And so I’m back
June 14, 2004 // Link
With this post, provided my hastily tossed together web site code works, I re-enter the world of blogging.
Daddy’s home.
I’ve long asserted...
June 14, 2004 // Link
I’ve long asserted that if I ever lay dying I hope I have the wherewithal to write something like “Colin did it” in my own blood. I think that’s hilarious, though I suppose Colin might not think so.
Of course, Colin might also think that posting the idea here let’s him off the hook because he could point to this as evidence for his innocence. So maybe this means he’s safe from my clearly insane machinations.
Then again, maybe it just means I’ve thought of something even more insidious to do instead. You never can tell...
It’s the sense of random danger that makes it so much fun to be my friend.
Did you ever have...
June 14, 2004 // Link
Did you ever have a band or a singer that you and you alone seemed to like, or even to have heard of? Maria McKee is one of mine. She’s not particularly obscure, but it happens that I know few if any people who know her music.
I had a strange experience the other day. I was waiting in my friend Sandy’s car while she ducked into a restaurant to buy a gift certificate. Turning up the radio, I found myself singing along to Ms. McKee’s songs (including “Things I Shouldn’t Do,” which is an obscure tune even for her fans). It was a CD, of course. I’d introduced Sandy to Maria McKee’s music a while back, and she took to it like a duck takes to water. Or to another duck.
It was strange to hear those songs pushing out through those dashboard speakers. It was as if I’d turned on the radio and heard the DJ say “this one’s for you, Carrington.”
Which now that I think about it should happen much more often, don’t you think?
When I was a kid...
June 14, 2004 // Link
When I was a kid, it was a big deal to see a picture of a naked gal. As far as my fifteen year old self was concerned, breasts were hearsay. It was a rare and magical occurrence to see them, because Amazon.com wishlists hadn’t been invented yet.
Permanent Copyrights Are Goofy™
June 14, 2004 // Link
I’m very much in favour of copyright. I think it’s an essential part of ensuring artists can benefit from their work. I’m in favor, too, of the automatic granting of copyright from the moment of a work’s creation. But the well of public domain material is just as important to a flourishing artistic community. It seems quite evident that a fixed and limited term of copyright is the best for everyone.
The current limit of “70 years after the death of the artist” is already a ridiculously long period. But of course it just keeps getting longer each time Disney and others push the U.S. congress to extend it—which is every time material owned by those same corporations would go public. I would have thought the original setup of “28 years from creation” would have been more than enough time to reap protected benefits from one’s work, but then again I’m just an artist not a corporation so what do I know?
Well I’ll tell you what I know: infinite copyright is a bane to growth, to the economy, to competition, to creativity, and to a little something my great grandpappy used to call “common feckin’ sense.”
And while it’s true that great grandpappy was hooked on ‘shine and prone to shooting at gophers and the FedEx guy, I still think there’s something to what he had to say.
One of the biggest problems with the current setup is that everything is automatically covered by these blanket copyright laws, and so all copyrights get extended whenever Disney whines about losing control of Walt’s century old doodles.
The irony should not be lost on us that Disney, the great champion of permanent copyrights, produces more material from (and makes more money off) public domain sources than just about anyone. Without the wealth of public domain material Disney would not have been able to produce The Jungle Book, Alice In Wonderland, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, Aladdin, and many others.
Wait, did I call that irony? Sorry, I meant bloody hypocrisy. I get those mixed up sometimes.
Indefinite copyright means that the vast majority of material which would otherwise fall into the public domain—with complete support of the author—is instead mired in copyright confusion. Throughout history, all of our greatest works of art have been built upon the works that came before them. Allusion and derivation are essential items in all our best writing, music, painting, dance, and so forth. But we’ve dragged that process to a sudden stop because the majority of material out there now has unknown copyright status.
Did you think it was a coincidence that you keep seeing the same movie plots remade over and over?
We have lost over half a century of creative progress thanks to a handful of litigious copyright zealots, and the effect of this artistic stagnation will resonate for generations. This is the first time since the Spanish Inquisition that we’ve taken such a massive step backward creatively. Go team!
