I hate the feature on “secure” websites where you have to answer some question about yourself to get in. The reliability of this method is somewhat in doubt. I could, for instance, answer just about any question about my wife, my best friend, and a handful of other people off the top of my head. I could look up or find out what I don’t know. But that’s not the problem.

The problem is that I never actually know the answer to any of the questions! Almost every question they ask is complicated by some factor or another.

What was my first pet’s name? Well, it depends. Are we counting the fish or are we talking about real pets. All of our fish were named Fred and as they kept dying they had numbers appended to them. Fred Four was the first one I think was “mine”, though I treated Freds one through three as mine, too. And though we called him Fred Four (or “Fred 4″, we also called him Fred the Fourth or Fred the 4th or Fred, IV. So how would I have spelled it when I first asked the question? Then there was Roscoe, our dog, who was the first real pet. So the answer to that question depends on what I’m thinking when you ask it. This one is the second easiest, though, since I seem to gravitate towards Roscoe the one and only.

What is my mother’s middle name? I am actually only half-sure of the answer, legally speaking. Her birth name was Susan Carroll Hertzog. But the “t” is never pronounced and I forget that it’s even there. Further, she grew up going by Carroll and I think that when she got married she dropped Susan, but she still uses the name Susan Carroll Truman, Carroll Hertzog Truman, and Susan Carroll Hertzog Truman. I prefer it when they ask what her maiden name is, which I guess they don’t do more often since the concept of married and maiden names is less common than it once was. Though even then, I have to ask myself “Did I remember to put the “t” in there?”

Where were you born? There are a number of variations to this question, all of which are beset with problems. Assuming that we’re not going to say “a hospital” (though that couple be the simplest answer… though did I put the “a ” in there or not? If they ask what hospital, did I put the name of the hospital that it had at the time or the one that it has now? (It’s a well-known hospital). And spelling the name of the town? Forget about it. Was it “-burg” or “-berg” or “-burgh”? I can look up the answer, of course, but did I look it up at the time I filled out the question? The answer is usually “yes” but it always causes temporary stress as I fear of being locked out of my own bank account. If they asked what county, that I could tell them… though did I put the word “County” at the end of it or not? Who knows what the heck I was thinking at the time.

What street were you raised on? This is the only one with a pretty clear answer. For me. But a lot of people moved around a lot when they were young. So this is the one area where I had a clear advantage over other people.

-{This post was brought to you by the forgotten letter “T”}-

There is a series of apartment complexes in Colosse called Valhalla. Valhalla is the only apartment complex (or group of such) that actively advertised on TV. They had a niche. At a time when it was always questionable whether you would even be able to get high-speed Internet, they offered it with every room. But they went so much further than that. In fact, they offer “an exciting integration of today’s leading technological connectivity in a dynamic and vibrant cyber-enthusiastic community.” In other words, high speed Internet access in every room. Ethernet jacks at every five feet in the common areas. And all that.

They actually boasted a lot more than just computers. For instance, they showed a luscious landscape with little fake waterfalls and people having a good ole time playing chess or walking along some creek or something. It looked heavenly. I remember thinking to myself, as I was stuck on a substandard DSL connection, I wish I could afford to live there. I was very much their target audience.

My… friend… Dharla was actually looking in to moving into there with a handful of other people. Though she wasn’t a computer person, she had gotten used to high-speed Internet at Southern Tech University and was having trouble adjusting to dial-up. But the more she looked into it, the more stories she started hearing about the people that actually lived there. Now, she was interested in dating me and ended up marrying a complete nerdball, so she was really quite nerd-tolerant. But she started hearing stories of the guys living there spending more than they should in rent and then taking what little they had left and using it to buy hardware. Stories of apartments with literally nothing in them except a mattress, some garbage bags of clothes, and an elaborate computer setup (on the floor).

All of that struck me as hyperbole, though I did find myself thinking, “What kind of person does choose an apartment complex based solely on Internet connectivity?” The picture that came to mind was only a slightly less extreme variation of what was described. Dharla could neither confirm nor deny the stories. But that she couldn’t was telling. She took a tour of one of their campuses and reported that there was absolutely nobody anywhere. Either the complex was having trouble filling its rooms or those that moved in never left their apartments. They had the chess tables and scenery from the ads and all that, but there was absolutely nobody to enjoy them. She wondered if people chatted to their neighbors on AIM or something. It was plausible.

My building at Mindstorm is undergoing something of a face lift, which is good because it needs it. The Mindstorm campus is extremely impressive. From the lobby the place looks immaculate. But the second you get on the second or third floor, you have paint peeling off strikingly bare walls and almost always some monitors and computer hardware sitting outside offices waiting to be picked up. You’ve got a massage chair, some discarded office chairs, big screen TV, gaming console… and nothing else. The walls scream for some artwork or motivational posters or something, but there’s nothing there. Nothing decorative. Nothing to make the place look even remotely presentable. Million-dollar computer and electronic equipment but not a thought to spare on presentation.

Whenever I walked through its halls, it made me think of Valhalla.

Comcast has rolled out faster Internet speeds (in one market) and they actually didn’t raise rates to do it! The people responded by… downgrading their service to save a buck. There has been some anger directed towards Comcast and others that they have failed to upgrade their networks. Well, in some markets at least (including my current market), they actually have been working to trot out faster services.

Part of me thinks it somewhat tragic that they (apparently) aren’t being rewarded for their efforts. The other part of me questions how much of this is their own doing. As ridiculously generous as their 250GB cap is, I can’t help but wonder if they’re making some people afraid to upgrade too fast. When I heard about the Zaulem Sound’s impending upgrade, I commented that this will allow people to reach their cap all that much sooner! A slight exaggeration since a 250GB cap is still out of reach for most people, but upgrading at least provides the illusion of yet another thing to worry about if they want to upgrade.

That brings me to one of the problems I had with the caps in the first place. Cell phone usage exploded right about the time people were getting enough minutes that they didn’t have to count minutes. Back before that point, people didn’t want to pay a monthly fee and then have to worry about going over and paying a substantial per-minute fee. The limits still exist, but it’s more than most people use. Of course, Comcast’s limits are also over what most people use, but people (including tech people like me) really don’t know how much bandwidth we use. Plus, the penalty for going over on Comcast isn’t paying extra, it’s losing service.

Of course, if Comcast (and other providers) are losing money on a certain class of customer, they have the right to establish whatever limits they see fit so long as they are transparent about it. I can’t help but wonder, however, if a better tactic would be to try to get these people to simply start paying more. The kinds of people that swap a lot of data are also the kinds of people that would consider signing up for Comcast’s Ultra and Extreme Plans. Yes, giving these people faster access could result in them swapping more files, but I’d have to think that there is a natural limit. And I think that imposing these limits and essentially telling them that their patronage is not welcome is a good way to make people wary about paying for faster access.

