Avatar vs iPad: Why No One Cares

Despite all appearances, the Republicans have Obama on the run and they know it. Meanwhile, the spirit of the country continues to dissolve in the face of the reimagining campaigns of both sides. One hopes they collide in the middle like the old commercial about peanut butter and chocolate. Maybe they'll accidentally do something right but when the public has no stomach for reality and are too burned to buy the dream, we're left betting on accidents. Calling oneself "progressive" to get around being called "liberal" or "socialist" is pretty thin.

As surmised, Constellation is dead. This is how it must have felt to be the janitor at Camelot after Arthur and Mordred duked it out and the body of the king was ferried away to Avalon. Something splendid happened in these dark halls full of leaves, dust and cold winds through banging shutters.

Elsewhere some wonder why the iPad has received such a drubbing in the technical press. I have a theory: with the buying public, having been fed unreal notions and increasing levels of Spy vs Spy, all it took was the dream world of Avatar to push them into a complete and fixed state of cynicism. The Apple campaign tricks that worked wonders with the iPod and the Mac are being met with skepticism and yawns. No one cares that Steve Jobs Loves Bob Dylan. Too many know that Thomas Edison was the orignal white pig putting his name on the ideas and hard work of his employees. Too many know that the Apple technologies serve the marketing goals of content capture first and the creative freedom of the users and developers only once that capture is ensured.

Perhaps it isn't that we don't want reality; we no longer can tell what is real. As Richard Reeves points out, we thought we were the people that made the impossible happen in the Berlin Airlift only to discover we are the people who made Abu Gharib possible. It is the feeling of sleeping in slime.

People know the emperor is butt naked except they aren't laughing. When hope fails and misery seems to be at hand, despair follows, and after that, cold hard disbelief no matter the facts at hand. When John Kennedy faced this, he used the space program, which he himself did not care for or believe in as a way to reignite the imagination of a generation. It will be interesting with the cancellation of Constellation effectively killing the future of American manned space flight what kind of futuristic vision we'll be offered this time.

Social Media: The Attentivore Venn

As I was reading a comment by Stefanie Michaels that said,

"Had you only taken the time to check out our feeds, you may have been able to have a more in depth understanding of who we are... after all- that's social media."

I thought about this picture; so here is it is at the speed of tweet.

The amazing thing is she didn't know we did read them and even made a video to support them in a good natured way. Maybe these gals don't get it unless it comes from their own inner circle. It is interesting that a report from the UK asserts that 90% of the tweets come from 10% of the twitterers.

The Not So Secret Secret

The harshness of the coming year will be the far left true believers in Obama who finally realize that the cuts in Federal spending will be in their favorite programs while the ones they do not support or actively despise will receive greater funding. They will blame the usual suspects and they will be right but they will also be part of the problem.

It is rare to find those who can simultaneously be sanguine as they stare into the horror of the scene unfolding. Even the investments in innovation will be made in the companies where Wall Street investors get the upper hand fast as stock becomes available. For all the change promised, the same people will take the lion's share even as a few jobs are created here and there by boutique projects.

Change we can believe in is not always change we like.

I believe in Ford: the one company that turned down the bailout money and on that day made their employees proud to be employed.

The Republican Response

The Republican response to President Obama's speech last night follows:



and pretty much everything else that would be good for anyone not rich enough to matter.

iPad

Beyond the incalculable blunder of the name (yes, our office jokes about this are the same as yours):



UPDATE: Thanks to Rob Koberg who sent this link, that point has been illustrated humorously by someone. Gotta love the web when it reacts fast and with the right spirit.

I've heard the cooing about consumers of books. I don't need it. I don't read that often.

I've heard the speculation about audio/midi. Thanks, I've got lots of those.

I've heard the games-du-jour rants. Thanks, I don't play games.

It's very cool. No thanks. I hate my cell phone.

You can watch hi-rez movies. No thanks. I have a Very Large Flatpanel for that and I can't drive and watch dinky 4:3 TV.

You're not our target demographic. Oh thank God for that.

$499 is CHEAP. Maybe, but only $999 is functional and I don't need a cute paperweight with hi-rez sparkles even if it sparkles for ten hours.

Arlo and Felicia are getting one. Good. She can ride on the back of his Indian and read to him. He'll like that.

YAG (yet another gadget). As the fellow said at CNet, iPass.

Twitlebrity and the Suck of Locale

Scanning topics of interest, I see Dave Winer is complaining about agism, Jon Taplin is extolling the virtues of the grassroots bottom up governance style, and some bloggers are still trying to figure out how to get the most out of the Vanity Fair 6 kerfluffle.

The bottom up decentralized means devolves quickly into the attention seeking means that shuts down criticism to enhance page views against other sources that make snark a policy as a means to enhance page views. It becomes an age of celebrity, of image over substance, but worse, lots of little mobs claiming hegemony: in short, high school.

Information (data in play) has an aspect similar to gravity: all locations pull against all other locations for attention. Some call it ego. When you consider that blogs, feeds, Twitter etc. are giving rise to the dominance of the attentivores (thanks to John Cowan for that term), maybe this is just devolution doing what it does best when provided a means and opportunity.

The problem of the network community is the Panglossian notion that given means and opportunity, people tend to do the right thing. People tend to do the selfish thing if that is what the market is buying. Consider that in 1988, use of the Internet email for private messages and jokes was harshly frowned upon and even a firing offense in some companies. In 1995, we worked a discipline of parsimonious texting such that one scoured each email for excess verbiage.

Then came RSS, feeds and broadband and the war for attention was on. RSS, BTW, is Winer's creation.

In 2010, it is about the Twitlebrity, the attentivore, the world where cred is obtained by having the most followers despite adding no contribution intellectually or otherwise. It is the age of the hot chick geek and the guy who made millions spamming the system. Sure everything else is out there, but it is undifferentiated.

All networks start as flat democratized systems. Over time the importance assigned locales and topics result in attention flowing into these sinks and as a result, controls and filters emerge to direct traffic, say attention. Right now the system is in a stage of puberty where trivia reigns supreme and efforts to change that will be dismissed as unhip, old media against new, old people against the young and so on. IOW, we’re having fun so don’t be a party pooper. And by the way, if you disagree, we'll make sure nothing you post gets a single view from "our crowdsource".

That is the brave new and different, the sagacity of the 30 something leading the 15 something, to a world of, aging twitlebrities trying desperately to keep the crowd alive and at a virtual distance because, hey, we're important and we need our vacations and rest.

And that is the ground against which Jon proposes to empower yet more grassroots. I don’t disbelieve; I think the timing given the zeitgeist and general immaturity of the players may be hopelessly optimistic.

