The most obvious manifestations to the public of web 2.0 (call it W20 for short) has been in the entertainment world. The radical shift from pay / broadcast / retail markets to what is nicely referred to as “non traditional distribution methods”, thinks like Itunes, Napster, Youtube, Flickr, torrents… There are many ways that media is now getting to the general public. The music business as a whole has suffered the most, as they were the first target coming in the door (music files are relatively small, and were easily traded even when people were on slower connections). Music is probably the most often stolen thing in the world now.

With increased bandwidth to the end users, the video, movie, and television worlds are starting to suffer the same fate, it is now pretty much a simple process to find almost any movie (including many still in theatres) and download it within a reasonable amount of time (less than 24 hours) so you can burn your own DVD copy to enjoy. While the theatre business isn’t suffering too much at this point, the secondary markets of DVD sales of movies after they leave the theatres is showing some decline.

Welcome to W20, where basically there is a bizarre sense of entitlement that exists amongst the general population that anything can be put online and it is free, legal, and happy.

It isn’t.

What has only recently come to light is the idea of W20 as a business model. The idea is to give something away that is desirable (such as a song) hoping that the end user will also do something that will create income. Example would be Radiohead giving away their newest album online (using a donate what you want process, which allowed people to donate anything from nothing to 100 dollars, I think it was). While I have seen various reports, the end number was a couple of dollars average for an entire album, which suggests that a large majority of end users paid nothing. Radiohead’s apparent motivation was to stick it to the record companies, but in the end they signed a distibution deal and the record is available all over the world. The real reason is concert ticket sales, which is where most bands make their true fortunes. Giving away the album to generate more fans to generate more ticket sales is sly spin business model, potentially gaining them tens of millions of dollars for giving up a couple of million of record company payouts.

The concept (as will be discussed in an upcoming book called (remarkably) FREE! by Wired editor Chris Anderson (author of the very popular and seemingly misleading “The Long Tail”) will attempt to explain how to make money on free, how it all works, and how it is a great business model, and how companies are making millions off of giving apparently valuable stuff away for free.

Mr Anderson often makes me chuckle because his books are often presumptuous, taking narrow snapshots of reality and attempting to paint the rest of reality to match. The Long Tail was based on a narrow point in time where a strong supply of back catalog TV shows and movies on DVD allowed the nostalgic public to buy huge amounts of older material at a good price. Anderson mistakenly took this as a long term trend, forgetting that at some point, (a) the nostalgic people will have binge bought enough old stuff and will stop, (b) that the material will become more widely available online (free!), and (c) that the wave of older material is all but exhausted already, nobody is waiting impatiently for the DVD box sets of “Hello Larry” or “Check It Out”.

In the FREE! universe Mr Anderson appears to ignore the domino theory of free. The concept of free is offer something good for free, hoping or intending that a very small percentage of the people who take free will also do something profitable, and will cover all the costs of the free distribution and leave a profit. But Anderson forgets to consider “What if someone else offers the next step for free as well?”

Free is the easiest selling point, it is the selling point where you don’t discuss the merits of the product, the merits of ownership, the true value of the product, but rather just take it, it is free. Music is ending up with the same value as that piece of paper flying the guy on the street handed you to get a 2 for 1 coffee at Joes Java shop. Free in the end devalues things until there is no value, and then no more enticement. So someone has to step it up and put something of value on the line again.

Consider this: Bands give away their music hoping to get people to come to their concerts, buying tickets and making money. But after a while a status quo balancing point comes in and it gets harder for new bands to break in. So some of them start giving away concert tickets hoping to make their money selling T-shirts and beer at the shows. Then someone gives away the T-shirts and Beer and tries to make it up selling laundry detergent (to clean those t-shirts) and Taxi rides (to get the drunk people home). It goes so on and so on. So today’s upsell value added profit center is tomorrow’s freebie, and so on.

Mr Anderson also touts the “advertising supported” model, where ads are forcibly pushed onto visitors. That isn’t just the banner ads and text ads you see on many sites, but by either forcing people through an ad page to get to the content (interstitial advertising) or by blending the advertising into the end product (logos on videos, “brought to you by” messages before music, or bundled downloads / software installs to pay for the downloads). What Mr Anderson again fails to consider is the idea that advertising exists only to promote products with a true income creating business model. If everything is free, why would anyone be buying advertising? Bands giving away their music for free aren’t going to take out huge ads online to promote their productions unless they are sure they are getting money back. Record companies are getting cut out of the game, so they aren’t going to spend. The further up the food chain this conversion of value product to teaser freebie goes, the less and less money is actually available to promote anything. Thus the advertising supported buzz generating websites (like say a Perez Hilton or whatever) cannot exist if they cannot generate income through advertising.

Simple example? Record / CD stories are disappearing faster than President Bush’s popularity. Not just individual stores, but entire chains are getting blown out (Tower Records, anyone?). The shift to the super cheap delivery systems (itunes), breaking of the album concept (individual songs sold), and the torrents / file traders have pretty much eliminated the physical distribution of music CDs. It was the weakest business model, but it is very likely the first dead canary in the coal mine.

Mr Anderson fails at the very basic thing that is in almost every marketing book out there: Free (or even cheapest product around) fails to create value for the end user. All upsells and marketing are dependant on value, and the loss of value for the music product (does anyone even buy CDs anymore?) has all but killed off huge parts of the music industry. Sales continue to drop rapidly of physical product, and online sales (while high in transaction numbers) are not bringing in the same sales income that physical product sales did in the past. At some point, it becomes more and more difficult for the music companies to stay in business, and their business is to get new artists from nothing to stardom, through huge investments of money and time. Remove the profit motive, and suddently new bands aren’t getting the wide distribution and exposure needed to push them over the top. Short term the FREE! concept may work, just like The Long Tail appeared to work, because you have a backlog of material and demand. But as that demand is satisfied and a lack of new high value content diminishes demand in the future, then the model fails.

The W20 business model, the FREE! universe isn’t any different from the Private Equity companies that have taken public companies private by basically getting those companies to bury themselves in debt. In the short term, money way made. But the business are gutted, often unable to stay afloat, and the true value of the companies is lost to a few robber baron types that run off with the money to gut other companies for their debt values. The W20 model has already gutted a large part of the music business, is starting to gut out the TV and movie world, and has set dangerous precedents in the mind of a new generation of consumers that feel that everything should be free. Pretty much anyone under 25 has no true understanding of paying for music, except what they buy from Itunes from time to time. I know plenty of people with tens of thousands of songs downloaded, hundreds of movies downloaded… with no concern for value because they don’t see any in it.

Free has a price, and hopefully more people will realize that the W20 business model is nothing more than gutting out value in an attempt for short term profits.

Right now the donations are coming in at over 250k/hour. That’s incredible. Lets keep it up in an organized way.

If we all go post about the november 5th and ron paul on EVERY forum we have any sort of cred on (not just political ones). Lets hit up game forums, community forums, EVERYTHING! Hell join some new forums that seem popular. Let’s just all go on a hunt for the next couple hours and post about it on every forum we can. Each forum is bound to have a couple ron paul supporters that will backup the thread and encourage everyone to donate and spread the word. It’ll create a landslide promotional effect that’ll drive in a couple extra million today.

Lets keep this momentum going! Make your goal to keep the graph above 200k/hour. If it starts dropping below post faster

That’s right, the lemmings trying to elect Ron Paul are purposely attacking the chat boards and forums of the internet to shill for this guy. They are attempting to manipulate public opinion by making it look like people all over are interested in what this boring old turd of a politician has to say.

REVOLT!

