Real estate is still a real value

Written by Linda Stern at Reuters. One can only assume Ms Stern currently has a difficult listing receiving infrequent nibbles entirely without the proper level of enthusiasm.

Nude teens raise eyebrows

Theresa Toney … complain[ed] about a group of youngsters naked in a parking lot. “The parking lot is not a strip club,” she said. “What about children seeing this?”

You mean the kids whose heads are still getting the right shape after being squeezed through a vagina, the kids that suck naked tits for breakfast, lunch, and supper, or the kids that need their naked asses cleaned 6 times a day and don’t get to bathe alone till their 13^th birthday? Are those the kids who will be damaged by casual public nudity?

Put down the Fruit of Knowledge, honey. It wasn’t meant for you.

Farmers believe cows “moo” with an accent

Cows believe farmers should spend more time with human women and less time complimenting cows on their accents.

Stick of dynamite found in checked luggage

Made it from Argentina to Houston where it did not, alas, effect any improvements to that city or state.

Harris clarifies comments on religion

Pond clarifies comments on Katherine Harris: Loopy cunt.¹

U.S. works to defuse spat with Venezuela

Little optimism to found. Kissinger is apparently no longer the match-maker of choice.

Soft drink companies reach benzene deal

With 10.67 Pepsis to the gallon at about 50¢ each I think they should have realized a long time ago that there’s no future in benzene.

Activist’s remark starts FBI probe

Jim Bensman got an FBI call because the local toiletnewspaper exagerated his suggestion to remove a dam at a public debate over what to do to ameliorate fish migration problems caused by the dam.

What the FBI man who answered criticism about the overreaction said should be the most welcome statement ever published for terrorists out to get America. He said–

We have to investigate everything.

There’s your manna, my bèturbanned foes. All it will take to shut down every public and federal agency in the United States of America will be a pocketful of quarters, a pay phone, and showing up to a town meeting or two unshaven and saying, “Boo.”

Taller people are smarter: study

Short people got no reason. Short people got no reason…

Ho, ho, ho.

More this week in the news via Google.

I haven’t been insulted well, ever, and it hurts my feelings. This has been a topic of lament here before and in other items unpublished. I think I’m not trying hard enough. I’m irritating all the wrong people. Like the addict who wrote this. No one with any panache or flair for a turn of phrase ever goes after me. Just garden variety, toothless snakes.

It’s a only a token gesture but if you link to me, using either the home page — http://sedition.com/ — or the “author” page — http://sedition.com/a/951 — and use the text, “this clown,” for the link, I will link back to you on this page.

I’m not asking for a blogroll or anything, just an inline, below the fold, straight to the archives clickable without any rel="nofollow" shenanigans. That’s plenty for what the goal. A Google bomb so the world will ever after—well, for the next two years anyway—know who is meant whenever anyone talks about this clown.

Sample prefab links if you’re in a hurry

Participants in the “This Clown” project

#1 from cofucius.

Your link back will appear here if you go through with linking me as “this clown.”

It’ll take quite a few of you to get me to number one for it: http://www.google.com/search?q=this+clown

I won’t rest until I get there. Or until I’m tired. I might rest then too.

For 99¢—which is for all purposes a dollar—you get an aural piece of crap from the iTunes store. 128kbps (or as Apple calls it, “High Quality”) AAC is certainly not the worst sound in the world. They do sound okay through poor equipment competing with ambient sound. But to use 128kbps in the same sense as audiophile is absurd. It’s just not very good and even a tone deaf monkey would know it if that monkey had some Boston Acoustics instead of iPod headphones turned up loud enough to destroy your high frequency hearing by the time you’re 40. Apple and the music labels could easily offer 320kbps, more than twice the current data rate they’re selling, but they don’t and even 320kbps wouldn’t be close to the resolution of music on CD.

A typical CD retails for like $18 but no one except your stupid parents and kids with outrageous allowances ever pays more than $14 or $12 for a CD. The rest of us who know used digitized music sounds exactly as good as new usually pay $2-$8 for CDs.

A five and a half minute song compared

So, for $1 you can buy a piece of crap which you could easily lose to a computer problem, or for full quality AIFFs which you can rerip at any rate you want, any time you please, you can pay between 20¢ and $1.50 per song (assuming 10 tracks per disc).

I love the idea of the iTunes store but as it stands it is a colossal rip-off strictly for suckers laboring under the pitiful delusion that they love music. Paying full price for a fragile, DRM controlled fraction of the real product doesn’t make you hip. It makes you stupid and rewards the music industry for continuing to assume that you are.

Update 8/27: okay, okay, solutions are better than bitching

Résumé — I own four Macintoshes and two iPods and I shopped the iTunes store before you even knew it was up. I’ve never and probably never will own anything pre-installed with any Redmond product.

I want an online music store—badly—but if it sells 9% of the original product for 100% of the original price, it is a rip-off. Don’t learn to accept it as a consumer win. It’s not.

[By the by: the voice/audiobook files are much lower quality and a point unmade about CDs is that not only do you own it, you can legally sell it so the net cost after enjoying your music can be free or even a profit.]

Still, this original post was not a part of the solution. So, let’s start on the solution. Getting, at least for starters, 320kbps songs for sale. I think the full 1,400kbps or the AIFF files would be the real consumer win.