There is a rough or at least ironic justice in the Vanity Fair 6 affair. The very technologies they extol created the era of snark as journalistic policy to which they fell prey. It is the old saying about laying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. Trying to dismiss claims that they should have known better is like claiming a fake tan is noteworthy: self-seeking. That Dave claims agism is a problem a short decade and a half after a generation of young hypermedia enthusiasts ran shivs through their aging bosses is simply karma.

It's a bitch but own it.

We built the most powerful communication system in history so we could rant about age, government and who is the current most hot hottie who we are assured we must take very seriously while they tweet about their lunch. Life among the mammals, for sure.

Meanwhile, the web brought me this wonderful toy box for making videos, publishing songs and generally having fun making stuff. I got mine. May you also. ;)

Shraddha (X3D Movie)

Here is my new video. Like the other 3D derived videos, this uses X3D/VRML samples. The theme is "Shraddha", Sanskrit for "Marvelous Faith". I hope you enjoy it.

Social Media and Being Almost Famous

A career can cross a lot of paths. The two gentlemen in the photo are standing about twenty feet from my office door. One is an exec at our company and the other is one of our business partners. I'll let you figure out who they are. Hint: the short one worked for a much more famous executive and the tall one is, tall, even in sneakers.

In all the fun of the Tweety Bird posts, I've been thinking about the social media aspects of our careers. I am pointedly not a social media expert. I've been around about twice as long as the folks sporting that badge have. As a musician, one time actor, still writing and recording because it's like the breathing habit, hard to shake, I do know a little bit about media.

Take a look at this graph. It's from my YouTube insight page.



The left and right sides are different to say the least, and the number of countries where I can't imagine having fans, I do. I learn a lot from the Insight stats. A picture is worth whatever it's worth but the dramatic increase in views of my videos can't be argued with and there are only two causes: 1) posting more frequently and 2) Facebook. Of the two, the second is the engine: Facebook.

So even for the hobbyist, if you want to put work in front of people, you have to find them and Facebook is rather good for that. I've a MySpace music page as well and there is nothing like these results to be had there. Twitter? If I want a bigger first day release bounce, Twitter would be a way to get that but frankly, Twitter wastes too much time on trivia and not being a fully-developed attentivore, I don't have it to waste. Yet I know some fairly famous people (actually, some very famous people) and those relationships don't get me those kinds of results in page views. That takes real fans, friends and the mildly curious.

Social media is here to stay and for those careers that do rely on being famous or almost famous (mine doesn't), careful use of social media such as Facebook is a skill you need these days as other aspects of the media industry are collapsing. Would I go hire a social media expert for that? Possibly but probably not. It isn't that hard to figure out unless of course, Vanity Fair calls, but until then, use it while it's still free.

And have fun!

Tweety Birds: Free the VF6!!

They walked into the punch, but then as I dig around more, I realize the question is why the punch at all? It is time to call BS on the snark industry of blog journalism. They is geeks and us is geeks and they may be divas but they's our divas.

Read Everybody Sucks by the same author, Vanessa Grigoriadis. The snark chic is the culprit.

Geeks Unite! Free the VF6! ;)

Tweety Birds: It's The Web, Stupid!

While working on a creative response to this flap (dieing down but still fun), I ran across this article from the author of the Vanity Fair article that started the mole rolling, Vanessa Grigoriadis. A couple of points:

1. She isn't a hack. Vanessa can write and she is a decent journalist.

2. In the article, the environment she describes is deeply flawed, seamy, and rage addicted.

3. She admits to tweaking noses as part of the job.

Past the screeching from the Twitter crowd and their fans, it's worth reading the article to understand how the web may indeed be transforming the publishing industry and journalism, but it may be devolution at light speed.

A War On GeekSheik

Ursula leGuin resigned from the Author's Guild over their acceptance of the Google settlement regarding copyrights of published works.

A war with the self-proclaimed digital royalty of GeekSheik is coming. They are destroying the creative ecosystem and real artists are shooting back.

This is bad.

Tweety Birds: The Second Wave Off

It seems that digging the hole and standing in it is how tweety birds rest for the winter.

Digital Royalty?

I have to admit, when I heard the news I immediately called a family member and dropped a Ron Burgundy, “I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.”

It's hard to expand on that. In her opinion and that of her mates, the missed opportunity was to tell the story of their success, or as Felicia Day put it, "new, different and powerful". I sense Day is moving on from the story possibly because as an entertainer, once the story quits being funny and she attempts seriousness it begins to turn into a story about young women who need to get over themselves as correspondents have been suggesting, and that's not a good image for an entertainer.

The trap is that now of those who are climbing aboard the Geek Train are using this tempest in a teapot to push their own wares as social media mavens (Digital Royalty? Really?) it spins ever more toward the silly pole and as the avatar of the story (the irony is thick here), Day gets pulled into the spotlight of this farce. Que lastima!

If they claim it is all about them, they are the attentivores as named, insipid, vapid and with none of the media savvy required by their portfolio customers. If they claim it is about Vanity Fair, they are fighting human nature's need for a good gigglefest and once again accentuating that in the media where they portray themselves as experts, they are wanting and customers beware. If they recognize they are simply the latest women to get kicked in the ass by the Lolita Effect which they are themselves exploiting, there might be a story with legs and not just the ones in the photo. It might be a broader issue about the sexualization of women getting younger every year and creating problems for all women as Amber Fenner Gray points out.

So far, they aren't that smart and perhaps their clients will take note. Day will move on because she does have serious work to do on the next season of The Guild and other projects. If she is the artist she desires to be, she'll find a way to salvage this in comedy with a point.

UPDATE: The new meme to keep it going is the article is somehow 'sexist'. They need to let this drop. a) The digital royalty appear to be begging their own status b) It's too obvious the attentivores want more of the same for their own brands c) The one of them who gets hurt is Felicia Day who will look sillier the longer this goes on for participating.

The problem of trusting the herd to keep one up on their shoulders is they are distractable and not that adverse to sacrificing one of their clients to better their own nests. It's hard to feel sympathetic. If they intend a movement to change things for women because as one commenter at Day's blog said, "The major figures aren't going to put up with this", then why bother with Vanity Fair to begin with. These ladies were already changing things before they gave into the attentivore reason for existing: to get just a bit more attention as glamour babes.

They may find out they aren't that major after this. I think they fear that and keep trying to spin this into a story where they are victims. There is some more attention to be had in that frame but frankly, I look at their photo and I look at the photos of Neda Soltan and have a hard time giving a damm.

Tweety Birds: Mama Smurf

Why put on the trench coats and have the glamour shot? I think John Cowan nailed it: attentivores.

Culture satirizes any source that takes itself more seriously than it is essential or more novel than a new version of an old model. 1.6 million people willing to give you access to their raster attention budget is as trivial or non-trivial as what that 1.6 million will do given a message from the twitter account. Marketing speak particular; it's non-trivial. It is power.