If subscribers both on the lightest and heaviest plans are similarly limited to 250GB, there is at least the perception that there is limited benefit in upgrading. That perception isn’t entirely rational since few users will even come close to reaching 205GB, but… what value is there in it? You can’t download more. There is still no guarantee that the connection will be faster when you need it to be (ie you’re still at the mercy of overall network speeds). Your connection won’t necessarily be any more reliable. The best advantage to higher caps are for people that intend to download large amounts of data. And those people aren’t welcome.

Time Warner, on the other hand, continues to pursue tiered pricing based on bandwidth. I still see the same problem here as with the old cell phones. You arguably want people to become more rather than less reliant on your product. That’s less likely to happen if people are having to monitor their usage closely. Time-Warner isn’t cutting off high-end users like Comcast, but they’re placing the usage on the tiers absurdly low.

Also worth mentioning, of course, are that both Comcast and Time-Warner are firstly cable companies and both have reasons to be concerned about streaming video cutting into their business. So if people become more broadband-reliant they might gain in one area but lose in another. The pool of potential customers in the US is also dwindling as so many have already made the transition. So if they’re going to be content to lose business as cable providers for the Internet, they’re going to have to make their money by either (a) focusing on the most profitable customers or (b) find ways to get more enthusiastic customers to be willing to pay for more.

I have a big post on premarital cohabitation coming up, but I thought I would share this first:

Nation’s Girlfriends Unveil New Economic Plan: ‘Let’s Move In Together’

The Boyfriend representative in this video totally blows it. Clearly, the better argument is this:

Of all the sectors of our economy, it’s housing that started this mess. There is, among other things, a supply excess that is driving home investments into the ground. If Boyfriends all moved in with Girlfriends, this would exacerbate the problem considerably. In cases where there are no roommates, it would lead to a contraction in the number of renters by half and leave rental property owners hurting. Further, even in cases where there are roommates, it’s not like Chad is ever going to get a job and be able to pay his own rent so he’s going to have to move back in with his parents which in addition to being a major bummer, is another contraction. So if you look at it objectively, it’s pretty hard not to see that the current economy demands that I be given some space.

Julie said: What do you think?

Will said: Well, you know my views on premarital cohabitation.

Julie said: You’re against it.

Will said: Generally.

Julie said: When aren’t you against it?

Will said: Sometimes there’s no other way. Two people simply can’t afford to live apart and don’t have good potential roommates but aren’t entirely ready to get married. Sometimes decisions have to be made quickly and other arrangements can’t be made. But it requires something extraordinary or practical.

Julie said: But we’re in love. Does that count?

Will said: Not really. If you’re in love and want to spend the rest of your lives together, you should get married. If you’re not ready to get married, then you shouldn’t live as though you are.

Julie said: He needs a place to stay, though. Unless he’s going to move back in with his parents. There’s nowhere else for him to go.

Will said: It would only be until he can find a roommate. I’ll be looking for an apartment soon. Maybe he and I could move in together.

Julie said: I’m not sure that would work.

Will said: Maybe you’re right.

Julie said: It doesn’t make sense for him to live somewhere else. I need a place to live. He needs a place to live. Why does everything with you have to be so complicated?

Will said: Because you need to draw limits. There needs to be a line that marks the difference between being married and being in love but not married.

Julie said: You have to put limits on everything, don’t you?

Will said: This isn’t about us.

Julie said: Why do you have to be the way you are?

Will said: How would you like me to be?

Julie said: Supportive, maybe? There’s a thought.

Will said: I want you to be happy.

Julie said: Moving in with Tony would make me happy.

Will said: {sigh} Then you should do what makes you happy.

Julie said: There’s enthusiasm for you.

Will said: You can ask me to say what you want me to say or you can ask me to mean it. You can’t have both.

Julie said: You don’t get a say in what makes me happy, Will. You lost that right when you left.

Will did in fact say: You knew that I wouldn’t like this idea. Why exactly are you talking to me about it?

Julie said: Because we’re supposed to be friends.

Will said: As a friend, I’m telling you that I don’t think that this is a good idea.

Julie said: Why the hell not?

Will said: Because he’s getting a divorce. The proceedings haven’t even been initiated yet. There is a lot that can happen between now and then.

Julie said: So this is about him, then?

Will said: This isn’t about him. This is about where he is in his life and where you are in yours. Premarital cohabitation is a bad idea even under the best of circumstances. You… are single… for the first time in a long time and he has just been thrown out of his house and is about to be divorced. These are not the best of circumstances. I think that you need to take a step back and assess where you are.

Julie said: You don’t get to tell me what to do.

Will said: I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what I think you ought to do.

Julie said: “Need” was the word you used.

Will said: What I think you need to do, then.

Julie said: What even gives you the right to tell me what you think I need to do?

Will said: You asked.

Julie said: Why can’t you just be happy for me? This makes me happy? Why can’t you just want me to be happy?

Will said: If this does actually make you happy, then it will make me happy.

Julie said: Okay, then.

-{See previously: Grenade: The Incorrect Response}-

I am of the mind that “hypocrisy” is a charge thrown about far too often. And often disingenuously. To me, hypocrisy has one of two definitions. A narrow one or an expansive one. The expansive one is to say that anybody who denounces something while personally doing it is a hypocrite. The narrow one, which I prefer, is one that denounces something while believing that it is okay for him (or her) to do it. I prefer the latter definition because it is the most morally useful one. The former definition, in my mind, reduces the notion of hypocrisy into morally useless territory.

If we are to say that everybody that denounces something that they do is a hypocrite, then we are all hypocrites. More than that, we should be hypocrites. To be otherwise is either to live a perfect life or to rationalize away everything bad you’ve ever done. If someone is doing something that they recognize to be bad, they should be able to say so. Ideally, they should admit to what they are doing, but for various reasons that is often not a good idea. I am sure that, for instance, the wife and family of an adulterous politician would prefer the dirty laundry not be spread around.

Likewise, President Jed Bartlet concealed his smoking habit from the public because he did not want to lend his habit the veneer of respectability. He did not want, by his own actions, to suggest that smoking was okay.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is somewhat more forthright about his relationship with “Uncle Phil”, as he’s called in the Truman home:

That Obama has just signed legislation designed to reduce cigarette use, it’s easy to suggest that Obama is worthy of condemnation for the hypocrisy. Obama deflects this in the same way that parents across the country do: For the love of god, do what I say and not what I do. In fact, Obama takes it a step further and uses himself as an example as to why this legislation is so important. Some would call this political posturing, but when I was coming of age the people that warned me the most sternly and effectively against smoking (I didn’t start until I was 22) were smokers themselves. Whatever the level of his sincerity (which we have no way of knowing), he is saying what a lot of sincere people do.

