Sophomoric Is A Compliment

According to the Blog Readability Test, I need some higher education.

But I'm still a more elevated read than:

The Huffington Post

Wired

CNN

every MySpace page

Yahoo! News

Good From The Neck Up

I couldn't wait a full year...mask wearing chicks in states of undress. It's like Halloween...but in November.

Guitar Zero

Once every few months I take something off Dan Lin's blog, and this is my latest lift.

It's impressive for the sheer dedication to hand eye coordination, but nothing else. I don't know what song it was, but it was full of cheesy 80's metal riffage that was made for dorm room shredding on GH3.

South Park, like their satire of World of Warcraft and the Imaginationland war on terrorism, totally nailed Guitar Hero.

Oh, I only hope this is how the game ends.

Fuck You America, Here's Your Dead

Friday was a pretty slow day, so there was little to rant and carry on about, but the weekends are always good to me.

Norman Mailer, one of the finest writers I have never read, died at 84. He had the misfortune of passing on a Saturday, when blogs are silent and news crews bring in their C-teams. In addition to having penned some of the most critically lauded work of the 20th century, Mailer was the only writer I know of to be name-dropped in a GWAR song. That alone is an awesome accomplishment. But there's much more.

Mailer drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times, and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party. He had nine children, made a bid to become mayor of New York City, produced five films, and flew gliders. Over the years he challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with fellow legendary writer Gore Vidal, and crusaded against women's liberation.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author had numerous run-ins with the law, usually for being drunk or disorderly, but was also jailed briefly during the Pentagon protests in the late 1960s. While directing the film Maidstone in 1968, he punched actor Lane Smith, breaking his jaw, and bit actor Rip Torn's ear in another scuffle.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is what makes an American treasure. And sadly, by Sunday night, the big obit belonged to Donda West.

Who the fuck?
(thanks to PJ Harvey for that)

The mother of Kanye West, that's who.

Goddamnit America, I fucking hate you. The newsworthiness of the story rates somewhere between what I ate last Thursday and analysis of satellite photos of Nova Scotia. I know you want a respite from the news that our so-called intelligence advisors want us to redefine our idea of privacy in order for them to continue a war on invisible enemies. I know that you're scared now that the writers are not penning new episodes of Desperate Housewives. I know that baseball is done and the NASCAR series is all but over, leaving you with precious little to distract yourself with. I know that the CMAs have passed and that the American Music Awards are a pale second to you. But seriously, I fucking hate you so much right now for even reporting it. America, your priorities are all messed up.

Possessing the snizz that popped out Kanye West is just not enough to merit the kind of media that Donda West is getting, especially compared to Norman Mailer. It's a true shame that more people in the country will scan the web news, watch television, or check the paper and take the time to glorify the minor (and even that's a huge stretch) accomplishments of a rapper's mother than many decades worth of multimedia work from a true giant in the entertainment field.


UPDATE: The word is that Donda died due to complications from cosmetic surgery. Fantastic!

Also, Rybot has leveled his finger of shame upon me for not recounting Cremaster 2 amongst Normy's greatest hits. Shame on me indeed.

Weekend Space-Out

I'm just going to stare at this thing for a few hours before I do anything. Cheaper than drugs, but not as socially gratifying.

Helmet Heads

Whether piloting the new F35 Joint Strike fighter jet or crushing revolution in the former Soviet state of Georgia, it is important to look as inhuman as possible. I say, objective: achieved!

The future ain't what it used to be.

A Plessy v. Ferguson Joke Is In There Somewhere

Letters Home From Our Troops

Guinness Book Of Who Gives A Shit

When I was eight years old, I read the Guinness Book Of Records and was impressed by the world's longest fingernails and the tallest man. Then I realized how unnecessary it was.

Twenty five years later, the self-important folks who compile useless data are still going strong, and they've made today their day.

Guinness World Records Day should bring out about 200,000 morons who are looking for the smallest possible piece of fame. What is mind boggling to me is why even bother to take stock of these things...unless your proprietary enterprise and prosperity depends on creating false importance. It's not a coincidence you saw a rat just before an exterminator came to your door.

Does anybody care what the fastest time is pulling a red doubledecker bus 10 meters with their ear lobes is? If you do, you're probably not smart enough to get up or change the channel when commercials come on. And the mania has moved to a large scale level where towns are working together to wasting time achieving the unimportant.

Making the world's largest underpants? Creating the longest bra chain? A record length Riverdance line? Most dance taps in one minute? Largest game of Twister? Steepest tightrope walk? Fastest time trying to escape from a straitjacket underwater? These are all retard pursuits.

Guinness celebrates exactly what I chide -- the meaningless and banal. Peeking into an almanac or looking at a list of record making statistics can be interesting, but stupid stunts and feats of worthlessness are exactly what they imply, and no self-proclaimed authoritative organization is going to legitimize it. Because they're the only difference between licking the most frog's assholes or having the biggest cold sore privately, or for all the world to know.

