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What did we do before the net?

I’m taking my family to see a Kiss concert this summer. The kids and wife are not as familiar with Kiss’ music as I am. So I put together a playlist of some of their more famous songs so everyone could become familiar with their music.

But I got to thinking. It’d be awesome to know exactly which songs Kiss will be playing. Certainly, someone, somewhere must have posted Kiss’ current setlist on the internet.

Sure enough, SetList.fm saved the day.

Looking through the list it appears that Kiss has been playing the same 21 songs all summer. While that sounds very un-Rock & Roll, considering their stage show, it’s not as if they can improvise anything. I’m sure every single note and every single movement is accounted for.

Anyway, thank you internet!

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Is Life with a Possibility of Parole Cruel and Unusual?

Working as a clerk for judge for as long as I have, I have plenty of “friends” in prison. These guys are defendants who, despite being in prison for a long time, with a long time to go, will obsessively write letters, briefs, writs, etc. They’re constantly coming up with new reasons why they should be let out. As if that’s going to happen.

When we deny their requests, they file appeals. And appeals of those appeals. Then federal appeals of those appeals. And when it’s finally done, they start all over again.

The one common characteristic of these guys is that they were all sentenced to life with a possibility of parole.

You might think that having a possibility of parole would be a good thing. But I’m not so sure.

Lifers are lifers. They know they’re never getting out. They file their initial appeals, but eventually they accept it. They’re broken and they no longer have any hope of getting out.

But when you tell someone he might get out, he’s unable to think of anything else. It becomes his obsession.

He can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Or you could think of it as a carrot that’s just out of reach and he’s always trying to grab it. “Maybe this time it will work,” he thinks.

I wish I could convince these guys to accept their fate. Sure, they might get paroled. That’s a possibility. But that doesn’t also mean we’re going to let them out because of some bizarre and poorly argued technicality that none of their previously attorneys thought of.

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The Copyright Industry Does Not and Cannot Compete in a Free Market

I’ve been meaning to write up a post about how the copyright industry lacks the ability to compete in a free and open market. What finally got me off my butt and write this post is the most amazing real-world example I could ever imagine.

U2′s manager Paul McGuinness asked Apple boss Steve Jobs to create a business model for the music industry:

Steve is the guy who has always magically known what the consumer wants before the consumer even knows it. I wish he would put that great mind and that great corporation of his to work devising a model that finally allows artists and creators to get properly rewarded for their work. Maybe he’s working on it right now. I hope so.

Paul McGuinness has been in the music industry nearly his entire life. But he cannot figure out a way to make money from it? Heck, it’s even worse than that. According to McGuinness, no one in the music industry knows how to make money running a business. Does that make any sense at all?

Unfortunately, it makes perfect sense.

Most people think that copyright is a property right. It is not.

Copyright is a government granted monopoly. The government grants monopolies over music, movies, photographs, etc., and then middlemen make money off of them. That’s how Paul McGuinness makes his money. Acting as a middleman between U2 and its fans.

Every time the copyright industry is faced with competition, they sue. If they cannot sue, they have laws passed so they can sue. If they cannot have federal laws passed to suit their needs, they have state laws passed instead. If the can’t get a government to pass the laws they want, they have treaties enacted which force all governments to pass the laws they want.

What I described above has happened countless times in the history of copyright. For a great example we have to travel back into time to when the player piano was first introduced. Back then the monopoly granted by copyright did not cover performances, only published sheet music.

So anyone could play any song he or she wanted without paying a dime. The music industry made money selling sheet music to musicians.

The player piano eliminated both paying for published sheet music and eliminated the musician who would have bought the sheet music.

So, as I said, the music industry of the 1800s sued. They lost because, as I said, copyright did not cover performances.

So the music industry went to Congress and had copyright laws changed to cover performances. So when the music industry sued again, they won. Of course they won. They always win.

I have to stress, the player piano was perfectly legal. The music industry could have competed with it just like restaurants compete with each other all the time. They could have advertised the fact that music played by real musicians constitutes a better product. That full bands are better than a mere piano. Etc.

However, at no point does the copyright industry ever simply roll up its sleeves to compete in a free market. Their “solution” to legal competition was and is to make the competition illegal. That’s why the music and movie industries have no problem suing their customers. The copyright industry doesn’t really have customers. They have tolls which we, by law, are required to pay under certain circumstances. When competition is created via new technology, they have new tolls added to the new technology. That’s a completely different mindset from someone running a business such as a restaurant.