Criticizing Obama on the hypocrisy, though, is the easy way out. I feel the same way about Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) and the recent revelation of his affair. And Senator John Ensign (R-NV), David Vitter (R-LA) and former Governor Elliot Spitzer (D-NY). They’re mostly cheap shots. They’re useful in the context of weakening a political figure. People who vote for Sanford on the basis of his alleged commitment to family values should probably know that he does not live up to them himself and he should be called into account. He can try to defend his actions or (more likely) admit that they were wrong and then the voters can decide whether they believe him or not (which they will miraculously do or not do along party lines).

But he should be called into account for what he actually did. It should not be used, as it has been, to attack his position on gay marriage. Further, revelations of infidelity should not be important primarily (or solely) if there is a hypocrisy angle. If it’s wrong for Ensign to cheat on his wife, then it’s wrong for a pro-gay marriage politician to cheat on his. The only time there’s really a distinction is if the pro-gay marriage politician is prepared to say that it’s different for him because he doesn’t believe that cheating on his wife is wrong.

A morally useful hypocrisy charge carries an implication that what the hypocrite has been caught doing is not actually that bad. Or at least is not as bad as saying that people should behave differently. Because it is criticizing the hypocrite not for what he did but rather for his condemnation of it. For instance, Ted Haggard was an anti-gay preacher caught in homosexual acts. His critics did not care that he was engaging in homosexual acts. In fact, they support the right to do so as free from consequence as possible. Haggard, despite his oopsies, continued to disagree. Haggard’s continued belief that what he did was wrong undercuts the hypocritical charge. So even when the charge is morally useful by virtue of forcing Haggard to confront the difference between his stated morality and his private actions, it did nothing to really prove that Haggard’s views on homosexuality were actually wrong.

There are some cracks in this, though. Democrats, to great effect, used hypocrisy against the Republicans during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings. The hypocrisy charge was successful not insomuch as it defended Clinton’s infidelity but rather the right of Clinton not to have attention brought to it. Since most people are skittish about the airing of dirty laundry (though not so skittish as to not pay attention to it), the message resonated and it’s one of the comparatively few cases where I can lend some credence to it. And so criticizing Ensign (who made some harsh statements directed at Clinton) on those grounds possibly have some sort of standing… except that it involves an issue ten years stale. So to suggest that now, ten years after the fact, infidelity is relevant and should be made public is… inconsistent. Perhaps hypocritical. Either a politician has a right to keep his private failings private or he does not. Saying out loud that these failings are failings does not, to me, really enter into the equation. Further, it is completely useless, though, to bring infidelity (or Haggard’s homosexual adventures) up in the context of gay marriage because that is an issue of public, not private, sexuality.

What disturbs me about this is that the charge is levied most frequently not to discourage immoral behavior but rather to discourage the condemnation of it, which in turn is to defend it. Otherwise, the hypocrisy is somewhat beside the point. The issue is that Haggard engaged in homosexual acts, that Sanford cheated, that Al Gore uses too much fossil fuel, and that Obama smokes cigarettes. If one considers these things bad then the hypocrisy angle is tangential at top and at bottom is appreciated because better they at least advocate doing the right thing rather than defend doing the wrong thing.

All of this brings me back to Obama and cigarettes. To suggest that hypocrisy is the issue, it implicitly assumes that what Obama is doing actually isn’t bad. For hypocrisy to be more important than smoking, then it’s his public face that’s wrong. And it’s difficult to say “they’re both bad” because either smoking is bad (and thus Obama’s public face is right) or it is not (and thus his private face is doing nothing wrong).

The stronger argument is that he shouldn’t smoke because it sets a really bad example. This is, of course, true. Of course, it wouldn’t be such an issue if the press didn’t keep asking the question. But then if they did that, I wouldn’t have had anything to post about…

-{Note, this post is not meant to be a platform for grievances against Obama, Sanford, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, or conseratives generally. Condemn or forgive the hypocrisy or the specific underlying behavior as you see appropriate, but let’s avoid comments like “I don’t care about x, I really hate him/them because y” and so on. I know these requests must seem tedious, but there are so many other places to discuss actual politics and politicians and some of the issues I like to talk about can easily get sidetracked into formulaic condemnations of people whose philosophies differ from our own}-

Having made a run at Facebook and Twitter, thus far Twitter has been something of a bust but Facebook has taken off like gangbusters. I can see why Mitch and Clancy took such a liking to it. Most of the people that came to mind that I wanted to add were handily available from my email contact list or as a friend of a friend. Those that weren’t (ex-girlfriend Julie, ex-roommates Dennis and Karl) don’t appear to be on the site at all. There was one other person that I was relatively sure would have a presence there that hadn’t popped up yet. It was, in fact, someone I’ve been trying to track down for a couple years now: Tracey Roberts.

Tracey is not someone that I’ve talked about a whole lot, but she played a pretty integral part of my life. Most particularly my romantic life. The first girl (of two) that ever destroyed me. I’ve been wanting to contact her for quite some time now. I’ve scanned through DMV records and googling, but all of this is made more complicated by the fact that her real name isn’t Tracey Roberts but is in fact one of the most common female names in existence within my generation. Googling her name is hopeless. Even trying to put in relevant details about her. All I’ve found through the DMV, voter registration, and zabasearch is her parents address.

So my assumption is that’s probably where she is. When I left Delosa six or so years ago, she lived with her folks. She was talking of moving to Canada with some guy that she met on the Internet. I would be surprised if that came to fruition, though it would explain what I’ve found (or been unable to find) if that’s the case.

Facebook, though, had apparently given me a lead to go on. The site lets you look for people based on not only on name, but also by alma mater. So I stuck in her name and Delosa Western University, the college I associate her with. Numerous people came up. The second looked promising. I took a closer look at the picture and the resemblance was striking. Was it her? I wasn’t sure. Facebook Tracey lived in Charlton, Tennassee. A lot of people move back and forth between Charlton and Colosse, so that wouldn’t be a big surprise, though I figured that if she left Colosse she would be leaving the south. She went to the appropriate university. Same color hair and eyes, though neither of those are uncommon (my wife has them). But something in her smile seemed very familiar. The more I looked at it, the more sure it seemed that I had finally found her. So I shot her an email: “Is this the same former Tracey Roberts of Camelot, Roosevelt High School, DWU, and UDC?”

