I used to be absolutely fascinated with Australia in my later years in high school and into my time in the Navy. The first thing that I'm sure caught my attention that time was the (probably with extra hyperbole added for free!) disproportion of men to women and the resulting lack of respect women down under got from men because there were just so many women. There were many hormones clouding the judgment, I'm sure, and I was additionally suffering from a severe case of White Knight Syndrome, which I now find to be sexist against women (by thus assuming that women both want and need to be cared for by a big strong man).
My fascination with the continent that's also a country didn't really wane with losing my virginity because I discovered this absolutely CRAZY AWESOME way of electing people to office. This was a time when I was pretty much politically clueless but nevertheless opposed to both parties. Australia uses Alternative Voting (also called Instant Runoff voting) where it's mandatory to rank order your preference of candidates for a ballot to be accepted. If no one candidate gets a majority of first place votes, the person with the least number of them gets excluded and those ballots go to the second name on their list. And if no one candidate gets a majority of votes, the candidate with the lowest amount gets dropped, and those votes go to the highest ranked (still-included) candidate, and so on until one candidate gets a majority of the votes.
Mind you, I still think it's a great system and in time I think it could break the tyranny of a two party system, but it will never ever happen here. The Right will claim that it's against what the Founding Fathers wanted and the Left will claim it's disenfranchising their voting bloc. I don't know, maybe I'm assuming that they think that poor = stupid.
But I digress.
Australia doesn't seem quite so shiny to me anymore, though I admit that it's looking betting in comparison to New Zealand as of late. (Update: Apparently the New Zealand legislature has delayed their absolutely horrible Guilt Upon Accusation copyright law.) If you thought poorly of corporations like the RIAA and MPAA for their contempt of their consumers, you've obviously never seen the misplaced cynicism the Australian government hold towards its citizens' ability to make their own decisions regarding consuming creative content. Either that or they believe the bullpucky (Thank you Dr. Maddow for adding that to my vocabulary) about videogames turning people into homocidal maniacs (Doom and Littleton, CO, anyone?).
Oh yes, Australia's famous (at least in my mind) for what I like to call their Ministry of Censorship. They're the government organization that assigns ratings to things like movies, music, and video games. If they refuse to provide a classification to something, then that item can't be sold in Australia, thus effectively censoring such a thing. Call me weird, I have a problem with people telling me what I can and cannot watch or listen to.
That isn't to say I hate everything coming out of Australia. Not by any means. Look at Yahtzee's game reviews and The Night Air podcast. I just have no desire to live there anymore.
The Night Air is something that Wil Wheaton turned me onto in one of his posts and is actually really great in a different sort of way. Wil refers to it as， "the lovechild of Joe Frank and This American Life, babysat by William S. Burroughs" and that pretty much nails it. If you're unfamiliar with Joe Frank as I am (How he got on NPR with such a normal name is completely beyond me), think of him as a less conservative Paul Harvey.
As for Yahtzee, well we've already seen that you don't need to have great artwork to have great humorous content. Randal Munroe draws stick figures in his webcomic and I think they're brilliant. Similarly, the simple animations Yahtzee has during his reviews are simplistic, but his commentary is downright riotous, if a little foul mouthed (which I like).
Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 13, 2009
Damn it, Dick, you've really done it this time.
I've been a fan of Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine since, oh, back when his first CD came out back around 2001. I've purchased all of his albums to date, some multiple times because I've lost a couple of them by lending them out to people.
I've witnessed him get more and more bitter regarding intellectual property these past few years and I've endured it up to now because I understand his point that he makes next to nothing because a majority of his profits go right back to the major record labels since all he does is lounge covers of popular tunes by bands who are owned by those labels.
That said, he's gone too far this time and I'm returning the CD he just sent me yesterday. I don't care that he already has my money for this CD and his next two. I'm that disgusted that I'm just willing to write off the loss.
While I'm not a fan of copy protection, to be honest, I don't mind the copy protection he's embedded on his CD. It doesn't install spyware on computers like Sony did a few years ago. Instead, there's an inaudible code embedded in the audio tracks that tie it to a particular purchaser so that if the tracks end up on an online file-sharing site, they know who to come after. In my opinion, that's all fine and good because it's silent. I can't hear it, and it will only affect those who are actually violating copyright.
