November 6, 2007 – Your Music Is Worthless
November 8, 2007 – Your Music Is Still Worthless
May 6th, 2008 – NIN The Slip
February 2, 2010 – The Plan To Save The Music Biz

What can I say? It irks me that this mentality took hold.

Today I saw this story showing how much (or rather how little) musicians earn online and what they’d have to sell to make minimum wage.

From the article:

If recording artists ever go the way of the blubber merchants, it won’t be because there’ll be no demand for their product. It will be because making recordings makes no economic sense.

Here’s the same info in chart form if you’re illiterate or like pink circles.

I dunno. It’s a pet peeve of mine. Mostly because something like music seems to me to be one of the most valuable things there is. I know it sounds weird to say I think there needs to be an incentive to create art, but I do.

I’ve grown to enjoy Red Eye over the past few months. Very entertaining more often then not and I liked this little conversation on Health Care reform.

(link)

And if you disagree, you’re probably a racist homophobe who wears fur to whale eating parties.

Done? Good. Neat post, huh?

I have a slightly different view. Mostly it comes down to semantics, but it changes the perspective entirely. I have no regrets. Not by Carrie’s definition. I subscribe to the “play it safe” or “good enough” or “fear of the unknown” method of looking back. That is to say the choices I made and the things I did put me where I am now and made me who I am…and I’m pretty damn happy with both. Could it be better? Probably. Could it be worse? Surely.

But to really suggest that there’s nothing you’ve done or experienced in your life that you feel sorry about or wish would have been different, is just not likely.

Feel sorry about? Ehhhh…maaaaybe. Not sure about that.

Wish had been different? Nope. Not one.

Wonder how things would be different had a given event in the past gone differently? Absolutely. But I don’t wish they were different – not one – because changes in the past most likely put me in a different place now – for better or worse.

I attribute it this way: If there is something in my past that, if given the chance, I would apply the 20/20 hindsight I now have and go back and do differently because I didn’t like the outcome, then it’s classified as a regret. Simple as that.

And by that definition, I can honestly say I don’t. If it’s small enough to have not changed my life in any major way, there’s no reason to sweat it. If it’s big enough that it could have changed my life, I probably still wouldn’t change it for fear of how it changes everything. As corny and cliched as it is, it’s that those things didn’t play out in a way I thought best that made me who I am and put me where I am in life…and I have no complaints so far.

No regrets.

Curiousity. But not regret.

Plus, it was a good excuse to use a Metallica lyric as a post title…which I’m already starting to regret. Damn!

“… Although I’ve gotta say, when I hear critics talk about out of control spending I start scratchin’ my head. I can’t help but remember, those same critics contributed to a $1.3 trillion deficit that I inherited when I took office. [applause]… I mean, seriously, I’m now president, so I’m responsible for solving it, but I don’t think we should have a selective memory. You hand me a $1.3 trillion dollar bill and then you’re complaining 6 months later because we haven’t paid it all back. [applause] A debt, by the way, that was partially the result of two tax cuts that went primarily to the wealthiest few Americans, and a Medicare drug program that wasn’t paid for. These are the same folks who are now complaining about health care, we can’t afford health care. You pass a prescription drug program and didn’t pay for it! Handed the bill to me. [Obama laughs]…”

… .. Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. [applause] I’m tired of hearing that … These folks need to stop scaring everybody. [applause and cheering]… .. …”

- Obama in Raleigh, North Carolina (rough transcript)

What does that even mean?

Pass my health care bill because I inherited a deficit? It’s ok for me to spend too much on bad ideas because those guys did too?

And what does that second part about takeovers and scaring people even have to do with the first part about the old guys spending and handing Obama the bill?

What’s the message supposed to be in that quote? Seriously, I’m not being facetious. Would one of my liberal friends take a moment to explain it to me either on my blog or on Facebook when it gets syndicated over there.

Great, ridiculous stuff, huh?

Here’s the kicker – this has actually happened to my wife…in real life…with one of her managers. They actually had to quit using the term “Black Friday” around the office.

Truth is stranger than fiction.