I wasn’t sure if she would reply or what I would even say if she did. The main reason I was trying to track her down was to apologize. I won’t get precisely into the details of what I have to apologize for, but of the relatively short list of people I mistreated in my life, she is at the the top of it. She is one of only two people that I feel the need to go out of my way to say that I’m sorry. She hurt me badly and to say that I did not respond well was an understatement. I will probably get around to telling the story at some point, but maybe not. I wrote her a long letter a couple years back, but unfortunately it was on a thumb drive that got wiped and I haven’t had the time or energy to write it again. I was planning on writing it, sending it to her parents and asking them to forward it to her wherever she was. The main reason that I hadn’t done so was that I didn’t have a letter ready. And as of writing her the message on Facebook, I still don’t. But I needed to know if I needed to drop everything and write one. So I wanted in anticipation for Facebook Tracey’s confirmation.

Instead, I got a two word message back “No, sorry”.

I looked at the picture and I was dumbfounded. The more I had looked at it previously, the more sure I was that it was her. But I also wanted it to be her. If it was her, she had finally left Colosse as she had long wanted to do. If it was her, she’d lost a little bit of weight (something she was very self-conscious about). If it was her, she was married. If it was her, she had an adorable little girl. If it was her, she had finally escaped the darkness of her previous life and found the happiness that I’d formerly sneeringly (but more recently earnestly) wished upon her.

I’m not convinced that it isn’t her. The physical similarities, regardless of the picture, are too great for me to dismiss it. I’d honestly expected her to be less enthusiastic about my re-inserting myself in her life. I thought that I might not get a reply at all. Doesn’t seem like her to outright lie, though. And the timeline of the move to Charlton seem wrong somehow. I would like to know for sure if it isn’t her so that I can keep on looking. And I would like to know if it is her and if she genuinely doesn’t want to hear from me (or her old life) anymore.

As much as I would like to say my peace, I would respect those wishes. It’s the least I can do.

#1 - Everything you have heard about hospital food is true. It is bland. It is mushy. It is as unseasoned as can be. In any other possible situation, I would be doing everything in my power to lend it even the tiniest bit of gastronomical excitement.

But if you’re in a hospital, it is exactly what your body needs to be fed.

#2 - They will not let you sleep.

I take that back. They’ll let you “sleep”, as in take naps. They’ll just be by every 3-4 hours to check your vitals, and wake you up in the process.

#3 - Having an IV line in, no matter what the reason, sucks. It makes it pretty much impossible to move one arm. If you want to get up and move the 10-15 feet it takes to reach the toilet, you have to get up and wheel the IV cart along with you. If you do fall asleep and move the arm, or accidentally make some other motion (say in the process of lifting up the hospital gown to set your posterior on the toilet) and temporarily block up the IV line, the IV cart will set off an alarm.

That last part is probably actually for the best.

#4 - Hospital gowns are the weirdest item of clothing ever imagined. They grant you the illusion of being covered, while covering virtually nothing. They grant almost no protection against the elements. You might as well be wearing just your underwear.

Yet here I sit, in my underwear and a hospital gown, and grateful to be wearing both.

#5 - Hospitals are COLD. Especially at nighttime, they are exceptionally cold. I’m guessing it has something to do with maintaining a sterile environment and keeping certain bacteria/fungi from growing.

I am very grateful to have three blankets over me tonight.

#6 - Thankfully, the idea of cell phones/laptops/etc being banned from hospitals appears to be pure bunk.

Now to try to get another catnap.

There comes a point where you are working (or have other obligations) for so many hours of the day that you end up getting more rather than less sleep. You come home from work day in and day out that you have so much to do that you find yourself unable to pick between them and decide to do nothing and say, “Screw it, I’m going to bed.” You can’t even relax because you know that there is so much else to be doing.

That was me a couple weeks ago. My boss, perhaps taking notice of my plight, relieved me of it by taking back the little time I had remaining. So last week, by and large, it was work-drive-sleep-drive-work-drive-etc. It’s been exhausting and frustrating. A previous boss and Mindstorm made the observation, “You seem like the kind of guy that nothing gets to you” and I am known by some as a sort of laid back fellow. Something I had to work very hard at and have met with some measure of success. Some. But this past couple weeks have been so stressful that people have been walking on eggshells around me. I can’t remember the last time that happened. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to be apologetic at the workplace for losing my cool.

But this post isn’t actually a whine or even a complaint. I’m getting paid for my time and besides, it’s only two months and I can take just about anything for two months.

The thing is, in addition to being exhausting and frustrating, it’s also been invigorating. Generally speaking, I generally take a laid back attitude towards work. I go in, I do what’s expected of me, I come home. I avoid overtime where I can but work it when it’s required or when I’m feeling inspired. I’m not often inspired. I excelled at Falstaff, but mostly because it was a job that I could do easily. I was pretty middle-of-the-pack at Monmark-Soyokaze. Up until recently, my days at Mindstorm have been measured by how many episodes of NYPD Blue or Da Vinci’s Inquest I get through on my smartphone while I work. It’s not that I haven’t been doing my job, but that I have only been doing what’s required of me and what’s required of me has not included anything that prevented me from listening to TV shows while I work. Both Linus and Clancy have expressed their belief that it’s sad that I have such jobs, but I’ve been okay with it.

Now I’m reminded a little bit of what I have been missing out on. A job that challenges me. A job where I am given a whole load of tasks, told that they need to be done with an unreasonable deadline, and told to get to work ASAP. Unreasonable deadlines have occurred in the past, but they’ve often been accompanied with attitudes that make me feel more indifferent rather than inspired. In this case, what I am doing is important and time-sensitive and if things take too long I may have to explain why but there won’t be any repercussions of the sort that can make me indignant and eventually apathetic to what my superiors think of me and the work that I do. Take note, bosses, when subordinates decide that you can’t be pleased, they will stop caring about pleasing you. But that’s not the case here.

So I’ve been working long hours. And I mean working. No more than an episode or two of TV a day in bits and pieces while I’m setting things up in between a bunch of things that will require my full and complete attention. Commenting on this blog has suffered. Posting hasn’t yet, but it will before too long unless things let up. But that’s okay because I’m actually doing the sorts of important stuff that my boss Shayen said I would be doing when he plucked me out of my former boss’s team and put me on his own.

Most of all, though, it is great to be reminded that yes, when the chips are down, I do what has to be done. I can be a bit of a slouch sometimes, but that’s because little is required of me and there is at least the perception that what I am doing is not worthy of attention and respect. This is all reminiscent of my time as a database developer at Wildcatter when I put in the sorts of 30 hour days that Clancy has to put in now. I sometimes dismiss myself as being somewhat lazy and look back at the things I didn’t do and say “Oh, I probably would have buckled.” But in 2001, when I was under a lot of stress but I did everything I could to come through. I like knowing of myself that, in 2009, I can still do these things.

Of course, I also like knowing of myself that two months from now, I won’t have to.

I find myself in the position of defending, among others, the recording industry and copyright holders. Not because I believe that there actions are justified, but rather because I believe the concerns that motivate them are genuine. Of course, sometimes they do things that are so indefensible that I lose any desire to keep a fair and open mind.