Societal importance?

What will smurfs do for a smile from the smurfette? Sometimes, quite a lot.

UPDATE: Amber comments on the Lolita Effect. In the sense that this incident is about 30 somethings, it doesn't quite apply. In the sense that the objectification of women has been brought up, it does. Do read this:

http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/

The Flight of the Tweety Birds

It appears that the Flight of the Tweety Birds is this week's cause du jour among the geek women bloggers. The claims are getting evermore snarky and meant to justify a round of 'serious' web generation mystique but don't seem to offer a basis for complaint. Instead they are the victims of old people, old business, just old. Old frightens them. It could be they were had except the article was written by someone who isn't old and isn't that tied to old media. Vanity Fair is a glamour mag and glamour mags don't take up serious topics. If they did, they'd be Playboy. Sad but so.

The claim that gets to the heart of their complaint is one made by Felicia Day, that the author of the Vanity Fair piece failed:

to celebrate a new kind of independent and liberated woman

I guess she doesn't have the awareness to notice she is practicing the same sexist agism and generationism that got her into the mess. Ok, Felicia, somehow you think you are new? Challlenge: exactly how are you the example of a new independent liberated woman? What is it you've achieved that say, Carly Fiorina hasn't? Meg Whitman? Susan Sarandon? Dolly Parton? Over a million followers on Twitter? So now you have the power to change exactly what? Your fellow bloggers say you and they want to have THAT conversation, so get on with it.

You want to sling arrows because you believe you've been trivialized. Great. Just be sure you have a full quiver and a solid stance in the saddle because you're accelerating into the curve on a running horse, not out of it. The complaints you have and that of your fellow bloggers read like Danah Boyd crying over her Twitter-wall experience at her presentation. In other words, it's infantilism vs agism and somehow none of you seem to understand if you put your sex up front, it is the topic. Smart women or men get that and run with it. Hypocrites or just plain too full-of-themselves repeat the remarks that have stereotyped you as the whiniest generation since the Jazz Age. New and different? How? Say it or STFU because there are real victims out there who need attention a lot more than a 30 something living in LA with the TwitterNation hanging on her every burp.

Compared to Neda Soltan what have you suffered lately?

Nothing is more boring than a successful anything that complains when the spotlight turns green. Like the sign at Wentzel's says, if you want a place in the sun, expect blisters. Otherwise, get over yourself, or at least take a moment to study the career of Lenny Bruce. When commedians or commediennes turn serious, the laughter stops and so does the applause.

Tweety Birds

In the new edition of Vanity Fair, some ladies of the web are photographed wearing trench coats and posing just slightly provocatively. The article has the breezy tone of snark VF is famous for and in the text follows the tone of the photo. It isn't a serious portrait or all that demeaning but the subjects have taken upon themselves to become outraged, pissed, ready to 'thump skulls' and their fans are following suit. It is the usual herd response from a generation that seeks opportunities and creates technology to increase their herdiness through their nerdiness. The article is poking fun at that and I don't think too many geeks were harmed in the production of the article.

Still:

1. They signed up for the photo. If the trenchcoat poses didn't clue them in as to what was coming, these ladies aren't quite as media savvy as claimed.

2. They need the photos. The cult of celebrity requires a persistent thumping on the skulls of the public to keep them front and center. Celebrity is a brief fling with a bull-riding machine anyway. Day, for example, is someone who rather desperately wants to be a Hollywood insider despite her reputation for being a successful outsider. That is where the career and the money are and she is not a silly woman from the cheap seats.

3. Every ten years or so, the last media darling generation gets tossed on the fire of satire and ridicule to make room for a new generation. Thus has it ever been and the geeks don't seem to be prepared for the inevitable.

So ladies and irate fans, putting up blogs about how unfair VF is, how they are ignoring your serious accomplishments (lifecaster? really?), or how the old media is just jealous of the new media (we be fast; you be slow), is what is expected of you and it will fuel the flames of support, and it will drive up the sales of that issue. Mission accomplished. It will also make put you on the path to the C-list and start the crack down the middle of the ice that holds your feeds above the waters of oblivion because the more you emphasize your serious accomplishments, the more boring you will become.

Vanity Fair and articles to follow elsewhere aren't doing this for jealousy, spite or lack of 'getting it'. They are doing it because it's time. If "what the web thinks you are, you are, deal with it" as Tim Bray wrote is the meme du jour, you have just been bathed in how that comes about and how very little control you have over it except possibly in watching your warddrobe.

Deal with that.

What Will Happen When YouTube Isn't Free

Bono has written an op-ed in the New York Times touching on the topic of music piracy. The usual counter-arguments are presented in the comments to the article and the usual lunatics tend to prevail.

Fine for now. In the near future, maybe not.

At some point the free services that the indies who give away their work rely on will no longer be free. Today YouTube is the radio. Anyone wanting to keep up in the arms race of art competition (with each other; the audience is passive) has to be able to make videos on the cheap or otherwise. Fortunately, it isn't that hard and like other tools, costs are down considerably even as skills have to catch up.

Yet like it or not, the term is 'hypermedia' not hypermedium and there are costs to producing at that level of complexity that can't be dismissed as easily as "we give away our CDs" because while one doesn't have to manufacture, one is still having to climb the complexity curve. Frankly, most bands and songwriters aren't up to the challenge.

Other costs will creep up. This will dry up a lot of what far too many rely on for entertainment sources. Having choked the life out of several industries, it will be Nebraska morning noon and night for about a decade as those with access to capital realign among themselves to control the distribution of the works of those who used these services to develop themselves during the 'everything should be free because that benefits me' period of internet market development.

Bono is right. It simply doesn't matter at the moment but he is right nonetheless. Unfortunately, he is talking to the wrong audience. He's arguing with the pig and as the old joke goes, the pig only gets irritated and he comes up smelling of sow. The people who need to understand where this is going ARE the artists and particularly the young ones just getting into what is left of the music business.

A Christmas Carol: Marley's Ghost

Merry Christmas! I made my Christmas card. I hope it suits and brings good cheer. There is an extra treat at the end.

Buyer's Remorse

Don't get into the habit of the Republicans with Clinton: every time Bush made a misstep, the Republicans would cite something from Clinton and say 'this is better than that'. It may be but successful governance unlike some politics is about what is Next more than What Just Happened. I'm a Democrat and I say Obama is losing his support faster than the Titanic lost passengers. With all the first class advantages he has or had, he is too stupid to find a life vest or too proud to swim.

The problem of learning from history is that those who do are never in the majority when the time comes to use that knowledge. Among those that didn't learn, those that refused to learn, those that refuse to remember and those that are too young to know and have only the glossy reimaginings of those who pretend otherwise, perhaps the last are most to blame because they have the energy to act on a dream but not the real grit to see through it.

