Back in January I posted about the death of old media. Later that day, it was announced that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was up for sale and if it hadn’t been sold in 60 days it would be shut down or go web only. Today is the last day that they’ll be publishing a dead tree bit newspaper.  In February, the Rocky Mountain News ceased operations altogether.

Remember you heard it here first…. newspapers, then TV, then radio. Sadly, this means that the ass-ponies at Clear Channel will be the last in the unemployment line. Here, watch this….

And in a follow on to Jim’s series of moral outrage posts…. There are reports today that AIG, which recieved $170B (that 170 with 9 zeros after it, folks*) in TARP bailout money will be paying out $165M in retention bonuses today in addition to $55M that has already been paid. Edward Liddy, CEO of AIG, says that he’s been informed by lawyers that AIG could face lawsuits if they didn’t payout the bonuses. Now maybe it’s just me but these are some of the people that are responsible for the global economic meltdown and I dare the motherfuckers to find a set of 12 people as jurors anywhere outside the Financial District in Manhattan that thinks they’re entitled to bonuses instead of public flogging.

I can’t find it anywhere in print but while I was getting my coffee this morning, Liddy was on Fox News saying that, in addition to being contractually obligated to paying the bonuses, it would be impossible to work their way out the current crisis without being able to keep good employees**. Again, maybe it’s just me, but why are these people so complete unique in their ability to bring AIG out of the woods? Aren’t they the ones that caused the problems in the first place? Couldn’t you put the average 12 year old in charge and expect them to not lose almost $62B in the next quarter?

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*To put this number into a little bit better perspective…. If you and your 499 closest friends make $100,000 a year for the entirety of your 50 year working career you would need to find 680 groups just like yours to earn that kind of money in your lifetime.

**Here’s a link to a Boing Boing article by David Gillmor where he puts itoh so succinctly.

The News & Observer the other day sported the headline Madoff May Die in Prison. ‘K, so? Maybe it’s just my personal vitriol toward these kinds of thugs.  In NC,  if you rob a bank and get caught and convicted it’s a manditory 40 years (at least that’s what all the little warning signs in the banks say… the NYT article I was reading said 20 years, whatever). The average take is $11,724. Madoff on the other hand stole $50B from investors and faces  150 years. Who’s worse off? Last time I checked most bank robbers weren’t living in $7.5M penthouses in Manhattan. If a 70 year old bank robber was convicted is it likely that the N&O would have carried such a remorseful sounding headline. Who gives a shit if Madoff dies in prison? Why shouldn’t he?

Another thing that astounds me is the brouhaha (brouhaha? hahaha*) surrounding the seizure of the Madoff’s assets. If he had been a cocaine dealer of relatively minor proportions, the government would have carted everything off already and the Madoff’s would have to prove that what they owned wasn’t purchased with “tainted” money. Why is it different for somebody who steals money from investors? For the record, I’m not in favor of government seizure of property for anything but if the precident is in place, why isn’t it applied more evenly? What makes it ok for this guy and not another? Would it be different if heroin dealers wore starched white shirts and Brooks Brothers suits?

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*Brouhaha? Hahaha is a line from Firesign Theatre’s Futher Adventures of Nick Danger on their album How Can You Be in Two PLaces at Once When You’re Not Anyplace at All? It’s really funny but I haven’t listened to it in a while so it’s possible that it’s only funny with the assistance of, ummm, recreational enhancements.

I was in an Eckerd the other day and there was a sign at the cash register that said “NC state law prohibits the purchase of lottery tickets with a credit card” or something similar. I asked the clerk about it and she said “Yes, it’s to cut down on problem gambling”. I pointed out that there was an ATM not 200 feet from the front door that would be more than happy to offer up a cash advance on any credit card you might be carrying.