For instance, plugging another nail in the likely coffin of Sirius XM by requiring that royalties be paid for the songs that they play. This would be related to their efforts to bleed regular radio stations with the Radio Is Piracy perspective. Record labels exist in large part to get songs on the radio. Record sales are nearly impossible to accumulate in large numbers otherwise. As Mike Mesnick points out, this is why payola and its children exist. Radio stations are already struggling. Moves like this may make a little money in the short run, but when Clear Channel and Infinity and the rest start counting their beans, the result will be fewer radio stations playing music and more playing talk radio.

Of course, the result could be precisely what I said wouldn’t happen last week. Assuming that the law allows artists to waive these fees, it will provide a financial incentive for radio stations to bypass the record labels altogether. It’s never been easier to make music. It’s never been harder to get the attention of radio stations. This could really obviate the entire rationale behind the record label system.

I would say that I can’t even begin to fathom what they’re thinking, but I guess I can. People - the very critics of this maneuver, in fact - have been telling the RIAA and its folks that the days of people paying to own music are numbers. That they’re going to have to find some other way to get paid. If they can’t force people to buy records and they can’t stop people from illegally sharing music, what precisely are they supposed to do? The Free-Art people never seem to have a good answer to that questions. Concerts and t-shirts only go so far.

The eternal skeptic in me says that they will get their way because they’ll make it hard for unsigned artists to “opt out” or will charge just little enough that it isn’t worth it to radio stations to become adventurous. So fewer music radio stations. More talk radio. Radio stations becoming even more conservative with their playlist since every song counts just a little bit more.

-{Via Newsome}-

I made more money in 2002 than I have made in any year since. My base pay has fluctuated up and down and I’ve in the past been salaried at more than I made that year, but job breaks prevented that number from ever being passed. But aside from that, the reason I earned so much back then was the hours that I worked. I worked very, very long hours. I had two main areas of responsibility. One was as the director of IT, so time was spent getting computers to work, replacing toner cartridges, laying network lines, and things like that. The second was as a database developer. My job was to design a database to incorporate all of the company’s operations to provide payroll, billing, efficiency, and accounting numbers. The problem with having these two responsibilities (in addition to being the editor of his religious book and whatever else he wanted me doing at any given point) was that they frequently conflicted. It’s hard to develop a database when every five minutes you’re interrupted because you need to replace an icon on someone’s laptop that they accidentally deleted.

So a lot of my database work was done off-hours. Sometimes a lot of off-hours. I worked at average of 58 hours a week at that job. My boss Calvin was not very flexible with deadlines and accepted no excuses, so that time was not very evenly distributed. Some weeks I’d work 40 hours and others I would work more. The worst was when he wanted something the Monday of the next week. I would make as much progress as I could during the week and then go in Saturday and Sunday. On multiple occasions, I’d go in on Sunday and end up not being able to leave.

The first time I did this, I was so excited to hit the deadline I rambled with my boss about everything that had been done and how it had been working. He said, without any enthusiasm whatsoever, “You did what was required of you. Congratulations.” He would then muster up some enthusiasm of the negative sort for the next part. “You need to work harder at meeting office dress requirements.”

I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I had gone in on Sunday with the intention of going home that afternoon or evening. It didn’t occur to me that it would take all night. He was unimpressed with my story. “Go home and change.”

I went home. I changed. I realized that there was no way on God’s Green Earth I was going to make it back to work. I called Calvin and told him so. He told me to take a sick day. What I later discovered that he meant by that was that I was going to lose a sick day but that since I had already worked on Sunday that I wasn’t actually going to get 8 hours worth of pay out of the deal. And when I got back the next day, there was a copy of the dress code sitting on my desk with the part about t-shirts being prohibited highlighted.

A few months later, the whole process repeated itself on Sunday. I went in with the intention of leaving that night but failed to. No problem, though. First, after the previous incident I made a point of always keeping a change of clothes in my car. So I was good to go. Much to my frustrating, I didn’t finish. That was going to be a problem. Except that it wasn’t. It was nothing as warm and kind as his being understanding that I had done everything I could to make it happen. Rather, it was that he “meant” to say that it was due on the 11th when he said it was due on the 4th because he knew there was no way that it would get done by the 4th. He half-apologized for the confusion, but then made a comment about how it’s always smart to tell people that something is due before it is so that they don’t wait until the last minute. I asked him, with all of the concern I could muster, if he was concerned about my missing deadlines and that I couldn’t think of any that I had missed and was there something I wasn’t thinking of? I knew there wasn’t. He looked at me and said, “Well, you missed this one, didn’t you?”

I was too tired and infuriated to work. I told him that I needed to go home and that I would take another sick day. He told me that I didn’t have any sick days because the sick-day calendar had just rolled over and I was back to zero. I told him I would make up the hours. Of course, in my mind I was saying “I’ve already made up the hours.”

I worked like a dog for the remainder of the week and, of course, came in on that Sunday and was there until Monday. This time I finished! At 5am! That allowed me to get a little shut-eye in my office. I woke up at 8 when his son-in-law (the company’s part-time sales chief) showed up. Fortunately, I already changed into my work clothes before going to bed so that I wouldn’t get another warning. I told Calvin that I had finished his project. I tried to work through the day, but kept falling asleep. I told the office manager that I was too tired to earn my keep so I was going home.

When I got back Tuesday, I had an official reprimand on my desk for… unaccountable hours. In another word: attendance. A week or so later I got my bi-weekly paycheck. 140 hours. I placed the stub next to the unaccountable hours write-up because I knew that someday it would make me laugh. I’m sure if I had taken the thing with me after I Calvin canned me a year or so after that, I would be looking at it and laughing right now.

A little while back I asked if anyone knew about an audio player that met certain specifications. Web suggested ZoomPlayer, which I have used for video before but never audio. Before trying that, I finally got around to trying XBMC. For those of you that don’t know what XBMC is, it’s the software package for the XBox Media Center. They have a release for Windows, Mac, and Linux free for downloading. It was the comprehensive solution I was hoping for to set up a better PC for my TV. Up until now, I’ve been running regular Windows, which does the job but does not have an interface remotely friendly to TV. I tried Windows Media Center Edition only to discover that it ridiculously required special drivers that I did not have. Then I beefed up on Linux to try MythTV, but the video out wasn’t functional for my laptop video card and since using a laptop is part of my eventual plan that scrapped that. So all that was left to try was XMBC.

It’s very impressive. In fact, it comes achingly close to having everything I could want and a little more on top of that. I say “achingly close” because there is nothing more frustrating than that one missing feature that would otherwise make for the perfect app. Or a handful of missing features in this case. So wonderful is the interface, though, that a handful of defects seems like only a few. And none of them are deal-breakers. They’re just frustratingly absent.