So when I hear about someone who lived off the teet of copyright for his entire life, but who’s unable to come up with a business model that works in a free market, I’m not surprised at all. People like Paul McGuinness are not businessmen. They’re middlemen who live off what the government grants them. They never create. They never innovate. They merely take their cut. When their cut gets too small, they blame everyone but themselves. They even go as far as to sue their own customers or demand to have them kicked off the internet. As if that would magically make them start paying the old tolls again. People like McGuinness think this way because they don’t understand how businesses or markets work. And because they know of no other way.

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In Defense of the Suburb

Suburbs have always received a bad rap. They got their start after World War II. Vets returning home wanted to own their own homes, so a bevy of cookie cutter houses were built in rural areas nearby urban areas to quickly fill the need. Overtime the perceived safety of living away from cities, and probably a good dose of racism, led more middle class people to flee to these neighborhoods. But despite some clear advantages of suburbs, they’ve always received criticism from the elites.

Earnest Hemingway said they were filled with “wide lawns and narrow minds.” Despite the fact that more people move to the suburbs year after year, movies such as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road show harsh view of suburban life, where suburban families are never happy or well adjusted.

The author of the book Revolutionary Road, Richard Yate, had this to say about suburbs.

Suburbs are “invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves…. A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.“

Think about that last sentence. “A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.”

I love what Wall Street Journal writer Lee Siegel had to in response to Yate’s quote:

For what might a neighborhood that had been designed to accommodate a tragedy possibly look like? For a man running down the street in desperate grief to fit right into the landscape, he would have to be hurtling through a place where vampiric towers blocked out the sun and corpses hung from the lampposts.

Is that really the place where Yates thinks we should live and raise children. He wants us to live in a place where “a man running down these streets in desperate grief” is not out of place and is quite common and accepted?! Does that make any fricken sense at all?

I remember back from my days working at PBS watching a show called POV, which devoted an entire episode to trashing suburbs. Considering all the the genuine problems in our world, I was shocked that PBS found the time to focus on such a sterile and mundane topic. People are not wrongly dying in suburbs. People are not starving in suburbs. People are not being oppressed in suburbs. Very few crimes are committed in suburbs. And public education is usually much better than those of urban or rural school systems.

But what made the POV episode so pathetic was that it used a 16 year old girl as evidence against the suburb. Apparently the producers of the POV episode did not know this, but 16 year old daughters hate everything their parents do. Even if she and her parents lived on the French Rivera, she’d bitch about it. To a 16 year old girl, growing up in a safe environment and receiving a quality education means absolutely nothing. Why? Because her parents are idiots and everything they do is necessarily wrong.

If you want to live in a place where it’s common for men to run in desperate grief. That’s your right. If you respect and decide to follow the opinions of 16 year old girls, that’s also your right. Of course you’re an idiot as to both. But being an idiot is also your right.

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Why does Charter make it so difficult to shop and buy?

Would you buy a clothes, a book, an automobile without knowing exactly what you’re buying. Imagine going to buy a new outfit at Amazon and being offered mere “clothing” without any specific information about what you’re getting. No color, no size, no quantity, no indication of whether you’re getting a shirt, pants, underwear, etc…

For some strange reason that’s how Charter operates. As you’re probably aware, we’re now in the high definition age. Every so often I get the HD itch and think about upgrading my Charter cable service to digital with more HD programing. (Right now I’m only getting a handful of local QAM channels.)

I go to Charter’s website to see what sort of offers they have and I get no information. I click on the Cable option, then the HD option. Then the digital HD option. I see a “build a bundle” option so I click that. I put in my address of course, so technically, they should know exactly who I am because they send me a bill to that very same address every month. However, for some reason they don’t recognize that I already have an account with them at that very same address.

Regardless, the “build a bundle” option brings up a non-working page.

I go back and click the “Cable Packages and Channels” link. It says I can “choose the channels and features” I want. Great, right?

Nope, it brings up yet another link where I can check out “offers.” There’s no option for me to pick what channels I get. Still, I go forward. This time there’s an option to enter my phone number. They finally figure out that I’m a customer. I have no idea what my username and password are, but it allows me to go forward without them. For some reason it warns me that the pricing may be inaccurate. They know my address, they know exactly what they offer at my address, and I assume they know what they charge for those services, so why would the pricing information be inaccurate?

This is one of the many offers I receive:

It says I get Sports, movies and more in Hi-Def, but what channels do I get in HD? It says I get local channels, but are they in HD?