Of the rest, they were lost to cause at birth.

Politics is about individuals and unless the character is there by dint of experience, the substance is not no matter how compelling a dream they sell. A puffpiece bio and two years in the Senate do not a President make. Hillary was our best shot and Democrats aimed it at her head. Que lastima.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/CursesFoiledAgain.mp3

So You Wanta Start A Rock 'n Roll Band

Sometimes I get asked why I still record my songs and release them on YouTube for essentially free. The truth is I enjoy it and it's a lot of fun. I listened to Arlo Guthrie talk about the music business at The Church two months ago and as a veteran he described how marvelous it is that the young musicians no longer had to sell their souls to the entertainment industry. I listened to Sam Phillips (the female singer, not the dead Elvis producer) explain how despite the time she worked with T-Bone Burnett and thrived, she really likes the immediacy of the web that enables her to release straight to the public.

In other words, while most of us believe we really want a major label deal and the instant riches and fame that flow from that, veterans of the industry seem to think otherwise. Why?

Here are two articles that you should read to understand the economics of the deal. Once you understand this, then step back and ask why you really want to be in that business if this is the probable outcome. Meanwhile, I'll go back to making my homebrew videos. I never expect any measure of real success except insofar as I still enjoy the heck out of it.

How Major Labels Cook The Books

The Problem With Music

Here is a new homebrew video.

Silent Night

An early Christmas card before it is too late...

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 1.35 million U.S. children are homeless on any given night. (2000)

Families with children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, accounting for almost 41% of the nation's homeless. (2005)

In 2003, children under the age of 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population.

42% of homeless children are under the age of five.

http://www.misd.net/Homeless/statistics.htm

Moo Boo Bouree

I was playing with the video editor. It seems gif animations will work as drag and drop video objects. Obvious, but I'd never tried it before. Since the web is brimming with free gif animations, it's a nice add to the library of cheap tricks.

UPDATE: I win Stump The Googler. After a week it can't find a video to relate this to. All those billions and billions invested and beaten by a lowly children's folk song about tap dancing cows. There is a God and she loves barnyard humor.

Arlo and The People - Episode 1: The Pumpkin Singers

Episode I - The Pumpkin Singers. Where The People sing the ceremonial Pumpkin Song to disturb The Monster and the good citizens of Great Barrington Massachusetts.



Episode II: The TailGators. Where Loopy Len and Dutiful Dana explore the mysteries of the magic parking lot and The Church.



Episode III: Sailing on the Golden River

A beautiful voice sings a beautiful song. If you have it to give, send a few shekels to the Guthrie Center. They feed the poor, help the needy and put on the best concerts in the northeast. And they need HEAT!

This Little Light of Mine

This nation needs a rebirth. It has lost its soul. - Jim Flynn

Lost? Misplaced in my opinion. The soul of America is no longer to be found in the malls, in the megaconcerts, or even in a lot of town halls. It has retreated into the small places where neighbors are still helping neighbors, cleaning up after storms, taking children to school, singing in the church choirs, in short, to quote my wife, "choosing to be family".



Globally, economically and militarily we are mightily messed up at the moment. We did that to ourselves. Our fathers did it too. We almost recovered and then we let the city on the hill hawks lead us again and when we let the stupid rise to power, we pay because once in, they are tediously difficult to root out.

Choose your family. Choose to be with them. Watch the nefarious and don’t let your own need for significance blind you to the harm they do. Vote cautiously and often. Buy local. Read the lyrics to the songs your children listen to.



Give a damm but not a dime. Evolve your way. The nation is not due for rebirth. Our soul is intact. The universe sings to us. We quit listening.

Why? Someone trying to make a bigger buck told us we had to belong to a party, a cause or a hair club and we bought it.

Our soul is right where it’s always been in the small places where the chosen gather for the joy of being together, to be family.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

The Trickster

Photo Credit: Arlo Guthrie

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. - Paul Radin

Again, knowledge cannot be aggregated into a single ruling body." John Papola

That quote from Papola isn’t precisely true. It is actually a limit on tracking identified resources in real time, that is, kinds, types and precision converted to actionable intelligence. The entire focus of web/Internet design has been to increase the precision given real time feeds.

No, you can’t know what goes on inside a human mind but you can observe, record and analyze speech acts. So trying to use human purposefulness as a defense or offense is to hide behind the rat hole of intensionality. You can know enough to make locally rational decisions.

To provide investors and other control mavens such information, you’ve been steadily and eagerly giving up your privacy and submitting to a 365 x 24 x 7 surveillance society. You did it for your convenience, fun and need to increase your self-perceived significance. By the very same game rules for markets, you are now hostage to the business models of IBM, Oracle/Sun, Microsoft, Apple and so on where next year’s profits rely absolutely on increasing your use and submission to the very technologies that provide that transparency.

After almost two decades of crying in the wilderness about this, my best advice is find a little place full of good people where you are secure with whatever your ambitions are and adapt.

Feed the trolls whatever will cause them to evolve. You can use the greed of others to modify their behaviors. That is the role of The Trickster.

Eat more rabbits.

Apple: Rouge The Corpse

When Apple ripped off Gary Lewis and The Playboys for the music to their new commercial, the emerging crack in their brand became obvious.

Cultural archaeology is one way to get ideas but at least rouge the corpse.

The Ballad of Rip Van Freaker

I was riding home from Woodstock
Tokin' on a spliff
When my psychedelic hippie van
Went flying over a cliff
Maybe it was the hand of God
That bent time in a wrinkle
I'd slept like a dog for forty years
A modern Rip Van Winkle
So I hitched a ride to the nearest town
To see what I had missed
And oh man what a bummer
2009 is this

TV is a picture hanging on the wall
Women dress like men
But the men don't care at all
Underwear is advertised
Where everyone can see
Gasoline is expensive
But pornography is free
Milk will give you cancer
Water is a snack
The cars are made of plastic
The president is black
The Chinese are our bankers
Ho Chi Minh's our friend
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The criminals go on talking tours
While preachers go to jail
They'll take your right to own a gun
But ammo's still for sale
A hunter needs a license
But an animal can sue
With the whole world turning upside down
What's a freakin man to do
The hippie thing is all messed up
A long hair just can't win
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The Russians fly our astronauts
To an international station
While the United States of America
Becomes a third world nation
Good men just can't find a job
While bad ones still get rich
Some things keep on keepin on
And Brother, that's a bitch
Designer drugs are legal
But reefer's still a sin
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

I wasn’t sure how it all went down
I was sure I didn’t care
We’d had it right in 69
And now we’re running scared?
I prepared to hide my love away
When a voice said, “No kid, Wait!
You can’t change their wicked ways
But you can infiltrate!”
And that was what I needed to hear
The Revolution is style
Before the next election
Put an R beside a smile
"What’s in a name?" a poet asked
When your heart comes marching in
Singing “Arlo Guthrie’s a Republican.”