Don’t let these assholes take over the internet and turn it into a wasteland of political spew and horseshit. Stick with Porn. Porn is good. Ron Paul is bad.

First off, let me say that I know things are tough. Cable, the million channel universe, expensive sports, 24 hour news channels, and just about everything else under the sun is nibbling away at your overall viewership. However, your immediate competitors at the other 3 networks aren’t suffering as bad, so it must be something they are doing or you are not doing that is screwing it up. I know that is an obvious statement, but sometimes you gotta frame the problem.

So, let’s get to the issues.

I don’t like to chase around looking for shows. The biggest error for 2006-2007 at NBC has been with the Law and Order shows. Bad enough that the main L&O has been suffering the last few years with a quick rotation on cast and some seriously horrible navel gazing scripts, but you guys moved the thing out of Wednesday and shoved it off to Friday. Why didn’t you just club it over the head like a baby seal and leave it to bleed out? That move put it in a space with lower potential viewers, and confused the heck out of those of us who watched it on Wednesday. I would have to say that I have watched MAYBE 2 episodes this entire year as a result (I have other things to do on Friday nights, thanks).

Clumping the other L&O shows together sounds like a good idea, but like sugar, heroin, or Dateline NBC, too much of a good thing is deadly. Again, most people aren’t going to dedicate 2 hours to watching just L&O, and as a result you are totally burning a night out for people who don’t like L&O. CI was much better on Sunday nights, and all L&O type shows are better at 10Pm. Parents will lose the fight at 9PM with their kids, and end up watching something else (because kids don’t like L&O much, from what I can tell). You are also having issues with the costs for actors and such to justify these shows.

Solution: Move L&O back to Wednesday where it belongs. Make a strong move and bring Chris Noth over there, and work on getting some stability in your actors – sign the next assistant DA to at least a 2 year contract… this one and done stuff sucks. Run CI on Sunday, and send SVU out to pasture (except maybe for a couple of 2 hour movie specials for 2007-2008 to run them out and tie up the threads).

Thursday…. ahh, Thursday… Now the proud home of “must miss TV”. ER lost me as a viewer a long, long time ago, and you are fighting a horrible battle against both CSI and Grey’s at 9PM which pretty much makes anything you put up there look like lunch meat. Your best hope is to get the best out of 8PM, and hope like hell people tune back in at 10PM to see ER.

Solution: Do whatever is needed to make 8PM and 8:30PM into the funniest hour of comedy in the week. One day, it will let you once again be a player at 9PM… and then get the people who make ER into a room and make them rewatch the first season over again, and then make them watch Grey’s Anatomy every day. Remind them of what an actual HIT show looks like. Try to make some commercials promoting the episodes that don’t include terms like “the most important ER ever!” or “the most shocking ER ever!”. Your promo people have cried wolf on that about twice too often, and that truly, truly sucks.

I could go on for a month, giving specific suggestions. But the reality is this: too much of a good thing will kill you.  Too much Law and Order, too much Dateline, too much of Howie’s Deal or no Deal… every time you guys get something good going, you immediately run it to death in short order, until nobody wants to see it anymore.

Law and Order needs to be somewhere else other than Friday.  You sent it to about the second worst spot on the entire week’s schedule, and you are surprised that the viewership went down.  Plenty of people have way more interesting things to do than watch TV at 10PM on a Friday night.   Consider getting it back to Wednesday, and you will see things suddenly come back to normal.

Good luck.  The net is going to get all of you anyway!

According to the TV ratings, I am not alone in turning NASCAR off.  Viewership in the US is off by about 10% this year from what I can tell, and many of the races have seats available on race day, walk up and buy a ticket on race day.  2 years ago you would have had to kill people to get tickets to most of the races.

There is little innovation, nothing new… 50% of the races are run on cookie cutter track that, except for the skyline in the background, could all be the same track.  The entire race often hinges on who can save gas to avoid a pitstop or who put the right 1/4 pound of air in that right front tire.  480 miles of nothing to get 20 miles of racing, in a series who’s point system rewards average and doesn’t give anyone a real reason to win.  The artificial “race to the chase” and “the chase” tries very hard to create some tension and stop run away seasons, but all it does is turn 33 drivers into lame ducks too scared to race anyone in the top 10, and turns the top 10 in boring bots too scared to race in case they screw up their average points finish.

When racing stops rewarding winning, people stop wanting to win.  They race for points, they race for scoring better than average, and all they do is aim to be slightly better than average, because that is all it takes.  Make the chase, and even at 10th place, you are only 50 points behind. 23% of the drivers make the chase, so you only have to be in the 77th percentile to make it in.

Champcar and the IRL are no better at this point.  Champcar is packed full of no-names and lame brains, unsponsored cars, stupid street races on tracks so tight nobody can pass without a major incident, and short fields that would make my local circle track cancel a class for lack of competitors.  IRL has the names and the Indy500, but a bunch of other cookie cutter races and all the competition of a pin the tail on the donkey contest.

I still enjoy F1 from a totally technical stand point, I enjoy how strategy, driver skill, and the choices of others all interplay.  But that is a sport of billionaires… and it is pretty hard to swallow at times.

Too bad… I really use to enjoy racing.

Are we back to World War 2?  Are we all suppose to just eat the government line because “it is good for us” without questioning how far this all goes?  In a land where freedom lives, it should be normal to wonder if something could violate those freedoms.  The images in her column cross the line from “commentary” and move right over to gag the media.  It seems that the conservatives want the NYT to just shut up, and is willing to blame any number of things on them, “daddy died because the NYT talked” and bull like that.

All of this to take the heat and the public eye off of Bush.  Nobody has answered why they are using such extrodinary measures, and such secretive means that are apparently not entirely within the scope of the law.  A brave expansion of executive powers that might not be exactly within what is expected.

Answer the questions, and I am sure that the NYT will print the results and shut up.  If you don’t answer the questions, they will keep asking.

The show has been a big eye opener for many americans, who has seen the internet through a whole different eye. For the adult industy, it has actually been a really good thing in my opinion because it shows that it isn’t porn sites that are making the internet dangerous, but rather those abusers and criminals that would otherwise be cruising the mall and burger shops.

The internet just made it easier for them to go fishing without as many apparent risks. No public exposure, little risk of running into police and whatnot.

I applaud NBC for their effort, they have really shown how things work. They have trapped out 130 perverts in the last couple of years.

Wonderful.

I wish though that they would spend some time on the missing link, the actual cause, the root cause of this problem isn’t the predators… it is the children left alone to surf the net, enter chat rooms, operate web cameras… ending up looking more like an open invitation to predators. Kids with computers, internet access and a closed door is a very dangerous combination.

Dateline should work with the police and set up the reverse sting. Become the predator, hit myspace and the chat rooms, and start fishing. Find the kids home alone, talk them into a meeting or giving up personal information, and then go for it. Hook up with the kids (with police present) and then go find the parents. Show them what the heck their chidlren are up to, and teach parents all over america how to keep their children from being victims.

It is about time someone took responsiblity for their children, and understood that these crimes only happen when the children are not cared for, not supervised, and allowed to run free when they are too young to accept the responsilbity.

I have spent much time in the last couple of years involved in the social aspects of being in the adult industry. Running link sites and what not does require a certain amount of social interaction, and I have been pretty social, I can say. For years I have done all the adult trade shows, working in partnership with other people on developing sites and traffic, and generally I played the social game.

About a year ago, I started to take less of an interest in the social parts of the business.  I don’t attend anywhere near as many trade shows, and I haven’t seen much of a difference in the bottom line of my business, which tells me I am on to something.  But that isn’t really what has brought on the vanacation.

