You’ve Won The Lottery. Now, Do You Buy A House Or A Song?…

The RIAA continues their ridiculous strangle-hold on people who download music. One of the better examples of this is the case they launched against 30-year-old Jammie Thomas in October. Allegedly, Jammie used the P2P file sharing program Kazaa in order to download copyrighted material from the artists. Nothing out of the ordinary so far (unless you count the fact that she used the shittiest downloading engine available at the moment). What is very troublesome, however, is what the courts have decided regarding how much the RIAA are allowed to sue for. In this case, $222,000.

You read that correctly, $222,000 for a small amount of songs (24 I believe). The story goes like this: single mother with an annual income of less than $35,000 gets sued by the RIAA for downloading songs via Kazaa. The case is settled in court in the RIAA’s favor. The case is then taken to the Department of Justice to contest the ruling but sadly, the ruling stays. In the end, the Department of Justice agreed that $9,250 per song is a viable price to quote in a case like this. So now this single mother with an annual income of less than $35,000 is forced to somehow come up with $222,000 in an effort proposed by the RIAA to “deter” any future “pirates”. Uh, yeah. Makes perfect sense.

The RIAA needs to stop this insane crusade they are trying to spearhead. Look, there isn’t a youthful soul alive that doesn’t download music these days. Do they really think this absurd case will stop people from becoming “pirates”? All this is going to do is deter people from downloading from Kazaa. It’s been said a million times before, but you can’t stop online downloading. You attack one site for allowing it, a hundred more will pop up later that day. The fact that the RIAA are wasting the amount of money that they are just trying to “deter” this unstoppable aspect of the industry is just sad.

Gene Simmons and that disaster area he calls his face recently claimed that the only people downloading his music are “pimple-faced thieves”. Simmons acts like all of the downloading of music is being done by a small group of teenage bandits, roaming cyberspace in order to steal directly from the artist’s pockets. Let’s make this clear: EVERYONE DOWNLOADS! The people that take the time to download Simmons’ shitty music are his fans. That’s who’s doing it. Some of them probably have pimples, I’m sure, but they are KISS fans all the same. So, in essence, he is slamming his own fans by saying these things. Don’t think for a second that the people in the audience of a KISS show have never attempted to download the music. (It’s also funny to me that the guy saying this is in a band that has done everything in their power to extort as much money from their fans as possible.)

Saying online downloading is something that can be avoided and prevented is along the same lines as saying time travel and world peace are possible. They are all impossible dreams and can never be attained. So, the RIAA keeps attacking these helpless victims because, well, they know they’re helpless. It’s an easy case to prove a point with. Which is really all this is about. The RIAA and the courts know, I’m sure, that they can’t logically stop online downloading and file sharing for good. Instead, they choose to sue single mothers with annual incomes less than $35,000 for seven times what they’re worth (financially) and claim it’s a valid argument. They know it’s unfair and they know it’s ludicrous. This, to me, is the worst part about these cases. Taking up this much time and effort for something that is only really fueling your own big-headed fantasy seems grossly unconstitutional. But, in that respect I guess it makes it a perfect fit given the current state of the music industry.

By the way, please visit www.freejammie.com. It has various ways to support Jammie Thomas and help stop the RIAA (which, in all likelihood, is another impossible dream). It has some pretty sweet tees too, brah.

Run Run Rudolph! (You’re About To Be Trampled To Death By Hundreds Of Insane Holiday Shoppers)…

(Ed. Note: This post will probably be served best as a cautionary tale to those of you planning to do your Holiday shopping at an actual retail store this season.)

I made the mistake of attempting to do Christmas shopping for my respective family at the Paramus Park mall in Northern New Jersey. I was supposed to go with a couple of my friends but they bailed on me at the last minute, leaving me to brave certain madness on my own. This proved to be even bigger a mistake than I originally began to think when I was stuck in traffic just beyond the boro of Saddle River line. First off, let me just say that I hate traffic and more specifically, I hate bad drivers. Northern New Jersey is full of bad drivers and that pisses me off more than anything else. I’m normally a really calm, easy-going type of guy but something happens to me when I’m behind the wheel. I instantly hate every other driver. The main reason I have such road rage is that I feel horrible driving is not something that should not be easily forgiven. When you suck at something like sports or your mundane office job, you are only harming yourself (specifically, your ego). When you suck at driving, however, you’re endagering lives. So when someone tries to make a left turn at a four way intersection when their arrow is in the process of turning from yellow to red and they think that means they should still have clearance to completely cut everyone off, nearly killing someone coming in the other direction when that other person has the green light…yeah, that is really not cool. It’s at those moments when I proceed to power the window down and scream my head off at them (this goes for old ladies and pimple-faced wieners alike).