Totally Cross

I'm totally pissed off after seeing this picture.

I know there's some choices to be made for money, but seriously, this is goddamn awful. Worse than Led Zeppelin doing the Cadillac commercial, worse than Henry Rollins and his Apple Powerbook. Hell, it's even worse than every movie they made after the first American Pie (and I had the good sense not to see them).

I will always remember when David Cross had some cred.

The Mud Really Flies

With a year until the election and even less for before the field clears to just two rival candidates, Barack Obama complained about the criticisms leveled at him.

"This is so irritating," Obama said when asked about the photo from Muscatine, Iowa.

The photo, taken during a Democratic fundraiser, has a message accompanying it claiming the presidential candidate didn't hold his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

Have we gotten to the point were we're trying to undermine candidates because they're not patriotic enough? Or that they're deliberately not participating for some sinister reason? Obama responded the photo was taken during the singing of the national anthem, not the pledge.

"My grandfather taught me how to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was 2...During the Pledge of Allegiance you put your hand over your heart. During the national anthem you sing."

See, he's at least as capable as a two year old.

"This is the classic dirty trick of the campaign," Obama said. "You don't have to curse them out, just tell them they've got their facts wrong."

He is right though...even if the green senator is not destined for the Oval Office, it's a pretty lame attempt to chip away at credibility and kick up even the tiniest dirt. Really, even if Obama can't swing the Pledge of Allegiance, do you honestly think that's the sign of something worse?

Drukqs

1. Drukqs Are For The Children

A popular children's toy found to contain a chemical that the human body turns into popular date rape drug GHB has been banned in three states, and is being recalled by its Melbourne creator. Believe it or not, it was not Baby's First Frat Party Keg or the Easy-Bake VIP Club Cake Oven.

Bindeez, an award-winning craft toy, has colourful beads that are joined together to create designs and sprayed with water to fix them. The company yesterday ordered a nationwide recall of the Chinese-made product, saying a chemical had been substituted for original non-toxic glue without the company's knowledge. The body metabolises the substance into gamma-hydroxy butyrate. Three children have been admitted to hospital in the past 10 days after ingesting the toy's beads.

I really dug my Legos and G.I. Joe figures, but having something like "magic beads" would have made my childhood infinitely more intense. Playing "doctor" would have been replaced with playing "club promoter" or "frat boy".


2. Drukqs ("afx237 v7" / "gwarek2" - Aphex Twin)

Rubber Johnny

3. New Drukqs Are Needed

A Florida sheriff's bulletin warned of purported new drug that comes from human waste.

The inhalant called "Jenkem", allegedly causes hallucinations and a euphoric high. The bulletin noted Jenkem users dislike its sewagey taste, which can last for days. That's because Jenkem's active ingredients are urine and fecal matter, hence its street names like "Butthash" and "Fruit from Crack Pipe".

This, of course, is total bullshit.

As the story goes, Jenkem originated in Africa and other third world countries by fermenting raw sewage to create a gas which is inhaled to achieve a high. The fecal matter and urine are placed in a bottle or jar and covered most commonly with a balloon. The container is then placed in a sunny area for several hours or days until fermented. The contents of the container will separate and release a gas, which is captured in the balloon. Inhaling the gas is said to have a euphoric high similar to ingesting cocaine but with strong hallucinations of times past.

Once ingested the onset of the high takes approximately 10 seconds with the most severe hallucinations happening in approximately 20 minutes. Alleged accounts indicate that the subject immediately passes out after ingesting the gas then regains a magical/hallucinogenic state within seconds of regaining consciousness. The high has been described by subjects as a feeling of "being out of it" and "talking to dead people". Some claim the feeling lasted for several hours or even days.

While the police informational bulletin about Jenkem was widely circulated, evidence that Jenkem use is a real or a significant phenomenon anywhere in the world is scant. Descriptions of Jenkem starting appearing in the press in the mid-1990s, most of them merely referencing it in passing, and nearly all of them specifically mentioning its use as being unique to street children in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. And we all know that info from Zambia is usually ironclad in its integrity.

The earliest reference to Jenkem is a 1995 wire report:

People used to wonder why a gang of scruffy pre-teen boys hung around the sewer ponds of the Garden Township here [in Lusaka].

The stench is so overpowering that people literally speed through that stretch of the slum area wondering how those who live close by ever got used to it.

The answer has finally dawned on Zambians, and it has left them pondering the desperation of its street children. The boys at the garden township have discovered "Jenkem," a new way of getting high.

The process is simple. Human excreta is scooped up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers which are covered with a polyethylene bag and left to stew or ferment for a week. The contents are then inhaled and the result is a lungful of biogases and a powerful "hit."

Jenkem "huffers" bury their entire face in the ghastly mess, gasping it all in.