Ah, I know what you’re thinking, click the “learn more” link and all your questions will be answered… yeah fricken right.

I do click the link and learn the price after the first six months is 70 bucks. I also learn that I only receive ten channels in HD, but they are “the top rated networks.” What does that mean? The most popular networks? The most highly rated networks? The most highly regarded by critics networks?!

Right now I’m pay $52 a month for basic analog cable, so I don’t need any converter box and can use my PC based Media Center as a DVR. Right now I’m getting ABC, Fox, NBC, and CBS in HD.

For $216 more per year I get 6 additional HD channels. I have no idea if I want them because I have no idea what they are. I will be required to use a converter set-top box, so my TV and computers, that work as DVRs, will no longer work.

Needless to say, I don’t see any value in that. Now maybe if I was able to pick the exact channels I wanted in HD, it might be worth it. However, they won’t even tell me what channels I’m getting. What if it’s all home and gardening crap? What if it’s Spike, TNT, FX, USA or any of the other craptacular 24 hours-a-day of advertising channels?

So, needless to say, my HD itch goes away very quickly. You’d think Charter would make it easy for me to upgrade to an HD service. But they don’t. I can’t help but wonder who are buying these services without first knowing what they’re getting.

If there are actually people in the world who buy stuff without knowing what they’re getting, maybe Amazon should start selling “clothing.”

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The Ramen Girl

One good thing about Netflix is that you can watch movies outside the mainstream. I’ve been enjoying Japanese comedies such as Shall We Dance and Big Man Japan. Last night I watched The Ramen Girl.

It tells a story of a young, pretty, educated, and spoiled American woman who follows her boyfriend to Japan, only to be quickly dumped. She inexplicably decides to become a Ramen cook. (You’re probably wondering why I rented this movie. The reviews on Netflix said it was quite good. Unfortunately I completely disagree with those reviews.)

About half the dialog is in English and the rest is in Japanese. Also it was directed by an American named Robert Allan Ackerman. So technically it’s not a Japanese movie. But because of the large amount of Japanese dialog, the vast majority of American’s would never watch it either. It’s the worst of both worlds.

The very best thing about the movie is that the main character could not understand the Japanese characters, and vice versa. In other similar movies there are scenes where characters are inexplicably able to understand each other, despite not knowing each other’s language.

The worst thing is the late Brittany Murphy, who lacks any ability to act. Her “abilities” were OK in films such as Sin City where she was nothing more than eye candy. (And no one expects great acting in a Robert Rodriguez movie anyway.)

But in this movie she had the daunting task of making the audience believe that a beautiful, educated, and spoiled American woman would put up with demeaning work such as cleaning toilets and washing dishes to learn how to make Ramen. She failed.

While I believed the restaurant owner was really a restaurant owner. That his wife was really a restaurant owner’s wife. And that the main character’s Japanese/Korean boyfriend wanted to bed a hot American chick. I never even for a second believed anything about the main character, including her motivation.

The movie also had a problem in using Ramen as its central dish. In the US every college kid lived off the freeze dried variety of Ramen. So in my mind, it’d be like a Japanese person coming here to learn how to make boxed macaroni and cheese.

Thus the movie had to explain why Ramen is so special and why it is so difficult to make. It fails. There are unbelievable scenes where Ramen produces “magical” effects on the moods of those eating it. There are also speeches about how you must make Ramen with your heart, not with your brain. But when the main character finally makes Ramen with her heart, she still fails when a Romen master refuses to give her his blessing. So all of those speeches were just a waste of time.

The ending was also really bizarre, and I can’t help but think it wasn’t changed at the last minute. During the movie we learn that the restaurant owner’s son left for France to become a chef, leaving the owner without a successor. Because the main character failed at obtaining the Master’s blessing, he lost a bet with a rival and had to give up cooking Ramen forever. Without a Ramen cook his restaurant would have to close. Mmm….

There’s a “touching” scene where the owner tells the main character that he wants her to be his successor. To make sure she understands he uses a book to translate what he’s saying into English. Being a touching moment, she’s very touched by the request and agrees to be his successor. The restaurant is saved, right?

Nope. For some inexplicable reason, the very next scene shows her leaving Japan for American where she opens up her own Ramen shop in New York.

Wow. Simply wow. There was nothing in the movie telling us that she wanted to go back to the US. In fact it was pretty clear that she had nothing to go back for.

