Month: September 2004

A pagan/political listserv I am on had a thread about doing some magic to ensure that the November Presidential erections are “fair and honest.” This is my response:

This is an interesting idea, however I have some
meta-concerns about it. Put simply: I believe a fair and
honest election is impossible at this juncture.

“Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber” — or more accurately,
“Tweedle Neurotic Servant Of Corporate Greed or Tweedle
Sociopathic Servant Of Corporate Greed” — is hardly
fair, no matter how votes are counted, no matter how
many people with brown skin are disenfranchised, no
matter how many Supreme Court justices decide who should
be president.

The two party system is nothing but a smokescreen, a way
to placate the American people into believing that their
vote is somehow meaningful. “I live in America, where
I’m free to choose Coke OR Pepsi!” I’m here to say: cola
sucks, rots your teeth, and has no nutritional value
whatsoever. They may as well return to putting cocaine
into it.

As far as honesty goes, who knows. I myself am
suspicious that Florida 2000 is the first example of
election rigging. It’s just the first one that was close
enough that everyone paid attention.

Don’t mean to be overly pessimistic here, but this
system is broken. If we are going to do magic to
improve the American political situation, the we should
start at the base and fix the problem, not merely pull
the wool back over people’s eyes into thinking that
votes between a Rep and a Dem will make any substantial
difference.

This system is broken, and needs to be replaced.

I actually laughed out loud a few times when I wrote this. I particularly liked the “neurotic servant of corporate greed” vs “sociopathic servant of corporate greed” line.

This new site is kind of like slashdot for politics. No wait, it is slashdot for politics! It’ll be interesting to watch. Though I suspect it will reflect the general state of American politics today, as does geekdom in my observation. For every radical or progressive geek, there is a hardcore libertarian or right-wing nutjob. I’ll probably check it out for a while.

Interesting Reading, indeed. From the Project Censored Exposed page:

Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country’s major national news media.

I was glad to see that wealth stratification was the #1 story, though all of the 25 look interesting.

An old speech by Bob Black from 1980 has been published on Alternative Press Review. Here are the first three paragraphs:

No one should ever work.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.

That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By “play” I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.

This reminds me of other theories by the Zerowork collective from the 1970s. I particularly like the Brezsnian emphasis on “freely interdendent exuberance.” The world definitely needs more of it. This is a very interesting read.

Go read this. Despite the RIAA’s moaning about violent criminals marauding the high seas, it looks like BMI is posting record profits. Very interesting indeed.

Just to be clear, BMI is one of the main performance royalty collectors on behalf of artists (along with ASCAP and SESAC). So they aren’t technically in the business of selling albums, but rather collecting royalties on behalf of songwriters whose songs are performed on the radio, on TV, in movies, etc.

So technically, this could be seen as irrelevant to the recording industry’s woes. More and more songs are being performed, and more royalties are being collected on behalf of artists. But record sales have nothing to do with it.

Perhaps the most salient point of the article is that the argument commonly put forth by the RIAA that “piracy hurts artists” isn’t the most accurate assessment of the situation, especially given that most artists earn very, very little from album sales.

Regardless, this article is further evidence that the situation is not so cut and dry either way. Clearly, there is a relationship between “piracy” and record sales, but what exactly the relationship is can be hard to pinpoint.

Maybe so. The folks who make Annabelle have started making a new line of guitars. The Pathmaker line (what Annabelle is) is a custom design by Abe Wechter that is made in a guitar factory in China. Abe discovered, however, that due to economies of scale, the factory can make more traditional acoustic designs even cheaper, simply because they make so many more. So he decided to import some of these designs, and give them the “Maple Lake” moniker, since they’re not Abe Wechter designs.

Annabelle is a great guitar, esp. for live performance. It’s pickup system is top notch, and the guitar plays like a dream. Its only weakness is that its acoustic tone is not as loud and full as other guitars, due the hybrid design (some of the guitar is solid wood, and doesn’t vibrate as easily as a normal acoustic). So I’ve been thinking about getting a 2nd acoustic, both for those kumbaya moments around the campfire (ie, playing acoustically with others and without amplification), as well as for recording with microphones in the studio.

Since Annabelle is a small guitar, it makes sense for my 2nd guitar to be a large body instrument, a “jumbo” guitar. And it just so happens that Maple Lake has a jumbo, with the exact same pickup system that Annabelle has. Very cool. I want to get this guitar. I’ll have to sell my old acoustic to do it, but the Yairi is in the same category as Annabelle, and of the 2 Annabelle is better suited to my needs at this point.

There is some amount of trepidation trading in a guitar I’ve had for nearly 15 years, but in the spirit of Buddhist non-attachment, it’s clearly true that a large-bodied acoustic would better suit my needs.

UPDATE: It’s a done deal. I sold my Alvarez, and ordered the Maple Lake 2614 Jumbo. Looking forward to playing it! Hopefully it will tell me its name in a timely fashion.

This has to be the best mode of protest I’ve seen in quite a while. The Surveillance Camera Players do performance art in front of government surveillance cameras. One of their recent performances is a summary of Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Go look at this, it’s well worth it, especially in light of obscene images like this one.