"Ba mudala, niyikali kuchila dobo," Mukela Nyambe, a fifth grade drop out, told IPS with teary eyes and a running nose. "Old man, this is more potent than cannabis."

The Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) says there is nothing they can do about it. It may be a terrible health hazard but is completely legal, as are glue or petrol sniffing, previously the most common way street kids numbed their senses.

Similar info came up in a brief 1999 BBC News article on the subject:

At the Lusaka sewage ponds, two teenage boys plunge their hands into the dark brown sludge, gathering up fistfuls and stuffing it into small plastic bottles. They tap the bottles on the ground, taking care to leave enough room for methane to form at the top. A sour smell rises in the hot sun, but the boys seem oblivious to the stench and the foul nature of their task.

They are manufacturing "Jenkem", a disgusting, noxious mixture made from fermented sewage. It is cheap, potent and very popular among the thousands of street-children in Lusaka. When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkem as a way of getting high.

"It lasts about an hour", says one user, 16-year-old Luke Mpande, who prefers Jenkem to other substances.

"With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life."

Sniffing sewage is a symptom of the desperate plight of Zambia's street-children. There are thought to be some 75,000 in the country as a whole — a number that has doubled in the past eight years.

Nobody knows exactly where the idea for making Jenkem came from, but it has been used by street-children in Lusaka for at least two years. Nason Banda of the Drug Enforcement Agency is not proud when he says that it is unique to Zambia. He shudders when he sees the boys at the sewage ponds, scavenging for fecal matter to make Jenkem.

"It's unimaginable" he says. "It hits right at the heart to see a human being coming down a level, to be able to dip his hand into a sewage pond, picking out the material and not caring about anything but the feeling of getting high."

How absolutely unsubstantiated and unverifiable. People do so pretty odd crap to get high, but nobody is huffing shitgas. If there was any truth to the matter college student would be breaking into sewage treatment plants all throughout the summer to catch vapor from the cess pools. And you know that some dumb Florida kid tried it after hearing the bulletin.

Street Justice

Two students at Southern Illinois University kidnapped, paddled and burned a young man after a drug deal went bad. That's some Charles Bronson shit!

Madison County prosecutors charged Rosario James and Jordan Sallis with two counts of aggravated kidnapping and one count of robbery and aggravated battery.

Last Friday night, three men went to James' house to buy marijuana, but two of them grabbed the drugs and fled, leaving the third behind. The suspects held that man and told him he needed to find $400 for the drugs. James and Sallis beat the man with a wooden paddle, burned his neck and shoulders with cookies immediately after taking them from the oven, shaved off some of his hair and poured urine over him from a soda bottle.

That. Is. AWESOME!

The victim managed to escape and call police after the suspects drove him to a house in trying to get money for the drugs. There was no evidence that James or Sallis had been using drugs before or during the alleged torture, but there's plenty of evidence they were not going to get ripped off. Technically, they committed some crimes, but when you're doing illegal shit, I say the rules go out the window.

What's News?

Lots happened...imagine the time it would take to go through everything in depth.

Energy Drinks Jolt Blood Pressure, Study Finds
Scientist are unimpressed by the obvious results. Next up, proving laxitive teas make you crap.

Police Station No Place To Smoke Weed
But my place is still cool if you wanna come over and hang out...but don't bring Destro - he's a douche.

Most Fans Paid $0 For Radiohead Album
And I am one of them. Thank you P2P networks!

Police Paint Portrait Of Fatal Melee In South L.A.
I don't care how talented they are, I'll look at any artistic interpretation of a 30 woman fight where somebody gets run over by a car.

Scientist Claims To Find New Pig Species
I made the same discovery at Cabo Cantina in April…and I’m not going back. Ever.

World Photo Appeal Sets Standard In Pedophile Hunt
It beats the old way…tying a 7 year old to a tree and waiting.

Woman Hurt In NYC Steam Blast Speaks
And I quote, “Ouch!”

Satan Caps Isles' 3-2 Win Over Rangers
Hail Satan! Hockey is so badass that even Satan plays, and he plays to win.

Oklahoma Death Penalty Foe Commits Suicide
Killing others = bad. Killing yourself = good? The irony hurts, especially when I keep laughing.

MITeed Off

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing architect Frank Gehry, alleging serious design flaws in the Stata Center.

The building, celebrated for its unconventional walls and radical angles, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior, according to the school. They add that accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

Details from the suit show MIT paid Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which totaled $300 million to build. The Picasso version of a building houses labs, offices, classrooms and meeting rooms, plus makes students who are on drugs totally freak the fuck out.

"Gehry breached its duties by providing deficient design services and drawings," according to the school, and they include Skanska USA Building Inc. in the suit as well.

Neither Gehry Partners nor MIT commented because of the pending lawsuit, but Skanska executives claim Gehry ignored warnings from Skanska and a consulting company before construction that there were flaws in the design, claiming "this is not a construction issue, never has been."

