Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Top Ten List: 25 May 2007

Published
by
Bryan
on Friday, 25 May 2007
in Music
. 0 Comments

A follow up regarding the Iraq funding bill - Clinton and Obama both voted against the bill in the Senate. Here in California, our Democratic Senators, Boxer and Feinstein, split with Feinstein voting for the bill that does nothing to end this war. And by nothing, I mean it is a giant step to begin not ending the war. In the House, our representative Lois Capps (D) voted against the bill, but she’s voted against the war from the beginning, so a vote for the bill would have been shocking.

Today, I’m away to the Bay. I leave the second most expensive city to purchase gas (Santa Barbara) for the most expensive city to purchase gas (San Francisco). And we’re driving. Stupid is as stupid does.

TTL for this week is below. Have a good and long weekend.

10. Make That Sound, Arto Lindsay, Salt
9. People Often Tell Me I’m Good At What I Do, Astronautalis, You And Yer Good Ideas
8. Crow Black Chicken, Bad Livers, Delusions Of Banjer
7. Let Me Go, Cake, Prolonging the Magic
6. Solid Gold, Eagles of Death Metal, Death By Sexy
5. Centerfold, Hayseed Dixie, A Hillbilly Tribute to Mountain Love
4. Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake, Grandaddy, Sumday
3. Soul Flower (Remix), The Pharcyde, Bizarre Ride II
2. Last Cans of Paint, BOAT, Songs That you Might Not Like
1. Certain Girls, Kissinger, Me and Otto

Democrapping out!

Published
by
Bryan
on Thursday, 24 May 2007
in Political
. 1 Comment

McClatchy Newspapers reported yesterday that the Democrats will no longer pursue a timetable of troops withdrawals from Iraq:

Democrats conceded Tuesday that their demands to begin withdrawing from Iraq can’t be included in a war-spending bill because President Bush would veto it, and they prepared to give him the money largely on his terms.

“The president has made it very clear he is not going to sign a timeline. We can’t sign timelines over his veto. But the fact of the matter is I think we have moved this debate very substantially forward in terms of accountability and demanding a new direction in Iraq,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

Democrats are working under a self-imposed deadline to finish a war-spending bill that Bush can sign this week - before the Memorial Day recess - in order to avoid holding up funds needed in combat zones and being bashed by Republicans over the holiday recess for not supporting the troops.

All Out of FlowersWay to tough it out there, Dems. You’ve waited six years to get a congressional majority, did so largely on the back of a massively unpopular war that you promised to end, and still can’t manage to show any spine - even as support for the war and for Bush continues to fall. Nicely done, way to go, no wonder you lose Presidential elections.

According to CNN, Nancy Pelosi was quoted as saying, “I think it’s a giant step to begin the end of the war.” Apparently, Pelosi is trying to utilize the Bush tactic of calling something the opposite of what it is in actuality. Oh, and congratulations, Nancy… that might be the most idiotic sentence to fly out of a Democrat’s mouth since John Kerry learned to talk. Here’s another great idea - let’s start calling tequila shots a “giant step” towards “beginning” sobriety.

John Edwards has already come out with a statement against this latest bill:

Conceding to the president on full funding for the Iraq war is a serious mistake. It is time to force an end to this war, and the only way for Congress to do that is to use its funding power. Any compromise that funds the war through the end of the fiscal year isn’t a compromise at all, it’s a capitulation. As I have said repeatedly, Congress should send the president the same bill he vetoed again and again until he realizes he has no choice but to start bringing our troops home.

Edwards is dead on here, and frankly, is looking like the only candidate I would consider voting for on the Democratic ticket. Of course, the election is still far enough away, so I imagine he’ll do something between then and now to piss me off.

Quote the Raven, ¡Nunca Más!

Published
by
Bryan
on Tuesday, 22 May 2007
in Political
. 5 Comments

While visits to CoolMojo.Net are steadily increasing as time goes on, I have no delusion about what that means. One of the drawbacks in blogging publicly is that you have to deal with the unfiltered public - which can vary from useful, articulate comments to comments by some idiot with a keyboard, an internet connection, and nothing better to do.

Jennifer, in all her glory, has managed to run with this whole “blogging” thing and has made it into something that many people notice. I can say, with great pride, that a lot of the traffic that ventures to all of the sites here visit due to her posts.

Last Friday, Jennifer received a comment from someone calling himself BorderRaven regarding a press release she posted about a day-laborer advocate, José Fernando Pedraza, who was killed in an accident at a counter protest in Racho Cucamonga, located in San Bernardino county. BorderRaven took umbrage to Jennifer’s posting (which you can read, along with his comment, here), even going so far as to make a veiled threat about “defamation, slander and libel”. After using the Google, I discovered that BorderRaven is a member of a group called Save Our State, an anti-immigrant group that has worked with other outfits like the Minutemen Project.

Normally, I would post what I really think about Save Our State, but since BorderRaven used the words “defamation”, “slander” and “libel” and I actually know what those words mean, I have heavily edited this post as a result of BorderRaven’s veiled and meaningless threat.