The reason I'm choosing to return his CD is that on one of the tracks of his new live CD, Viva La Vodka, he mildly lambasted a fan at one of his shows for recording some video of the show on her cell phone. An argument could be made that it's disrespectful to be distracted like that during a show or that flash photography is distracting to the band, but no. He specifically stops the show to tell her that she's stealing from him. Tacky? Absolutely. What's worse is that this is one of the cuts that he chose to include on his live CD. Not only is he assuming this woman is a thief, by including this particular cut on the CD, I can only assume that he thinks that I'm a thief as well. I don't like that assumption.
Now that I think about it, what does that say about him and what he thinks of himself and his shows? Does he think his shows are so uninspiring and dull that some crappy quality video with even crappier quality audio posted to YouTube is identical to the experience of actually being at one of his shows? Is that what he's saying? Because that's what I'm getting.
He's getting to the level of Prince in levels of douchebaggery. Next thing you know he'll order a takedown notice of a video of someone's baby because there just happens to be 20-30 seconds of one of his songs playing in the background.
The thing that really gets me is that by doing the entire paranoid bully routine, he's playing right into the hands of those very record companies who are making it so difficult for him to make a living at what he's doing. If it weren't for these record companies' price gouging on rights (that go directly into their pockets and not to the artist, by the way), then he would have a significantly higher profit margin on his record sales. Just imagine if there were Creative Commons licenses on the music he was covering and he could go directly to the artists instead of through a record company with more lawyers than God (which isn't saying much, because all lawyers go to Hell).
This entire nonsense of berating a fan during a show reminds me of a few years back when I was at the Warped Tour. It's one of those festivals where most of the bands only have 30 minutes to play. One year, Anti-Flag spent 20 of their 30 minutes to rant and rave about the evils of capitalism and the Bush Administration. Yeah, because people paid money to get lectured at a music concert, not to actually hear music.
I've witnessed him get more and more bitter regarding intellectual property these past few years and I've endured it up to now because I understand his point that he makes next to nothing because a majority of his profits go right back to the major record labels since all he does is lounge covers of popular tunes by bands who are owned by those labels.
That said, he's gone too far this time and I'm returning the CD he just sent me yesterday. I don't care that he already has my money for this CD and his next two. I'm that disgusted that I'm just willing to write off the loss.
While I'm not a fan of copy protection, to be honest, I don't mind the copy protection he's embedded on his CD. It doesn't install spyware on computers like Sony did a few years ago. Instead, there's an inaudible code embedded in the audio tracks that tie it to a particular purchaser so that if the tracks end up on an online file-sharing site, they know who to come after. In my opinion, that's all fine and good because it's silent. I can't hear it, and it will only affect those who are actually violating copyright.
The reason I'm choosing to return his CD is that on one of the tracks of his new live CD, Viva La Vodka, he mildly lambasted a fan at one of his shows for recording some video of the show on her cell phone. An argument could be made that it's disrespectful to be distracted like that during a show or that flash photography is distracting to the band, but no. He specifically stops the show to tell her that she's stealing from him. Tacky? Absolutely. What's worse is that this is one of the cuts that he chose to include on his live CD. Not only is he assuming this woman is a thief, by including this particular cut on the CD, I can only assume that he thinks that I'm a thief as well. I don't like that assumption.
Now that I think about it, what does that say about him and what he thinks of himself and his shows? Does he think his shows are so uninspiring and dull that some crappy quality video with even crappier quality audio posted to YouTube is identical to the experience of actually being at one of his shows? Is that what he's saying? Because that's what I'm getting.
He's getting to the level of Prince in levels of douchebaggery. Next thing you know he'll order a takedown notice of a video of someone's baby because there just happens to be 20-30 seconds of one of his songs playing in the background.
The thing that really gets me is that by doing the entire paranoid bully routine, he's playing right into the hands of those very record companies who are making it so difficult for him to make a living at what he's doing. If it weren't for these record companies' price gouging on rights (that go directly into their pockets and not to the artist, by the way), then he would have a significantly higher profit margin on his record sales. Just imagine if there were Creative Commons licenses on the music he was covering and he could go directly to the artists instead of through a record company with more lawyers than God (which isn't saying much, because all lawyers go to Hell).
