xen

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/vagina-selfie-for-3d-printers-lands-japanese-artist-in-trouble Igarashi has said she is on a mission to “demystify” female genitalia in Japan, a country where thousands flock to an officially sanctioned annual penis festival in Kawasaki every April.

shit gets real at 1:40

As much as I wish I could say I made it, I didn't. Had just over a year but I am drunk as fuck now. should have hit a meeting instead of a bar. I'm not really sure why I got drunk today or why i don't feel bad about it.

Re: I wanna see your...........PETS! from this to this

spaghetti.

Not a damn thing that is worth noting.

Less than 2 weeks before you came through St Louis the old lady kicked me out. Hell, a few days after I sent you the CCG I would have so came and picked you up but I was on a north bound bnsf myself. now that I got my shit right, you head home via STL, hit me up. *wink wink nod nod this time I kept a spare key to the car so maybe adventures can unfold.

There is absolutely no reason for me to have listened to this album 3 times in a row. God damn you motherfucker, i like it.

Searching for Sugarman Is a must see. Someone on the oontz wrote my favorite quote. I just wish i knew who to credit it to, "I am not a graffiti artist. I am an asshole that writes a made up name on other people's property without their permission"

Drinking a beer and watching for the tornadoes to roll in.

I agree physical theft, stealing from record stores, grocery stores, your neighbor down the street is absolutely wrong and if caught, you deal with whatever consequences come your way. Legal or a severe beating, shot if it comes to that but checking out an album, book, or movie doesn't fall into that category. Just, like, my opinion, man.

For me, it comes down to what the purpose of copyright is, and what the value of culture is. I love the original intent of US copyright law, which is very clearly stated as "promoting arts and sciences". In exchange for a monopoly on distribution, the rightholder agrees that this right ceases to exist after a period of time. When the original copyright law was discussed, this period was seven years. When the actual copyright law was passed, it was fourteen years, with one further extension of fourteen years allowed. Maybe fourteen years made sense in 1790, but doubling down to 28 years was a huge mistake, and every extension since the 1831 act has compounded this mistake into a disaster that completely undermines the foundational intent of the copyright act. Indefinite copyright is unconstitutional, so the strategy has been to effectively pursue a goal of "forever minus one day" where every time the act is updated, we just push back the expiry over and over. This calls into question what culture is and what its value is. We have a lot of stakeholders in the publishing industry (music labels, publishing houses, and film studios are the most relevant today) who wish every form of participation in the culture to involve some sort of toll booth: you listen to an album, you pay a fee - you watch a film, you pay a fee - you read a book, you pay a fee. But this is our culture, and we are (and should be) more than passive consumers of entertainment whose only function of this culture is to throw money at it. The problem with these toll booths that have been erected is that they never go away and that they get out of control - you cover a popular song on Youtube, you get a DCMA takedown notice - you sample music, you get a lawsuit - you re-contextualize content, you get a Three Strikes notification - you adopt characters and events, and the lawyers come knocking. This posits a fantasy that every bit of intellectual property is so unique that it owes no debt to what came before it, and that there is a clear line in the sand between content creators and passive consumers. This was a poor fit for the broadcast TV and radio era, and it's a miserable fit now. The best counter to this position is something along the lines of http://everythingisaremix.info/ . I won't bother further reiterating his points because he doesn't need my help - he makes them well. The problem with never-ending copyright and modern music artists is that it's not like this current system is something that works for them now. The current system is designed to protect rightsholders, and the rightsholders aren't the artists, they're the labels and the studios and the publishers. The rightsholders created the current system to protect their needs, and they do it with creative accounting ( http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 ) where the artist isn't just the product, they're the customer for the label's services, so any and all expenses get passed on to their "share" of the pot, and more money from an artist's album gets paid to the record label's CEO than the artist. This should seem immoral if not patently absurd. Creative accounting like this is the reason that Return of the Jedi still "hasn't made a profit" and has prevented some of a generation's best-loved actors from sharing in its success ( http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of-the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/ ). People often ask what the alternative is in this dark future where artists are no longer paid for record sales. That's a non-starter; we've been living in that future ever since the dawn of the record labels in the 1920s and 1930s, and it's gotten worse in our lifetimes. We don't have to create an alternate method from sales to pay artists due to lost sales from piracy, because artists aren't compensated now based on record sales. Record labels are compensated on the basis of sales, and this failed business model they peddle to Congress to defend is one the record labels are wholly responsible for. The large majority of musical artists is paid on the basis of performance, not recordings, because that's all the labels left open to them. The record labels (and the music studios and some of the publishing companies) have nobody to blame for the failure of their business model other than their own success in getting everything they asked Congress for in the last century. Did Congress rush in to save the sheet music industry and the piano industry from radio? Radio from television? The movie studios from television? Should it rush in and save an industry with a failing business model based on treating creative artists like slave labour from the internet? And if so, at what cost? At the cost of keeping our culture in a lock box that we are not allowed to access without proof of purchase? Mind you, we're not just talking about traditional piracy or counterfeiting, we're talking about companies going after legally defended Fair Use, critical review they don't agree with, casual performance (I'm sorry, that youtube video your little brother recorded of you singing the theme from Frozen in the shower isn't costing Disney a cent, regardless of the DCMA takedown), non-profit distribution, and participation in the culture itself. If 7-28 years was sufficient in 1790 when culture traveled at the speed of horseback and "fashion" tended not to change much during a person's lifetime, what function does 90 years plus life of author serve in an era where culture travels at the speed of light throughout the world and where most publishers make the vast majority if their income in the first five years of a property's publishing life? Past five years, copyright feels a lot less like a moral right (which it isn't, it's a government-granted monopoly) and a lot more like cultural theft and the denuding of public social space. tl;dr Go to the show, buy a t-shirt, support the artist where they make their real money.

That's pretty much my take on it. If raven wasn't against it, I'd post a permalink here but I don't want to to take food out of his mouth. Selective judgement and all.

I finally got around to reading Duffy Littlejohn's Hopping Freight Trains in North America. It is a damn good read. It's not just a how-to, common sense type read but interesting bits about railroad/hobo history. If any one is interested, hit me up for a .pdf. No offense to Kabar2 but I have a lax view on copyright.

Ya Slipping

Sage Francis - Copper Road