Friday, March 14, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
New Art Form: Song Charts
If you can't figure out what song this chart is in reference to,
you probably won't enjoy Song Chart Memes at all.
Then again, maybe you've never heard Alanis Morissette. Okay, how about this one...
Not a Broadway fan, huh? How about this...
Okay, not everyone's into Elvis Costello. If you don't get this one, you've never listened to the radio.
You are cordially invited to go here and come up with your own.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Free Speech Zone: 2+2=5
Record companies don't share money extorted from file-sharing fans with artists
The record industry has sued over 20,000 music fans to "protect artists' copyrights." But they haven't turned over any of the money to artists (of course, they never forked over any of the money from my.mp3.com, Grokster, Napster, etc).
A contingent of prominent artist managers claims that little to none of that money has trickled down to their clients. They are now considering legal action.Link (via /.)
"Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for," said lawyer John Branca, who has represented Korn, Don Henley, and The Rolling Stones, among others. "Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don't get paid soon."
It's hard to know whose side to be on in this issue, assholes like Korn, Don Henley, and The Rolling Stones, who are more interested in music as a commodity than anything else, who destroyed Napster and who think you're a criminal if you ever listen to their music without them making something off it, and the corporate scumbuckets at the RIAA who are arresting teenagers for downloading TV theme songs instead of just legally recording them off the TV with their VCRs or cassette tape recorders.
Recording devices are protected by law, you can tape anything that's copyrighted as long as it's for personal use. You can tape TV and radio to your heart's content and even make copies and pass them around, but if you use a computer, well, thank the RIAA for convincing the Supreme Court of the United States that computers aren't recording devices, therefore exempt from all traditional definitions of fair use. Which brings up the real issue, whatayuh gonna do when the Supreme Court makes a decision that's provably and ridiculously wrong, incorrect, just a lie, like they ruled that 2+2=5 and that's that, any arithmetic teacher in the US who dares to teach a student that 2+2=4 can be arrested with an automatic conviction because the Supreme Court has already ruled in the matter, you can't go any higher up, guilty as charged for speaking the truth because only a retard, a lawyer for the RIAA, or the Supreme Court of the United States doesn't know that computers are recording devices.
You can record anything with impunity, you're protected, as long as you're actually using antiquated technology like tape or standard CDs, hell, you can make laserdiscs galore of all your favorite tunes and pass them out as party favors and nobody would give a shit. But do the same thing with a computer and you're a thief, a criminal, so please don't believe that bullshit they're putting at the front of DVDs where they try to criminalize people who are actually doing them no harm, passing material around on the internet that's available in most public libraries where you can already check them out for free, the latest movies and music, a war against a delivery system, how quaint,
If any douchebag from the RIAA had you arrested because somebody left a message on your answering machine that had a Madonna song playing in the background and she's owed royalties, you'd tell them where to stick it, whether it was technically legal with a tape machine or technically illegal with a computer. This prejudice against a particular device that can do precisely what other devices do, only better, has cause a freefall in the world of copyright, with one side fighting to lengthen the time it takes for any intellectual property to enter the public domain, literally a battle over Mickey Mouse, and the public, you know, REALITY, where everything enters the public domain one nanosecond after it arrives on the internet and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it short of confiscating all our computers.
I'm posting a copy of You Can't Always Get What You Want here because fuck if I'm going to post any Korn or Don Henley. If I made a cassette off the record and mailed it to you, we'd be cool with The Rolling Stones, the RIAA, and the Supreme Court, but since I've decided to save money on tapes and postage by offering it to you this way, I'm technically breaking the law, and so are you if you download it. As a tribute to Rosa Parks and civil disobedience, do it now.
Fuck 'em, let 'em sue each other. Let the "artists" win, and bankrupt the RIAA. Serves 'em right.
And here's a picture of Walt Disney with his fly open.
Funniest Musical Number Ever
One of the big complaints about musicals is that they're ridiculous, people don't generally just burst into song at the strangest moments. In this brilliant performance art piece by Improv Everywhere, hidden cameras catch a bunch of undercover performers in a mall who just burst into song, musically demanding "May I get a napkin, please?", to the utter bewilderment of the mall crowd who don't remember buying tickets to a musical. All I can say is "May I get a feature, please?"
- thank you boingboing -
Monday, March 10, 2008
Vote Nader! I'm Serious!
Mr. Conspiracy Says...
Vote Nader! I'm serious!
This election's being described as historical because there's a candidate who's half black and a candidate who's at least half woman. It should also be described as historical because we get to have a legitimate president for the first time in eight years, but nobody's pushing that inconvenient truth, perhaps because they know the next president isn't going to be particularly legitimate either. (I don't remember any massive retooling of the election system in the last eight years, do you?) But it'll sure look legitimate. They're going to pretend right on down the wire that the votes counted have anything whatsoever to do with the votes submitted.
I've decided I'm voting for Ralph Nader just because everyone thinks it's so wrong, after all, he's the bastard who gave Bush the votes in Florida, right? Bullshit. That election was fixed. There was nothing Ralph Nader, Al Gore, George Jetson, or Yahweh could have done to prevent George W. Bush from stealing the presidency of the United States in 2000. Nader wasn't the spoiler, he was the patsy.
There is only one power behind the Democratic and Republican parties and that's the way they want to keep it. Their entire demonic plot depends upon the two party system. If you wanted to turn the population against a three, four, five, or infinite party system, how would you do it? By demonizing Ralph Nader as the party pooper who threw the 2000 election to Bush. How convenient for everyone to forget that they recounted all the votes in Florida, even though the Supreme Court made sure it wasn't official, and GORE WON. Someone's got to point out to Nader detractors Michael Moore and Bill Maher that Nader had absolutely nothing to do with the real outcome of the 2000 election.
Like the perps of 9/11, if you're smart enough to pull off such a massive con, you're smart enough to arrange it so someone else gets blamed. It's totally naive for anyone to think it was an accident that before the recount, in the FICTIONAL election results, every single independent candidate in Florida got more than the amount of votes that would have put Gore in office. Wise up. Those election results were tabulated the week before the election to deliver the message they conveyed; Don't vote for third party candidates. It's become stuck as common knowledge, an urban myth, that Nader was the spoiler, not the voting machines.
Fuck those assholes. I'm throwing away my vote for a third party candidate, probably Nader, but I'm still holding out hope for the Kucinich/Paul ticket. In any case, if you want a third party system, vote for anyone but the Democrat or Republican.
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
- Pink Floyd -
Good Advice for Writers
"You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple 'I must', then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty. Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted."
- Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet #1 -
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