Bend over RIAA

The Recording Industry Association of America needs to assume the position that it has been putting file sharers and music artists in for the last couple of years.

The RIAA, in a broad sweeping protective motion (translate as lawsuits) has sought to help the artists in popular music today by putting an end to piracy. They say that sales of CD's have dropped 2 billion dollars in the past 3 years due to the explosion of music downloads. The artists, or at least the big label artists, stand behind them. The RIAA has hired lawyers and done studies, and has proven their point. But uh-oh, what's this? Someone cared enough to prove them wrong.
It seems that a Mr. Felix Oberhozer-Gee of Harvard Business School and Koleman Strumpf of the U. Of North Carolina have been doing their own research. They picked their time frame from the heyday of Napster and showed that in a study of 650 albums in a 17 week time period in 2002, the sales of the CD's increased by 1 copy for every 150 downloads. This is bad news for the RIAA, because they've been running a campaign to woo the American public by suing them and charging 16 bucks for about 3 dollars of music.
Speaking of legal copyrights, Donald Trump is seeking a trademark on the tagline, "You're Fired", which he uses weekly on his show, "The Apprentice". Seriously, how does someone like this make it so far in life? What is the limit to what you can trademark?
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All comments on this site copyright 2004 by Blake E™

I never blog on Saturdays.

But I'm getting more hits from different people; I have to keep this momentum going. People I don't even know are reading this. That's scary, because they might not know how unapologetic I will be if anything I ever say offends them.

Skate shoes aren't everything

Last night I loaned my Amanda my "Brandston" concert T-shirt, and we snaked our way down Main Street in Dallas to The Gypsy Tea Room to see the Yellowcard/Something Corporate concert. We got lost, found the place, got lost again, and finally found that parking, as I should have recalled, costs anywhere from $2 to $5. We found, and I'm not joking, exactly $5 change between Amanda's purse and the floorboard of the car.
Now, those of you who know me know that I try to side step the mainstream most of the time, but I've loved Yellowcard and Something Corporate since their indie label days, and I wasn't going to miss them just because they were on Columbia. When I arrived at the concert, I could see that most of these people hadn't picked up these bands until they started playing them on MTV. Why did I know this, you ask? Let's just say when I went to the "Deep Elm" label show at the Door, no one was wearing cargo shorts and a "Timberland Boot Company" shirt. Suddenly Amanda's Adidas didn't look so bad. Hey, she's punk at heart. No, she's really not.
I ran into an old chum from LeTourneau days their, too, a one Mr. William Yeomans. He was with another dude I used to work with, Peter. I had to leave him behind to get in the "will call" line, but not before securing him a good spot in the "have ticket" line. You're welcome, Will.
So, of course, the Tea Room is a standing room only type place, and we're pretty close to the front. The people behind us coveting our position decide that the best way to get closer to the stage is to see how much compressed material can be found in the human body, and just started pushing forward. The only thing between me and the girl in front of me was my Levi's. Being married, this is no longer a desirable situation. The best part was the guy "looking" for his friend in the crowd who stepped in front of Amanda to get a better view, obscuring her 5'2 view, and Amanda yelling the lyrics off-key in his ear until he decided it just wasn't worth it anymore.
All in all, great concert. Any concert is good when you walk away with new stickers.

I just blogged all over myself.

The funny thing about being unemployed is that it is so contradicting.
You have plenty of time to think of your career, and all of the things that you can do to improve your productivity. The problem is, you don't want to be more productive. That just makes your day longer. Sucker.
And I'm starting to realize that I've already seen this episode of "Unsolved Mysteries".
You know, I don't think I'm a "job snob". I applied at Wal-Mart. I used their "Employment Computer" thing. It was great. When working as a Network Administrator, I made a salary. When using this machine, it asked me how much I made per hour. I didn't make anything per hour. I made a salary. There was no way to enter that.
Also, from what I can tell from the "short" questionnaires, Wal-Mart has had a lot of trouble with people smoking pot, coming to work, breaking their leg while swinging from a fork lift, and stealing small objects on their way to living on worker's comp.
I also found out I could never be a baggage screener for the government. I took a test. It was pretty conclusive that I was a very smart guy with very poor eyesight.