In the last 8 or 9 months, a few individuals have decides that they didn’t like private comments I have made, and they have spent that time making my time in public chat boards more and more unproductive.  I have tried all the usual techniques, not paying attention, purposely stepping away from situations that might cause issues, etc.  I have been very careful “not to go there”.   Apparently this isn’t enough for some people.

It’s okay… tons of work to do, many new things to develop properly (like Free pornstar movies and Sologirl Amateurs ), so I will stick with working and developing and producing and not worry too much about what self-important people think.

Anyway, I have the ongoing disaster that is Bell Expressvu. It has been a seriously shitty experience all around… let me explain:

I have had expressvu for a bit more than 3 years now. I take pretty much all the normal programming from them, about $90 a month or so for a couple of hundred channels, movies, etc. I have an older 3100 series receive and single gun dish. Anyway, I have had issues with my local housing authory (I live in a planned community, stupid move on my behalf) that said the current install location of my dish outside was unacceptable, and they threatened me with a $60,000 fine if I did not move it quickly.

So, I figure “what the heck”… Expressvu is pushing rental 6100 series receivers which is compatible with HD TVs. I don’t have an HD set yet, but I am sure it will happen sooner or later. So I figure why not rent a new receiver, and get them to move the dish at the same time. This is where the fun starts.

As an existing customer, I would have to pay significantly MORE than a new customer would for the same thing. Basically, I would pay the install charge ($75) and I would get no signup bonus or rental bonus as a result… the net difference was upwards to $200 just to start with, plus two or three months of free HD programming that I wouldn’t get. I contacted Bell, and they agreed that this was silly, but it “is the way it works, nothing we can do”.

So I decided to cancel their service and try another provider for a while.

This is where the “save” department comes into play. Pretty much every subscription company has a save mechanism to attempt to keep clients. Most companies don’t want to tell you the truth, but it costs them MORE to find a new client than it does to keep an existing client. Advertising, freebies, spiffs… they spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to drive new clients to their services, and when they know that you could leave them (big loss of income) and go to a competitor (with little expense on their side) it is katie bar the door and they bend over, pretty much willing to give you whatever you want to make you stay.

I should point out that one of the more frustrating things about dealing with Bell Expressvu is that their phone system has a pretty amazing rate of hangups. Over the course of 5 days, I have been on the receiving end of no less than a dozen total hangups, transfers to space, and such. This is our phone company, remember… you would think their stuff works. My feeling is that employees are happy to accidentally push a button and make clients who are asking difficult questions go away, as difficult sitautions no doubt lower their call ratios and make them look ineffecient.

Anyway, “Jason” finally said, well, if you go to a store, get the $49 rental install kit (which is nothing more than a paper contract), we will pay for the install, refund your install costs (near net $100) and give you 3 months free service (did I mention they would bend over?). Net numbers on the table for me was about $450 if I stayed in the game.

Okay, you guys are frustrating the heck out of me, but I will give it one more shot.

The next day, I go to the local bell store and buy the install kit, call the number, schedule the install, etc. No actual problems here, shockingly.

Later that evening, a bunch of the channels on my current system disappear.

Contacting customer series (I have the number memorized by this point, which is a bad sign), and they say “oh, your software is out of date, yadda yadda…” over and hour on the phone and a little bit more time and the new software is downloaded and “it can take up to two hours for your programming to reactive properly”.

Next morning, the programming is still screwed up. Call them back. They ask me for what channels I am missing. I tell them. They say “you aren’t paying for those channels in any package you have, so your programming is correct”. I am a bit confused at this point, until I realize what has happened: When “Jason” gave me three months free, he “accidentally” bumped me to a weird combination package that doesn’t include about half the channels I normally watch. Free indeed.

Driod on the phone says “that is your package, but if you want to spend an extra $X per month, we can move you to this other package so you can get those channels that you want” – the price quoted would have pushed my monthly bill to just over $100.

I lose it. This may be the one time in this process that the “transferring me to a supervisor that turns into a hangup” was earned.

Anyway, back down the line, time to cancel all this shit and get it over with.

All the way to cancel, get an actually pleasant african guy on the phone (his full name I won’t post because I am sure he is the only one with that name in the company… but it starts with MB, which is a pretty interesting combination at the start of a name). He admits outright that many current phone service employees have techniques for losing a difficult call, that my experiences are NOT unusual for anyone asking difficult questions, and that he was personally sorry (not bell sorry) that I had to put up with shitty service. He very carefully worked to try to get the programming right… and offered me three months additional free service when I covert to the new HD plans within 12 months. So net, Bell has put about $750 on the table to keep me in the game. Against the odds, I agree, and allow him to work on the program. Standard “it takes a couple of hours” deal, so I thank him, and the night ends unhappy but hopeful.

Next morning, check the programming… it is certainly DIFFERENT, but not correct. The failure rates here are pretty much blowing my mind.

Anyway, I figure the HD installer is due later in the day, I will bite my tongue until he is done and then give another try to fix this stupid situation. Installer shows up a little later than I thought (They said betwen noon and five, it was about 2 when he called to say he would be there soon… why couldn’t they just say “between 3 and 5?”). He came in with the new receiver under his arm, and I stopped the show and said “let’s talk about dish installation”. Remember, the need to move the dish a bit is why this all started to begin with.

I walk him outside, show him the current install, show him the potential install locations and he has one look and says “It won’t work” (he said it in french, but same thing). He didn’t have any equipment to do the install of anything outside of the standard box, wouldn’t go on the roof at all (not insured) and generally said “no chance”. Remember now, I have been a client for 3 years with full service, and the dish move is literally less than 10 feet.

With that, he picks up the receiver in the box, says “sorry”, and leaves.

You can picture the steam coming out of my ears at this point.

Back on the phone with the cancellation people. This time I get a real droid, someone filling time. I know it is useless, so after giving him my basic information and talking to him a minute or two, I ask to speak to a supervisor. He puts me on hold and miracle of miracles, the phone hung up. Call back, I get ANOTHER droid, and immediately ask for a supervisor, no wasting time. I get a supervisor that honestly sounds like he has no interest at all in trying to find a soltution, and he floors me with this: “your account has already been closed, there is nothing more I can do”.

What the fuck? Turns out the hangup employee took it on himself to cancel the service outright and thank you good bye. He didn’t want to talk to me, and he was VERY happy apparently to cancel my service. Upset and unhappy supervisor managed to restart my service and tells me to suffer (nicer words, but basically “nothing I can do”).

Anyway, my programming is still fucked beyond belief (I am apparently paying for 7 option packages, but I don’t have any CNN or anything like that, and many of my local french channels have gone AWOL as well), and I still have to move my dish. I am convinced the new location will work out fine, and I have the measurements and angles calculated that say it is good to go. I even tested and peaked out the dish in it’s current location and I have signals between 90 and 100% on all transponders.

Now let’s get into the really fucked up parts of this deal.

First, if you are getting rental equipment, only a Bell installer can put it in. They will not just send you the stuff, they have to install it. If you want to BUY the receiver, that is $300, and I would have to buy a switch and a second LNB to add the second sat to the system to get HD and whatnot… another $100… plus my dish really does need to get replaced, considering the paint is off of it completely… that is another $99 plus shipping… so I would be looking at shelling out $500 plus shipping instead of $10 a month rental charges… but because one single tech decided he couldn’t do an install, well, they won’t do it.

Second, none of their stores have any stock. You have to order online and take delivery by courrier in 3-5 days. They won’t send a new dish to existing customers (but an installer can replace a defective or damaged dish when making the rental install). So even if Ibuy the thing, I can’t get everything I need.