On Tuesday one of the company’s executive VP’s resigned and did so with a scathing letter that spells out his take on the whole thing and it was printed in the New York Times.

I’ll quote just a little that I feel sums it up:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

…I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Yep. He’s right.

I just can’t get mad about wasting 165 million dollars (which was already apparently contractually agreed upon) when we’re giving them at least 180 billion in bailout money.

To put it in perspective, it’s like loaning a friend $180 and getting mad when they give 17 cents away to someone they already agreed to pay 17 cents to…no matter how silly or ridiculous the conditions of agreement, it’s still irrelevant.

I’m more pissed that were giving them the $180,000,000,000+ in the first place. Not at some guys who were smart enough to make some very lucrative deals in the past.

Gimme A Commercial Break!

I have to say I agree 100% with the idea that the commercials are necessary to the pacing. Obviously the answer is that eventually shows will be written with non-commercial pacing, but we’re not there yet. Just found the idea interesting.

Which leads me to something else that I think will be lost in the world of entertainment in the near future – spontaneity.

Since we moved, we’re stuck with Time Warner. I fucking hate everything about Time Warner. Their prices are too high, their offerings too few and their equipment sucks major ball sack. I always knew it, but after sampling AT&T for a few months before we moved, it’s painfully obvious. The sick thing is that even though we moved less than a mile as the crow flies, there’s no plans for AT&T to make service available here any time soon. I’m disgusted every time I sit down to watch TV and I cringe every time I pay the Time Warner bill.

With all of that said, it’s made me consider being on the bleeding edge and just dropping a service provider altogether. A combo of an antenna, a PC hooked to the TV and something like a Roku along with my Netflix subscription would probably cover everything I already watch.

I’m only concerned about losing two things – discovery and spontaneity.

I know I’m old school in this aspect and I think I talked about this before on this blog, but when it comes to my entertainment I prefer a little spontaneity and I like the random process of discovering something I enjoy.

With TV that means surfing through the channels and having something catch my attention and getting sucked in and enjoying it. Maybe a movie, maybe a documentary about the mating habits of some rare bird found only on a remote island, maybe a sitcom that becomes regular viewing.

With “on demand” programming it’s different. I have to choose to see the show. With channel surfing, it’s being shown to me.

With the world going “On Demand” and everyone watching exactly what they want when they want, I fear this simple joy of spontaneous discovery is on its way to extinction.

I think the same applies to music. I love my iPod. I love having my entire collection of music available anywhere. I sometimes miss driving in the car and just channel surfing and finding a song I like that I hadn’t discovered previously.

My biggest “old curmudgeon” thing to overcome in the face of changing entertainment delivery is how to keep that spontaneity, how to continue that path of discovery.

Because while the tech and the change fascinates me, it’s one area where I’ll be sad to see the old way go.

Here’s the deal. We have no need for a formal dining room. None. I hate the idea of a room with a formal dining setup just sitting there being wasted space.

Ideally, we’d like to do a huge expensive kitchen renovation and suck up the formal dining room into a new larger, bad-ass kitchen. But that costs a lot of money and isn’t something we’ll be jumping on any time soon.

In the meantime we’ve decided to incorporate it as part of the front room/office and make it a sitting area thus creating one large office/sitting room thingy on the left side of the house. It should be a pretty nice area.

So yeah, that’s where we stand. Some people I talk to can’t fathom the idea of not having a formal dining area and others seem to understand our approach completely.

No formal dining room for us though – we’re leading the way into the 2nd decade of the 21st century and beyond.

Here’s something that’s puzzling us. A CNN Opinion Research Poll shows that nearly 8 of 10 people say things are going badly, yet 3 of 4 say they’re doing fine personally.

That’s odd.

Then again, I still believe that people think things are bad because they keep being told how bad things are. I’ve been saying that all along. That’s not to say that things are fine or there aren’t people having a rough go of it, but it would certainly explain the poll results to a degree.

Here’s part 1 (with links to parts 2-5 below):

Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

So the last two days we had snow…and ice.

People started calling off before it even began based solely on weather reports of it coming. More people after it started falling and even more today in the aftermath and cleanup phase.