Its St. Patrick's day!

As many of you know, St. Patrick is the saint of alcohol and green and any mixture of the two, including vomit. St. Patrick was a good man, who thought God would talk to him when he was too drunk to hear anyone else speak. OK, none of that's true. March 17th is the day St. Patty died. Actually, the interesting part is that up until 1995, before the Irish government caved to commercialism and tourism, in Ireland it was a religious holiday, and the pubs were closed all day. Not anymore, though. I'm not that much Irish, but maybe I'll get drunk anyway. I've got nothing better to do.
Actually, I prefer a celebration dance:

Do the safety dance.

I'll bet you had to use the cheat codes.

I have an anouncement.
Today, after playing it for years, I beat the internet.
The end guy was really tough.

I have it on good authority

According to at least one 5 year old girl, I am, to quote her, "the bomb". She believes this so much, she solidified it by writing it down. She's smart. I think it's because she's Asian.
I went to kindergarten today, just for kicks. Name-of-the-day, an exercise meant to bolster a child's writing ability by bolstering their ego was performed as usual, with the exception that I was name of the day. They wanted to know everything about me. The asked me my favorite color. They asked me who my best friend was (my wife, their teacher). Then they asked me two questions which I could not in all good conscience answer truthfully to a kindergarten. What is your favorite thing to play with? I said, "my guitar" I thought, "my wife". What is your favorite game? I said, "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2" I thought, "Any game that only a husband and wife can play". You know what I mean. Twister.
So anyway, the whole point is that there isn't one. I just like being the most advanced student in the room. They're gonna kick me out of school again.

Soup of the day: Kroger Brand vegetable in beef stock. Oh yeah. The pasta they use is the same one they use for their alphabet soup.

It's that important to me.

If I was rich, the money I didn't give away, I'd spend it all to prove my point.

A seriously truthful analogy.

I think my resumé is kinda like a pie-chart showing the the productivity of a sewer system. Its a good presentation, but the material that its based on is still shit.

Meet Poeple Online!

Two important views on dating by someone who is married.

1. Dating is hard
2. Marriage is not an escape from dating. It'd be more accurate to say that dating is an escape from being married.

I was at a trash dump once.

Going to church doesn't make you a christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

You're very special to me.

Oh no, I get it, you're more important than the other 120 cars in line.

Let me discuss the Highway 183 exit off of North 360. Here's the basic scenario. There are three lanes. Two go west, one goes east. This is great planning on the D/FW traffic division's part, I must say, considering no one is EVER going to Fort Worth but people are always heading east into Dallas. But that's not what I'm mad about.
Now, anyone who takes this road on a daily basis knows to wait for the traffic. It's backed up for a mile going into Dallas everyday. But there is always one self-aggrandizing retard who thinks, "I'll cut in line a little further ahead". Why do I care? Now he's blocking off my lane of traffic because of his own arrogance. He is in a hurry, not like everyone else who are all on their way to take a nap at home. What's worse is that due to the way the exit is constructed, I don't see him until the only way I can avoid hitting him is to use my "go-go-gadget-wheels". Well, I'm tired of it. The next time, I'm not putting on my brakes. I'm going to hit the next guy so hard as to propel him at a speed that will cause him to age slower than everyone else. I don't think that any of the witnesses will say that he was anything short of obstructing traffic, and given that I think other people are pissed about this, too, I could probably get them to corroborate a story about him having a gun or something. Oh sure, they'll never find the gun, but the cop is pissed about it, too. The world is totally on my side in my mind.
Also, the self-checkout at the grocery store is proof that anyone will do their own work if you make them think its a priviledge.

Just read the comics.

When I was in 2nd and 3rd grade, I would buy a Houston Chronicle every morning on the way to school. I picked the Chronicle because it had more comics than any other paper. Two pages, I believe. I would read the comics, then throw away the paper.
As I got older, I'd read more and more of the paper. I'd read the editorials and all the news and try to read it cover to cover. I really enjoyed this for a while, but then I realized that everything else besides the comics was negative, and sometimes the strip writers were the only people who seemed to have a correct view of life. Now, I buy the paper, and just read the comics, and throw the rest away. Dallas Morning News has three pages of comics.