XBMC has a beautiful interface that’s extremely easy to navigate. The vast majority of my concerns prior to installing the program were not only addressed, but were addressed in ways far superior to what I had envisioned. For instance, creating the “library” was supposed to be a headache but was instead a breeze. Not only will it give me easy access to an emulator, but it even has a special place designated for it. File management was going to be an issue where I thought I would have to go outside the app, but what they provide is far superior to the ways that I was figuring I was going to have to rig it up. It’s got easy-to-access options for music, videos, optional libraries for each, emulators (installed separately), and more. Very nice.

Unfortunately, there are the absent features. Whenever features are absent from an otherwise excellent program, I figure that usually (a) it’s one of those areas where I use a computer differently than the average user. I have a special setup or a special way of doing things. Or (b) there is a way to do it and I just can’t figure out. There are probably some of each. Part of the problem is what I call the Linux Disease. Linux, by virtue of having different distros and desktop environments, provides good choices of things to pick between but none of them have everything. XBMC likewise has various “skins” you can install, some are superior to others, but with each one having something the others lack I have to choose between functionality. And because of the different versions and whatnot, you can’t just pick something and install and have it work. I keep running into compatibility issues.

The most troubling problem I’ve hit so far are fast-forwarding and rewinding audio and video. For audio, you can’t. It’s just next/prev track. Worse, on some skins, there’s no button for it and you have to select the next song you want to play. For video, you can jump forward 30 seconds or 10 minutes. Neither work for me. If I want to go back a little bit, it’s probably because of a line of dialog that I didn’t hear. So I just need to go back ten seconds or so. Likewise, if there’s some big plot point I missed, I don’t want to go back ten minutes. I usually want to go back five. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to easily change this setting.

The secondary issue is alluded to in the first. The options for music are limited. You can’t move backwards or forwards within a track. And on most skins, you can’t even tell it whether you want to shuffle or play straight through or whether you want it to start back at the beginning when it’s done. This is some pretty basic stuff.

Thirdly, it doesn’t accept a large number of buttons on my remote. This really isn’t that big of a deal because I can still do what I need to do. Does anyone know of a good remote control programming application? There’s got to be something like that out there. Or maybe I just need to buy a remote with all-assignable buttons.

Ordinarily, either one of the first two of these might be enough to get me to say “screw it” and move on, but the rest of the application is so impressive that I am trying to figure out how to work my way around it. I’m going to the trouble of researching it to see if there are options that I’ve missed.

If you can accept these limitations, so far I endorse this application.

Charles Homans think that ketchup packets are the worst idea ever:

I think that’s wrong. Very wrong. They’re not even the worst condiment packet ever!

Ever since my decision to make common cause with our president by putting mustard on my burger, I have been fumbling ridiculously over mustard packets. Mustard gets everywhere except on my bun. Unlike mayo and ketchup, mustard doesn’t come off the fingers with a lick. It’s like toothpaste on shirts. It has staying power until you break out the soap.

That aside, the mustard experiment has gone over well. Not only does it replace mayo, but combine it with some Sriracha or Tabasco sauce and it overwhelms any cheese you might put on it and you can replace that, too.

The latest show that I’ve been consuming through my earpiece (as well as watching when I have a spare eye) is Grey’s Anatomy. So far I’m enjoying it. One of the more interesting aspects is the non-romance between lead Meredith Grey and her rejected suitor George O’Malley. In some ways it’s the classic case of a chick rejecting the sincere beta in search for her alpha. The alpha, in this case, being the unhappily married Derek (”Dr. McDreamy”) Shepherd. But it’s clear from the outset that Dr. Shepherd is not the only obstacle in George’s way. The primary obstacle is the fact that Meredith doesn’t even notice that he’s interested (or acts as though she doesn’t). This is problematic not just because it means that O’Malley has to do the heavy lifting to make anything happen, but in my experience if you’re hot for someone chances are good they either know it or the way that they see you is completely devoid of any sexual attraction.

O’Malley stands by in utter frustration as Meredith gets her heart broken repeatedly by the conflicted Dr. McDreamy while he knows that he would love her and never hurt her if he just got the chance. O’Malley gets some disingenuous advice from their mutual friends to go for it. I guess it’s something that people are expected to say, but it’s pretty bum advice when it’s equally obvious to everybody that it’s going to end badly.

And, of course, it does. As O’Malley is about to make his move, he catches Meredith having sex with somebody that she absolutely, positively should not be having sex with. He flies off the deep-end. Things tumble for Meredith until she is feeling beyond miserable about herself. In a moment of weakness, she receives O’Malley’s sexual advances. Long story short, the whole incident ends in a way beyond humiliating for O’Malley and he moves out (the two of them were living together with someone else), everyone takes his side, and Meredith is left feeling lower than dirt. Which, in his mind, is what she deserves after the awful way that she humiliated him. And most of her friends are willing to give her no quarter (their mutual roommate says flat-out that if it comes down to it, she’s siding with him). She apologized again and again, but he would have none of it.

As I watch and listen the whole situation unfold, it’s hard for me to experience too much sympathy for O’Malley. Of course, I can completely and entirely relate to the guy that loves the girl that doesn’t love him back. His hurt was understandable, as was a fit of rage after the humiliation, but a little perspective casts a pretty different light on things. He circled around her like a vulture. At her greatest moment of vulnerability (some of which caused by him), he made his move. Things didn’t work out like he’d known all along they wouldn’t until he saw his moment to strike, and he is indignant. None of this is to suggest that Meredith is free of blame. Though her reactions were the product of her own torment (much of it self-inflicted), self-destructive behavior becomes less tragic and more unforgivable when it has a radius beyond the self-destructive individual. And to be honest, O’Malley’s actions themselves were also the product of his own hurt. The main difference, in my mind, is that she has apologized repeatedly and neither he nor anybody else acknowledges the role he played in his own destruction.

This makes me think of the plight of a lot of beta males. The source of his pain was not entirely his own doing. It’s not like there was something that he could have done in order to win her over the “right” way. He had no chance. And to some extent, you can’t help who you are attracted to. But what you can help is (a) how much you cultivate that attraction and (b) how you respond to it. O’Malley followed the path that a lot of us do. He at once acknowledged that she was out of his league and so didn’t make his move but then did not acknowledge that the next move was his… the move away. Moving out of the apartment or trying to tackle his futile emotions. The romantic in all of us says that love is not something that can be contained, but to say that of O’Malley is also to say that of Meredith. The main difference being that she at least had a shot at her dream at one point.