Urge for Going: The Weird Ways of What Comes To Us

Most references to this song I see on the web cite Joni Mitchell who authored it but apparently didn't record it or Tom Paxton who recorded it and some say made it famous.

I'd never heard of either of them when I learned it in 1967 although I saw Joni's name as the author on the RCA 45 produced by Chet Atkins and performed by George Hamilton IV. The funny bit is that I learned it on solo guitar and couldn't reproduce the Atkins arrangement so by the time I played it, my part sounded like Joni. It's still one of my favorites to play this time of the year. My old 45 is not playable so I'm glad to find this, though now I prefer Joni's version from a live Canadian TV show on YouTube. Still, it's fun to hear this again. I wonder if I had heard the others if I would have attempted it.

Getting To No Me

Are you tired of answering Facebook quizzes designed to help your friends help the marketing departments of the companies that pay Facebook to pester you with these questionnaires? Consider them an opportunity to throw mustard on their spyglasses.

Getting to No Me

1. What time did you get up this morning? 3:15AM. Ask me when I went back to bed.

2. How do you like your steak? I take roses to the pasture.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Butter on the seat cushion.

4. What is your favorite TV show? A form of entertainment.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? As long as I'm breathing, I'm there.

6. What did you have for breakfast? My health.

7. What is your favorite cuisine? I don't date relatives.

8. What foods do you dislike? Humans. They are too salty.

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Wherever she sets the table.

10. Favorite dressing? Blue jeans.

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? The kind that run on gas.

12. What are your favorite clothes? Loose.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? The 23 century... meet Jane Jetson.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? Which side?

15. Where would you want to retire? Off the interstate. OTW, one gets run over.

16. Favorite time of day? Quitting time.

17. Where were you born? Next to Mom.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Bingo.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back? Kelly.

20. Person you expect to tag you back first? Kelly.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? Kelly.

22. Bird watcher? Poll watcher.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? I'm a might person.

24. Do you have any pets? Kelly. Almost trained.

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? Whatever you report.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? Bigger.

27. What is your best childhood memory? My children standing at the window when I came home.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? I'm a Batman.

29. Are you married? I'm not your type.

30. Always wear your seat belt? Only in the car. It chafes in the shower.

31. Been in a car accident? I hiked to the top of one once.

32. Any pet peeves? No. Peeves is a house servant.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Cash.

34. Favorite Flower? Martha White Self-Rising.

35. Favorite ice cream? Frozen.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Our kitchen.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? Only once, but I found the bug and recompiled.

38. From whom did you get your last email? Ethiopia.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Don't they have their own?

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? I regenerated my liver.

41. Like your job? Almost as much as Noah.

42. Broccoli? Didn't he make Bond movies?

43. What was your favorite vacation? When we moved out of my old apartment.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Me.

45. What are you listening to right now? Oh Happy Days. It's stuck in my head.

46. What is your favorite color? Petunia.

47. How many tattoos do you have? All of them.

49. What time did you finish this quiz? Quitting time.

50. Coffee? I never rent.

The Undisputed Truth

You can watch 24 x 7 x 365 violence on Spike TV, or watch YouTube for the undisputed truth. It will be fun to read the defenders of laissez faire business models argue about this.

Where There Is Sadness, Joy!

This is the beautiful and ever inspiring Burns Sisters. With the passing of Mary Travers and the resurgence of racism and hatred in America, take a moment to listen to a prayer for joy.

Mama Told Me Not To Come

Want some whiskey in your water?
Sugar in your tea?
Whats all these crazy questions theyre askin me?
This is the craziest party that could ever be
Dont turn on the lights cause I dont wanna see
Mama told me not to come
Mama told me not to come
She said that aint the way to have fun, son
That aint the way to have fun, son

As the days of protest ground on in the Sixties, it got louder, noisier, nuttier and finally the cities were on fire.

Anyone up for a repeat of that except this time without the good music?

Not moi. Some pointers:

1. The tea baggers are Americans. They have the right to protest. One may not agree with their signs but then we did ourselves no favors with the Sarah Palin bashing and the Hillary Clinton bashing. Don't say it's not the same. It's EXACTLY the same.

2. The tea baggers have some points to make. Listen to them. If you can refute those points calmly and with facts, do so. Otherwise, DO NOT ENGAGE. This is critical. Having both sides throwing gas on a log fire is bound to set the forests ablaze. Everyone will lose.

3. Change doesn't come without discomfort. These people are scared. They should be. The forces out there who are pouring money into these campaigns are doing their best to scare them. Before calling them ignorant, racist rednecks, take a look at those cool cats on Wall Street and in the multi-nationals paying the big money to scare them.

4. Some of these people are racists. That's a fact. It is a disease and it will never be vanquished as long as there are differences to fear however stupidly. Calling them that won't change it. Worse, many of them, in fact the majority are not racists. Save that tag for when someone's civil rights are being denied them. The race card is too important to play it when all the other side has is a pair of deuces. Worse, it is incindiary. It sets a fire that won't be easily put out. Save it for the real thing.

Stay cool. Learn the facts. Answer the charges with the facts. Most of those people are good people upset and scared but determined. In their minds and hearts they believe they have to stand up for America. Let them know you are marching with them wherever our freedoms are threatened. Use reason and calm presentation to show them their freedoms are in fact not being threatened.

Don't surrender to your rage. As the rabbi said, an eye for eye leaves us all blind.

On 9/11

I was pulling into the parking lot at Intergraph when the DJ said a plane had struck the WTC. Because our business was 911 systems and a pilot had explained the scenario to me years earlier while we were flying into Reagan, I suspected this was the one predicted.

I also knew our business was suddenly solid gold.

It was a terrible feeling so instead of watching the TV with the others, I went to my desk to remove from our web pages the name of a colleague who had died from heart attack a month earlier. I walked down the hall in time to see the second tower collapse. A lady in the room said, "What happened to the firemen that ran in there?" and I said, "They're dead. You just watched them die."

It was macabre.

The irony is some of us who are analysts began the research into how our systems could be used to protect us. As a result, Intergraph Public Safety would become a sub to Lockheed for New York/New Jersey MTA and today, that is newsworthy on ABC.

You can know what will happen, what to do, try to do it and fail. The usual meme is you learn from your mistakes. That isn't always true for reasons I won't go into here and now because even if you believe me, it won't make a damm bit of difference.

Hitler Was Obsessed

Some say the web is killing mainstream entertainment. Some say, "GOOD!!"