Finally, the replacement dish thing drives me nuts. Even the supervisor type said that Bell will not sell only dishes, they have to be part of a system – but because I am an existing customer, if I upgrade my equipment I don’t get a new dish because I already have one. I took 3 calls to get anyone to admit I could buy one, and that took 20 minutes and two sessions on hold to find that out: $99 plus shipping. It would appear that an existing customer with any issues with an installation is pretty much screwed over and has to find their own suppliers outside of bell to get any parts.

I was also shocked to see that major stores like Futureship and Bestbuy (same owners) no longer stock any expressvu equipment, they just have the same useless rental packages (a programming guide, and a rental contract… no equipment). Not a single receiver or any equipment in my local FS store at all.

So here I am, 10 days later, and I still don’t have a new receiver, still don’t have the dish moved, and time is running out.  I have to go to my local “What use to be a radio shack now a circuit city mutant thing” and get some stuff so that I can relocate my current dish, plus probably a can of rattlecan grey primer to keep it from rusting, and I will do the work myself, relocating the dish to it’s new location, getting perfect signal, and telling Bell to “GFY”.

I submitted a change to my programming tonight, we will see if they can manage to make it work.  I wonder if they will notice that I have cut my bill almost in half.

Anyone from expressvu reading this?  Shame on you all.  A near monopoly that should be broken up and sold like the junk parts it really is.

That sponsor is SPAMARREST.

I get tons of mail each day – some of it personal, some of it for business, and much of it, well, spam.  Horrible stinky spam.  I have ranted, I have raved, I have gone off on people, and I have even made the news about it… I have filtered, cut back, checked, limited and choked my mail program trying to keep the spammers out but I have still be deleting hundreds of messages a day.

So as of today, I moved to spamarrest and I am hoping that the sickness that is spam won’t bother me anymore.

Try it out for 30 days on a free trial… you will be glad you did

Anyway, turns out “chef” is also a scientologist, and he got a bee up his bum about all this and pissed off out of the show.  He didn’t seem to mind when they made fun of catholics or muslims or jews… but scientologist apparently are off limits.

Anyway, the show must go on, and well, the show’s creators pretty much killed Chef off in the latest show.  A fine fuck you to someone apparently a little too full of himself.  Goodbye Chef, it has been fun, but don’t let the door slap your big ass on the way out.

 Click here to read the story about this wonderful situation.

Why?  Two of the dullest races, back to back with a week off in between.  It is hard to maintain interest when you have a week off so early in the season, and the two races themselves were total snoozefest that not even the most dedicated fan could find much fun in.  You could have watched the first 10 laps and the last 10 laps of Vegas and gotten about 99% of the excitement and joy that came in about 3.5 hours of broadcasting.

The week off thing really confuses me as well.  Drivers bitch and moan and complain about no time off after July… but there we are, 3rd week of the season, already taking a break.  Most of the off weekends are piled up in the first half of the season, and that really hurts.  Changing the schedule to have two western races with a week off in between really takes away from the whole deal as well.  On top of which, the weather in Vegas was really quite poor this year, and it often is questionable in the winter / early spring period.

I know there are only a few tracks on the circuit that could handle a race after Daytona, but that is more an issue of economics than anything.  Rockingham use to be the traditional “after daytona” race.  It is a smaller and more entertaining track, but had suffered occassional issues because of bad weather.  I looked at the 2000 and 2001 schedules, and it was bang bang bang sex races in a row to start the season, on a variety of tracks (Daytona, The Rock, Vegas, and Atlanta… then Darlington and Bristol).   Now the first four races are all on tracks 1.5 mile or greater, and it isn’t until race #5 that we get something other than aero and drafting.

At the end od the day, I don’t know the answer, I don’t have a clear idea how to fix it.  With so many cookie cutter tracks on the schedule, it is pretty much impossible to make it as interesting as it once was.  Trading out race dates at places like Winston-Salem, North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, and such, and replacing them with 1.5mile D shaped ovals sprinkled all over the US has taken away much of the character and nature of the series, and replaced it with a sort of generic “race of the week” look that to me just looks like the same track with a different name painted on the wall and a different background on the wide shots.  Otherwise, it is the same old same old, playing into the hands of the teams with the most money for development of downforce and plate race cars, and less reward for the good drivers that tend to flourish on the slightly tighter or more skill oriented tracks.

A 7% haircut on viewership isn’t going to be enough to make things change, but I think that NASCAR will see as the season goes on that certain races (like, say Bristol) will bring in the crowd AND the viewers, and snoozefest 1.5 mile tracks will continue to sell decent tickets (as the only NASCAR race in a region for a whole year) but the fans will turn the noses and remotes up at this somonex on wheels, and they will find better things to do.

Wake up NASCAR… The “new” fans out west are not turning up like you wanted (California race wasn’t even near a sell out again), meanwhile Interesting, fun, and challenging tracks from the history of the sport sit idle, spoiling in the sun.

Free North Wilkesboro

First off, I have been driving a rental car for the last 2 weeks while my car got fixed. Yeah, some dumbass snow removal guy decided that reversing without looking was a really good way to save himself some time on the job. instead, it got him writing reports and arguing with insurance companies, who found him to be responsble and me to be fine and clear. Anyway, I got the car back today but there are a couple of things still to do to make it all right again, so I will be going back and forth on the issue I guess.

The weather has been fucking mental as well, it was freezing cold last weekend, and today it is raining and they are talking about 11C by Sunday. Spring usually rolls in slowly, but this time it looks like a freaking freight train coming to run us over. I am not really ready for it.

I have also been working on my least favorite thing, accounting. I hate the work, I hate checking it, and I hate that in the end it just means that I have to send the government money. Nothing fucking good there!

Worst part? The last episode of The Deadliest Catch ran this week, so I am way fucking bummed out about it all. First because it was an interesting show filled with real, decent, hardworking people that I can truly identify with, and second because I didn’t know when it started that this was also a documentary of the last year of this style of crabbing. Basically, for pretty much all times, they used a derby style system – total catch permitted was X tons of crab, and everyone starts on the same day and they go until the X tons has been caught. If you catch more you make more, if you catch less you make less. Pretty simple, right?

The Deadliest Catch was exactly about the competition and spirit of “try harder, work harder” that made these guys special. They would work for days at a time non-stop in order to get the most crab before the limit was reached. Sort of a combination business and sport. You could see the intelligence, the knowledge, the experience, and the skill that these people use to win the game. No fucking basketball hoop or other false prize – this was all about money and pride. Amazing.

It saddens me no end to know that many of the people who were on the show have since lost their jobs in the crab fishery because the quotas were only granted to some boats, and others were purchased by the state and put out of service forever. Approximately 250 boats fished for Opilio crab in 2005, and in 2006 I have seen numbers under 100 boats total. Truly fucking amazing how the government can take something noble, prideful, and all american like this and turn it into a red tape clusterfuck beyond all understanding.

Anyway, losing one of the few TV shows I truly enjoy sort of sucks.

Besides that, I have had a little problem this week getting traction on an idea I have been working on. Nothing like having a really great idea but not being able to exactly put it down on paper or share with others. I sort of shared part of it with one person, but I didn’t get any feedback yet which is sort of driving me around the bend a bit wondering. That is just one of those things, I guess.

I am also looking to sell my house this real estate season, 2 other similar houses have sold in the last couple of months on my street and I feel pretty good. But to do that, I have to get the house into salable condition and make sure all the odds and ends are taken care of, which is a bitch. Worse, as I go along, I find more shit that needs to be taken care of, so I am actually sort of going backwards instead of forwards. Fuck.

Finally, spring break season is on, which is usually a quiet time in the online busines as students go away, and families often take trips etc. So as a result, pretty much everyone I know is saying “quiet this week”… Things should pick back up in a little bit, but for now, it just sucks.