Between Gehry, who also did the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the score of big brains at MIT, I think it's hilarious that nobody noticed any potential design flaws. Pure genius.

Convict Army

Faced with higher recruiting goals, the Pentagon is quietly looking for ways to make it easier for people with minor criminal records to join the military, according to the Associated Press.

The policy review comes as the number of Army recruits needing waivers for bad behavior (such as trying drugs, stealing, carrying weapons on school grounds and fighting) rose from 15% in 2006 to 18% this year. It reflects the services' overall growing use of criminal, health and other waivers to build their ranks. Currently about three in every 10 recruits must get a waiver, and two-thirds of those approved in recent years have been for criminal behavior. Even more encouraging is that some recruits required more than one waiver to cover things ranging from a criminal record, to health problems such as asthma or flat feet, to low aptitude scores.

The goal of the review is to make “cumbersome” (as they call it) waiver requirements consistent across the all armed services, and reduce the number of petty crimes that now trigger the process. Naturally, some Army officers worry that disciplinary problems will grow as more soldiers with records, past drug use and behavior problems are brought in. They must be the ones who were not dope smoking thieves prior to joining.

One example advocates point to is the Marine code for drug use. The Marines require a waiver for one-time marijuana use, while the other services don't, and 69 percent of conduct waivers for Marines who joined from October 2006 to June 2007 were for previous drug use. By comparison it was 12% for the Army. But in earnest, the bulk of the Army's conduct waivers during that time were for serious misdemeanors, which includes thefts worth more than $500, any incident involving a dangerous weapon on school grounds, or minor assaults and fights. Try that to the tune of 71%.

And having an ingrown toenail or allergies is no longer winning the waiver war. According to the Pentagon data, the bulk of all conduct waivers are for recruits involved in either drug offenses or serious misdemeanors. For Marines and Air Force candidates, they fell between 75-80%, but the Navy actually saw a decline…down to a tolerable 40%!

Relaxing some of the waiver requirements may make it easier for the Army to meet increased pressure for recruits in the next few years to fight unpopular and unnecessary wars in the coming years. And why not? I say let troubled youngsters get killed for our interests. Just because they did something illegal or bad in the past shouldn’t preclude them from having a gun and a flag to defend. In fact, get them off our soil so we can be safe, because without the discipline and leadership of the military, who knows what they’ll do if left unattended.

Real Life Monkey Drumming

In this week's video submission by Rybot, he passes on the tale that Chris Cunningham was possibly inspired by some live percussion when he took Aphex Twin and made yet another incredible merger of sound and vision.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Spider-Girl

Doctors began operating on a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs in an extensive surgery that they hope will leave the girl with a normal body. Yeah, good luck.

The freak girl is joined to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in the mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus. Lakshmi, is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, something she'd have if the family put her on display in the traveling circus.

Shockingly, there are many complications for Lakshmi's surgery. The two spines are merged, she has four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. Peep the picture if after all that haven't figured out she cannot stand up or walk. Sexy.

Lakshmi stands an 80% chance of surviving.

Nobody should be surprised that this story comes out of India, and that the hospital doing the surgery is paying for the operation because the girl's family could not afford the medical bills.

Just Say No To NaNoWriMo

What is NaNoWriMo?

National Novel Writing Month is a "fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing", as their founder puts it. A few years ago, it was hell.

Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000-word novel by midnight, November 30. And for almost a decade, Chris Baty has led an ever growing group of aspiring writers and novelists down the river into the heart of darkness.

On the surface, it is innocent and enthusiastic. To invigorate the writer, and motivate them to create without concern about perfection.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

As you spend November writing, you can draw comfort from the fact that, all around the world, other National Novel Writing Month participants are going through the same joys and sorrows of producing the Great Frantic Novel. Wrimos meet throughout the month to offer encouragement, commiseration, and—when the thing is done—the kind of raucous celebrations that tend to frighten animals and small children.

While noble and genuine, that sets up a bit of a paradox. Sure, there’s all that jive about taking risks and churning through page after page, but that’s counterintuitive to what the writing process is and to what makes a writer better. Writing without editing and taking the time to think about what you’re creating is the equivalent of composing a song that you can’t hear as you’re playing it – the end result is ugly and opposite of the intent.

While they are pushing the light-heartedness of the experience, any writer with more realistic aspirations (like Yours Famously) should find the task nearly impossible and troublesome from the outset. As stated in their rules, the writing dates are fixed, and what’s more you must come up with an idea from scratch on November 1st. Writing 50,000 words on a story you’ve already extensively outlined, developed and researched is verboten. And hard as hell.

