With all of the RIAA hoohah, it might make sense to find out where your money is going before you purchase any shiny new CDs. No one in their right mind wants to support an association that would have the audacity to attempt to sue half the country because they shared some music. If you want to make absolutely sure that your next new music purchase is not going to go to the hands that will sue you, visit the RIAA
Radar Search Engine to find out whether or not the RIAA had a hand in the creation of the album you want. If the album is RIAA fodder, I would highly suggest purchasing it used from Half.com or Amazon.com to avoid feeding the fat cats.

I’ve been going to the gym between 4 and 6 days a week for 1-2 hours per visit since June. Aside from losing inches from everywhere (which does not necessarily indicate weight loss, especially if you’re weight training) and sweating through bottles and bottles of water, I think it’s becoming part of my routine. Some days are harder than others of course and some days I have no motivation to do anything much less jog uphill like a hamster on a wheel. I’m starting to feel the “I didn’t go to the gym today so I’m a loser” guilt when I don’t make it there. I’m also finding that I sleep like the dead after a 2 hour workout (and the glass of cabernet before bed helps too).

The oddest thing of all is that I don’t feel tired after the workouts anymore. The first three or four weeks I used to come back from the gym, have a sports drink, and pass out. When I say pass out I mean fall asleep anywhere I was including the couch, the livingroom floor, my computer desk, and my bed (when I had enough energy to take me there). Now after I work out, I get home, watch some TV, and am compelled to do leg lifts and lower ab exercises. It’s very strange! I don’t know what’s happening to me! Soon I’ll be taking pilates and yoga! ARGH!

I’m gonna go eat some carbs outta spite for my enjoyment of the exercise thing! GRR!

So, like everyone else, I joined Friendster. I got my friends to join Friendster. Now their friends are joining Friendster. Now that almost everyone you know is on Friendster, what do we do? There is no classified board to sell your junk. There is no threaded message board where you can have an intelligent discussion about things. There are no clubs or groups within Friendster, save some obnoxious cliques. Right now I’m trying to figure out what the hell the point of Friendster was. It’s a really big popularity contest and perhaps the idea is earning the CEO some dollars, but other than that I have really found it to be worthless. Since I’m not trolling for a date, or trying to find a long lost friend, there’s absolutely no point.

In my quest to find a Friendster replacement, I’ve found Tribe.net. Tribe does everything that Friendster does better and faster and it also does all of the things you wished Friendster did. You can sell your stuff, troll for a date, join a group, AND have a THREADED forum-style discussion! Needless to say I have joined Tribe and I’m planning on checking it out. I hope you guys who read this silly weblog will at least check the site out and maybe make an account and we can start a little club and stuff. I also hope I can convert some of those Friendster people. Let’s move on, people. Down with Friendster! Tribe.net forever! *smirk*

TechTV was kind enough to round up the first list of Kazaa aliases who will be hunted down and prosecuted in their witch hunt. Any of the aliases look familiar to you? Are you one of the “chosen” few? Know someone who is on the list? Just generally pissed off about the matter?

If you are any of the above, feel free to sound off here. I’d love to hear more of what people are thinking about this whole debacle.

If you haven’t seen USA Network’s The Dead Zone, you’re missing out. This series is of course based on Stephen King’s novel “The Dead Zone” (however loosely) and stars Anthony Michael Hall as Johnny Smith. Like most Stephen King works, it doesn’t completely translate to the screen, but Anthony Michael Hall looks great and is doing a great job with his character. The supporting cast is mostly forgettable, but the plots are relatively interesting. At least it breaks the monotony in a positively horrible summer television schedule.

I wonder what the TV schedule has in store for us in the fall. I wonder how many reality shows Fox can squeeze into their schedule, and I wonder how many shows will be cancelled halfway through the season to free up airtime for new reality shows. Do I sound bitter about Fox? Good, cause I am. They were never better than questionable but they really hit a low point last fall. As a Joss Whedon fan I’ll never forgive them for killing Firefly before its time even though I wasn’t enamored with the series. The only thing I will be happy for is the fact that since Buffy is no longer, I’ll never have to tune into bloody UPN again. What a miserable channel with a myriad of forgettable shows and talent. Blah. The highlight of the upcoming season will be the revamped Angel on The WB. Joss will be paying more attention to Angel so I expect the writing to be top notch this season. I don’t know what else will be worthy of my time. Even though it pains me, I am curious about the Rachel/Joey union on Friends. I always wanted Joey to get a good girl and anything that results in Ross getting screwed over is always amusing. But anyway, I babble. What are you guys looking forward to watching this fall? I know the pickins are slim with all the reality crap but there has to be something in prime time that’s worthy of a watch.

I want to know why the RIAA and the record companies aren’t getting the bejeesus sued or beaten out of them for price fixing. Certain music stores, like Virgin Records, are selling CDs for pennies less than the price of CDs after they were first introduced. Maybe that’s why they’re suffering and on the brink of going under?

Seriously now, the CD has been around in the neighborhood of 20 years. Why should I be paying upwards of $16 for a new cd? Didn’t other major companies like Nintendo and even Microsoft at some point get sued for price fixing? The economy has changed, the value of goods has changed in the past 20 years, technology has changed to allow for faster and higher quality mass production of these items… why should I be paying such an antiquated price for an album that might not even be over 30 minutes long. Furthermore, only pennies (that’s right.. PENNIES) are actually getting to the artist. All of the rest of my $16 is going to record executives, agents, lawyers, and a laundry list of middle men and lackeys.