Anyway, back to work I go, I guess… enough bitching for one day

I mean, yeah, I get it, I really get it… but Chris Locke probably won’t like my conclusions.

Let me paint a picture for you. Let’s say you go to the electronic store to look for a new TV. At many of the big box retailers you go into the sales people will be all over you like stink on shit. You can’t even get NEAR the product before someone is there to help you find the most expensive thing in the store. They push, they shove, they try to sell you extended warrantees and in home service and setup and 101 other things. They pressure you like made to spend the most money and make them the most commission.

The Gonzo Marketing version would be this: You go into the same store. The sales staff are all hidden in dark corners where you can’t see them. The place is filled with other people who aren’t looking for TVs, but instead are enjoying watching the discovery channel on 64 big screen TVs. As you walk around, they talk to you about the green leaves on the screen or the life cycle of the wild animals or how to save the rain forest. Now, you love the rain forest, and you start to talk to that person about the rain forest, and how it is important and stuff. All the while, you are watching the picture on this really nice new plasma TV that happens to be right next to you. The person mentions they have one just like it at home, and it is really great. They talk some more about the rain forest and stuff… and then they mention that this plasma is much better than the LCD screen and much brigher and stuff, and really is a good bargain right now at $300 off the normal price. Did they mention that their son works in sale here? I am sure he could get you another $200 off on it… let me introduce you… and you end up buying the over priced plasma TV from your friend.

The “father” is in fact employed by the store, and gets a commission on every sale. Rather than looking like sales staff, they play the friendly “other shopper” and disarm people by making them think that they are NOT selling them something. It is clever, but it is massively misleading and dishonest (and I suspect illegal in some manner, but I can’t be sure)

The company and the individuals have to team up together to create the perfect ruse. They have to setup the TVs just right, put the right show on the screen, and have enough people around that they are sure to hit something you are interested in. Once they get you talking, it won’t be long before they can make the sale without you realizing you were getting cornered.

Putting it in the web context, it basically breaks the assumed trust of blogs and bloggers. While we know (see previous post) that bloggers are not entirely honest or at least not entirely correct, there is a trust that they are blogging with some sort of obvious purpose. Commercial blogs are obviously commercial, and personal blogs are obviously personal. Some sites shade the lines, but basically you can tell one from the other. The Gonzo Marketing idea is to go into the personal blogspace and invade it with nice people who in reality are just well disguised fronts for the sale department of their companies.

I guess what cheeses me off the most about this is that Chris Locke goes on and on about the personal responsilbity and the great potential for power that comes with the self publishing world of “weblogs” and personal webspaces. He goes on with the power of the pulpit to preach to us about how we will all have this great personal power, and how it will be the thing that liberates us all.

Then he carefully explains to greedy corporations how to invade, subvert, and abuse this very liberating form of self expression and turn it into just another mass media turd, by assembling as many micromarkets as you can touch and leveraging them together just like any other billboard campaign.

It really sucks to see something so potentially good subverted from the get go by the person preaching about it the most.

First and foremost, Locke tries to paint the picture of the internet as a sort of great social commune of people sharing interests, creating geocities websites filled with dancing hamsters and talking about organic gardening. He touched just barely on the new at the time idea of weblogs, which we all know now as blogs. He correctly did predict that we would all spend out time talking to each other in little personal interest sites. Everyone is a writer, and editor, and a researcher. We all bring our personal experiences and knowledge to the table, and away we go, filling the web with endless amounts of wonderful, insightful personally slaved over and loved information.

That much, my friends, he got right.

He goes on to attempt to sell this concept to industry as a “gonzo� or underground marketing campaign. Basically, unleash your employees to create personalized websites about whatever interests them, and attempt to leverage that into some sort of sneaky personal brand connection concept. It is a stunning abuse of the very trust he seeks to promote in the wide open social commune that he calls the net. It is a bit like sending in undercover spies or some sort of digital trojan horse. Pollute and corrupt the system from the inside.

Thankfully, that sort of bloated neo-corporate blather for the most part has been lost in the sea of the web, because people are not so easily tricked by the bullshit of forced originality. It is a very well known fact that most blogs are abandoned within a few posts of being opened, as most people discover that they really have very little to say. Attempting to force employees to talk about whatever for fun and corporate prodfits is an even bigger non-starter, and as a result, most of what was in Gonzo Marketing regarding personal interest websites has pretty much failed.

In it’s place, we find things like myspace and any number of pathetic dating sites packed full of losers hiding behind fake photos and even faker profiles. In both cases, the goal seems only to score the most “friends� and not to actually talk about anything. A personal grandstanding and very shallow shout outs, totally transient in nature. For most of these people, the net is just a glorified school dance or pickup bar with smaller drink tabs and no reason to dress up.

Those who do chose to blog come in a couple of groups. The best bloggers tend to be the professionals that you actually want to know more about. I personally love to read Matt Cutt’s blog (he is a higher end Google guy, double meaning intended). It is filled with great information about how Google runs, things going on, and the weird things that Matt really enjoys. It is a real mish-mash, but good fun overall and not at all forced in language or subject.

In the middle area there are hundreds of thousands of people who ruin personal blogs on about every subject in the world, from anthills to zits and everything in between. Some of these are well written by people who have some skill and a real interesting point of view or passion for a subject, and others are just hack jobs from people who can barely string together a sentence. There is a ton of passion in these sites.

There is also the commercial blog. I run some of those ( like The Little Tit site or DDCup Big Booby Blog ) that are aimed to provide a service and inform a group of like minded people about things they might like. My personal preference in breast size doesn’t come into play here, I professionally write from either point of view without issue, as I understand both, and they are darn good information and resource sites that visitors tend to enjoy. Over time I open more sites of the same general concept, reaching out to people with similar desires or pleasures. It is actually one of the most fun parts of my day to work on these sites.

Finally, there are the blog mega sites, like stile project or consumption junction that were bloggy type sites really before blogs existed. They are sort of the all things to all people, and are quite popular for various reasons.

What Locke failed to address in his book was the issue of integrity and truthfulness in blogging. It is very easy to write almost anything in a blog (My sister is an alien) without anything being able to check out the facts (nobody can prove she is an alien, now can they). The web is filled with blogs that lie, steal, cheat, and mislead… and that what keeps the blog world from being anything more than a poorly organized social experiment.

Let me give you an example. There are any number of “celeb� blogs out there, chatting about the latest gossip, often posting nipple slip pictures, embarrassing moments, and shots that are pretty darn funny. These sites get huge numbers of visitors every day, and they tend to try to sell people off to celeb nudity sites like Mr Skin or similar sites.

Every wonder where they get those pics from? Simple: THEY STEAL THEM.

Every wonder where these sites get their funny videos from? Do you think they have film crews all over the world chasing stupid drivers and dumb skateboard riders around? Nope… THEY STEAL IT.

Now, consider this: If they are willing to steal material to fill their sites, would you consider that they might be a little bit fast and loose with facts too?

Nobody is checking… nobody knows.

If you get your news from blogs, then you probably don’t have all the truth… just be careful, okay?

Chapter 7: The Gonzo Model

Okay, I was following along no problem. Chistropher Locke is certainly a motivated and strong speaker, and believes very much in what he writes. He is a, umm, how can I say this, real born again evanglist when it comes to this idea of Gonzo Marketing. Religeous in approach, even. He prays at the alter of the little guy, lighting a candle for the micro interests that all of us apparently have. Left handed red head football lovers from WallaWalla, short people with big chips on their shoulders about global warming and the effects on the one eyed slugs of bimini island… everyone has a candle lit at the alter of Locke.