I came up with my tale and got to work on it after a good day of thinking my ass off on a basic plot, which fortunately was easily expandable and allow me to research and develop as I hammered out the characters and setting in the early chapters. About midway through the month I started worrying about keeping up with my output in order to cross the word barrier. Even though I was starting to slip, I didn’t lose quality or focus on telling the story properly, and so I gave up that concern. Also, I realized that my story was going to be far beyond their word goal, which made me happy, but I wondered how folks were capable of meeting such a stringent guideline and not sacrifice the essence of their idea.

It turned out they couldn’t.

Some had posted excerpts of their work, and it was total shit. Yes, writers are critical of their “contemporaries” – a term I use only to say they too were writing, but the things I read were poorly expressed, boring, and utterly unreadable. Working regular hours left little time at night or on weekends to live pleasantly, let alone crank out a novel, and I saw that the level of talent of those who were making their quota was relative. With a level of creativity equal to their level of responsibility (which must approach zero), it made much more sense what I was seeing.

Somewhere past 30,000 words and with less than a week, I decided to pull the plug on the race that need not be run. It wasn’t sour grapes on not meeting the challenge, but sour feelings about the careless forces driving the process. In third grade, the teacher gave you creative writing exercises with the same risk-free goal of completion. Being unbound by editorial restraint and conventional judgment is fine when you’re eight, but the real creative process isn’t crapping out volumes of words, it’s condensing it to only the necessary ones. I was glad to be preliminarily inspired and try the project, where the only reward is to have verification you met the word count, but the context of the writing lost it’s charm when I saw what was at stake in order to complete the game – writing well.

This near-daily waste of time is but exercise for thinking quickly and developing ideas with a creative twist, but like NaNoWriMo, it is foreplay to real writing and should never be considered as such. And the more I bloggulate, the more I see the difference between that and longform storycraft, and like writing what likely does not constitute a decent story in under a month, the more you strive for one yet do the other, the further the two roads split.

And so Scartoe, I warn you against undertaking the process.

It's A Camera...Run Away!

No tricks on this blog...he does what he says.

The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.

Running From Camera. I'm fascinated.

Too Rich

It’s bad enough that the rich are so, well, rich, but to have nothing better than to spend absorbent amounts of lucre on items is plain insulting.

Take the awesome made-to-order Sveid corkscrew. The small hook used to operate the corkscrew is 18-carat gold, but is also available in platinum if you’re a precious metals snob. The body is made from "aviation titanium", which I guess is the same metal grade that private Lear jets are made of. Also, it makes the thing near-indestructible, because opening a bottle of wine is dangerous as hell. It can be yours if you have $72,000 laying around in your bar supply fund. On the other hand, you could pay my rent for the next six years, and I’ll gladly open a bottle or two for you.

Too pricey? Maybe the level of flash you’re looking for comes in the form of a cell phone. Your $7,000 cell phone. Oh, Vertu makes more expensive models - up to $310,000, but you can still get a gold and sapphire lined mobile screen in the starter phone. Aside from rubies for the bearings and fine leather casing, each mobile is hand-made for every egotistical prick who feels like dressing up something you can get for pocket change at Radio Shack.

Maybe you’re a charatible person who will spend some of your vast fortune on others, say, your children. If so, you need the Cartier Baby Panther motif rattle. It’s a steal for $200! That’s less than the price of a bottle of wine you’d open with your Sveid corkscrew. Sterling silver baby rattles tell the world, “Hey, fuck your poor children with their plastic rattles…this three month old has class and wealth!” And why not? It goes perfect with the bald eagle feather down blanket and the hand carved crib.

Wondermark

I am a sucker for clever webcomics that use open source 19th art work as a stylistic motif. Not that there's a lot, but one more is always good.

Blame Canada

Our neighbors to the north are once again making sense.

An extensive new study counters what the Canadian Recording Industry Association (as well as our own RIAA) have claimed – that there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing.

Two professors from the University of London, with Industry Canada and Decima Research, surveyed over 2,000 Canadians on their music downloading and purchasing habits in perhaps the first empirical study to employ representative microeconomic data. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what they claim.

Anyway, these were their two big findings:

First, when assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." Translation: it is estimated that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

Second, the aggregate view of the entire Canadian population shows there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. "The analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole."

Note that this study was government commissioned independent research. The findings are backed by an earlier study by Canadian Heritage that also countered the claim that P2P downloads negatively effect the industry.

The study also found there was no statistically significant relationship between P2P downloads and digital download purchases from stores such as iTunes, meaning P2P downloads neither increase nor decrease the likelihood of such purchases. Also, CD prices have little impact on CD purchases, though there was some indirect evidence of pricing being factored into those that P2P file share. People who buy large numbers of DVDs, videogames, cinema and concert tickets also buy a higher number of CDs, and that household income has no statistically significant effect on CD or digital download purchases

The study itself is a dry read for the non-economist, but the message is that the industry has at worst benefited from P2P activity and that there has been no adverse effect. And still, this further undermines the major labels attempt to find a scapegoat for their sagging sales. As more and more bands leave the big labels (see Radiohead and Madonna’s recent moves) or get exclusive distribution (Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell through Starbuck’s or the Eagles at Wal*Mart), the companies are losing their power as fast as their revenue.

