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Why do Conservatives love the good old days so much?

No, this is not about why Conservatives love the 50s or 40s so much. We all know that with the exception of the 60s, Conservatives love the past, that’s exactly what makes them conservative in the first place.

This post came about while I was reading a piece on Cracked about conservative comedian Glenn Beck. Part of Beck’s shtick is the love of liberty, particularly the type of liberty associated with the United States back when the founding fathers were around. People like Beck consider these early days some sort of conservative utopia, of sorts.

What’s really weird about this is that we actually have more rights nowadays then we ever did back then. For example, we now have an election to decide who gets to be President, when that position was once filled not by the people, but by the US Senate.

There was one a time where the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights, did not pertain to the states. So states could enact laws making it illegal to criticize politicians and there was nothing anyone could do about it. It was all perfectly legal.

And of course more people are allowed to vote nowadays. And I’m not merely talking about women and minorities. I’m talking about white men who did not own land. All of these slacked jawed yokels who think they would have been allowed to vote back in the 1700s are completely mistaken.

If you think about it, the only rights people had then, that they do not have now, is to own other people and to beat their wives and children. Is that what Conservatives miss so much? Owning people of different colors and beating their wives and children?

Sure, you had no voice in who became the President, not that it mattered anyway, because it’s likely you wouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway. And sure the local corrupt mayor could put you in jail for saying that he’s corrupt. And sure the Bill of Rights were as worthless as the paper they were printed on, because your state could ignore them.

But, you could save up your money, buy a person, and beat the shit out of him. And even if you couldn’t afford to buy a person, you could marry a woman instead, and beat the fuck out of her and everything that comes out of her vagina.

If this is the liberty filled utopia that Conservatives think we should go back to, leave me out of it. Please!

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The 12 steps of doing nothing

The people working at the Consumerist have a running joke about companies that take problems “seriously.” “Taking a problem seriously” is nothing more than meaningless corporate-speak spokespeople will use when addressing a problem, and because we all know it’s meaningless, it’s sort of funny.

After reading an article over at the Consumerist I found a new bit of meaningless corporate double-speak even worse than “Taking the problem seriously.”

“Safeway would take steps to fix the problem…“

Why would you take steps to fix a problem, when you could simply fix the problem instead? To me, saying you’re “taking steps to fix a problem” is another way of saying you’re not fixing the problem.

Imagine if your wife told you to “take out the garbage.” Now imagine replying, “I’m taking steps to rectify the garbage problem” as you continue to channel surf on the couch. Now imagine your wife smacking you upside the head for saying something so fricking stupid.

However, spokespeople love “taking steps” because when the problem reoccurs, as it did in Safeway’s instance, the company has an out. A spokesman can follow up by saying, “We’ve taken steps, but those steps have not been fully implemented” or the “steps were not correctly followed.” Or even,

“We’re taking steps to implement a new set of steps to enstep that steps are stepped upon in the future.”

On the other hand, if a spokesperson claims that the problem is fixed, and if the company is caught doing the problem once again, the spokesperson is screwed because it’s quite clear he or she lied about fixing the problem in the first place.

So “taking steps” is nothing more than meaningless corporate double-speak. When a spokesperson says the company is “taking steps” we can rest assured that absolutely nothing is being done.

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Sonic Youth bassist ignorantly slams Radiohead for making $3 Million without a label

Don’t you hate it when someone you respect does something stupid? That’s the case with Sonic Youth bass player Kim Gordon who recently attacked Radiohead for their experiment in selling their In Rainbows album.

To summarize the experiment, Radiohead released their In Rainbows album for free, but allowed fans to pay whatever they wanted. Radiohead made about $3 million off the experiment without the detriment benefit of a label. By any measure, it was a complete success.

So what exactly is Kim Gordon complaining about? First, she’s upset she didn’t think of it herself. Second, she claims the experiment would, for some unexplained reason, not work with Sonic Youth. Third, that it makes other bands look greedy, by them not giving away their music for free. And lastly, that it makes it harder to make new music, yet again, for an unexplained reason.

Let’s start with the first, Miss Kim didn’t come up with the idea herself. Millions of companies all make money using business models they did not come up with. Who cares who first decided to make a laundromat?! Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea can jump on board and do it too. Kim is not precluded from using a good idea, merely because someone else did it first. Heck, does she honestly think that Sonic Youth was the first band to sell albums via labels? Certainly not, then under her logic, why does Sonic Youth do it?

Second, it won’t work for all bands. I’m guessing that because Sonic Youth has fewer fans, there will be less people willing to take advantage of the experiment, so the band will sell less and make less money. But that’s an asinine reason to avoid the experiment because no matter what model Sonic Youth uses to sell their albums, they’ll always sell fewer albums than bands with larger fan bases. Under Kim’s argument, only bands with massive fan bases should ever bother to sell albums.

“Sure, bands such as the Beatles and the Stones can sell music digitally encoded onto plastic, but that could never work for us, right?”

That argument clearly makes no sense when applied to CDs, so how can it make sense when applied to downloads?

Third, so it’s unfair to come up with a better business model because it makes the idiots sticking with an outdated model look like idiots?! Under Kim’s asinine argument, no one should ever experiment with new models, and we all should just stick with outdated models, so as not to offend anyone. Yeah, Kim, that’s a great idea!

And Kim, let’s get one thing straight: Radiohead did not make you guys look greedy by giving away music. They didn’t give it away. They sold it for a whopping $3 million! So no one made you look greedy, only ignorant of the changing landscape of music distribution.

As to the last one, I’m trying to figure out how releasing music on your own terms is more difficult? Without a label you’re completely free to produce and release as much music as you’d like. And if you want to continue releasing CDs for your old skool fans, you can do it without a label for only 31 bucks a year. How does this freedom keep you from releasing music?

I should point out that Robert Smith (someone I do not have a lot of respect for) from the Cure also didn’t like the experiment and had this to say about it:

You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense.

But Price and Value are two entirely different things. Merely because I put a price of $10 on my shit, does not mean my shit has the value of $10. Regardless of the price attached to my shit, its value is still zero.

Conversely, merely because Google charges me nothing, does not mean that Google’s services have no value to me. They have tremendous value to me, completely independent of the lack of a price.

Simply put, value does not equal price, and vice versa.

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