So, I’m sitting in horrendous, annoying traffic awaiting my arrival at the mall which I know will also be a horrible experience. And when your mind realizes that you are enduring something you hate in order to do something you REALLY hate, it’s immediate reaction is to shut off and terminate your life, effectively saving you from dealing with your enormous stupidity.

I finally arrive at the mall at around 1:30pm. Now, being the forgetful fella I am, I forgot that I was arriving at a mall in the middle of a Saturday during prime time of the holiday shopping season. Yeah…bad idea, to say the least. It was only after I pulled into the parking lot for the first time that I realized how shitty my life was about to become for the next few hours. As I was battling the endless amount of assholes prowling the parking lots for an available space, I saw one individual that seemed to encompass everything about holiday shopping people seem to hate. It was a black car attempting to park rear-end first into a spot that was currently occupied by someone in a green car that was trying to back out and leave. It seems the black car drove passed the green car only to realize that the green car was actually leaving. So, rather than just admit defeat and continue on, the black car decided to stop where he was, turn on his right blinker (the green car was located in a spot to his right) and wait while the green car left the spot. The problem with this plan (despite the obvious) is that he was stopping while there was a trail of cars behind him. So, the black car was now stopped, awaiting a possible vacant spot while causing a major traffic tram that would eventually stretch to the main road leading up to the mall. Not only that, he was actually blocking the green car from leaving because he didn’t pull up far enough! And, he can’t pull up anymore because there was another blue car already waiting for the green car to leave…and that car was actually waiting BEFORE the black car was! Horns began to blow and fists were shaking as hard as I’ve ever seen them shake. When I initially turned the corner, I was promptly greeted with this sad display of human interaction. After witnessing it for a little while, I desperatly wanted an alien ship to soar out of the sky, wipe us all out with it’s death ray, and end this misery that is holiday shopping.

I managed to find a spot that was miles from the mall but since I haven’t gnawed my hands off yet, I was still in good shape walking into the main entrance. The mall itself resembled the running of the bulls in Spain. It was endless sea of people running to and from for reasons that have yet to be defined in any rational matter. The retail companies of America have made us psychotic on a level that is really just ridiculous. People will actually severly injure someone else for a talking doll just so their bratty kid will play with it for two days after Christmas.

I raced around the stores scapping up some pretty good gifts (I won’t go into details on this because the people I am buying the gifts for will be reading this). I had almost escaped without any long term emotional scars when I suddenly had a desire to shop for some winter apparel from Gap (damn promotional posters). I went into the store and found some nice gear, paid, and left. This quick visit to Gap is crucial, however. Had I left the mall before going to the Gap I would have avoided the following incident…

I was beginning to make my way towards the exit when a group of young kids came out of a toy store followed by a large group of adults. A couple of the kids were running and proceeded to continue their stride directly into my legs, nearly tripping me and causing me to spill my bags onto the ground. This, obviously, was frustrating because I had a fragile gift in one of my bags that was probably shattered. I guess I showed a little of that frustration in my face when it happend and apparently, one of the parents of the little rat that ran into me didn’t like this facial expression. When I bent down to start collecting my bags, the mother yelled out, “What was that face for sir?” Sensing a possible conflict with a soccer mom, I just looked down and continued to collect my things, all the while just hoping she doesn’t say anything else to me. But, I was wrong to hope for that. “They’re just kids, sir. They don’t need you ruining their Christmas by making them feel bad. Just pick up your bags and go, please sir.”

It was at this point that my mind completely shut off. By that I mean that I couldn’t piece the logic of those statements fast enough to have a rational response. All I could do was stare up at the woman with a “are you fucking kidding me?” expression and not move. She stared right back at me, nodding her head in agreement with her own moronic existence. For a few moments (you can insert your own idea of the amount of time “a few moments” actually feels like) that was all I could do was stare.

I will now list the events that transpired after these few moments in chronoligical order because I am honestly too tired to explain everything in detail like I have been doing:

My eventual response to the soccer mom: “How about we just accept it was an accident and agree you need to keep your mouth shut?”…

…Husband threatens to hurt me until the little kid “accidently” kicks me in the right shin…

…Sensing a greater incident unfolding, I gather my things and leave as quickly as possible. I look down to see my fragile gift has, in fact, shattered, and return to the store to return the gift where I was informed there were no returns on broken gifts from this particular retailer once they leave the store. Apparently I agreed to this when I bought the damn thing…

…More yelling ensues…

…Fed up, I leave the mall and muscle through more mental-illness-enducing traffic.