This entire nonsense of berating a fan during a show reminds me of a few years back when I was at the Warped Tour. It's one of those festivals where most of the bands only have 30 minutes to play. One year, Anti-Flag spent 20 of their 30 minutes to rant and rave about the evils of capitalism and the Bush Administration. Yeah, because people paid money to get lectured at a music concert, not to actually hear music.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Seven deadly sins, seven dirty words
Oh for the love of all that's holy I'm cynical. I recently saw this little gem on the internet and was pretty much filled with revulsion at having watched it. I'm not depressed and I'm not in a particularly bad mood. I just don't like the assumption that this kind of frou frou nonsense has universal utility. I especially don't like this attitude of, "Oh, you choose to be depressed or pissed off, so it's your own fault if you aren't constantly wearing your happy helmet and inspiring joy joy feelings in all those around you." I say we should take this philosophy to the detainees in Guantánamo Bay and tell them that it's their own faut that they aren't choosing to enjoy their extended Caribbean vacation.
I don't know. I just take umbrage at people who go up to depressed people and tell them to be happy as if it's the easiest thing in the world to do. It's not, especially when someone is depressed. Hell, if the person actually turned their emotions around on a dime like these people are wanting them to, they'd still find fault with them and call them manic depressive. It's a no-win situation for the person being told what to do.
Shifting gears a little bit, something else that royally pisses me off is people who rattle that same tired cliché about people who swear only do so because they have a limited vocabulary and are too stupid to come up with the words to get their point across without swearing. Bullshit. There are a myriad of reasons for using profanity other than ignorance, some of which include dramatic effect, brevity, or as an emphatic interjection. For example, say you suddenly find a live grenade in your pocket. You have about three seconds to live. Do you say, "My word, why I belie*BOOM*" or do you say something like, "Oh, shit!"?
I'll be the first to admit that there are some people who are just terrible at swearing. Like middle schoolers. They suck at swearing and throw in profanity in places that make no gorram sense and use it so often as to dull the impact of using them. That's no reason to denigrate an entire class of users of certain words simply because a vocal minority improperly uses them.
I don't know. I just take umbrage at people who go up to depressed people and tell them to be happy as if it's the easiest thing in the world to do. It's not, especially when someone is depressed. Hell, if the person actually turned their emotions around on a dime like these people are wanting them to, they'd still find fault with them and call them manic depressive. It's a no-win situation for the person being told what to do.
Shifting gears a little bit, something else that royally pisses me off is people who rattle that same tired cliché about people who swear only do so because they have a limited vocabulary and are too stupid to come up with the words to get their point across without swearing. Bullshit. There are a myriad of reasons for using profanity other than ignorance, some of which include dramatic effect, brevity, or as an emphatic interjection. For example, say you suddenly find a live grenade in your pocket. You have about three seconds to live. Do you say, "My word, why I belie*BOOM*" or do you say something like, "Oh, shit!"?
I'll be the first to admit that there are some people who are just terrible at swearing. Like middle schoolers. They suck at swearing and throw in profanity in places that make no gorram sense and use it so often as to dull the impact of using them. That's no reason to denigrate an entire class of users of certain words simply because a vocal minority improperly uses them.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
I love new media
To be more correct, I should probably say I love using new technology to access old media. My parents pay something around $100 a month for basic DSL and an expanded cable lineup, of which I'm sure they watch maybe a half dozen channels.
Me? I will admit I pay a premium for internet access. But I have FIOS at 15MB/s down as well as 15MB/s up. But if I were to get even basic cable tacked on, my Verizon bill would easily balloon to at least $125 a month. Instead, I get my movie and television fix from a multitude of sources.
For movies and TV shows of the past, there is, of course, Netflix, both via mail and their View Instantly movies.
As far as television is concerned, I catch MSNBC's pundit shows via their podcasts. Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Psych, and Chuck I'm able to watch on Hulu. New episodes of [adult swim] cartoons I can watch on their own site if I'm too impatient to wait for the season to come out on DVD (as I am with Venture Bros). And gods forbid, I actually pay for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on iTunes ($10 a month each for a month's worth of new episodes).