Was the movie trying to tell us that she’s still a selfish bitch? Did the owner sell the restaurant to his rival? We don’t know. We do know the “touching” scene we saw before was rendered pointless.

Every so often you hear about famous movie characters who were supposed to be played by other actors. For example, Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name was supposed to be played by non-actor bodybuilder Steve Reeves. The studio wanted Kevin Costner to play Neo in the Matrix. And of course Tom Selleck was all set to play Indiana Jones, instead of Harrison Ford.

When you hear about such asinine casting choices you can’t help but think those hugely successful movies would have failed. And failed hard.

I’ve thought that maybe the reverse could sometimes be true. Maybe there are sucky movies out there that would have been great if the right actress/actor had been cast.

I can’t help but think that the Ramen Girl could have been a better movie with a better actress playing the lead. However, because of the underlying plot problems I described above, it still would not have been a great one.

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Mandating radios in our pants will not save radio!

As I’ve written about previously, the RIAA is attempting to get radio stations to pay the labels musicians for the music radio plays. Not through any free-market business approach, but through an act of Congress. It’s called the Performance Rights Act.

As nearly everyone knows, throughout the history of radio, the payments have gone the other way. Artists and labels have paid DJs and programmers to have their music played on the radio. It’s called payola.

Even though it’s illegal, and even though labels are demanding to be paid from radio stations, the labels are still paying payola. Why? Because getting your song regularly played on the radio almost guarantees it’ll be a hit.

Of course radio broadcasters have fought against the Performance Rights Act. But they’re changing their tune as of late. They’re willing to support the passage of the act if the feds mandate FM radios in every portable electronic device, e.g., iPods, cell phones, etc.

As everyone knows, among young people radio is in decline. Young people don’t listen to radio like they did back in the old days. Back in the old days radio was the only way to hear hip and cool new music. And it was basically the only way to get music in your car or on the beach. Sure, 8-tracks and cassettes came along, but you had to have the time and equipment to make your mix tapes.

But when the MP3 player came out, suddenly you had your entire music collection in your pocket. Now that’s also true of cell phones, which nearly everyone carries.

So why would anyone listen the radio, filled with commercials and obnoxious DJs, when you already carry your entire music collection in your pocket?

Radio broadcasters are hoping that if they force FM receivers in consumer products, that people will magically start listening to the radio again, just like the good old days. It won’t happen. Anymore than the government forcing automobile manufacturers to include buggy-whip holders will force car drivers to buy and use buggy-whips. The time has passed.

That’s not to say that radio is dead. Far from it. Heck, you can still buy buggy-whips on Amazon.

It’s just that radio will no longer have the same impact it had back in the old days. Serials are gone. News is better found online. You can get real-time traffic reports on your phone. And the days of kids fervently listening to their favorite DJs for the favorite music are gone.

Radio is still the best way to get a hit single, but it’ll never be the center of attention it once was. And merely mandating an FM radio in everyone’s pocket will not change that fact.

Of course it’s partially radio’s fault for their decline. AM used to be cool and the DJs were as famous as the rock & roll stars they were promoting. White kids wanted to listen to black music, and they could only hear it on the radio.

But AM stations stopped caring about finding the next cool artist, and started playing just the hits, the hits, and only the hits. It became mundane.

Then FM radios came out. FM used to be cool. It used to be cutting edge. AM was where hits were made. But FM is where DJs were free to experiment and music fans tuned in to hear the next big thing.

But as the old saying goes, all good things must pass, and so did the coolness of FM radio. The album rock format took over from experimental DJs and programmers. Then the hit music format took over from that. Suddenly FM’s formats were just as narrow and bland as AM used to be.

It’s really hard to get teens excited about the safe, bland, and mundane. And the current consolidation of radio has eliminated anything worth being fervent about.

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Too Smart for Me

Apparently you can solve any Rubik’s Cube™ in no more than 20 moves. I wish I was smart enough to understand the mathematics behind this.

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The GOP’s war on the employed proves they’re the new “Me Generation”

I’ve written previously about the Right’s war on the unemployed. Glenn Beck thinks anyone without a job is lazy. Corporations are refusing to hire the unemployed. And of course Senator Hatch said that the unemployed are good for nothing drug addicts.

Since most GOP voters have jobs, it makes sense for the GOP to attack the unemployed. They’ve been doing that for years. Heck, centuries. Which is ironic, because the Right actually loves high unemployment because it lowers wages and benefits.