And this nicely sums up my problem with politicians… at some point during the arguing over how to best cripple the lottery in NC that the people had voted to approve but the politicians clearly understood that we weren’t adult enough to handle one of our fine legislators pointed out that people might spend themselves into bankruptcy using credit cards to buy lottery tickets. Easy enough to solve.. prohibit people from using credit cards. Of course, anybody with a real gambling problem is going to immediately think of going out to the atm and maxing the cash advance to buy tickets. You’d think one of these geniuses would have applied the same logic to the crack problem — make it illegal to purchase crack with anything except shekels — that’ll stop them, right?

If you look even a little superficially, you’ll find multitudes of things where politicians identified a problem, spent a couple minutes noodling the solution with their tiny, politician brains and then passed a law…

It boogles the mind.

According to this article over on TechCrunch, the current stupidity amongst the leadership of the RIAA and the record labels is all part of the master plan, they’re really geniuses that are making money by suing their customers but then at some point they’ll stop and we’ll all forget what assholes they are and start paying them again for whatever it is they think they do.

That’s possible, I suppose. About the same time, I expect everybody to start paying me for being so smart. What they don’t really understand, apparently, is that for most things they don’t serve any function anymore. In the old model, they took a cut of a band’s revenue because they spent a lot of money promoting  bands that never had any revenue to speak of. So if my band made it big they’d take some of my money to cover development costs for bands that nver made it. Today, if you have a band and an ounce of motivation you can promote your own band. Sick Puppies is a perfect example. They promoted themselves with their self-shot video.

A band can gain a following via youtube, myspace, facebook. They can sell their music online on Amazon and book their own gigs. Why, exactly, if I have done all that would I want to give part of my money to  a label? What function will they serve? Answer me that and I’m willing to grant them a part of the pie.

Caught this the other day over at Boing Boing. Sounds like the total plan: move to Williamsburg on a motorcycle and learn to speak European.  I had a beard once, I don’t care how cool it makes you it’s too much maintenance unless you want to look like a mountain man.

I wrote a post a while ago about Whiteville being the most hateful little town in the South. I was taken to task for being inaccurate and vindictive. Since I’m sure my tens of readers don’t ever look at the comments, I’m going to point it out. Go. Read. Then come back here.

*Tapping foot and looking impatiently at watch*

Good.  First I have 2 updates. (1) McDonald’s in Whiteville has installed a ketchup pump so you no longer have to ask for ketchup and (2) Several people said hello while I was in town this week–perhaps I was overly harsh or maybe I’m more influential than I thought. So my next post is likely to be about how I think a really hot 25 year old with a huge trust fund should want to turn me into a kept man.

That said I thought some back-up evidence would be in order. You decide which of us is being more accurate. I was in town for about 2 hours. These pictures didn’t take me all day to collect. The funny thing is one of the first cars I saw coming into town was a Land Rover Disco but I didn’t even have my camera out yet.  I also missed the McDonald’s parking lot full of cars at 9 where all the NAFTA impoverished people were waiting to steal sugar. If times are tight for the McDonald’s franchisee in Whiteville it’s not because nobody is showing up at their establishment. First I stopped at McDonald’s, then I went downtown. Your call… let me know if you think I was out of line.

This Escalade was parked outside McDonald's when I got there

At this point the city lot contained a newish looking Toyota SUV, a Wrangler & a Chevy truck

The Jeep in picture is one of the new body style Wrangler's. It had a lift kit and new tires on the front at least. In the background is one of those impoverished owner Chevy trucks CharlieJ was talking about.

This is across from the city lot. What's missing is the Lexus that's usually parked next to it.

And to top it all off while I was leaving town, a Land Rover Disco parked in front of the Auto Parts store. Those wacky Yankees... driving 2 and a half hours to get car parts...

Can you tell I’m in class again? When I’m not, I blog like a bitch about ever goofy thing I see during the day. When I am, I work and go to class & desperately try to get a few hours of sleep a night.

Anyway, while I’m waiting for the conchs to heal and before I get the septum done, I’m thinking that I haven’t had any needlework done lately. I’m trying to decide what new tat to get since the quarter sleeve that I wanted to get done is not in the budget right now. So I think I’m going to get something small but don’t know what yet. Stay tuned.

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