All I know is the web is starting to deliver entertainment waaaay funnier than anything on cable these days. Thanks to Danny Ayers for posting this on Facebook.

Do You Wanta Date My Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie

I gotta love this video. a) she was born in my hometown which means nothing but hey, go with it and b) it's funny.

Every season has its Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini hit. This song and video is that for this season.

Sam (for Liz)

Old song. New mix. Maybe done. :-)

Domine Iesu; the MP3

I finished demoing a piece for a Lent service next year, Domine Iesu.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/DomineIesu.mp3

This is the first religious piece I've written specifically for a mass in Latin. Latin confounds some ears, so here are the lyrics translated:

Domine Iesu, Christe fili dei,
Miserere mei, peccatoris
Kyrie eleison,
Christe eleison
Miserere, Domine
Domine Iesu, Amen.

and the English translation:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Have mercy on me, the sinner
Lord have mercy,
Christ have mercy
Have mercy, Oh Lord
Lord Jesus, Amen

The first two lines are known as the Jesus Prayer from Egypt originally and later adopted into a Greek tradition according to Wikipedia.

License Costs for Open Government Systems

As the Obama administration proceeds with the open government initiatives, a laudable effort in and of itself, I wonder what their plans are to cope with the ever rising costs for licensing third party content such as map data.

http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/06/08/data-transparency-via-datagov/

There are different licensing agreements for data that is inward facing and outward facing and different cost structures. Are these initiatives in the name open systems, a la cloud systems, accounting for the ever rising costs of deploying copyright information licensened for internal use originally?

The cloud may be open but it isn't free. IBM and Oracle won't tell you that.

For Iran and the World

A post from Arlo Guthrie at Arlo.Net:

You guys wearing sacred clothing, holding the Holy Koran in hand, while your thugs beat, maim and kill your fathers, brothers, sisters & mothers - Yeah you guys (if you're reading this) - You have shown the entire world that you would sacrifice your own children for your temporary authority over them even as you KNOW you will grow old and pass away, and they will live to create a world of their own. The only question is how many will perish before you come to your senses or stand before your creator... How much blood will be spilt before your shame overcomes you and you shed tears for forgiveness? If the power of your authority comes only from clubs and guns, what does that say of your God? It would be better to have no faith than to have as little as yours... adg

P.S. Same goes for any nation anywhere, anytime (including ours) when tyrants cover the rotting stench of their cold dying hearts with the outward appearance of holiness.

For Neda

On The Other Side

My brother, Michael made this video as a tribute to our Dad.

We'll pick again on the other side. I miss you, Daddy.

Devastating

As I read blogs from those who like to put "Hussein" as their middle name (upper middle class white kids who grew up on the right side of the tracks) criticizing the American response to 9/11, I find I am torn between my own criticism of the Bush Administration and the horror of that day.

So now I keep this photo taken by my son on his trip to New York to remind why devastating events shared all over the world tend toward over reactions.



Now let's look at the other side because from that event we went to this event and the clustering to both ends of the whipping stick is going fractal fast.



If the left keeps trying to replenish their endorphin high from the election just as the right is going calculating cold, polished chisels in Karnak are going to be scraping Obama's legacies off the temple walls faster than you can say Akhenaten.

I am not a Democrat or Republican, left or right in this analysis. I am a behaviorist and any behavioral strategist be they Axelrod or Rove can tell you this is a game of percentages of stimuli fed into the press amplifier. All those "Husseins" are playing the game plan of the very forces they wish to defeat. The defeat of Laura Hall should be a bell ringing. You are the other end of the same stick that walked into the Holocaust Museum and shot a man dead. It's a waste.

Am I in Alabama?

Reading some of the snarky comments about Alabama having a symphony on Facebook, I try to stay civil, as in not restart the War of the Northern Aggression. Still one can't not recognize the quirks. Two true examples of life in the Heart of Dixie:

1. From the news, a local school principal disciplined a student with an uncivil name and then slapped the kid on the back of the head. The next day the kid's father was arrested and immediately released for going to the school and whipping the principal's uncivil behind.

2. My ex-boss at Intergraph was in India recently and visited a temple with another friend. A temple priest asked to be allowed to bless them. When he reached out to place his palm on the fellow's forehead to give the blessing, my ex-boss high fived him.

Ok, but we have excellent symphonies.

Beautiiful Boo

Here is something fresh but old folkie sweet. Daddy loves his little girl, and this just got me the biggest smile. Awwww!

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/BeautifulBoo.mp3

Devadasi

The story of the devadasi who became sharii, Umrao. This is a sequence from the VRML world, The River of Life, with music by Ravi Shankar and Jean Pierre Rampal.

The Boat Ride

The boat ride to the Temples of Saraswati is the opening sequence to the VRML world, The River of Life.

Walking Kamala

This video is the Walking Kamala sequence from "The River of Life" VRML world referenced in several places in my 3D blog.

Video does not do VRML rendering justice, and it isn't as fun for the adventurous who do download the plugins and play the games. It is practical.

The music is sampled under fair use.

Gentle On My Mind

The picture was taken in 1966 when I was 12. I was asked to visit a nearby school and play for an English class. It wasn't my first gig but it was the beginning of neighborhood fame. That is an album cover. The title is the humorous response to, "Whatever happened to that kid?"

The guitar is a Stella 12 string. It was a big beastie but I was a determined kid. A few months later, my sister friend and I would pass the audition to play for the Cerebral Palsy Telethon at a local TV station. Being kids, they put us on in the middle of the night. Ralph Embrey, a famous Nashville impressario was hosting. The next morning at ten, I would be roused from where I was sleeping on the floor to come see Ralph who told me someone had called and would donate $5 if I would sing "Gentle On My Mind" on camera. Having no fear then, I did just that. Ralph then looked at me and said, "Your Dad called that in" then asked "I know Glen and he can't remember all the words to that song. How do you do it?" I told him, "My Dad asks for it a lot."

Dad didn't want me in the music business. He said it was a rough game and I had too many brains for it. We were asked that morning to come to Muscle Shoals but my parents declined and for the better or worse, it would presage things to come. I would play it one last time on TV three years ago on a morning show when the host who remembered me playing it for his father on TV years earlier in the 80s asked for it. I told him I didn't think I could remember the words, but he insisted and I did. Dad got up early that morning to watch it proud as he could be.

A year later as Dad lay dieing, I sat in the next room and sang this song for him. We can't know why we remember all the words until we need them. Then life is clearer and all the moments that didn't make sense do. Art isn't about fame. It is about service, reflecting emotions so it will make sense.

I did see Glen in an airport many many years later and was on the flight with him. I didn't introduce myself because I have a rule about not being rude to famous people, but I think I would have liked to tell him the story. Dad would have liked that too.

