Collection of Older Entries
I still haven't figured out exactly what to put in these things. I'm torn between semi-amusing anecdotes about life in general, or just blathering. One thing I *know* I want to get off my chest is an issue a friend of mine is in the middle of. Mainly because it's just infuriating me.

Sunday night, I'm unwinding, getting ready for work the next day, and I get a phone call. It's a good friend of mine. She's hysterical, because her ex (it's been nearly a year!) just told her he's got an STD, and claims she has it too. Now, I know this SOB...liar to the max. Used to be a friend of mine, too, actually. So now she's absolutely terrified, and both her current squeeze and I are absolutely homicidal. What kind of person does that to another?

Long story short, we're trying to calm her down, and her squeeze is talking to a lawyer. Lawyer says she's got a good case for defamation since he's telling everyone she gave it to him, and she doesn't have it.

*SIGH*

Y'know, if I've got the thing, might as well use it. The best way to understand a person, I've always said, is to know where they come from. I was trying to sleep (unsuccessfully, it's migraine time again), and for some strange reason my high-school years were stuck in my head. For the record, it's some time since I graduated.

I grew up in small towns all over the place. In all my life, I've never lived in a place with over 100,000 people in it. When I drive to the city, I'm absolutely astounded that so many people can live that close together without wanting to kill each other. But my most formative years were spent in a little northern community we'll call Creepyville. Simply because, well, this is the Internet and all...and I don't want anyone to recognize anyone if they know them.

The way to best describe the town is to use the example of my social studies teacher in my senior year. His name was (well, for these purposes) Mr. Ward. Now, Mr. Ward was well over six feet tall, skinny arms and legs, big beer belly, coke-bottle glasses, and needed braces. That, and he didn't know how to use a belt. When he turned around and bent over...man, it was like watching the moon rise. Really nice man, but...well, you know that kid you went to school with that you knew played Magic in the corner in his spare time? That was Mr. Ward. Brilliant man though, knew everything you ever wanted to know. Married, two kids.

The first thing you need to know about Mr. Ward is that he and his wife were cousins. Not second cousins, not third cousins, not step-cousins...genuine, honest-to-God cousins. As in their parents were full siblings. Blood related. Yeah, ugh. Well, his sister can top that. Her husband (common-law, I think) was an uncle. Well, one day in class, Mr. Ward is telling us all about his brother. A direct quote from that day? 'My brother married out of the family.' At that point I knew I needed to leave that town, and I did...three days after graduation.

Another Mr. Ward gem came the day two freshmen got their kicks out of writing all over a desk. He actually dragged them out of another class to erase everything off the desk, and scrub it as well. While he's doing that, he's telling us all about responsibility. And (I swear to God, I'm not joking) he opens that with, 'When I took off my clothes, made love to my wife, and we conceived our two children...' An entire class of about twenty to twenty-five teenagers just got the incentive they needed to be celibate for the next few months.

That pretty much sums up my small town in a nutshell. The Ward family wasn't the only one we would joke about...the two favorite lines up there were 'you know you're from Creepyville if you go to a family reunion to pick up chicks' and 'you know you're from Creepyville if your family tree doesn't branch'. (Yes, I know we stole those two from Jeff Foxworthy. It was a big country town.)

So that's where I spent my formative years...being instructed by men married to their cousins, and drunken idiots who would hang out at the end of the main drag in town. Not only that, but it was by far the most racist little 'burg I have ever encountered. If you weren't in one of the two ethnic majorities of the town, you might as well bend over and take it, because you were nothing. Hmm...now I'm back to wondering if I'll be attending my high-school reunion. Probably not...of the over two hundred people who were at my grad ceremony years ago, less than one hundred truly graduated. And the ones that I care to see again, I see anyway. ;)

Here I sit, at 6:54 AM, watching what passes as news at this time of the day. And this article pretty much sums up what they're talking about.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20030410/tc_usatoday/5056309

Now, in the event that the link no longer works, it basically talks about how the music industry is cracking down on people who 'share' MP3's and such.

I admit, I have MP3's on my home computer. Usually stuff I've burned off the CDs I already own. But I don't share it. Maybe that makes me a little odd, but my thought is that I'm not wasting what precious little bandwidth my server gives me so someone in Pago Pago can download the latest Eminem song from me.

Over the years, I've watched the prices of CDs and tapes go up and down like Microsoft stock on a bad day. Right now, if I want to buy Eminem's latest album (probably a good example, since he's a huge seller in my area), I have to pay $24. If they want to know why people burn music, all they need to do is go to the stores and check out the prices. Any 'good' CD is at least $22 if not more. Sure, you can pick up the greatest hits of Frank Sinatra in the throw-away bin for $8, but while Sinatra had a beautiful voice, he's not really the tone of today's generation. Today's kids like music like Eminem, Kelly Clarkson (or however you spell her name...I'm probably the only person alive who can honestly claim I've never heard a single note out of her mouth), Papa Roach, Blink 182, etc.