I could use a corndog.

A small addition.

One more thing about marriage that everyone should know:
First of all, our fights are terrible. I'm everything short of what you thought you'd never be with her, and she with me. We care, but only a little. It is terrible. The arguments are terrible. I see my fifth date with Amanda when we said, "I know we'll argue, I just don't know what it will be about". I think we were both thinking that if this were true, when we fought it would be few and far between. Like maybe we'd fight 10% of the time, or less. I think we fight less, but I think it doesn't matter. They are terrible, nonetheless, and neither of us would lose sleep if we never had one again.
I think the real reason that we need to see how terrible they are is to see why. Why they are so terrible is because every other time is so great. The argument, in contrast to the rest of our life, is so revolting. We love each other so wholly any other time that when we argue it is so disgusting and uncharacteristic, we are abhorrent at the idea that the other person would drag us in to this terrible situation, and what's worse, not support us while we are in it.
And I think that's what's good. If the arguments didn't mean anything, we'd have a problem. But they do mean something, and sometimes everything.
I love her, and she loves me, and we do that more than anything else.
That's what everyone should know about marriage.

I'm now an official expert on marriage.

I've been married for the better part of three weeks at 3pm today, and I think I've pretty much got this down pat.
You think before you get married that everything that everyone tells you about marriage is cynical and mean. It's not.
Let me tell you what I already know. Everything that people tell you is true. She is always right. You better know this right from the start. As a man, you think you're more logical, and that's going to solve everything. Unfortunately, you're not nearly as logical as you think you are, especially during an argument. You're irrational, and very logical about it. Always remember this: If you're in an argument, you're probably no longer logical, so don't assume that you are. Give up. Stop arguing. If you're a woman, you need to know this: you're man thinks he's being logical. He's an idiot.
You know what else? That's all you have to know, I think. Everything else is easy. When you agree, its easy. But I guarantee you that no marriage ended without an argument. Learn how to argue while you learn how to fix what started the argument, because trust me, the argument is just as dangerous as the issue.
You might think I'm saying this because Amanda and I just had an argument.
You'd be right.

Ah yes, another successfully day of job hunting.

I found out today that there are, and I'm not kidding, 7 Starbucks within a 5 mile radius of my house. Two are right next to each other. And when I say right next to each other, I mean only an alleyway separates them. I might be wrong about Wal-Mart. Starbucks might have a good race with them for new communist leader for our nation. At least we'll all have jobs. I hope Starbucks wins; I don't want to work at Wal-Mart.

In other fronts, I've been wearing the same pants for three days.

No no, I'm smart. I'll fix it myself

I'm not altogether sure why my comments thingie keeps retreating. If you have any idea how to fix this, check out my source code and email me.
Also... Ow, my head.

Where have you been?

Wow, what an absence. I guess married life will do that to you. Let's see, what's new? Well, I got a ragin' case of strep throat and had to go the emergency room when we were fresh back from our honeymoon. That was neat-o. Um, I still have no job. That's about fun. Seriously, have you ever not had a job? You just always wonder when the appropriate time to lower your standards and go apply at the Wal-Mart "employment computer" would be. What's etiquette here to have your wife stop supporting you? I'm pretty pleased with my part-time job as assisting music minister at Providence Baptist in Longview. I'll keep praying for a full-time job. You just keep praying with me.
Married life, if you don't already know this, is great. You get to do everything you'd normally do, only you always have company. Company with which you can have sex. Its the keenest thing ever. And a God ordained marriage is like a party everyday. Being next to the airport, you get to do stuff like watch planes, and take pictures and go to the super-malls in D/FW and drive around and get bored and watch TV and not water your plants enough and stand on the balcony and hate your cat and past diseases back and forth and argue and make up and everything you ever thought you'd want to do with a person that will be with you for life. Take that, single people. Now I know why married people are always trying to get their single friends married. Well, that, and it's just hard to stay friends with a single person when you're married. But Gara and Amie did a good job of it, though. (Thanks guys, you're great.)
That's it. Stop reading.