You Arrogant Bastard

How about a clothing store called Wyclef Jeans

So yeah you have all heard by now. A hurricane hit this town, a laptop would have been nice but I'm not saying I'm dependent, or that anybody reads this, or that I didn't occupy myself either way. But listen, I'm out of practice so just lay down. I spent the days leading up to the storm trying to repair these weblogs, which were damaged as a result of the recent Alapo server move. So I lost my Johnny Cash entry, it was a nice picture, but reposting it for personal gain would be a bit irreverent. More importantly, we lost the tail end of that argument I was talking about over there at the dead horse Tailored Results.

Anyway, so I guess we aren't getting the old stuff back, and I just went a week without power, so as Dr. Smith would say, bunk dat. Lets get back to the old routine of mocking the suburbs and talking about what flavor slurpee I had today [while we're on that topic, I tell you... don't get that grapermelon shit anymore. They switched the flavor. It's sour strawberry and that shit tastes horrible. The grapermelon sign is still up there so just watch out- thats all I'm saying. That, and that the sour strawberry tastes like shit. Should have stuck with coke. Any responsible drug user would tell you the same. Don't mix and match your shit unless you know exactly what you are taking. I didn't know it was sour strawberry. I didn't know what I was taking and I was left with a tart slush that I eventually threw out in White Flint. That's right. Suburban Washington. We have come full circle. Now I can close the bracket].

So I did a good bit of newspaper reading by candlelight, and I'd put two articles up here if the Wall Street Journal didn't charge you an assload of money to read their paper online. Here's one that I liked. It an opinion piece from like 6 days ago, so yeah don't bother pointing that out, Saul. It discusses the democratic responses to the question "What is your favorite song?" at the debate back on the 9th in Baltimore. I had figured they had been prepping for this one too, but, well, shows what I know. Check this shit out.

By this point, the other candidates had had time to develop a politically "useful" answer. Nonetheless, Dean chose "Jaspora," a Creole hip-hop number by Haitian-born Wyclef Jean that Dean identified as "one you've never heard of." The simple lyrics are garnished with Biblical allusions and supported by an addictive reggae beat. It is utterly apolitical. It's not even in English. (It was, however, huge in Haiti.) Maybe Vermont's favorite flatlander was trying to reinforce his position as the "wild and crazy guy" in the Democratic field. Or maybe the former governor actually said what he thought -- which wouldn't be out of character for someone who recently suggested that the United States should be neutral in the Middle East peace process.

Haha... Wyclef. I stand by my Chili Bowl restroom wall proclamation:
A to the motherfucking L Sharpton in 2004.

Original Gangsta

A War of Words

9/11 is back, and again, conflict has hit close to home here in DC. In fact, it rages on in our own backyard... a heated debate of words is taking place in Trevor "T-PhaGGoat" Martin's cultured weblog, Tailored Results, specifically his recent entry entitled "Argh!"

Make sure you check it out if you are one of the 6 people who actually reads this site and has not seen it already.

And go see the Dalai Lama at the Cathedral. It'll be a TENZIN' GOOD TIME! [note: "You Arrogant Bastard" not responsible for injury sustained to readers as a result of suicide bombing]

Y'in Sedudu: Recording Industry [150,000 per song?!]

Everybody check out the article in the Post today? Yeah, the one about the RIAA filing 261 lawsuits against evil, profit-margin-recuding filesharing thieves [including a 12 year old kid or something like that]. Mentioned in that article is the RIAA's amnesty deal that will, it claims, protect you from litigation, provided that you get on your knees and promise the RIAA not to trade any more copyrighted material. This article, however, finds fault in the seemingly benign scheme.

First, the amnesty offer doesn't apply if the RIAA has already subpoenaed your ISP for your info without your knowledge. The EFF maintains a database of known subpoenas, but RIAA lawyers didn't respond to a request for how to definitively tell whether you're on their larger list. More important, the RIAA's offer can't protect you from other potential litigants, which include indie labels or vengeful songwriters. A close read on the terms of the deal finds this clause:

Information will not be made public or given to third parties, including individual copyright owners, except if necessary to enforce a participant's violation of the pledges set forth in the Affidavit or otherwise required by law. [emphasis added]

That last line is the kicker, an EFF lawyer says. There's no guarantee a third party won't successfully subpoena your information from the RIAA, using the same legal procedures the RIAA invoked to get it from your Internet service provider.

