Rants

Yoko

How can you like Yoko? She didn't do anything, and was about to divorce John before he died. Then she decides to forget about all that, and live off the royalties from being wife to one of the Beatles. I can't see where she should recieve respect.

New Here

Hello everyone, and I'd like to say thanks to Jesse for allowing me to rant and rave with complete freedom now as a member of Atimes.

Now, in true anarchist form, I say fullheartedly "screw conforming to the Apple system!" This is basically a concession of failure on their part. They are admitting that they cannot stop the file-sharing online, so they are trying to call on people's consciences to get them to start feeding money back into their greedy hands. Too late. The music labels already are the immoral ones, seeing as a band sees less than $1.00 off of every $18.00 cd sold. Why aren't more bands crying out about the "great injustice"? Because they know people will still pay for their music one way or another. Whether it's for more tours, or clothing and accessories, bands will live on. Bottom line now is music control has gone to the hands of the people, and anything less than free-music will not suffice, or rattle enough people's consciences to make any drastic changes.

This also works, because I don't think family should directly benefit from their dead relative's genius. Especially if that relative was planning to divorce the spouse right before he died (Yoko Ono). Dumb whore

Hans, you should like this. Since bands will now have to rely solely on talent, perhaps more quality music will be made which "explores the emotions" as you put it. No more record labels forcing it on us.

So that took a few tangents, but you get my jist. Down with the norm, up with free music, movies, and love.

Sorry I've been away for a while

In light of Apple's new online music store ($0.99/song, AAC format with minimal DRM, better encoding than MP3, etc.) a new era has begun in digital music. Finally, there's an alternative to scrounging around on Kazaa or Gnutella for a song, downloading it at .4 k/sec, and having it be half-corrupt when it finally arrives. Apple's service is fast, full of variety, and is constantly being added to every day. And it's legal.

So my question(s) is(are):

Now that there's a relatively cheap, fast way of acquiring music, which do you see yourself using? Do you screw the $1 per song and go for the free, illegal, low-quality route, or do you use the possibly expensive, legal, high-quality route? I, for one would be downloading songs like mad from Apple if I had a credit card. I think that the artists who make great music deserve compensation for their works, and as a fellow artist, I understand the desire to support one's self through creation.

Do you think the artist should be compensated for their work?

What if they're dead?

What if you can't find what you're looking for on the store? Would you go get it on one of the file-sharing networks?

I'd like to see what you all think. Apple's service is only available to mac users, but within the first 18 hours online it sold over 275,000 songs, netting Apple, the labels, and the artists a profit of about $100,000. Granted, that was in the first few hours of the service, when most people were just giving it a try. The real test of whether this will work will be in the next few months, when the initial curiosity dies away. A Windows version is in the works, I believe. I know most of you use Windows/Linux... would you use the service once it's available for your platform?

Just interested in seeing what you think.

These Places still exsist!

My uncle was talking today about a doctor he knew, who happened to be black, and was in Georgia for some reason. He was at a gas station or something like that and a kid in the store pointed at him and said "Look mommy a nigger!"

It astounds me to no end that places and people like this still exsist, I realize that the klan still exsists and that there are many a bigot in America, but kids that are so removed from the actual world was astounded to see a black person. It is just incredible that America still has its ancestory of bigotry prevelant in areas. Also Rachel Lavenda was talking to me awhile ago and said that an incrediblely christian family asked her where her horns and wings were, in a mockingly fashion. This bigotry is just incredible to me as well. It is mind blowing is mind blowing that there are bigots to this extent still roaming around.

Also if it sounded like I was saying bigotry was a rarity on this post, I wasn't, I realize that the KKK and other horrid groups of bigots still exsist and racism is still very prevalent, but nonetheless these example have impacted me because it shows how truly close racism is to me and where I live, and isn't in some far removed parsec of the universe.

Good Post

I think that signifies this entire website and most of the idealogy expressed here . . . correctness sux. Conforming to any sort of pre set standard is never a good thing, rather analyzing and using your mind to determine what is good and what is bad is the only way to live life, and that is why the biggest motto on this site is something like "Don't wear pants." Everyone is wearing pants and it is our job to look at pants and see if there is an actual purpose to wearing them or if everyone in society wears them for the sake of conformity. In addition when the politicians get together for a "spontaneaus" singing of God Bless America . . . i am sure those are "spontaneaus." They are just using the song to make them seem more patriotic and trying to show that they actual give a shit about the nation. It makes me feel a lot less about those people, and makes me think they are playing the politician game for mere power and don't really care about this nation or anyone in it. God most politicians annoy me. Now that Jesse Ventura* . . .

Also PC is a horrid thing as well, you can't say most anything with out being accosted by PC nuts if they are any where around you . . . Calling a person with dark skin, black if fine as not all "black people" are or from Africa as the PC morons would like us to believe. And I don't know a single Indian who gives a shit about being called Indian and not "native American." Obviously we should be a little more conscience than we were in the past, but the complete opposite is not any good either.


*That was a joke, that is what everyone says who are to incompotent to pay attention to politics so they say they like Ventura because he spoke his mind, and they people never understand the things that Ventura supported or wanted to implement in this state.

Patriotic Correctness

For the left, the way of thought control is political correctness, for the right, it is patriotic correctness. This is a recent trend and it pisses the hell out of me. I am all for the singing of the star spangled banner and the pledge and all that, but when people refuse to stand, they are crucified! This is an unspoken way of stigmatizing debate and trying to control people's thoughts. Today, I went to a baseball game. At the beginning, was the national anthem, which was ok because the national anthem has been said at the beginning of baseball games for over 100 years. What bothered me was in the seventh inning stretch. The PA announcer asked everyone to STAND for a singing of "God Bless America." This is a song with no historical or traditional significance in it at all, it just says GOD blesses the country. I know that if someone didn't stand, they would be looked down upon by everyone else. Stop with this craziness! Stop with this chest pounding! This evangelical patriotism and patriotic correctness sucks!

Part One: Freedom

Now I am probably going to sound like a babbling moron because I am very tired, but here is my entire position on all of this.

In order to maintain democracy all threats against democracy have to be eliminated. Democracy is a very hard balancing act that has NEVER proven successful because by definition democracy is weak. What is a threat to democracy you might ask, I say anything other then democracy, and this is where regime change comes in.

Call me what you want, but if not nipped in the butt these things tend to spread like wildfire. Look at how all of Eastern Europe and a good portion of Southern Asia went down like a cheep whore after WW2.

Part Two: The Death of America is Close at Hand

America is becoming too much of a consumerism based economy. We do not produce enough any more to pay our debts and we spend all our money on enjoyment. We import far too much. Rome fell due to three things, lead pipes, Christian rule, and importing more than exporting. We have two of the three problems. That is not to say I?m not for Bush, because I feel he is a great leader. He is just too much of an Evangelical Christian for my tastes. He relates everything he does to religion, which I do find to be a bit offensive because Religion should have nothing to do with how you run the county. I do not feel that that is what is best for America.

That has been my blurb. Comment your asses off