To be a part of the solution

1. Follow this link: iTunes feedback.
2. Select Feedback Type: Enhancement Request and Feedback Topic: Buying Music, Videos, or Audiobooks.
3. Write whatever you want. What I recommend is what I’ve written them twice in various venues: “I love your store but will never shop in it again until you offer higher quality sound files. 128kbps is too low to justify paying full price.”

Update, 22 May 2007

You can now, or soon will be able to, buy 256kbps DRM-free files from the iTunes store for an extra 30¢, i.e. $1.29.

This is—like most of Apple’s business decisions—half terrific, half awful.

Win column–

• No digital rights management.
• Improved quality.
• This ups the ante for other music vendors who will have to follow suit which will up the ante for Apple, rinse, repeat.

Lose column–

• Still only a fraction, ≈ 20%, of the quality they could sell.
• This still inferior, fragile music is on par with a new CD in cost: $1.29 x 12 tracks = $15.48; 15 tracks = $19.35.
• Only one major music distributor is on board so far: EMI.
• No digital rights managment (it’s a loss as well as a win but this isn’t the place to get into it).

The AP tonight reports: “Workers discover chocolate Virgin Mary.”

This reporter wonders if the Health Department will treat future batches of congealed goo with more respect and fewer violations of code.

A tiny white circle … sits in the upper center of the creation… Cruz says the white speck is the head of the Baby Jesus as he is held in Mary’s folded arms.

Notice that even a Mary of chocolate is able to produce a white baby.

Yes, that image is something. That’s just how I imagine the virgin time and time again. Why I’ll say my faith is shooting right up. I know this picture will bring me peace and a good night’s sleep…

Oh, just click on the thing and spare me from further self-flagellation.

Dramatic flash back to another image you’d better be 18 or over to click on: Virgin Mary in the news last year.

It’s either “anal” or “picky.” Please avoid using the expression “picky anal.”

Nothing I hate more than being wrong but it’s important to set things right, therefore–

Looks like it’s apology time again.

I was totally wrong to tell you that there is a park policy against feeding the ducks. My being polite did not mitigate the fact that I had no proof it was a park policy. For all I know it isn’t anymore. The prohibition signs which were once posted are long burned to carbon. It seems entirely possible that the park officials have decided to take down policy postings with kerosene for efficiency’s sake. I’m embarrassed I implied otherwise.

When you astutely deduced that I couldn’t be right about water fowl feces being a problem or else the City of Seattle would just kill the birds, you were showing, as you said, logic; true insight. And you were absolutely right again. The City of Seattle would absolutely never kill thousands of waterfowl nor addle 12,000 or more of their eggs. At least not again. It did work quite well when they did it three years ago in 2003.

You were coming from a pure place and knew you hadn’t done anything wrong. That could be the only reason why you took the time away from feeding sugared cereals to ducks to chase me down without your family—though I did notice you remembered to bring your two rottweilers, probably they would have been scared to be alone—to try to make me agree with you, Bill O’Reilly style. I’m so sorry I remained unable to see your view and that I was a little worried about continuing the discussion with your dogs so close to my offspring.

So, after all the harm I caused you, I readily admit you were justified to flip me off. I deserved it. I had it coming and gratefully accept it as being a plus against the balance of my ongoing edification. I wish I had been man enough to admit it and apologize then. I know I haven’t been living right and it was a real wake up call for me to get straight with Jesus before my life spins any more out of control.

I do—however—take umbrage at the epithet you used against me. Nothing I did warranted you calling me “Liberal” in front of my children.

I await your apology and acceptance of same so that we may become the friends and fellow nature lovers we were surely meant to be.

Sorry to have been of trouble,

Viv

I remember reading, in some marketing for Apple back in the day that Hank Rollins kept on his notebook computer, among other things, “a list of things that are true.”

He didn’t say what they were of course. It was an advertisement, not a political buy from David Horowitz. It’s also entirely convenient. “Things that are true.” Ohhhhhhh. He has a list of ’em. All I’ve got is some vague notion that celebrities, especially edgy ones, never need to back up claims that make even a deity blush from the lack of humility.

Now even though Hank’s 45, he could kick my ass, but even though he’s a rock star, I could teach him plenty about arrogance.

Here are some things that are true. Not from a list. Just from the Truth.

1. Rashomon (羅生門)

Um… actually that’s all.

Well, no. It’s not. But that’s all one can feel is true in your company.

…is fine with me. As long as they keep delivering on the search results. That’s all that I care about.

Teenagers from the high school down the street hang out in front of my house in the warm months. It’s a dead end, shady, and beautiful with the creek. They can smoke their cigarettes or pot without much fear.

I go out and tell them to go easy and they can stay. It doesn’t matter to me a bit what they do as long as they aren’t littering or otherwise fucking with the creek.

One day one of the boys lied to me while acting polite. It pissed me off and I told him so. More showed than told. Just like any good author would do. He contritely retracted the lie.

I wish now I hadn’t called him on it. I wish instead of getting mad and telling him why I knew he was lying I’d calmly said—and could say to every teenager who is toddling around the abyss of seventeen—

You know your parents believe your lies because they’re either too stupid to know you’re lying or they do know you’re lying and they subconsciously or otherwise choose to accept it and pretend it’s true because they love you.

I’m gonna save you years of confusion, wasted time, and maybe even an emergency room bill or two, by telling you you had better learn not to lie to strangers. They don’t love you, and not all of them are stupid.

I’m busy. So enjoy some nostalgia. Unless you’re new around here. In that case, enjoy getting to know me.

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