The article also makes the point that any seasoned filesharer aged at least 14 years knows: If they are going to bring you to court for using Kazaa, simply move to the next big thing. The filesharing community is like the porn industry: the biggest attractions never last for long, and they spoil as they get older. My opnion has always been that Kazaa wasn't so great. The spyware problem was solved with Kazaa Lite, but I always had trouble finding good music from indie labels. Audiogalaxy was better for that, yet none of tehm can touch what Napster had.

To those determined to make an end-run around the music biz's lack of attractive online offerings (Apple's iTunes Music Store is still the best of a weak lot), the lawsuits just mean it's time to abandon KaZaA by moving their game of keep-away to the next playground. KaZaA rose to prominence only after Napster was shut down. Now that RIAA lawyers have proved they can subpoena the names of KaZaA users from their ISPs, expect a mass migration to anonymous, encrypted P2P networks designed specifically to fix the known vulnerabilities in KaZaA. Earth Station 5 is the most outrageous example. It uses a mesh of proxy servers, encrypted data, and other identity-hiding tricks to keep copyright owners from tracking who's downloading what. To top it all off, the company—which recently issued a press release declaring itself "at war" with the entertainment industry—is headquartered in Palestine.

So don't give your name to any 'amnesty' agreement! The RIAA is trying to bully its way into better sales. Personally, I would not want to subsidize the entity that is prone to sue me at any time. Thank god for the CD/GAME Exchange. Buy used music!

Philosophy and Philosopher

It's been one of those laughably familiar high-school nights again- the kind where you see so much you don't know what to believe? Yeah, that kind. And as soon as you think you've seen it all before, before you become so comfortably jaded, like an emergency room nurse [Yes, I see your fucking wound, now take a seat like everybody else], something turns around and bites you in the ass. Or, with more relevance, vomits at you from a safe distance. The fact is, I've been watching people vomit for years. My earliest memory of such an event was sometime during the years I went to preschool, when my brother asked my mom to pull over the car so he could vomit all over the sidewalk. Boy howdy, that vomit contained large circular chunks. Anyway, this isn't going anywhere, and I forget how I was gonna plug it into theological philosophy. The bottom line is, shit, Hopkins' head was like a can of spray paint. I thought I was doing the right thing...

Hopkins! Get into the bathroom.

SLAM. Like a dam breaking, it was. The liquid spewed out of the hole in his head like water rushing through a hollowed out log. I didn't stick around for much longer. I went to go tell people about it, think up more analogous situations, you get my drift. I think I was going to talk about how vomit no longer shocks and frightens me the way it used to. But when you think you are just talking to a guy and then he starts erupting like a grand liquid volcano, shit. How's that for a conversation stopper?

Anyway, I've completely lost where I was going with this. Check out this website. You take a little test about your personal beliefs, see if they check out, see if you're a hypocrite, etc. Understand your own personal philosophy in a convenient HTML based lecture. [courtesy of Queerben]

And while we're on the topic of philosophy, I thought I would take the time to share a website that I found, which contains words of wisdom from the prolific reggae legend Lee "Scratch" Perry. Check it out here. Say what you want, but this man is a genius. Here are some highlights:

"When I left school there was nothing to do except field work. Hard, hard labour. I didn't fancy that. So I started playing dominoes. Through dominoes I learned to read the minds of others. This has proved eternally useful to me."

"Well, all those tapes have been stolen from Mr. Perry because they discover that Mr. Perry was creating the African arkology. And if he have the facts of life and the wizzy [wisdom], then why shouldn't we steal it? Pauline decide to poison me and go to Haiti to get the jugs that turn people into zombie. It did not work. It turn me into Superman!"