There is supposed to be a romantic tragedy behind the love of the unattainable. I think that popular entertainment presents us with it so often (and make it love actualized sometimes) because we can all relate to it. But I view it as a truly destructive force. The inability to get someone out of your mind or to let a former lover go is one of the greatest sources of self-inflicted misery I’ve seen in those around me in my somewhat privileged life. It’s human and to some extent unavoidable, but I find Hollywood’s exaltation of this impulse to be problematic. I’ve complained before about how Hollywood misleads men by making them thing that persistence counts. But it misleads women into thinking that men will come around, too. And it misleads all of us into thinking that there is something beautiful about unrequited love and dreaming the impossible (Mc)Dream(y).

There isn’t.

And it isn’t just that it makes people unhappy. It’s a contagious sort of unhappiness. It leads to O’Malley the Vulture and Meredith the Succubus. It leads us to overlook the options that we do have. It makes us less pleasant for our friends to be around. Unless you’re a tortured artist, there isn’t much positive that can come from it. I think that we search endlessly for the bright side so we invent one. And though it never makes the pain stop, it makes us endure abuse and neglect and it makes us deal it out to people that are not the ones abusing and neglecting us. And, for that matter, exactly to the one abusing and neglecting us for the same reason that we are doing the same. Of course, that assumes that you’re in a position to deal the pain you’re experiencing. These people can be the most insufferable because they think that a dearth of available victims makes them benign.

Update: As if to make a fool out of me, O’Malley apologized in the episode I listened to today, outlining a significant portion of what I said above. He has regained his status as my favorite character. Most excellent.

It all started with my fifth viewing of The Watchmen. I heard it was playing in a hotel room in downtown Zaulem and decided that it would be worth the trip. Not exactly true, but true enough that I did end up watching the movie in a hotel room.

There’s never a good time to run out of gas. Never a good place.

Some times and some places, of course, are less bad than others.

Downtown Zaulem at one in the morning, for example, would be one of those times and places that are not less bad than many.

My friend Al Cavanaugh, a lawyer from Colosse, has a court case in Cascadia and flew up. I was running a little late picking him up at the airport, so even though I knew that I needed to refill the gas tank, I decided that I would do it immediately after we left the airport. With my gas tank running that low, there was no way that I would forget. Except, of course, that there is a lot that happens when picking someone up at the airport that pushes rather pertinent things, like a fuel gauge hanging on the other side of empty, out of one’s mind. By the time we got back in the car, we were already getting caught up on how things were going with one another that it completely escaped my mind until I glanced down when we parked at the lot adjacent to his hotel room. Then I did what I should have done at the airport. The one thing that makes me never forget to refill the gas tank.

Al and I went out to eat and had a couple martinis. The waiter got both of our main dishes wrong and I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how the bill came out to $40. But that didn’t matter nearly as much as the confirmation that the movie was indeed on the PPV in his room. We were rockin’. The movie ended at about fifteen after twelve and I needed to make a hasty exit. Partly because I was getting sleepy, partly because lots in Zaulem have this really irritating tendency to close at midnight. Seriously, why what use is a parking lot that you can’t leave your car parked at least until the bars close?

Fortunately, tired though I was, I did do that thing earlier that makes me never forget to refill the gas tank. Basically, whenever my gas tank is running feverishly low, I place a jacket, shirt, or rag on my steering wheel. Its the string on my finger for that particular issue. So when I got to the car, I knew what to do. I also knew that looking at the gas gauge, I didn’t have much time to do it. So I consulted my good friend Gippers where the nearest gas station was. I was in luck! There was a Shell station (my favorite!) a half-mile away. I forgot, however, that the half-mile was as the crow flies. The route it had me take had me going in all sorts of directions. I would have been suspicious, but Zaulem seems to be one of those cities where what seems like the quickest way to get somewhere isnt always. So in Gippers I trusted. Unfortunately, I was so distracted by the gas gauge that I missed a couple of turns, making my trip longer.

Then the stalling began. My car would stall any time I was parked at an incline. Fortunately, it restarted each time. But every time it did that it took a little piece of my sanity with it. It’s never good to run out of gas, but on an incline? In the middle of a startlingly dark and closed city? With no gas station nearly? It was all a good reminder as to why I don’t typically mess with the gas gauge. I have a long and unproud history of running out of gas, but I’ve been a lot better about it lately. Unfortunately, this was one of those times where my car mileage was doing unusually poorly and the near-outage caught me out-of-rhythm. The rhythm being the various Shell stations I can stop at between home and work, where I am prepared at just about any time to be running dangerously low on gas.

The car made it, fortunately. The gas station was in a rather lively part of town. There was a dude dressed as Elvira and all manner of people wearing all sorts of demarcations of individuality and hippitude. It made for some interesting people-watching as I filled up my gas tank, paying more than $3 a gallon for the first time in a long time but so very glad to have the opportunity to pay it.

I’ve seen it discussed here and there the correct pronunciation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The correct pronunciation is apparently So-to-may-OR while a lot of people gravitate towards So-to-my-er or So-to-may-er with the emphasis being either on the “So” or the “my/may”. I personally pronounce it as though it were spelled Sotomeyer with no obvious emphasis.

One school of thought is that you pronounce a name as the person whose name it is does so. Since she pronounces it SotomayYOR, so should we. On the other hand, you have others saying that we should resist “unnatural pronunciation” and it should not be insisted upon.

I’m honestly sympathetic to both points of view. On the one hand, we should try to call people what they wish to be called. Doing otherwise can be seen as (and is often intended as) disrespectful. It’s sort of like having a friend named Frank and insisting on calling him Francis because that’s his name. If the two of you know one another and it’s an inside joke or something like that, it’s one thing. Otherwise, it’s one of the things that people do to demean someone else in a way that they see as perfectly defensible because it has its own accuracy. It’s not entirely dissimilar to those that emphasized our president’s middle name or the first name of the governor of Louisiana and objected to all objections because, you know, that’s the legal name. Similarly, calling her Sotomeyer despite her preference and the custom of the language can be seen the same. People that make a point of pronouncing it differently are due particular scrutiny. Of course, you can pronounce it right in a disrespectful manner to. Someone that says “Justice Sotomeyer… wait… sorry, have to be {insert air quotes here} politically correct… sotomaYOR” is being more disrespectful than the guy that happens to pronounce it wrong.

On the other hand, I foresee people being accused of being disrespectful when they’re not intending to be. As Conor Friedersdorf points out in the aforelinked American Scene post, some people are just all jazzed up about accusing people (particularly people with whom they frequently disagree) as racist. But failing or declining to pronounce her name correctly is not racist. Nor is it inherently disrespectful. Some names are just hard to pronounce. To me, the correct pronunciation of Sotomayor is about as unnatural as names come. Something about the four syllables with the accent on the last syllable just ties my tongue in knots. I can pronounce it correctly, but it requires a degree of conscious effort. Maybe somewhere down the road I’ll get it right, but for now if I am mentioning her it’s because I’m trying to convey something about her and it obstructs clarity if I have to take a time-out to construct the pronunciation of her name correctly.