I know I could catch the shows on their respective sites, but news and current events shows sort of need to be watched soon after they air, and I don't have the bandwidth the stream those shows over my mobile broadband connection that I have at work. Additionally, I don't have the time to watch it at home during my work week, what with the 12 hour shifts. It's still a hell of a lot cheaper than a cable subscription, yes?
I know overall, I'm certainly not saving any money on media consumption as compared to my parents. I'm just spending it diffferently. My cell phone bill is significantly higher than that of the average user because I have both the phone and the $60 for the EVDO line into my laptop. I just see internet as a necessity for me whereas suburbanites twenty years older than me consider cable TV a necessity.
Me? I will admit I pay a premium for internet access. But I have FIOS at 15MB/s down as well as 15MB/s up. But if I were to get even basic cable tacked on, my Verizon bill would easily balloon to at least $125 a month. Instead, I get my movie and television fix from a multitude of sources.
For movies and TV shows of the past, there is, of course, Netflix, both via mail and their View Instantly movies.
As far as television is concerned, I catch MSNBC's pundit shows via their podcasts. Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Psych, and Chuck I'm able to watch on Hulu. New episodes of [adult swim] cartoons I can watch on their own site if I'm too impatient to wait for the season to come out on DVD (as I am with Venture Bros). And gods forbid, I actually pay for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on iTunes ($10 a month each for a month's worth of new episodes).
I know I could catch the shows on their respective sites, but news and current events shows sort of need to be watched soon after they air, and I don't have the bandwidth the stream those shows over my mobile broadband connection that I have at work. Additionally, I don't have the time to watch it at home during my work week, what with the 12 hour shifts. It's still a hell of a lot cheaper than a cable subscription, yes?
I know overall, I'm certainly not saving any money on media consumption as compared to my parents. I'm just spending it diffferently. My cell phone bill is significantly higher than that of the average user because I have both the phone and the $60 for the EVDO line into my laptop. I just see internet as a necessity for me whereas suburbanites twenty years older than me consider cable TV a necessity.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Monday, February 2, 2009
They're makin' laws, but they don't understand, turns a boy into a fightin' man
For the longest time after my parents got divorced, most of the music my mother listened to, like Kansas, Styx, and Twisted Sister, got passed onto me. Well, The Thompson Twins sort of became forgettable, but other that, most of my mother's taste got passed onto me.
Except for Journey.
Good God I hated Journey with a passion for the longest time afterwards. Alas, it was not a permanent thing. Journey is just too damn craptastic to not love. Interestingly enough, all through over a decade of hatred of Journey, I still remembered Neal Schon, Ross Valory, Steve Smith, and Steve Perry. Sure, everyone remembers Steve Perry, but who else, especially someone who hated the band for such a long time, still cling onto information like that?
In a word, me. However, I had some memory aids from long ago helping those names remain lodged in my brain forever. That memory aid? Journey Escape for the Atari 2600. I spent so much damn time avoiding heart-shaped panties with legs, Abe Vigodas, and white blobs in an effort to reach the Kool-Aid Man and a scarab that the band members' names stuck with me for all that time.
Do note that I had completely forgotten about Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist. I suppose this just shows that even in the mind of a child, the keyboardist in a band is the most worthless person in a band, particularly onstage.
Except for Journey.
Good God I hated Journey with a passion for the longest time afterwards. Alas, it was not a permanent thing. Journey is just too damn craptastic to not love. Interestingly enough, all through over a decade of hatred of Journey, I still remembered Neal Schon, Ross Valory, Steve Smith, and Steve Perry. Sure, everyone remembers Steve Perry, but who else, especially someone who hated the band for such a long time, still cling onto information like that?
In a word, me. However, I had some memory aids from long ago helping those names remain lodged in my brain forever. That memory aid? Journey Escape for the Atari 2600. I spent so much damn time avoiding heart-shaped panties with legs, Abe Vigodas, and white blobs in an effort to reach the Kool-Aid Man and a scarab that the band members' names stuck with me for all that time.
Do note that I had completely forgotten about Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist. I suppose this just shows that even in the mind of a child, the keyboardist in a band is the most worthless person in a band, particularly onstage.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
