American, people, and increasingly they dislike us because we seem to think it is. It’s amazingly arrogant to assume that people want to kill us because we enjoy certain freedoms, and it’s even worse to assume that they want to attack us simply because we’re American. Take a look at the history behind it all and you’ll see that for the most part, much of the global ire is perfectly justified. Some isn’t (crusading in the name of any deity, crusading based on ancient racial distincions, etc.), but the vast majority of anti-Americanism is easily justified with just a simple history lesson. Maybe if Americans quit waving their mass-produced flags all over the place and listen to the world community instead of assuming America Knows Best, we could get through some of this nonsense and start rebuilding the world the way it should be.

Song of the day: Sugarcult - You’re The One

R.I.P. St. Jude, patron saint of hackers. (????-2003)

General