And the most pathetic fallout over the crumbling of the record industry? “I find myself, when I’m signing a record deal now, asking, ‘Can this sell as a ringtone?’” said Steve Rifkind, president of SRC, a label affiliated with Universal. Let that soak in.

Sans Entourage

This may not be a great Halloween costume (and I hope that's what it is), but it is yet another reason for me to hate Entourage and anybody associated with it.

Adrian Grenier has got his gas face on like they just told him Santa Monica Blvd was going to be cordoned off in West Hollywood on Halloween. Or maybe he's just angry with himself for being seen in public looking like a ladyboy. Guess we'll never know, but I can tell you that that chick next to him dared to find out, and now she's looking at a little rhinoplasty. Who's got spandexcstasy now, bitch?

...And You Will Know Them By Their Independent Release

It's always nice to see Goliath take a few licks from David.

Indie / art rock band (...And You Will Know Us By The) Trail Of Dead have dropped their record label, a move usually served in reverse. Before Interscope records purged the band's page from their site, charmingly kind singer Conrad Keely had some polite words to say about the affair.

So as has already been announced, ...Trail of Dead has once again made history, this time being the first band to drop Interscope. OK, we're not the first. Actually, Trent Reznor beat us to it. Let's just say we're the first rock band to do so... this year. Ever since label head Jimmy Iovine started dating the lead singer guy of the Pussycat Dolls it became impossible to get him on the phone, so that was a first bad sign. Then their idea of marketing became keeping it a secret that we'd released a record. The industry is in a strange place these days, and the only way they can make money is to sell urban pop music. Which is what I thought we were writing, but apparently I was wrong.

That's not saying the label didn't do great things for us. At the expense of a massive debt to them of half a million dollars, they really helped us to grow. They've taught us about the worthlessness of A&R people, how to yell at idiots running an art department, and how to shake hands with smiling retailers who have no idea who you are. And I love Jimmy Iovine for having worked with John Lennon and Phil Spector on the Rock and Roll sessions. I mean, that was thirty years ago, and the Rock and Roll sessions sound pretty bad over all, and John Lennon is now dead and Phil Spector has murdered people since then, but hey, that was really cool that Jimmy did that, thirty years ago, back then, and dated Stevie Nicks. He's had a great dating record, he just won't have the next TOD record.

Beyond that, there were a few paragraphs of pseudo-political narcissism and general wanking befitting an indie vocalist, but the point still got made loud and clear -- the major labels are on their way out.

The Human Dickwad

No kids, this is not a joke about the president...just the best goddamn Halloween costume you're going to see this year (especially since I was forced into abstention). Behold, the merger of mankind and dildonics!

No Art In The Performance

Cypriot-Australian eccentric “performance artist” Stelios Arcadious has set himself apart from contemporaries.

After a 10 year search, he found a surgeon willing to give him a new ear…his third. Working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University's Digital Research Unit, he was able to procure an ear grown in a lab that was implanted into his left forearm in 2006. After his final operation last September, it is fully formed for his next step – making it hear.

Arcadious believes art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." He hopes to get a microphone implanted as well, which will connect with a bluetooth transmitter.

“That way you can listen to what my ear is hearing.”

I’m sure that forearm hears a whole lot differently than those other ones two feet away.

I’m glad there are so many people who are driven to make themselves deliberately different by doing body mods, especially those stupid ones. In order to impress your fellow humans yet show your individuality, you have to make yourself not look like them, right? Know that nobody would put the effort into looking that way if they were not ever going to be seen. It’s an ego thing, not a self-gratification. And if you don’t believe that, think about it again next time you get ready for a date.

From splitting the tongue to horn and metal stud implants, they are the next stage in personalization, now that tattoos and piercings no longer make the maverick. Silly and outlandish, but next… And don’t confuse any of this with real art. Your body is not a canvas and living with your lame attempt at creativity hardly a performance of any type. Performance art is fairly marginal in terms of merit, but this is setting the bar about as low as the rungs will take it.

Super Retardedly Fun Weekend

Whether you're going to jam with a band, catch a hockey game, hang with your friends, or sleep the shit out of Sunday, enjoy the weekend.

And if you're going to do all of them like me, you may as well goof on others...

WNNO

Your iPod nano has got nothing on a carbon nanotube radios.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have crafted a fully working radio from a single carbon nanotube - a man-made microscopic mesh rods composed entirely of carbon atoms 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. Fixed between two electrodes, the nanotube vibrates and performs the four critical roles required to receive radio waves: antenna, tunable filter, amplifier and demodulator. Power is supplied by streaming electrons from an attached battery.