Interestingly, when President Obama announced her nomination, he got it right on the first pronunciation but then in later references he slipped into somewhere in between Sotomeyer and the correct pronunciation. When her name was the object of the sentence, he got it right. But when her name was just included, our well-spoken president wavered. I suspect that this is going to be an ongoing thing. In that vein, I hope that people will do what they can to pronounce it correctly, but I also hope that Sotomayor’s defenders will not use that as a bat to club the people with whom they disagree. And ultimately, I wish that Sotomayer herself would just consent to the pronunciation that is going to cause people the least amount of linguistic gymnastics.

Actually, Sotomayor (if confirmed) would not be the first Supreme Court justice whose name I have difficulty with. At least half the time, I pronounce Antonin Scalia as AnTONin Scal-yah. The first because it’s one letter off from the name Antonio, which I’m more familiar with. The last name is one that I have just never heard with any regularity until I started following the news. Now that I know, I am still used to the old pronunciation and the correct one, while not as unnatural as SotomaYOR, still doesn’t flow off the tongue. It’s kind of funny that I mispronounce an Italian name by my association of it with a Spanish one. It also goes to show that contrary to the assumption of some, it’s not out of disregard for Hispanics that some people have difficult with (or quite trying to find) the correct pronunciation of her name. Some people have only recently learned out Souter’s name is pronounced. I had once thought that it was Sowter rather than Sooter, but once I found out how it was pronounced it was a really easy one to switch to since Sooter/suitor is already an English word.

Interestingly enough, this is an area with which I already have some experience. My name is difficult for Asians to pronounce. Or at least it’s difficult for the Japanese to announce. So when I was working under a Japon in Estacado, he could not pronounce my name to save his life. It would usually come out as Wi-ih or more commonly as Wi-er or Weer. He struggled with this mightily. I could see him try to get it right, but he could not for the life of him get it out. I actually tried at one point to tell him that he could call me Wier if that would be easier for him. He seemed kind of offended by the suggestion. I then lied and told him that it “Wier” was sometimes used as a nickname for “William” and so Wier Truman I became.

Do any of y’all have a difficult to pronounce name? My last name sometimes gets goofed up and my wife’s name gets goofed up regularly. Some people consider it sad that people shorted or anglicized their name when they came over, but I admire their willingness to do so. I don’t know if I would be willing to do the same, but then I’m not the sort to migrate to a new country permanently. Slate had an interesting article a while back on the trend in China to come up with English names. If I were to move to a foreign country, I would at least consider adopting a local first name. Particularly if it were difficult for the locals to pronounce correctly.

* - As most of you know, “Will Truman” is a pseudonym, but in real like my common name actually is Will or contains an “L” in it. The story is essentually true.

-{Note: This is a post about pronunciations of names. It is not a post about Sotomayer’s qualifications for the bench, her ideology, nor the president that nominated her. This marginally involves the conduct and moral turpitude of her supporters and detractors, but I do not want the comment section to veer in the direction of suggesting that people whose opinions on her nomination (or the underlying worldview behind those opinions) differ from your own are morally or intellectually lacking. Please contribute, but contribute with care.}-

There is a museum dedicated to my great grandfather in the midwestern state of Salteura. Someday, before I die, I’d like to visit it. If it’s still around. It’s really the only museum on that list.

There was almost, however, a coffee stand that I was going to add to that list. If this blog still happens to be around next time I’m in Britain, I’d like to visit Hit Coffee. That would certainly make for a header picture, to say the least. The problem is that it’s apparently a mobile coffee stand that you reserve rather than a place you can go.

That’s a serious bummer.

Kent Newsome writes:

But until the music industry as we have known it dies and is reborn as a direct artist to consumer market, the Blip.fm’s of the world are like snowmen in the sun.

This reminded me of a thought that’s been swimming in my head the last few months. I know a lot of people that argue that music should be direct artist to consumer market. The record labels are just middle men that obstruct the divine connection between artist and consumer and charge a toll. The idealistic part of me desperately wants to agree. I spent two or three years listening primarily to local and regional artists in my hometown, riding the quest of a new movement, and then watching that movement crumble as the (Nashville, in this case) record labels bought off just enough of the talent to deflate everything without changing much of anything that the movement became a response to. Who needs those bastards, right?

While it may be ideal to cut out that middle man, the basic problem as I see it is that they do add value and that added value has to have a mechanism in any alternate formula. They don’t add as much value as they used to, but they’re not as obsolete as a lot of their critics would have them. It used to be that they were necessary in large part because they provided the capital to record and distribute records, but that’s not really the case anymore. Independent artists all across the country are producing their own records now. But they’re not getting the national play that they often should. Because of the greedy, obstructionist record labels blocking their way? Yeah, partly. But not entirely.

As records have become easier and cheaper to produce, it’s created a wealth of material that’s good for everybody. It’s particularly good for enthusiastic music fans like Kent and (in a former life) myself. But it creates a problem for a key contingent of the consumer market. Namely, those people that don’t want to have to seek out good music. Those that want music delivered directly to them. People that aren’t all that picky and like familiarity. These people don’t listen to popular music because they’ve been force-fed by the industry. They do so because it provides a sufficient diet for them with little or no effort. New song comes to the radio, thumbs up or thumbs down, wait for new song on the radio. The record labels and radio provide that pipeline in a way that it’s going to be pretty difficult for any independent, side-stepping direct market could.

The bottleneck is radio. For all of the complaints about how record labels lack originality, they’re not really the culprits. I used to think that they were, but then I signed on with Rhapsody and discovered that there are a lot of great musicians out there that have been signed*. Not just copycats of Top 40 sensations, either. But we very frequently don’t hear these songs on the radio. A lot of that has to do with the inherent conservatism of radio. They have much more limited airtime than record labels have money to sign acts.

But even there, radio is giving us what we want. Complaints about how they keep playing the same songs over and over again ignore that a whole lot of people (myself excluded) like that. They listen to the radio for a few hours a day and are often waiting to hear songs that they’re familiar with. So arguments that they would have more time to experiment for the advanced listener if they would stop playing the same songs over and over again ignore that casual listener.

So the radio stations have to prioritize. But they have no idea what to play. Maybe it would be better if DJs had more freedom to play what they like, but that’s frequently going to be at odds with what the casual listener wants to hear. The casual listener being supreme for radio because the advanced listener has so many other options that they have effectively removed themselves from the equation. They, like me, have Rhapsody or some service of the like. Or alternate music pipelines. So if radio stations have to prioritize, how do they do so? Well, if everyone is shouting at you “play this record” they will have to listen to those that shout the loudest. Record labels shout the loudest. More than that, though, they have some of the best (if overly cautious) filters available because they have a lot more at stake than an indepen