But the GOP’s latest move is to attack the employed. Not the unemployed, but the employed. According to an article on the Huffington Post, GOP politicians are promising to ensure that public servants such as teachers, the police, and firefighters lose their jobs.

The GOP are promising to get voters fired and to increase the unemployment rate. But yet the GOP has a rabid and large support base?! Thomas Frank asked, What’s the matter with Kansas? I’m asking, what’s the matter with the US?

The answer is that the Right has become the new “me generation.” It’s all about them and protecting what they have and what they feel they deserve. Their hopes and dreams for the future are crumbling. They know their country is worse off now than when they were kids. But instead of actually working to make our society and community better, they make scapegoats out of the weakest and most unfortunate and demand via protests that the government take action to help them.

I’m sure you’ve seen the video of Tea Baggers attacking a man with Parkinson’s. To the Tea Baggers the guy is worthless because he cannot carry his own weight and wants things for free.

Do they know the guy? Are they certain he didn’t pay for insurance but was arbitrarily denied by an insurance company death panel? Do they know he’s not a veteran who is not getting the care he deserves because the GOP has turned its back on veteran hospitals?

No they don’t. They’re just attacking him because they feel he’s “taking” from them. And as I said, it’s all about them.

The same is true of healthcare reform. Do you know why the vast majority of people on the Right feel that healthcare reform is not needed? It’s real simple.

It’s because the vast majority of people on the Right are healthy. That’s it. When you’re healthy, health insurance works because you’ve never given your insurance company any reason to arbitrarily deny a claim. So for the vast majority of people in the Right, they feel that health insurance works.

And since it’s all about them, they don’t want to change anything to help people who are not being served by health insurance. Even though the new system would not change anything in their lives, and would drastically change the lives of the uninsured. Even though it would remove a huge burden of paying for insurance from the private sector and place it on those who actually use it. Which is normally something the Right loves. Even though it would simplify the process by eliminating redundant red tape and bureaucracy, something else the Right loves to do.

But the Right is against it. Because it’s all about them. They’d rather have 20% of the population unable to work to save a few dollars a year on their taxes. They’d rather have children die from lack of food and medical care rather than settle for a 42″ TV instead of a 46″. It’s about their money, not someone else’s livelihood or life.

And the Right justifies their anger by blaming anyone who is not fortunate. Did the guy with Parkinson’s go out of his way to get that disease? Was it his fault? Nope. But as far as the Right is concerned, the worst sin is not being able to support yourself. If a child dies from lack of medical attention, it’s the lazy drug addicted parent’s fault.

It is never the Right’s fault.

I’m reminded of a drive I made to Colorado. I stopped in a small mid-western town and read one of those historical plaques. Back in the 1800s the town was formed by Christians. It was a farming commune. Everyone farmed for the common good. Everything you grew was for the community. The old and less fortunate were taken care of, including health care. Schools were provided by the community for the entire community.

About a 100 years ago Christianity was about community. Heck, my grandparents met at a communist hall in the UP. Back then not being concerned with your own selfish wants and desires was very Christian. Working for the common goal of helping your community was very Christian back then. I think the word I’m looking for is sacrifice. Back then it was common for Christians to sacrifice their own wants and desires for the greater community. (It seems there was some famous Jewish carpenter who sacrificed his life for the greater good. What was his name again?!) Anyway, those days are gone. It’s all about “me” now. What can the government do for “me”?

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Thoughts While Camping

I just got back from camping in the the Upper Peninsula. I have a few thoughts.

Anyone who smokes should not be given an oxygen tank and an Amigo to ride around on. Smoking or oxygen, it’s your choice. Maybe death panels would be a good thing.

I hate diesel trucks. Not semis. It’s those ginormous and deafening trucks guys with small penises drive.

Speaking of vehicles I hate, I hate those ginormous RVs. You know, they’re about the size of most houses were from the ’50s except they’re on wheels. At least I found one that was aptly named. It was called the Intruder. It was definitely intrusive. If you loving living in a house so much, stay at home.

The U.P. is one of the few places on earth you can walk around in public with a water stain on the butt-crack of your shorts and not feel self-conscious about it.

Convenience stores in the U.P. have stuff you can’t find anywhere else.

It is possible to spend a week without the internet.

Five miles is long fucking way to walk when the terrain is rough.

Despite all visual evidence to the contrary, the Tahquamenon River does not taste like root beer.

Pumping gas then going into the store to pay is sort of cool.

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