Every MP3 fan out there knows what happened with Napster. The hottest thing known to MP3 downloads, it died a vicious, horrible death when the law got involved. Oh, it still exists, but there is absolutely no reason for people to use it now. So people have turned to other forms of music collecting.

http://www.cpwire.com/archive/2003/4/3/1297.asp

Then there are the 'big' sources out there now...things like Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, etc, where people download MP3s, documents, game files, and even movies. IRC and newsgroups run the same way...I overheard a conversation the other day where people were downloading entire games like Warcraft III through newsgroups. How they do that is anyone's guess, as I have absolutely no idea.

The whole issue behind that is that downloaders and providers are viewed as infringing on copyright law. Anyone who has ever purchased a CD has seen the line 'unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable laws' (or something along those lines). But two rows down, all stores sell blank tapes or blank CDs. If people aren't using those for 'unauthorized duplication', what, exactly, do they think we're using them for? I know I don't have any copied cassettes or burned CDs that have fully original music on them created by me. My habit all my life has been to make mix tapes, choosing songs on other tapes or CDs I already own, and listening to what I want to, when I want to. So even though I'm not doing anything with these tapes other than listening to them privately, even that is breaking copyright law.

It's interesting to see how people get all bent out of shape when it comes to video piracy, but there's really no difference between someone who burns MP3s off the Internet to use as they wish, and someone who copies a movie onto a tape to keep for private home usage. In both cases, it's copyright violation, and against the law, and can be punished with severe fines, and even jail time. So why do people do it?

1) Inaccessibility. With videos in particular, many titles are out of stock and/or no longer produced. Now, you can rent a favorite title from the video store each and every week, waiting patiently until the store cuts it from their inventory because you're the only person renting it, or you can make a copy. If it was available to buy, you WOULD buy it, but it's just not possible.

2) Cost. I absolutely refuse to pay $35 for a copy of Arnold Schwartzenegger's 'Kindergarten Cop'. Call it a guilty pleasure if you will, but I've always loved that movie. And in order to get it anywhere in town, that's the price I'd have to pay. AND I'd have to do a special order. Same with Robert Zemeckis' 'The Frighteners'. I love the film, but the price is outrageous. Why pay that much for an old film? 'Kindergarten Cop' is from 1990. As far as I'm aware, it's not a classic. And the DVD has no real special features. So what are they charging me $35 bucks for? Arnie's face on the cover?

3) Testability. I know, not a word. But it's a logical concept. If I really like a movie, I'll buy it. I'd rather have an authorized copy than an unauthorized one. But I have numerous movies on VHS that have never been released on DVD, and are now out of print. So I 'back up' my movies. If it's one I really like, and I know I'll watch, I use my purchased copy to make another copy. That way, I don't have to worry about my original running out. I don't sell tickets, I don't distribute, and if I'm showing it to other people, I use the original, but someone would probably still find a way to charge me with something.

Those same three can be applied to music. Lord knows I can't find (to buy) a copy of Rock and Hyde's 'Under the Volcano', despite trying. I've owned three copies of that cassette over the years, but cannot find it again to save my soul. I've already mentioned cost ($24 to hear Eminem tell the world to f*** off? I can hear that for free if I go downtown!). Testability is a good point. If I like something, REALLY like something, I'll go out and buy it. I prefer originals to duplications. Especially if it's an artist I like. I have a healthy collection of Garth Brooks, Blink 182, Bon Jovi, and Elvis Presley. And if I hadn't started out downloading Blink 182, I wouldn't have gone out and purchased each and every one of their albums to date.

Do I have a point? Not really. It's 7:37 AM and I'm rambling. Although if pressed, I would say my point is that file sharing programs aren't the anti-Christ the music profession makes them out to be. I admit I do have a little issue with people who start their own servers simply to share copyrighted music, because in my little mind, I see that as drastically different than the guy who has couple hundred MP3s on his home computer and shares those with others while downloading.

I just saw one of the most useless movies ever. Wes Craven's 'They'. This movie had an unbelievable amount of potential. Good cast. Decent premise. But it fell miserably.

The show just wasn't scary. Not once did I feel tempted to jump or scream. And it was a complete rip-off of Craven's earlier work. And I thought only James E. Reilly made a habit of ripping off himself!

The main starring point of this film was things that came out in the dark. Well, y'know what? Darkness Falls does it better. People who have night terrors as a kid bring something back with them, something that puts an implant in them that starts festering when it's their turn.

This movie had so much potential. It proves what children have known for so long, that there really is something under the bed, or in the closet. Unfortunately, the movie was poorly written and executed.

I rented this movie with a couple friends, and normally, we'd be telling each other to shush so we could hear the movie. We were all so busy poking fun at it that we couldn't concentrate enough to pay close attention. Even re-watching it later didn't improve it.

I seldom think that people should re-create their own films, but this is one movie that Wes Craven should start over with from square one. The man that gave us Freddy Kreuger (who, in the first movie, was really quite creepy) gives us something that I can't even believe made it into the theatre.