Save Our State is a bunch of ignorant crackers an anti-immigration group who’s goal is to further humiliate California challenge illegal immigration. They consist of stupid rednecks with nothing better to do people who can barely get off their fat asses protest various day-labor sites and stores that provide jobs they wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole to those of questionable immigration status. Many of them haven’t read a fucking history book feel immigrants lack the ability to assimilate. Save Our State’s protests have occurred in cities their members can’t pronounce Rancho Cucamonga. Some of their protests were attended by white supremacist groups who flew Nazi flags and gave Nazi salutes controversial. Their members secretly wear assless chaps are also affiliated with another bunch of rednecks the Minutemen Project.

I hope this makes fun of people who I think are damaging this country while calling themselves “patriots” clears up any misunderstandings.

Top Ten List: 18 May 07

Published
by
Bryan
on Friday, 18 May 2007
in Music and Notes
. 1 Comment

Yeah, so things are a little busy. Last weekend was Jennifer’s birthday, so in addition to a Happy Birthday kinda-Vegetarian BBQ Friday Evening, we had her parents in town for the weekend - which meant a trip to the Museum, to Painted Cave, to Solvang for Wine Tasting, and to the Chumash Indian Casino. We actually ended up at the casino TWICE… and I left the place down a total of $8. Jennifer’s dad… ehhh, not so lucky.

Jennifer and I spent the previous weekend in Orange County, and this weekend it’s down to Long Beach. The weekend after this, it’s a trip to San Francisco to see our friend get her Master’s Degree. We will have left town or had out of town visitors every weekend in May.

And things aren’t exactly quiet at work these days, as last Friday (Jennifer’s Birthday) I was the deejay at UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang’s Staff Lunchtime BBQ (sounds like some funky gameshow, and it kind of was a funky gameshow). I could probably write a blog entry on that experience in and of itself.

So, anyway, you come here to find out about me and my wonderful world of living…. here’s a TTL, and hopefully I’ll be more profound next week. Have a good weekend.

Song, Artist, Album
10. 5 Million Ways to Kill A C.E.O., The Coup, Party Music
9. Neat Neat Neat, The Damned, (title track)
8. Propaganda, Dead Prez, Lets Get Free
7. Billy’s Dead, Deadbolt, Voodoo Trucker
6. Not Great Men, Gang of Four, Entertainment!
5. Rockit, Herbie Hancock, Future Shock
4. Piss On The Wall, J. Geils Band, Freeze Frame
3. Everyone Is In On It, Love Is Chemicals, Love Is Chemicals
2. Jungle Love, Morris Day and the Time, Jungle Love
1. It’s Oh So Quiet, Noise for Pretend, Read - Interpreting Björk

RIAA: Screwing the consumer since 1952

Published
by
Bryan
on Thursday, 10 May 2007
in Music
. 1 Comment

So if you are fan of internet radio, hopefully you have followed the follies of Copyright Royalties Board (CRB) and their ruling last March to implement, at the behest of the RIAA-formed SoundExchange, new royalty payments that would effectively put small internet-based broadcasters out of business. Last April, Congressmen Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) introduced The Internet Radio Equality Act (H.R. 2060) to “nullify” these new royalty payments and roll them back to what they were previously before the CRB decision. Today, Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a companion bill to H.R. 2060 in the Senate.

Hopefully, after the dust settles from all of this, we can finally put to rest the notion that the RIAA and SoundExchange have any interest in representing artists, and are solely interested in representing the financial interests of the labels. If their desire to obliterate a medium that they don’t control - that being internet radio - wasn’t proof enough, then there’s two more bits I’d like to share with you.

Wired: Listening Post reported on April 30th that SoundExchange only paid out 60% of the royalties collected in the first quarter of 2006.

SoundExchange collected approximately $14.2 million in royalties and paid around $8.5 million to artists and labels.

SoundExchange says the difference is “held in reserve for artists and sound recording copyright owners (SRCOs) that have not been identified or located.”

That’s right - SoundExchange is so interested in artists getting paid that they lose track of 40% of the artists for whom they are collecting royalties. One might think the labels would get a little miffed about not getting their share, but when SounExchange is busy getting the royalty rates increased, I’m sure the labels simply see that as an investment. Incidentally, after three years - the longest amount of time SoundExchange is required to keep records - they no longer have to pay those artists.

There is also a “landmark” case that no one seems to remember. In 2002, five of the RIAA’s major members (Vivendi Music Group, Sony Music, BMG Music, Warner Music and EMI Group) agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit in which they were accused of subsidizing advertising for retailers as to ensure that CDs would not sell at too low of a price. According to Ars Technica:

[The] music industry was running a “minimum advertised pricing” scheme (MAPS), under which they’d withhold valuable in-store promotional materials (i.e. giant cardboard cut-outs of Outkast, posters of Britney, and the like) from large retail chains that advertised CDs at low prices as a way of drawing people into the store. Wal-Mart is one of the chains that uses CDs as a loss leader, so when the feds found that MAPS was another just word for “illegal price fixing” Wal-Mart went right back to its loss-leading ways.

Those are some upstanding citizens in the music industry - seemingly willing to screw the consumer in every way possible.

Back to the internet radio royalties: I would argue that this is one issue where it is critically important to contact your congressional representative, and maybe send a letter to your senators as well, asking them to support these two bills. I think it’s a safe bet that the RIAA and SoundExchange will do some heavy lobbying on their own to defeat this proposed legislation - and they have LOTS and LOTS of money.

I also recommend the website Save Net Radio (http://www.savenetradio.org/) as a way of keeping tabs on this issue.