Now if you want to get into the quality issue, this is a whole different can of worms. Think about the last ten CDs you bought. Can you honestly say that you enjoyed even 80% of the tracks on those CDs? Did you buy a CD (or maybe even a few) for maybe two or three songs? Maybe you even had to pay for the entire CD just to get one song because it wasn’t released as a single? We have all been there and it sucks. I know not every album can be stellar, but why has it become so difficult to find an album that has more than one good track on it? Actually the answer is simple. If every artist only puts one or two purchase-worthy songs on each album and fills up the rest of the disc with the stuff that should be on the cutting room floor and flashy “multimedia enhancements” then the record company can charge a higher price for the disc and get the artist to turn out a new album every 12 to 18 months. Have you noticed that the only artists that aren’t trapped in this factory formula are established artists with creative control, artists on independent labels, and a lucky few that get mentored by established artists?

Now if more of those artists that aren’t under the proverbial thumb of the record industry brass would speak out about all of this RIAA induced hysteria, maybe we could get somewhere.

If the RIAA has their way, everyone caught sharing music online will be fined to hell and back. If certain political factions have their way, file traders will be jailed.

Having established that, did these factions ever stop to think that if you put a bunch of file swappers in jail and fine the rest to oblivion, there will be no one left to buy music? Seriously. Who in their right mind, after having been fined or spent time in the slammer because of sharing music is ever going to give their money to the music industry again? I wouldn’t. Hell I’m not even buying new cds now because of this RIAA induced brouhaha. Furthermore, after having been sued and put through the ringer by
the RIAA’s legal mob, why would you ever give any of your money to the music industry?

Music sales were lackluster at best before the RIAA waged war against everyone in their way. File trading was blamed for the sluggish music sales in the past two years. Did anyone stop to think that maybe the quality of the music being released is pathetic? Who needs another friggin’ Ashanti album for $18.98? Furthermore, did the music-warmongers forget that the whole economy is crappy right now? I think the Bush Administration’s blind-eye/deaf-ear policy is rubbing off on other groups across the country. What do you think?

Out of sheer boredom, I decided to visit Stephen King’s site and to my amazement, he finally finished the Dark Tower Series. Three more books will be released starting later this year. The other four volumes are being re-released in hardcover (WOOHOO) and The Gunslinger has undergone an editorial facelift. If you want to know more about the facelift, visit www.stephenking.com and you’ll find a link to an interview he did with Amazon.

I’ve been obsessed with this particular series of books since I was 12 years old. I’ve got 14 years of my life invested in these books so I am both relieved and on edge that Mr. King has finished them. I’ll be delighted to finally see Roland find some peace (one way or another) but I’m hoping that this won’t be a let down. Books in a series, especially a series of such high acclaim and popularity, tend to get more and more overhyped as the series progresses. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time continues to degrade as each book comes out and it seems like he’s writing himself into a nice corner. The last book got a lot of attention and I still haven’t finished it because it’d make a better doorstop than a piece of literary entertainment. I hope that the Dark Tower series doesn’t degrade in the same manner. I’ve waited too long and read them too many times to suffer a let down of the magnitude of Matrix: Reloaded.

So I went bowling with the family and some neighbors last night. Six people on one lane for two hours. Fill in the blanks about my level of enjoyment but I don’t care to elaborate. Anyway, being the occasional bowler, I had to rent shoes. They gave me brand new right out of the box bowling alley rental standard leather shoes. After wearing them for over two hours I can tell you that I would’ve rather risked athlete’s foot with a scrubby old pair of shoes than ever wear brand new bowling alley standard shoes again. I got home and took off my Superstars and my two big toes were purple. Yeah… purple. Yeowch! They still hurt this morning.

So as my feet were suffering on this family bowling nightmare of an evening, I decided that I wanted a Bass (or a Guinness would do). I sent my dear ol’ da to get me my cup of brew and he returned in 5 minutes to inform me that this nightmare of a bowling alley had neither Bass nor Guinness even though they sported both banners on the walls all over. From what I gathered, they didn’t even have them in stock. If they did it’d be hard to run out of either by 8pm on a Saturday night. The only other darkish brew they had was Amberboch. Uhm… yeah that’s what I said.. Amberboch. One glass of Amberboch and two hours of sore toed bowling later I felt no pangs of sadness as I limped out of the worst bowling alley I’ve ever been to. *sigh*

I always get stuck behind the slow driver in the red sports car. The speed limit is 55 and this retard is doing 40 with nothing in front of him for a mile and a half. Furthermore, he’s not on social security. He might’ve been in his mid 20’s at the most, and I guess he just couldn’t figure out how to use the gas pedal. Or maybe it was a stick and it was his first time driving it, but for pete’s sake, don’t drive it on a major road! Orlando is full of quaint suburban neighborhoods and deserted country roads. Why are you doing 40 in front of me on Orange Blossom Trail in a cherry friggin’ red sports car? WHY?!

If my truck was bigger I could’ve played Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines, but that’d probably land me in jail for the rest of my life. GRR!