I was good with that. Blogs and free blog space and myspace and 100 other sites have given the public a space to post whatever the heck is they want, regardless of the truth, skill, or intelligence of the people using it – the only barrier being smart enough to figure out the interface and type your name (and if you have ever spent time around places like blogger, you will know that many, many people just don’t past that test). There are literally thousands if not millions of totally useless, undeveloped, abandoned blogs and personal web pages crowding up the net universe. Heck, you can’t blame people for trying, I am proud of anyone willing to give it a shot.

Locke prays every day that another blog will appear, that another micromarket will be born, and that the world will be all right.

I start reading this magic chapter 7, and it all goes to shit.

All of sudden, the book takes a sharp turn and we are back inside stuff cubicle packed offices, instructing bosses to set up personal websites inside the company and let the employees play… and then pick the best and put them REALLY on the web and use them as a sneaky, back ass way to get your company exposed, all while tricking employees into being secret sales droids… never realizing that their posts and articles on back yard gardening are in fact a covert way of sneaking your company into the very micromarkets that your employees have spawned for you.

There you have it: The high priest of do it yourself web teaching companies how to corrupt the system and turn it into, well… shit.

Gonzo Marketing is in fact the first step down the road not of blogs, but of micromarket splogs generated not by computer and keywords lists, but carefully created and maintained by the ignorant employees who think that they are putting one over on the company by spending their time working on a blog instead of answering customer phone calls or actually doing work.

He calls it “winning through worst practices” but in the end, after 6 chapters of spewing off how important the new non-broadcast media would be in people’s lives, he turns around and tells companies exactly how to corrupt it and turn it back into a form of broadcast medium… instead of 100 people working to produce a TV show, just give each one of them a couple of blogs to run and you suddenly have access to 200 new micromarkets…

I guess I am just a little disgusted – and all of this from a guy who’s website looks like the very worst of myspace and yahoo groups tossed in a blender, fed to an incontenant monkey, and given 12 hours to filter through.

Anyway, I am going to plug on through and try to get to the end of this book, all the while trying not to laugh at the quaint 5 year old information that it spews.

There are two trends growing, and honestly, I don’t know which one is worse. This story brings both of them out.

Reality porn started a few years back with sites like bangbus and Mike’s Apartment showed girls getting picked up and “talked into” being on a porn video. In the case of Bangbus, the real trick was at the end they never actually paid the girl the money they promised, and often tricked them into getting out of the van and then driving away. Think of it as a simpistic version of male dominance, on tape and sent out to millions of other potential knuckle dragging cavemen to enjoy.

From my point of view, taken as a humorous aside in life, they are actually really a bunch of fun and play to a harmless fantasy that most people would never even consider thinking about. It sort of plays off the older “pick up a hitchiker”thing, a pretty normal fantasy that has been around since the start of my life, anyway. I will tell you that you probably would enjoy checking out the bangbus trailers because some of them are truly classic pieces of porn humor. Taken in a light hearted manner, some of them are truly side splitting.

Mike’s Apartment is a twist. Guy puts ad in newspaper for temporary room mates for his flat in Amsterdam. A parade of poor students, cheap travellers, and confused locals come through looking for a space to stay, and when they findout that the price of admission is getting naked on camera (and often fucking the mythical “mike”) some run and some strip down and get busy. Again, sort of the stranger fantasy played out well.

The downside of these reality sites is that some people have taken them a little too far, pushing the border of subjects like non-consentual sex and even rape. One of the weirder and less enjoyable sites included ideas like “attacked while sleeping” and “she’ll never know” type sites. This delves into an area that starts to work on matters of judgement and good taste. There are thing, example, that a married couple might do for fun (I will even admit to waking my ex-wife up with some nice munching, which lead to amazing sex) but most of these sites play on “neighbors”, “room mates”, or “sister’s friends”. It is the idea of having sex without waking someone up… and it is, without a doubt in my mind, the portrayal of non-consentual sex, which is rape.

Rape ain’t good, guys.

Anyway, these dumbasses in the article happened to find a buddies’ almost conquest passed out in the living room of their shared flat, and decided after watching some porn that it would be a good idea to blow their load all over her while she slept. Not cool at all.

Guys, if the girl can’t say yes or no, the answer should always be NO.

Anyway, the other trend in all of this is the current run of the press to blame porn for every ill in society. When that Entwhistle dude that killed his wife and kid was caught, they checked his computer and foudn that he was checking out porn and hanging around adult dating / sex exchange sites. Some of the media tried to suggest this as some sort of trigger for what happened. The truth of the matter is that more than 50% of all americans check out porn and enjoy it at one time or another, and that visiting an adult site isn’t exactly unusual or out of place. Only the taboos and morals of the current society keep us from standing around the water cooler at work talking about the fuck movie we watched last night. Porn star girls and guys are well known, most people know who is who. It isn’t a big deal, we don’t talk about it.

So my advice to the media is that you start looking somewhere else for a scapegoat… and guys, keep your dick in your pants when the girls don’t want it. That will keep us from having too many more articles that make the porn business look bad, okay?

I am in Canada. We have two sat-tv companies, Starchoice and Expressvu. When I first went to a Canadian system (I use to grey market a US provider), I used Starchoice. They were not bad, but the set top boxes were slow to open new channels, which made channel surfing impossible. When the set top box took a powder and they tried to charge me for a replacement, I jumped ship and went with Bell Expressvu.

Everything with expressvu has been reasonable but not great. The packages are a little wonky, the reception at times is a little wierd, and my outside disk has all the paint peeling off of it. Not a really big deal, because I guess I will be heading to HD pretty soon anway, so no big deal, right? That is what I thought.

I have been watching the ads closely. The price of the HD receiver finally dropped down under $300, and the price of good HD TVs is coming down fast too. I can see myself probably going to HD pretty darn soon. I figured, heck, I could just get the receiver now (with the new dish) and buy the TV when I get a chance, no big deal. I am a big customer, I have pretty much every channel you can get without going to the premium foreign channels and stuff. I figured I would give them a call, I was sure that there would be some sort of deal for a semi-loyal client who is paying them premium money.

Wrong-o Bongo.

It turns out that existing customers get NOTHING extra. Not a thing. Nada. Actually, new clients get more (10 free months of the HD channels) and existing customers get it in the ass. Nothing, nada, no nothing for paying $300 to move up.

Anyway, Expressvu, you are on notice. I am calling the cable company to check out their digital offerings next week, and you may be OUT THE DOOR.

Suckers!

Anyway, I have played a little bit over the last few days, and the results are mixed but encouraging. I played some sit and go tables (about broke even), and played a few lower dollar tourneys (I am landing about in the top 20% each time… ). I tend to be playing pretty good, concentration okay and everything, but over time I tend to lose the thread, lose control, and I start playing poorer and poorer hands, or playing good hands long past the time that they weren’t good anymore. That is what lands me out of the money most of the time.

I played my first rebuy / addon game as well. It was a cheapy ($5), and I was amazed at the number of people who didn’t addon at the end of the first hour. I figured that half the people should have less than the average number of chips, so each of them should be at least interested, plus some of the others as a matter of course. Yet in this case, not even 20% of the people took advantage from what I could see in the numbers.

So I will be back to play a little bit more, money is tightly controlled, so I am playing really money tables not subs or semis… at least not until I build up a little roll to work with.

Want to play poker online? Click here to get a nice bonus and play online!

With his approval ratings sinking faster than Scooter Libby’s social schedule, Bush has to take some drastic steps to pick things up. Mid term elections are now 12 months away, and unless the republicans as a whole start to look better, there might be a swing in the house and senate. Bush’s plan? Don’t fix anything, just lash out at all the other people and hope nobody notices your misdirection.