I looked into the wrong end of my Wayback Machine this morning and I saw that in 2133 I’ll have a great, great, great grandchild studying this period in her history class. Do you know what she’s going to write in her term paper? That we were a bunch of dimwits being led by slack-spined, poll-fearing politicians who are themselves owned by litigious corporations. (She’s also shocked by both our zoos and our dentistry, by the way, and I was delighted if unsurprised to learn that she had never even heard of Avril Lavigne.)
But there is hope. We can let Disney and its ilk have their indefinite copyright and still move the great mass of abandoned material into the public domain. The solution is the Eric Eldred Act. In a nutshell (which is where all the best ideas are kept), this is a proposal that 50 years after a work was published the copyright owner would have to pay a “tiny tax” (say, $1). If the owner didn’t pay this tax three years in a row, the work would become public domain.
At the very least, this act would ensure that material for whom nobody wants to lay claim would finally fall into the public domain, while to cost to the Greedketeers at the likes of Disney would be a measily $1 per year.
Come on, Walt, ask yourself: what would Mary Poppins do?
I saw Dark Passage
June 15, 2004 // Link
I saw Dark Passage (1947) at Cinematheque today. It’s been ages since I’ve seen that movie so I’d forgotten how silly much of the final act is. But that’s more than made up for by the first-person camerawork of the first act. After looking straight into Lauren Bacall’s eyes for a half an hour, the final reel could have been unprocessed film stock and I’d still have given it thumb’s up.
I ate “fruit on the bottom” yogurt today.
June 16, 2004 // Link
It occurred to me that there was probably a meeting at Big Yogurt Company International at some point when all the powerful yogurt mongers sat around a boardroom table discussing the problem of keeping fruit yogurt mixed properly after it has sat on a shelf for most of its best-before date. (Or, if it’s at my local grocer’s, twice that time.)
Some guy at that meeting—I prefer to think he was the new guy, just promoted from the stock room after being spotted reading the employee handbook on his lunch break, and maybe his name was Bradly or something with a K, and he’d recently been dumped by that blonde who sorts the big spoons down in the Blending And Stirring Department, whose name was definitely Shirley—finally spoke up: “Why don’t we just not mix it at all?”
Uproar! Commotion! Rhubarb! What was this lad blathering about? At Big Yogurt Company International, they prided themselves in their quality assurance. They’d been making yogurt since back when it was still sold as curdled milk to keep the rats away. And when a yogurt needed a mixing, well then by golly it was going to get a mixing.
But then New Guy Bradly or something with a K explained: “I’m just saying, we could leave it unmixed and call it Fruit On The Bottom yogurt. It’d be a mix-it-yourself product. Very empowering to the busy homemaker or the middle management types. We could market our liability as a strength.”
They were impressed, hanging on his every word. He paused, just the right amount of time, and then sealed the deal: “Oh hey, here’s a thought. We could save a bundle by firing the entire Blending And Stirring Department.”
Anyway, that’s what I thought when I ate the yogurt, which was strawberry-banana.
I got on my bike today
June 19, 2004 // Link
I got on my bike today and rode the Whitest Legs In The World up and down the too many hills in my neighborhood. I live in an area called Forest Hill, and around here they take the Hill more seriously than the Forest. I live at the top of the hilliest hill in the ‘hood, so whenever I ride I start off at a (potentially literal) breakneck speed that scares me and sets my eyes a-watering because of the wind.
The rub is when I turn around at whatever midpoint or destination I’ve set for myself, because from then on I’m riding toward That Damn Hill—which I’ll have to climb at the end of my ride when, I safely presume from experience, the Whitest Legs In The World will be quite tired thank you very much.
I love my digs, but I hate That Damn Hill.
Make The Tunelubbers Walk The Plank
June 19, 2004 // Link
I just read an article on The Register about how the RIAA have forced Verizon to hand over the names of people suspected of pirating music.
I’m not going to rant about privacy issues, because my stance on internet privacy has always been a simple one: there isn’t any, get over it.
I do take issue, however, with giving the title of “pirate” to people who distribute copies of music files. That is a dysphemism and it’s being used by the RIAA as part of a marketing campaign. To accept and employ that term for such actions is to grant a basic premise underlying the RIAA’s arguments. I do not accept that premise.