Its inventors have already used it to broadcast two songs: "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos and "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.

The Berkeley team beat another group at UC Irvine, who announced last month they had created only a demodulator, which converts AM radio signals into electrical signals, out of a carbon nanotube. Also, UC Irvive is a punkass UC school. You and Riverside both.

The Berkeley team says its microscopic radio could be used to create radio-controlled devices capable of swimming in the human bloodstream and other novel applications, like play the entire AC/DC catalogue.

Getting Themselves On The Ballot

Oh, Parent Of The Year, you have some real contenders!

Television bounty hunter and posterboy for straight-to-video action movies from the 80's, Duane "Dog" Chapman, had his show pulled from the air indefinitely by A&E, two days after a private phone conversation in which the reality star used a racial slur repeatedly was posted online.

In their spineless statement, the channel copped to the following:

“In evaluating the circumstances of the last few days, A&E has decided to take `Dog The Bounty Hunter' off the network's schedule for the foreseeable future. We hope that Mr. Chapman continues the healing process that he has begun." And then assured folks that one of the top rated programs on the network had not been canceled.

Wow, how considerate, and decisive. Who said A&E didn't have balls?

Dog, who shouldn't look forward to many happy Fathers Day's in the future, was thrown to the media wolves in his own words by none other than his son. Seems a private rant at your kid urging him to break up with his black girlfriend isn't kosher if you keep calling her a nigger. Yep, I said it. Fuck you Sharpie and kiss my ass Jessie!

Tucker, who has the jungle fever and can now change his name to Benedict Arnold, recorded the conversation and sold it to The National Enquirer. What a wonderful son. You've got to feel good as a parent when you raised your boy to record your stupid racist comments and sell them to paparazzi vultures who'll tear you apart. I can't defend good old fashioned racism, but let the crazy old racist make himself lose credibility with his kid in private and let's worry about little vindictive brats who are so self involved that revenge is more important that keeping a family's honor and image intact. Oh shit, who am I kidding...they're a family of white trash bounty hunters who looking like Maui tourists circa the Carter era.

Celebs, I told you, your private conversations can now be used to ruin your public image and career even if they have nothing to do with your work or fame. Isn't that right Alec Baldwin?

Meanwhile, Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid took some attention away from his team's dismal 3-4 start by insisted he will not resign after a judge sentenced Reid's two sons to prison and likened his home to a "drug emporium." Why would he have to resign? As long as those kids don't play for the Eagles, who cares?

Reid took a five-week absence earlier this year, also in relation to the shining antics of his rascally boys.

"...as parents we have huge concerns for our two boys. This has been a battle we have dealt with here for a few years and I'm sure we'll continue to address the situation. Our prayers are obviously with the boys, for their future, and to make sure things work out, where they can live a normal life down the road," he said. You're pretty much out of your league as a parent if you're praying your little junkies can live a "normal life".

Fortunately, equally sage minds agreed Reid's parenting was as good as it got.

"He has done everything he could. He went out, worked his butt off to make sure he made a good life for his family. Through that he showed his kids ... It is up to the kids to learn from it."

Cornerback Sheldon Brown hath spoken!

"At the end of the day, each individual makes his own decision and has to be held accountable for his own actions."

God damn, he spoketh again!

On Friday, prosecutors charged 24-year-old Garrett Reid with five additional drug counts related to 89 pills he had smuggled into prison. His cellmate said he saw Reid remove the pills from his rectum and that Reid offered him some of the pills. Supercool! I just saw the same thing go down in the second season of Oz.

On Thursday night, police searched the Reid home to corroborate the cellmate's story. They found numerous drugs in Garrett Reid's room, including several prescriptions in his name and other prescriptions in his brother's name, as well as two syringes and eight needles.

That same day, 22-year-old Britt Reid detailed his eight-year struggle with painkillers and other drugs as he was sentenced to 8 - 23 months in jail for pointing a gun at another driver. He also pleaded guilty to charges including carrying a firearm without a license.

Originally, Garrett Reid had been sentenced to 2 - 23 months in jail for a high-speed crash in which another driver was injured. Police found heroin, steroids and more than 200 pills in his car and he admitted using heroin on the day of the crash.

Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill called the Reids a "family in crisis" and questioned whether brothers Britt and Garrett Reid should return to their parents' home after they serve their jail terms.

At 22 and 24, they shouldn't be living at home.

Both Chapman and Reid are wearing ostrich sized egg on their faces thanks in part to their children, who have world class parents whose failures personally and paternally have made their offspring damaged goods. And no matter what, it is the parent who is responsible for the actions of the child, whether they drove them to it or neglected to prevent it. Then again, they're a bunch of bastards who make their dads look bad when doing only what they want. Selfishness is to children as incompetence is to parents.

Gifstringing

Rybot answers the question, "Has somebody put a whole bunch of their strange, animated gifs together into one video?"