GWB, let me give you a suggestion: Try the words “mea culpa”. Accept that the buck really does stop at your desk (because in your world, the only guy more powerful than you is god… and your father). Accept that you are in the end responsible for taking the US (and the world) to war in Iraq without real justification, or that the justifications were either made up or “cherry picked” from the intelligence available. I don’t think very many people are saying outright that you lied, but they are saying that you used only the truths and information that supported your desired result, rather than balancing the informaiton out.

The whole reason Scooter has some time on his hands goes back to your administration apparently being willing to do anything to shut up dissenting voices.

There was no nuclear weapons – and there was no proof to start with.

There were no chemical weapons – and the UN inspectors hadn’t found any before the war either

There were no weapons of mass destruction – and the UN inspectors didn’t find them either.

Saddam Hussein wasn’t friends with Bin Ladin – in fact, they apparently hate each other.

Al-quida wasn’t much of a force in Iraq before the war.

So today’s attacks on John Kerry, and misrepresenting how he voted against funding your personal war on Saddam. You attack anyone who doesn’t support your views, and you stand up and get creative with the truth.

Presidental of you, sir.

It had been building for some time. President Bush has spent 5 years talking about “faith based organization” and allowing his then Attorney General Ashcroft to run bible study sessions inside government buildings (they were not manditory meetings, but it would appear that some staffers might have felt obligated or left out if they did not attend) – as reported in many places (such as the ACLU website or Pat Robertson’s website). The terror attacks on New York have often been framed as an “us versus them” situation, and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan put down as the fight between good and evil (as Daddy Bush would say, “between good and evil, right and wrong”).

The US is becoming an agressively fundementalist christian society.

There are endless fights right now about cross on city logos and a judge secret installing a 5000 pound monument of the 10 commandments in the courthouse lobby. There is a massive christian backlash against the federal and supreme courts enforcing seperations of church and state. There have been fights over issues like the lord’s prayer in schools, bible study classes, and just about every other issue to deal with public schools and christian teachings. Pretty much down the line, the courts have ordered the schools to stop forcing students to participate in christian rituals in public places.

The US was originally settled (or should I say stolen from the indians) by a mix of catholic christians and protestant people, and has seen a great mix in it’s ethnic makeup and religious beliefs. The US has spent a long time being very tolerate of all religious groups, all the while the christians held the power. The last 20 years have been a low point for the catholic church, and attendance has hit an all time bottom.

However, as Brokaw reported, there is a major upswing the in the “casual christian” churches. Those demoniations such as the New Life Church that follow the bible but don’t really seem to hold to the old traditions of prayer and hymn. That has been replaced with flashy stage shows, pyrotechnic displays, live rock bands, and preachers delivering sermons in the same way that self help gurus stir up a crowd to spend $300 for a bunch of tapes and books. These religous organisations are not only building support for “god”, but they are also politically active, backing PACs and other situations to apply pressure on the government of the day to get certain thing done or moved along.

Since Bush took power, there has been a very quiet but very aggressive campaign against porn, smut, and dirty thoughts. From Janet’s boob to Howard Stern, from Max Hardcore to Goalie Entertainment, the FCC, the FBI, and the DOJ have been working hard to surpress free speech and to punish those people who are not truly responsible for that is going on (such as attacking the Super Bowl network of the day for Janet secretly deciding to market large nipple rings on live TV).

In the adult online business, newly re-written administative rules (under usc 18 section 2257) would require adult entertainment companies to maintain overlapping and duplicate databases of performers for each company involved in the production and distribtuion of legal adult materials. This would mean that not only the company producting the movies would have to prove that the models are over 18, but each company along the way (including the companies that reproduce the DVDs, the companies the print the boxes, and potentially even the companies that ship the boxes to the stores) would each have to keep complete personal records on every person involved in each video they handle – in a cross referenced database that can be looked up in about 10 different ways as specified by the DOJ. Their goal? They say it is to “cut down on child porn”, but in reality, it is to put porn site operators out of business by requiring burdensome and wasteful paperwork. In the case of a website operator, records would have to be kept for each individual image each time it appears on a website, with complete records for each model each time.

The Christian people in charge know they cannot legally stop porn (straight fucking ain’t obscene, so they can’t do anything about it directly) so they use administraitve punishments to try to slow down or shut down the industry. It is the same as using zoning laws to move adult bookstores and video shops outside of the city by effectively making it impossible to obtain a leasable commercial space within a city that matches the zoning rules.

This has all come as a result of 9/11/2001, Bin Ladin, and the apparent hate of the US by certain Muslim factions in the world. As they have become more aggressive and more militant, the US has replied with more and more “god bless america” and “I pray” and “faith based organizations”. The current Iraq conflict is basically a christian / muslim war. The current unrest in France is essentially lead by muslim youths, even as their leaders have issued an edict against rioting – as if they should be told not to burn cars, destroy buisnesses, and such. Drudge had it on his site as (paraphrasing here) “the start of the jihad in europe”. There is an intense fear amoungst christian groups that they will be pushed out of countries by the muslim people, and they fear losing control of the world.

They may be right. Who knows?

My fear is that as the US faces more threats from the outside, there is increased pressure to “join the winning side” which Bush basically equates to being a good god fearing Christian. Born again / new christians are some of the most annoying people on the planet, because they insist on trying to share their recent conversion to god with everyone else. Their churches have sunk to new lows to attract younger members, by supporting rock and rap groups (such as Evanescence) and getting those acts into non-christian settings. Getting those subtle and not so subtle relgious messages out to the youth in a format the little ones will swallow whole is the idea. Other hard rock acts like P.O.D are taking the message very subtly into the alternative and hard rock mainsteam arenas.

Where is all this leading? I have a feeling that as the attitude hardens on either side, we end up with more resistance on both sides, and more anger, and in the end, a bigger and uglier war. Christian versus muslim, with an all out battle to the end.

Does anyone really want that?

The reaction in congress is to consider a new law tightening immigration laws.

This is typical of the current state of affairs in the US. There are plenty of good and vaild laws on the books currently to deal with the immigration issues, but rather than working to enforce existing laws, the people in Washington feel the need to write new and more complex legislation, quite possibly to show they are “doin’ sump’tin” about the problem. That “doin’” is going to take more than a year to happen, if it happens at all. I suspect some of them are just hoping that things go away.

The adult industy faces the same problem. There is a law on the books (USC 18 section 2256 and 2257) that regulates the industry, requiring proof of age for models, documentation, and such. These rules were put in place as much because of one Traci Lords than anything else. It’s a good law, it requires that the people who actually take the images get all the model IDs and everything, and keep them on file with the custodian of records that the police and feds can consult as needed if anything ever comes up.

The problem? Not a single conviction has been made in the 10+ years that this law has been on the books. When summoned in front of Congress, the FBI admitted as much.

So, the Department of Justice is attempting to use “executive clarifications” (a process normally used to clarify HOW a law is enforced) to re-write the rules to require huge amounts of new paperwork by adult content producers and distributors, all under the guise of “stopping child porn”.

What these dumbasses don’t understand is that the legit adult industry doesn’t intentionally produce or distribute child porn, and that every case that I am aware of where an underage performer has been found, they have been using false government issued documention to show their age as over 18. Again, in almost every case I am aware of (and there are very few) the girls and boys involved are typically within months of the age of majority. We are not talking about 12 year old girls getting fucked by perverts or 6 month old babies being molested, but over eager “near adults” purposefully misleading people to participate in the adult indsutry of their own free wills.