Quick vocabulary lesson: every year out in the open sea, even in these modern times, people have their ships targeted and boarded by real pirates. Pirates are people who rape, murder, and plunder on the open water. That’s what a pirate is. It is not some kid living in his parent’s basement and trading Eminem MP3s over Kazaa.
The RIAA wants to call them pirates because it’s a nice scary word with dark undertones. It makes the file traders sound like a bunch of burly, tattooed sea dogs who clench knives between their teeth and who are bent on the overthrow of all that is decent. Of course, the RIAA didn’t initiate this usage. Decades ago software hackers brought it on themselves because it sounded so much cooler than “Person whose combination of Commodore 64 ownership and puberty has removed any chance of a social life, thus resulting in sufficient free time to crack the copy protection scheme on this floppy disk.” And now it’s come back to bite us on our collective spotty asses.
But file-traders are not pirates. It’s easy to argue that they’re not even thieves, depending on how you define property and its loss. They are simply copiers and distributors. I wish the judge who has to sit through the next woe-is-multi-billionaire-me RIAA lawsuit would call them to task on their use of the term pirate. I’d love it if they were forced to use a more accurate term, such as “alleged unlicensed distributor.” Maybe “unlicensed distributor with a hook.” I might give in on that one.
If they get to pick their term for us then we should get to pick our term for them. And that term should be just as prevalent in the media as theirs has been. I would suggest, in keeping with the theme the RIAA has already instituted, that the RIAA are referred to henceforth as slavers.
Any sufficiently loose system of allegory which permits the equation of the term pirate with file traders is equally useful to justify an accusation of slavery for an organization like the RIAA: they make their profits off a combination of an hierarchical price-control system and the exploitation of people indentured to them; they defend the exclusivity of their trade routes and operations with all the force available to them; they compensate their production force a miniscule fraction of the product’s sale price, often with little or no guarantee of compensation at all; and the metaphors go on and on.
I think we should hold out for media headlines like “Music Piracy Ring Broken Up By RIAA Slavers.” That seems equally fair—and equally ridiculous—for both sides.
Of course, calling the RIAA slavers probably seems offensive, but that’s just because we’re not used to it. It’s no more outrageous than the RIAA calling file traders pirates. What’s good for the goose...can pull alongside the gander and fire broadsides at it in preparation for boarding.
I ain’t gonna play Sun City, matey!
Those sneaky Sleestacks slipped by me
June 25, 2004 // Link
I only just now found out that a DVD of season one of Land Of The Lost has been announced, and it’ll be available this Tuesday. I look forward to a visit to the “World of Sid & Marty Krofft” steeped in nostalgia. Eyes will roll and eyebrows will be raised as I join Marshall, Will and Holly on a routine expedition...
And, yes, I’ll admit that Kathy Coleman (ie. Holly Marshall) was one of my first crushes. Who could resist the combination of pigtails, a veritable waterfall of blonde bangs, and shirt with a pattern straight from a tablecloth? Not Little Carrington, that’s who. Of course, it was nothing like the lasting bond I formed with Felicity Kendal (as Barbara Good) in the Britcom The Good Life (AKA Good Neighbours). A gal who plants crops in her suburban back yard is going to win my heart every time. And once again, we have blonde, bangs, and plaid. Coincidence?
But I digress.
I’ll add Land Of The Lost to my to-watch pile of TV DVDs, which currently includes Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 6, Babylon 5 season 5, and my overlong underopened first two seasons of The Outer Limits.
I’m even more chuffed about my already-en-route copies of the first two seasons of Press Gang (the best TV show of all time) which I’ve ordered from Amazon.co.uk because they’re unavailable on my local continent. (Let’s hear a big huzzah for region-free DVD players!)
Reuniting with old TV friends on DVD is a good thing, but where is Max Headroom? Where oh where are The Edison Twins? Shucks, even Brisco County, Jr. seems to have gotten lost.
But most importantly of all, why can’t I have the complete series of Read All About It on DVD (or any medium for that matter) so I can finally find out if and how the gang at The Herbertville Chronicle defeated the dastardly Duneedon. I have no closure, darn it.
Come to think of it, Lydia Zajc in Read All About It was another gal who stole my young heart sporting pigtails, bangs, and plaid. Clearly, I have a type.