Haunting Faces

Some faces haunt me and not in a bad way, they become hazy images at the periphery of consciousness that never quite go away.

Kate Bush - Anyone who knows me knows I'm a Bushaholic. I believe she is the finest female rock musician - no contest. Yes there are plenty of more famous, bluesier females but Kate captured the heart of what it is to be rock: she goes her own way and never repeats herself. Kate is the Queen.


Dame Wendy Hiller - the essence of the smart self contained actress who had a way of reaching around to find the heart of the part. She was not a classic beauty; she was a quiet determined intelligence who was beautiful and above the fray of an industry that consumes women like chocolate.


Cecile Chaminade - the most famous woman composer of an age and possibly one of the greated composers of that age, she wrote salon music, songs, orchestral works, opera and more. They buried her before she died because she refused to modernize and she was a woman. She blazed the trail for all the women composers after her and her reward was to die alone in a small apartment with an amputated foot and a broken heart never having met the man who was her equal.


There are beauties that we should not let go of or forget even if fashion and other's needs say we should. We empty our hearts onto our lives only to find our hearts are the only springs that fill them. The price is we must stay where we stand while our lives flow away into ever deepening fog, but if we do not remember beauty, it will be as if we never lived at all.

Music Tribe Alert!

Music Tribe:

I’ve completed the scene in Facebook/Vivaty integrating the videos, music other materials:

1. Smooth. Easy Drag Drop and Go.

2. Integration: fast dialog building for pulling in YouTube, Facebook, and externally hosted audio

3. Time to setup: about eight hours total. It sets up in minutes, then you customize and I have lot of media assets to put in there. For those of us who have to spread work across pages, this is the BEST way to integrate them as services.

4. Results: Excellent.

Bands on Facebook who don’t build one of these for their act and business quick need cranial exams. This is the way to get it done in social network markets.

As the stagecraft objects improve, this will also be how albums are made, released and navigated. In fact, these become the albums++.

Big juju, musicTribe. Bery big.

Media convergence at long last!!!

Epiphany - The Video

Here's a new video suitable for the season. Short, meditative, peaceful good for early risers who want a moment before they drive.

The music was written for the University of Western Australia's virtual reality campus. Big thanks to Oz and Surak!!

Making Money on The Web

A discussion asks how in the era of the Web As Copy Machine From Hell can the artist use scarcity as a means to increase or preserve the value of art.

First, the medium of distribution has nothing to do with the value of the art as meaningful.

On the other hand, no product no market no sale no pay.

Copy protection simply won't work anymore. It’s of no value to fight the machine/human interface behaviors. It simply won’t work.

The Internet figures values in terms of URLs as coin of the realm. Wealth is created as a scalar applied to the functions such as edit, copy, delete, revise, publish, yadda.

All Internet business models must first describe the process or means for URL production. You don’t want to stop copies; you want to be sure that the right URLs are created during the copying. Essentially, that is what the web services for any business model eventually come down to.

A social network is a URL amplifier.

1. Release the video.
2. Post the video.
3. Watch the download stats for the URLs.
4. Rate, collect, respond to inquiry, invoice or acknowlege, in other words, sell or discuss.

This isn’t hard. Everything I need (now) to create and sell product is managed from a single desktop. While it is not true for any communications industry model, it is essentially true at all scales of application.

Don’t think in terms of scarcity of copy. It is scarcity of talent and ideas that drives the production of significant URLs.

It will always come back to quality, fidelity, novelty, the gig, and the deal.

If I may ramble a little more: the big picture sea change so trivial it’s barely noticed is that web 2.0 is evolving toward a mass notification system where the messages are controls, that is a a message and link to a page for the purpose of task-orienting.

It’s a cosmic merely to the RSS/Atom community of feedfans, but in terms of higher order social norm organization, it is significant in that at one scale it is organizing your acts, at another, it is reorganizing your DNA. Still another cosmic merely to the social theorists.

At the monetization level, it is the very key to the product evolution. There are any number of public services that can avail themselves of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and these are subscription services.

My Son's Time To Go - The Video

If we are to use human memory as our guide, we may only be fair witnesses, but we must reveal all that we see.

This is the video for My Son's Time To Go. I didn't set out to write an anti-war song. It's in the questions.

My Son's Time To Go

Early Morning Light

At every moment in every spot in the world, light is different. If one could see that in aggregate, one would possess the all-seeing eye. If one can feel that in aggregate, one possesses the all-compassionate heart. If one understands all that in aggregate, one has the all-knowing mind. Light is the expression of the universe over it's own preponderant darkness. Light is the soul of life given to the universe as love.

Wise and Clever

Watch the video below. In case like so many of us elders you think the kids aren't thinking hard about the future, some are wiser than we know.

I guess this means I can stop circulating the petition to skip over their generation and pass the power and the money straight to our grandkids.

Dial M for Mayhem

In the beginning was the blank space. The data barrier was void and lo, it was good. Then came the round bracket. It was found to nest and the days of the never-ending cooder were upon us. Then came the curly brackets and all could C the structs before them but verily the semi-colon and the comma could not be banished from the land. Then came the pointy bracket with its faithful companion, the quotation mark to sweep all that came before them away. The data landscape was fruitful and the trees multiplied without number.

There are rumblings in the land of the Elder Edda of the monster, M. With spare incantations and in secrecy, it seeks to resurrect the curly by whose topology it will sweep all the pointy brackets into the bit buckets of the cloud hereafter around and anon.

Lo, the days of darkness have returned.

This Land Is Our Land

Remember when songs meant something? Here is an interview with Pete Seeger, a man who saw the entire span of modern American folk music and who as much as anyone made sure they did.

Little organizations doing what is right right near where it needs doing is the message. We can't count on the government and we sure as hell can't trust the bankers. We spawned a generation of rich sociopaths who believe they can steal right in front of us and there is nothing we can do.

I dunno. I know what we learned from people like Pete: we have to tell the story and maybe we better write some new songs.

Whoever makes the best biopic of Pete Seeger can tell the story about what is best about this country: people who keep doing the right thing.

Change is necessary but it only works if we know what is right. Is that corny? I don't care. It's right.

In Times Like These

In times like these we wonder where old friends are, who friends are and who are just the liars that litter the alleyways of streets where we took a wrong turn and stayed on that path a little too long. Then one day we run out of shoe leather and gasoline, feel that engine winding too shrill and the slide on wet roads from tires without enough tread left to keep up going forward.

Then someone sends a good song from an old friend and I remember how many people are on that road with me. Thanks Joe Cookbook. I thank the big guy for friends.

The Long and Winding Road

The bad news is I start the treatments for leukemia (NHL) today. It's a schedule of two weeks of steroids followed by 18 weeks of chemo in three week cycles. Every third week, they hook me up for four hours while I sit in a chair. It may be time to find something I actually want to read or set up a laptop for midi composition.