When I shit, my enemies take sick. When I speak, they split! And when I speak again, they vomit. Send them to the doctor to go cure them. There is no cure for my enemies! They die on my sword, Excalibur. I stand alone! On the microphone. With all my
pound, shillings, and pence. I go to Japan and kaput Japan economy. And I kaput German economy, I kaput Russian economy. I pack up the Russians with my rock, and I rock up the Americans with my cock. Rock up the Germans and say I am the wordsman, I am the herbsman, and I kaput your economy for insulting me and putting me on the reggae program. I am ET. Ethiopia.

Well, you could read Plato for years and learn nothing. But that right there... that just about says it all.

Lights Out

Well so there it goes boy-o, put a cap on it, play it all backwards in slow motion so you can watch the skin go back onto his leg. The summer has bellowed its last drunken laugh, and we collectively are being herded into the next stage of BLUEPRINT: YOUTH, and damn if it isn't filled with all kinds of anxiety and future fear. Fuck man, I smell the wet dirt. The cows are lying down. Fucking shit. If I had a time machine... you know. Fusion energy, hovering skateboards, roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.

So the thing that troubles me the most about the whole college admissions process is what a waste of time it is. Please, sir. Allow me to pay you $70 to evaluate me as a human being. Not good enough? Drat. Well, this other panel of people I've never met or spoken to says I'm good enough. I'll give the aggregate $120,000 to them.

Has anybody considered the fact that a large part of our lives are being determined by people that have ultimately failed? What kind of kid stands up at morning meeting and declares "When I grow up, I'm going to be a college admissions officer!" I'm sure they are all worthy individuals, but come on... they must have done something wrong in life to wind up making their living judging children. Too much booze? Too little? I'd really rather be judged by some hardcore successful people. I would have no qualms if I got a handwritten letter from Nelson Mandela telling me I wasn't sufficiently prepared intellectually to handle the rigors of an institute of higher education. But when you get that auto-mailing with the standard letterhead, that cold, sterile letterhead that addresses you by your full first name... well shit man. Its just like if I was running for governor of California right now. I would have no problem getting beaten by Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least its not some young prick with a pair of thin-rimmed glasses. Nothing is worse than being somehow beaten by somebody you could physically beat. Cruz Bustamante should have no problem conceding defeat to that powerful, godlike man. I guess I'm being too self-centered. I'm sorry, Mr. Mandela. That was the primadonna in me. That sure would be great though. Get Nelson Mandela to personally author every letter of rejection from a college. I want to see him walking down the roads of South Africa - tomorrow!
These are going to be some fucked up weeks. You know things are fucked up
when you can't tell whether the spam in your mailbox is accusing you, under the assumption that you are a woman, of having laughably undersized breasts, or telling you, under the assumption that you are fickle, that you have cancer or hives. I'll get it checked out anyway just to be safe. For the first time in my life I miss the comforting consistency of a penis-enlargement advertisement.
Hell of a way to spend your last night, though... come on now. J Russell had it right, too many hollow shells, not enough recognized street cred. Man, how can you live in a great town like this and never cross the park? I wish there was some sort of Lee "Scratch" Perry quote to fit my thought process now. Ah well, I lost my creative flow reading an interview in search of this quote. I'd better throw in the towel. Hell of a thing to do when the shit has not even hit the fan yet. I would have needed that towel to wipe all that rank shit from out my eyes. I'll pick it up if the situation calls for it. Yeah, I guess I kind of spent this evening waiting for things to pick up, as they normally would. I was waiting for something, but I don't know what it was. Waiting for it to hit my bloodstream, waiting for somebody to shout out my name from 10 yards away and then sift through people to shake my hand, sure I'm arrogant, but everybody wants that. J Russell went home because he wasn't getting his usual due in that regard. Culture shock I guess. I may be a middle-class white kid but I sure am antsy and uncomfortable in the intricate social webbing of the rich/white/attractive/clean-pants scene. At least I've figured out the college social context already so I'll be set as soon as I push through these next four months. Its documented in Ma$e's comments. At college, you can be anything you want to be! I'll pretend to be a little less rich and white. Lets shape up this world, join the Peace Corps and feign interest for several years. See you at school, Bobbo. We got any classes together?

Fuck it, the gears are already in motion... my 'possible careers test' from 6th grade has determined my future: I shall be a pastry chef.