Miss Bellows Falls
June 26, 2004 // Link
Today I read about the Miss Bellows Falls Diner, which is an old lunch car diner. It’s billed as the “only completely intact example in Vermont of the barrel-roofed Worcester Diner produced by the Worcester Lunch Car Company.”
I’ve always wanted to eat in one of those, and so the phrase “I have to go there some day” drifted through my mind. (Actually, it didn’t so much drift as appear like song subtitles in a movie, complete with the bouncing ball that tells me when to sing each word. Handy, that.)
That phrase—when I mean it, not when I say it with a “have a nice day” intonation—is among those that trigger an automatic addition to my Things To Do Before I Die list. So down at the bottom of The List is a new entry calling for a visit to the diner.
I’ll be sure to take snapshots to share with the class.
I returned some (so-called) CDs today
June 27, 2004 // Link
Here is a copy of the letter I just sent EMI Canada via the feedback form on their web site:
I recently purchased a copy of the CD entitled Chinatown by The Be Good Tanyas. The faulty CD would not play in my car, in my computer, nor in one of my home CD players. I exchanged the CD for another copy, and encountered the same difficulties. I subsequently discovered the CD was produced faulty on purpose by EMI Canada—it breaks the Red Book standard with copy control technology. In fact, I suppose therefore it is not technically a “CD” at all.
Needless to say, I returned the disc for a refund. I thought it prudent to let EMI Canada know that this sale was lost solely due to your decision to break from the Red Book standard.
Previously, I have purchased many scores of CDs by EMI artists, including Andrew Hill, Kathy Mattea, John Mayall, Gob, Beastie Boys, Juliana Theory, Etta James, and many others. I shall check for the EMI Canada logo in future and refrain from purchasing music you publish under the assumption that all EMI Canada discs are faulty by intent. When I returned The Be Good Tanyas’ disc I also returned my still unopened copies of the latest (so-called) CDs by If We Were Us and Alexisonfire, assuming them to be faulty as well since they carried the EMI Canada logo.
The mind boggling thing is that the persons at EMI Canada who decided to break the Red Book standard with a crippling technology that wastes your customers’ time and creates barriers to sales, not to mention inducing antipathy toward the label, have probably been wondering just why it is so many people opt to download music instead of purchasing CDs.
Clearly, the “Keep Music Coming” campaign is a big waste of time when a label itself is so actively encouraging us to do otherwise.
I await their response, if any, which will probably be some missive about how the (non-)CD is labeled as such, and how (so-called) piracy is the reason audio CD sales are down (instead of the fact that fewer CDs are published, or the fact that the boom of replacing records with CDs is over, or the fact that the public knows fully well the material cost of blank CD media compared to music CD retail prices, or the fact that the general public couldn’t give a toss about big music labels and doesn’t see the few pennies the artist would have received as sufficient incentive to purchase a $25 disc, and on and on.) Whatever. EMI Canada lost my business today.
If we don’t support record labels, some day there won’t be any.
Canada hit the polls today
June 28, 2004 // Link
Well, actually, about a third of us didn’t bother, and to that ungrateful bunch I give a big raspberry.
The rest of us have re-elected—with 37 per cent of the popular vote—a Prime Minister and federal party that was recently caught stealing from us. Roll up, roll up for the Magical Misery Tour.
Given a choice between three major parties (tax relief, health care relief, and comic relief), we sent a clear message to Ottawa: “Hey, as long as you’re not actually physically breaking into our houses to take our TVs, do whatever you want.”
Go us.
I watched the movie Her Alibi
June 29, 2004 // Link
I watched the movie Her Alibi on its bare-bones, cropped DVD. I’ve always had a soft spot for Tom Selleck movies, which is why I was willing to break my “no widescreen, no purchase” policy. The sub-$10 price had a little influence as well.
I was struck by just how terrible the score for that film is. It’s not just distracting, it’s hilarious. It’s full of “wah wah waaah” and “sproing!” noises to accompany the physical humor, swaggering trumpets when the tough guys are on screen, and background themes that Nintendo would have rejected as too corny for Mario to woo Princess Peach with.
Even so, it’s not in the same league as the 80’s synthapop music by the Alan Parsons Project which underlies the mediaeval action rom-com Ladyhawk. That still gets my vote for most distracting and hilariously inappropriate score of all time.