So my wife and some of the managers are forced to do crazy shit like sleep at the hotel or work 16 hours or get up at 4am and head in to do stuff like serving food or cleaning rooms or taking reservations.

Big deal, they’re the bosses that’s why they get paid what they get paid, right?

Well, sort of. But a lot of people (mostly the kind of people that don’t make any extra effort – like showing up when they call for snow) don’t seem to put the whole process on the table.

Maybe that willingness to come in and pick up the slack is why these people became managers and achieved higher salaries? In fact, I’m 99% sure it is.

The kind of people who do things like that are the kind that become managers with big salaries. The kind who aren’t don’t.

And the funny thing is that those that don’t, don’t seem to get it at all. And when Friday rolls around and those people who came in an worked 16 hour days and slept at their place of employment to make sure they’d be there and things would be taken care of take a three day weekend, you know what the “people who don’t” are all going to say to each other?

“Must be nice to be the boss and take a three day weekend whenever you want.”

People are so predictable.

Note: “people that don’t” also usually complain about how they keep getting screwed in life and how they never get a break or a raise or recognition or anything and can’t understand why others do

Carrie initially asked:

Does what I contribute have any value? Am I offending people with my posts? Do I need to insert more emoticons so folks know when I am kidding?

If I ask myself these three questions I come up with:

1. Probably not to many people.
2. Oh God, I hope so!
3. You can never use too many emoticons.

That’s pretty much my approach to this whole thing. Seriously.

I started this blog because it’s a shame to own lordgonchar.com and do nothing with it. No, that’s not entirely true. I decided to put a blog here because I didn’t have the time, desire or idea for a real website. Isn’t that what a blog is? A website? But not like a real website? Kinda?

I decided to toss my hat into the ring for two reasons really. I liked reading all the blogs of the CampusFish folks and I felt like I wanted a place to be more ‘me’ than I could on coasterimage.com and to a greater extent than I could be on the other forums I post at.

The number of people visiting my little domain here isn’t life changing or even impressive, but it’s an alarmingly high number if you consider what I post here. I pretty much expected a handful of people (mostly those online acquaintances) to swing by once in a while and that’s that. While those online acquaintances might be the ones who actively participate, for each one of theme there’s another dozen or so people swinging by daily and just looking. Some never come back, some do, some keep coming. So that’s cool.

I don’t know what I intended with this blog. Like most things I do in life, I just started doing it and keep seeing where it takes me without any real plan or experience or intention. I like to just go along for the ride a lot in life…but I also like to drive. That’s one thing that makes me me. Defines a bit of my character if you will. I’ll like to get the ball rolling and just see where it rolls to. If it gets boring or old or too dangerous or stupid, I’ll get off. If not, I ride until it does.

Just a chance to publicly be me, I guess.

If something along the way strikes someone as funny or entertaining or insightful or useful or informative or fascinating or whatever – just makes a little moment in their lives – then I guess that’s all I can ask for. And that’s cool. Oddly enough, I think that also sums up much of my approach to life in general.

What’s really weird is that the interaction I have here comes solely from my ‘online’ life. (and Carrie touches on that a little in her original post) I’m a little weird in that my ‘online’ and ‘real world’ lives rarely cross paths. All you have to do is look at the people posting here or the blogs I link to and you’ll see it’s mostly people that I don’t see in ‘real life’ too often. Not never, but not too often. But perhaps even more strangely, they’re people I talk with frequently.

On the flip side, if you met my real-world friends you’d find a bunch of people that probably don’t even know lordgonchar.com exists. Hell, I don’t even think my wife knows I bother having a blog…but she almost certainly knows everything that ends up getting posted here anyway.

So a little like Jeff says in his post, I do blog towards a specific part of my life – a certain audience of friends and acquaintances with whom I enjoy sharing things and debating ideas and talking about shit.

I post as an entertainer, a friend, an informer, just a guy. Whatever might be something to someone…or nothing to no one.

Most importantly, I don’t take it too seriously. Life’s too short. I post shit here that I want to post publicly. If people want to gawk at it, then we all win.