The good news is I get out of yard work for most of the summer and I can rent out the top of my head for Google Ad Space. :-)

I'll be fine. Steroids are an emotional roller coaster though so if I write whinier than usual, well, it's coals to newcastle. I'll see if I can compose a blues mass for the church choir. Hey, emotions should not be wasted. Minds should.

And I still have fine music.

THe Watchmen

Don't bother. If you have young children, don't let them see this. In fact, thumbs down. It has it's own audience, no doubt.

Normally I don't diss a film like that, but these guys are running ads that don't tell you the degree to which this movie is soft-sci-fi porn with full frontal of men and women, and some explicit gettin' it on. People who took their kids were dumbfounded.

And the plot sucks. Good CGI.

The Star Trek preview looks excellent.

Amazing Grace

Arlo keeps on the path he has been on since he was thirteen years old, straight down the middle toward a home he can see or just because he likes the road. Wherever he performs, he brings a unique but familiar perspective some might say is old Hippie talk, but others of us know is the gospel truth. At the core of the Hippie thing was peace and love. It's hard to object. Then togetherness. That's tougher. It gets tight in small corners and we start pushing against each other for space and air to breathe. We can push so hard that even while we have reasons good enough to make Officer Obie stop and think twice, we aren't making more room. We're making each other hurt.

The Guthrie family purchased the old church building where much of Alice's Restaurant was filmed. It is called The Guthrie Center. If you order CDs from his label, www.risingsonrecords.com, they come in a US Postal Priority mailer, meaning someone carefully put them in there out of the box and hand-sealed it then dropped it off at the Post Office on the way to shop for groceries. Inside the box with the rightly priced CDs is a form to send a donation to the Guthrie Center. I may send the money but I think I'll keep the form.

Arlo stayed on his path and that path led him straight home, straight to the heart of love and peace and togetherness. In the video below, he describes the Guthrie Center as a "Bring your own God" church. Maybe it gets crowded in there, but maybe in that church there is room for all of the people who bring their God and because they do, no one's getting hurt.

So he could be right. Maybe we should stay in that log until we outnumber the dogs outside howling. Breeding's got to be better than marching.

The Perfect Folk Song

I know a lot of Dylan fans. I've never been one. It isn't that I don't admire his songs but Bobby always came across to me as a bit mean and so do most of his fans. It's the We Are Too Smart To Care What You Think Brigade and well, I guess I don't follow that trend in folk music.

Then there's Arlo. For my time, Arlo Guthrie was and is the perfect folk singer. He is incredibly gifted as a writer, a wry commentator on the times, a fantastic musician, but through it all, he is funny, he is generous, he is kind, and he sees through the bullshit. He is never mean. Of all my heros in a lifetime of making music, writing songs and listening, he is still the one guy I want to sit down and pick with for an evening somewhere away from the crowd. He simply impresses me as a man who would be a good friend and teacher.

Here is the perfect folk song seen through the eyes of the leader of the first family of American folk music: Arlo.

Give A Damm

They say the times of change are upon us like the Sixties but without the good music and the sex. That only leaves war, drugs and politics which means the worst of the Sixties are back. What to do?

In a 1993 concert just before performing “When A Soldier Makes It Home”, Arlo Guthrie observes that after all the movements of the 60s, he found there are only two kinds of people: those who give a damm and those who don’t and there were always both of those on both sides of an issue. What surprised him was how over the years he found he had more in common with those who do give a damm regardless of which side of the issue they were on.

As we continue on during the times of change and internationalization, maybe that is the best badge to wear.

The Great Gazoo

Someone sent me yet another reference to Facebook's weak defense of their policy that once on Facebook always on Facebook. I tell them to try get rid of their MySpace page and see how that works out.

Relational databases make it difficult to remove related entities once in the system and used by other entities. Given the numbers of friends one befriends, Facebook is possibly a tedious thing to administrate. That said, people seem shocked as they begin to finally realize the Web's existence has a dark side manifesting in everything from intellectual property to keeping one's DNA private. Databases leak and if one is using free services without reading the terms and conditions one is a fool. The world does not protect you. It will let you starve while it buys back a dime on a dollar of your retirement account from the men who stole your water.

If I am in a bad mood, I describe the web as a man-made viral pathogen rewriting our cultural DNA quickly, quietly and without our permission. No one knows how this will turn out for those who turn it on and can't turn off, but if you don't mind being the naked emperor, it should be ok at least until dildonics come with a URI and that is not far away.

In a good mood, I think of the web as the Great Gazoo combined with Fred's two feet. In the first case, a self-admitted "undependable, bit of a kook" alien can raise havoc if you call on him. In the second, a car made of stone, wood and animal skins can take you on a wild ride downhill. If you get in, you may not get out. How good are your own two feet?

Did anyone forsee all of this? Sure. We even warned you. First we were told it wasn't a problem, then it was society's fault, then that we were sick people for wanting to hide information from the commons.

What do I have to say now? "Take heed. Don't ask for more than you can handle You may get it." Toodaloo, Dum-dums!

The Mirror Ball Mosh or Buffy The Umpire Slayer

To assess digital art in these modern times, there are ten critical criticisms:

1. Popularity: How many sites link to it.

2. Citability: How many reviews link to it.

3. Authority: Of the links, how many links link to the sites that link to it.

4. Covetability: how many copies were stolen.

5. Enviability: how many competitors ripped it off and changed the names to claim originality.

6. Originality: huh? Who would link to something they don’t recognize? This one doesn’t matter but I toss it in here to satisfy the need for a ten item list.

7. Authenticity: how many animals were harmed making the thing.

8. Cultability: how many forums are dedicated to proving the artist is wrong about the interpretation of their work.

9. Derivability: how many forums dedicated to proving the artist is wrong are right.

10. Extensibility: how many new pieces of art are created to *honor* the resource at the bottom of all of those links.

The best way to assess art is to find the average size of the pile on top of it that keeps you from finding it times the number of those looking for something like it divided by the number of those who claim to have it for a price they will reveal to you if you give them your social security number.

Protest Songs and The Punctured Pretension

A friend of mine is letting his freak flag fly with political protest songs on mySpace. I sang on some of those including Sly Stone's "Stand" and "Vicious Love Affair". Ground Level Sound still covertly records when no one is looking. Well... no one is but... we have a good time together.

Everything I know about protest I learned from Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman although it was Christopher Guest who finally nailed it to the masthead.

That song is A Mighty Wind years ahead of the time but somehow these days, it's even more relevant. We should stop to deflate our shoes occasionally.

Schadenfreude is for Losers

What an incredibly beautiful day!

I am amazed how far some will run to hide a truth everyone knows. Life in a golden cage isn't life at all.