Not a single child porn “producer” (I think that using producer is an insult to people in the legit adult industry) would bother with paperwork, with model records, or with ID checks. They are not even going to attempt to mislead anyone. They film pre-teen, pre-pubescent children engaged in disgusting sex acts. They are not borderline or almost… they are way out there, clear and obvious as the nose on the end of my face. But alas, the US government feels that new laws, new regulations, and new burdonsome paperwork on the LEGIT industry will somehow stop the production of child porn in it’s tracks.

Sort of like making the Whiskey producers track every bottom they make and recycle the emptry bottles and follow the drunks home, hoping to stop the moonshiners from plying their trade. They two are only related by achohol content, not business model or regulation.

Sort of like creating whole new sections of law to control illegal immigration at the US southern border, rather then just sending in the national guard, more border guards, and setting up processing to get the illegals directly out of the country. Instead, they will come up with even more complex laws to punish people who hire or pay illegals to work for them – which is funny because many a politico has been caught with an undocumented nanny or gardener working for them. It’s BULLSHIT buck passing, putting more burdens on people already following the law, and doing nothing to resolve the real issues that are out there.

Nothing happens because nobody appears to want to make it happen. The members of congress and the house in the US should be ashamed by the waste of time and taxpayer money that goes into keeping their worthless butts in washington.

My personal favorite is Bill O’Rielly (oh really?). The guy runs a show called “the no spin zone”, and his first topic every night is “talking points”. Now, I don’t know about you, but talking points usually are a partisan list of topics to be used when addressing the media to put the right message out there. That anyone can (with a straight face) accept “no spin” and “talking points” at the same time boggles my mind (where is that smilie?).

Middle of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA and Brown were having a nap, the President headed to California to get a guitar, and O’Reilly is on the air blaming the governor and the mayor of New Orleans for FEMA not showing up.

No spin, indeed.

FOXNC and it’s “presenters” for the most part pick a very conservative / republican line to almost any story that comes up, only being critical of of Bush or others around him as a last resort, when they see that they are alone on the “pro-bush all the time” stand. Then they will make very weak and sanitized “Bush didn’t do enough” statements, and try to find a scapegoat to explain it (see Brown).

Between the crew of FOXNC (many of whom also do ultra conservative syndicated radio shows) and people like Rush Limbaugh, it is surprising that most Americans can go to the bathroom without help. These guys pile the crap on so thick that it is beyond understanding… Limbaugh still blames Clinton weekly for the economic mess in America today. “Dittoheads”… a nice way of saying don’t think, just agree with me.

The massive divide between reality and what a large part of the radio, press, and TV medias are putting out there only helps to encourage this mentality, and teaches people to pat themselves on the back for a job well done even if the job wasn’t well done.

It has been a very sad last 10 years watching much of America slip into a self righteous abiss.

Alex

Ray, here is a hint: Unless the levees are completely repaired and secure, you can’t put people back in harm’s way. You can’t even really let them start to rebuild or anything, because, well, you can’t keep anything they do secure.

I have a suggestion for you (and not a popular one, I am sorry).

Except for the areas of New Orleans that have stayed dry, you need to plow the rest of it down, and allow the water to come in full time into those areas. Remove the levees from that side, let it flood out, and just let the lake be bigger. Use the dirt that you dig up from those areas to raise the overall land level of other areas of the city that are marginal, and raise them up before you rebuild them. Basically save the french quarter, the business district, the port area, and so on. Give up on the rest, the costs for keeping it dry in the long term is not a very good business investment.

You will end up with a smaller city, but one that is much more secure and much more willing to work for the future. This will also renew your city, and hopefully bring new investment and new money to your city, which will help all the people who come to live there.

Good luck to everyone in the path of the storm. Stay dry!

Alex

It has been a good week for Bush-boy. Michael Brown ressigns from FEMA after being recalled like a lost little schoolboy. Dick Cheney finally decided to end his vacation and visited the disaster zone, using empty platitudes and vapid political comments to explain the situation in simple terms to the collected (and likely very bored) press. Then, on top of it, it turns out that Bush / Cheney cronies are getting all the cleanup contracts without bids. It truly has been an amazing week.

The funniest story of it all? When the levees broke, you would be surprised where POTUS was “working”. “Bush, in San Diego for celebrations of end of World War II, is photographed smiling and playing a guitar given to him by a popular singer. Cheney remains on vacation in Wyoming.” timeline here of the fuckups

Yes, Dubya, now is the time to accept responsiblity. Now is the time to admit your failures, and admit your VERY poor judgement.

All of this has brought to my mind a very clear picture of GW Bush as a leader, and as a man. I don’t like what I see.

The inaction of the President, who now suddenly is the New Orleans frequent flier of the month, is stunning to see. The areas were declared federal disaster areas before the hurricane even hit, but still he stayed on vacation. The hurricane hit and just about wiped out biloxi and other coastal towns and cities, and still he stayed on vacation. The levees broke, New Orleans filled with water, and Bush went to pick up a guitar at a public event on the west coast.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Bush strummed while New Orleans flooded.

The length and frequency of vacation to Texas, and the seeming desire to stay in Texas no matter what happens in the rest of the world is sort of stunning. Normally we get a couple of weeks off a year from work. Bush has spent a ton of time in Texas on the ranch, with 11 long term visits in the past 6 years (the current vacation was more than a month). He is the “commander in absence”, the guy in your office who is never at his desk. He doesn’t work late, he doesn’t get to work early, he exercises during the day, and basically limits his work time dramatically. This is the POTUS you see on TV on the West Wing, handling things day and night. This is the “Bank Manager” president, 10am to 3PM Monday to Friday, with long vacations twice a year to keep things in balance.

Everyone knows now that the war in Iraq was a crock. The proof was made up wholesale, the “reason” for the attack has slipped, and the US has moved from thwarting terrorism to nation building. There were no weapons, and even Colin Powell is embarrassed for having given that horrible misleading speech to the UN and to the world.

Bush has been the president of deception, misrepresentation, and inaction. As a Canadian, I can tell you that I feel less secure today, knowing that our big neighbor to the south has painted a target on it’s head. Nuclear fallout goes a long way, and I am just in the right place to get some. I am not impressed.

*sigh*

My friends ran this new orleans blog about their experiences trying to keep internet connectivity and keeping their business afloat while this has been going on. They are located not more than about 4 blocks from the Superdome, so they have been living this crap first hand.

The people that disgust me the most? Morons like Bill O’Reilly (fox news) who has attempted with every broadcast (and every “talking points” bullshit that he puts out) to spin responsiblity away from the president and onto local officials and specifically the democrat Governer of Louisiana. Considering he claims to be the “no spin zone”, his performance has been nothing less than hurricane strenght.

Mr O, here is a hint: No matter what happens, the boss is always responsible in the end. In case you missed it, LA and MS were declared federal disaster areas before the storm even hit. That means that FEMA is effectively authorized to enter the area and begin operations without any “invitation” from the state or local officials. They are FEDERAL DISASTER AREAS. End problem. FEMA screwed the pooch, took a 5 day vacation (they got 2 days lead time with the disaster area declaration), and in the end, there is one guy responsible for it: They guy who stayed on vacation in Texas instead of heading back to Washington to “lead the fight”. Had Bush been back in Washington on Sunday, I suspect you would have seen the trucks rolling into the area Monday morning – not wednesday afternoon or thursday.

He didn’t make it back to work until Tuesday himself, so why should anyone else care? Heck, Cheney didn’t make it off vacation for nearly 10 days after this started. WTF?

No matter how hard you try to “no spin zone” the situation, the federal response was lax, and the leader of the federal response is POTUS. The buck is suppose to stop there. Let’s see where it really ends up.