Big Long Bang

Liuyang City, China's largest fireworks-producing city, set off a 20 km string of firecrackers, which lasted for more than an hour. And nobody from Guinness World Records agreed to show up.

"We hope the success of making the longest firecracker will increase the confidence of producers and make our city well known across the country," said Xu Qiangguo, head of the Liuyang Firecrackers Bureau. Damn, why don't we have a Firecracker Bureau in my town?

The promotional event cost over $100,000 and many people in the region weren't happy about it.

"Unless the firecrackers are supposed to be part of a cinema scene of raging war, what benefits can come from setting off 20 kilometers of fireworks?" asked the Beijing Times.

"It's high time to call off applications for the professed 'longest' or 'most' records, such as 10,000 people eating hotpot and 10,000 people washing their feet together. They lack social significance as well as scientific and technical skills," said an editorial in the Guangzhou Daily, which called the event a "real burden for the local economy."

Chinese towns have long staged a variety of fantastic 'records', including the world's largest mooncake, the world's longest whisper and the most people ever to fit on a golf course. And while these hardly mean anything, can't we just understand that you need to keep a country with over a billion people busy, especially if half of them are living in rural poverty?

Play Better!

Already at the center of tennis' gambling probe, No. 4-ranked Nikolay Davydenko was criticized for his play at a second consecutive tournament.

Davydenko, the defending champion, finished with 10 double-faults and 36 unforced errors in a 6-2, 6-2 third-round defeat against No. 22 Marcos Baghdatis. The Russian was booed during a match in which he lost serve five times, and drew a rebuke from the chair umpire.

A week ago, Davydenko was fined $2,000 by the ATP for "lack of best effort" during a 1-6, 7-5, 6-1 loss to then-No. 102 Marin Cilic at the St. Petersburg Open. Davydenko was given a hard time during that match by the chair umpire, too. Awesome insult to injury - you lost and you have to pay for your shitty effort. If only they enforced that across the other professional sports...

Chair umpire Cedric Mourier spoke to Davydenko at a changeover during the Baghdatis match, asking him what was wrong with his serve. Davydenko responded by asking what else he could do.

"Serve like me," Mourier said. "If you serve like me, you put it in the box. That's it."

Fans heckling players is one thing, but to have the striped chair jockeys harassing you, well, that requires an extra level of suck on your part.

Davydenko had said Wednesday he was hampered by a sore elbow, but he didn't give a direct answer when Baghdatis asked him what was wrong as they shook hands at the end of the match. "I cannot serve," Davydenko said later. "That was happening in St. Petersburg. I don't have pain really. I have no pain in my elbow. I need to find what's the reason I cannot really serve."

In August, online gambling exchange Betfair voided all bets on a match after Davydenko withdrew against 87th-ranked Martin Vassallo Arguello in the third set because of a foot injury. The ATP is still looking into that match. This guy sounds like his game is falling apart. He should just retire and come back in a year like most tennis players do. His game can't get any worse, right?

Natural Pollution

In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide as the state's power plants and vehicles did, according to scientists.

A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year -- in fact, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. The California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, and the researchers calculated how much carbon dioxide was likely to come from the devastating week long October blazes.

Try 8.7 million tons - more than the state of Vermont produces in a year.

On average, wildfires in the United States each year pump 322 million tons of carbon dioxide. That's only about 5% of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and coal by comparison, but still significant. In previous studies, scientists have shown that a general increase in American wildfires — but no one event — is linked to global warming.

The scientists used satellite imagery, computer models and combustion rates to determine how much carbon dioxide is released during a fire, and estimated that for every acre burned, the emissions were equivalent to two cars driven for a year.

Dear Earth, thanks for fucking yourself up more and helping us along with the process.

Don Scumbag

The slob-pig known as Don Vito on MTV's show "Viva La Bam" was convicted of two counts of sexual assault on a child.

Vincent Margera, 51, who was accused of groping three girls ages 12 to 14 during an autograph signing event last year at mall skate park in a Denver suburb of Lakewood, fell to the floor cursing and yelled, "Just kill me now." Way to keep it together and maintain some dignity.

He faces a sentence of probation to six years in prison on each conviction and was being held without bail until his sentencing hearing in mid-December.

His defense attorney Pamela Mackey had argued that when Margera appeared at the skate park, he took on the persona of the outrageous and profane Don Vito. Mackey had said that Margera, a car painter (no surprise), learned that the crazier he acted, the more his fans loved it. Oh, that's his excuse? That's a pretty flimsy defense, and a real dodge at accepting any responsibiity. I hope that doesn't ruin the "mob-encouragement" defense for other crimes, because its powerful and makes perfect sense.

Of course, plenty of documented photos of you touching girls in public can ruin your chances of winning a case too. That, and being a 300 lb plus creep with a lazy eye.

what, me guilty?