After reliving that day with this post right now, I have a sudden urge to find the man (or people) that invented Amazon.com and give him (or them) a big, tears-of-thankfulness filled hug and let them know they have saved my life from here on out.

Bored, So Here’s A Video (12/17)…

Here’s a quick vid of Kermit doing a mock-up of the Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime”. I have never been able to shake my fixation with the Muppets or this particular Talking Heads song so this is something I’ve been obsessed with in the past couple of days. It’s ridiculously stupid and far be it from me to support Disney ventures, but what the hell…

America’s Alleged Favorite Past Time…

Baseball has long been my favorite sport. Mostly because it was the only sport white dorks like myself could have any possible chance at being successful in. Growing up, I loved little league and relished in being a short stop like my hero Cal Ripken Jr. To me, baseball was pure and when you are a young whippersnapper, you aren’t very interested in the dirty laundry associated with the “business” end of it. Why would that interest a child? We just liked watching our idols belt balls into the bleachers and watch the mascot trip and land on the bat boy. Baseball used to be (to me, anyway) innocent and playful.

In recent times, however, the sport and its athletes are in a constant struggle to regain the public’s acceptance and respect. The opinions of the “organization” as a whole are largely in the toilet and on the surface, it’s easy to see why. Steroids have tainted the game for the past few years and now with the release of the Mitchell Report, the ugliness behind the sport can no longer be avoided (at least according to George Mitchell and Jose Conseco). Obviously this scandal has proved to be very bad for baseball’s public relations, but in the days following this report I picked up on something that has long been my theory as to why the fans are no longer backing baseball the way they used to.

Roger Clemens was without a doubt the biggest name mentioned George Mitchell’s investigation (Barry Bonds doesn’t count; no one had any doubts about his appearance on that list). Not surprisingly, he denied the allegations ferociously. His name was mentioned numerous times throughout the report (the most of any other player I believe) for injecting needles into his posterior for help with his pitching, according to Radomski (the former Mets’ trainer who is the focal point of the accusations in Mitchell’s accusations) and several others. What was disturbing to me, however, was not that Clemens was mentioned (anyone entering their prime at forty-years-old is suspicious). What is annoying to me is that Clemens denied these reports through his lawyer. And there inlays the problem with professional athletes these days. Because it is a business more than it is a sport, baseball is constantly defending itself through the mouths of lawyers and agents. This constant distance from the players continues to destroy the sport’s reputation and image within the public arena. Rather than man up to his responsibility and attempt to squash these claims himself, Clemens has his lawyer speak for him, which only reinforces his guilt in the eyes of the fans.

Now, obviously, since speaking openly about this report has legal ramifications, Clemens (and the other players that will soon be spending the rest of their days proving these claims as false) can’t really be as discrete as he possible could. But let’s not kid ourselves here…this is far from being the first example of players staying behind the curtains while their financial representatives tell us what we need to expect out of the players and the sport. They tell us the “truth” behind rumors and spend their days counting their clients money while we grow increasingly frustrated with the fact that our favorite players just can’t speak to us directly. Everything is top secret in the sport and the fans are forced to decipher their instincts and intuitions from the press releases of people that are more interested in maintaining a profit than defending the sanctity of the game.

What’s so disheartening about this aspect of the “game” is that the players don’t even seem to care about this barrier. No one seems to make an effort to address the fans and let them know what their story is. If Clemens had come out and told the public HIMSELF that he was innocent, we’d be more simpathetic to his case and be more graceful with our insults. By making his lawyer do all the talking, people will continue to blast his reputation and unless he actively convinces us he is not guilty, we will continue to doubt him unconditionally. Because, well, why wouldn’t we? As far as we’re concerned, he’s just another rich athlete that cheated. There is no personal level that we can relate to him on. Ditto for all of the other players mentioned.

It’s why people hate Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. They are constantly reinforcing their mistakes by not addressing them. Each time they avoid the interview or avoid the camera, they are only making themselves seem cold, distant, and isolated from the fans of baseball. Which, understandably, pisses the fans off. And, as stated earlier, the players don’t seem to care that it pisses us off. Which is, again, another ingredient to the overall problem with baseball today.

Next time some overpaid clown tries to deny steroid use through someone other than himself, he shouldn’t be surprised when the public refuses to accept their side the story. Act like a man and tell us yourself. Then, maybe, we will begin to love the sport again.

(Ed. Note: There is an exception to this argument…Curt Schilling. He has a blog called “38 Pitches” that he writes himself. It’s a great way to get to know him both as a player and as a person. Now, if every famed player followed suit, we’d be set.)