Friday Fives

1. What is your favorite "Friends" episode?

Hands down, the Thanksgiving episode where Brad Pitt plays the old high school friend who used to be fat. One of his best roles ever, right up there with his tic-ridden activist in Twelve Monkeys. YAMS!

2. Who would be in your historical threesome?

I have no idea as my knowledge of historical likenesses ranks right up there with my knowledge of 17th century Dutch mercantile practices. If the young, 12 century King Philip looked anything like the young Timothy Dalton who portrayed him, he'd definitely be a candidate. Oh and I guess I'd throw in England's contemporary Prince William . Viva la France and God Save the Queen!

3. What foods have you forced yourself to eat this year that you usually don't eat?

Nothing. I have never "forced" myself to eat anything. I'll try anything once. If I don't like it, I'm not going to eat it again. Period.

4. Given the opportunity and a clear shot, what would you most like to steal?

Without a doubt, the winning lottery numbers. Unfortunate as it sounds, money is the means to many ends, not least of which include the wherewithal to pursue your fancies and the freedom to do so.

5. In life, we make choices. What have you chickened out of doing?

Hmmmmmm. The first thing that comes to mind is lacking the balls to break up with my ex-lover. I wasn't good at dealing with conflict ( and still don't really like it, but have learned that it is a sometime necessity in life ) and in the end, Robert ended up being the de facto heart-breaker. To this day, it is something I regret and am ashamed of, but something which made me grow.

Rip now or forever hold your peace

iTunes is a smash. Over 500 million songs have been legally downloaded at the wildly successful site and millions more at other less successful ones. Score one for the music industry. Peer to peer networks have been shut down or have been forced to go legit, but this has failed to marginalize rampant piracy. Let's take that point back. And so it goes, a series of victories and defeats for the music industry, a sort of tennis match where the players are us (The Consumers) and them (The Music Industry) and at stake is copyright protection. All the while, the music industry still continues to "hemorrhage" cash and whines that people aren't buying music anymore.

Perhaps realizing that it will never stamp out internet piracy, the next strategy is to schedule a re-match. At stake this time is DRM. And from the looks of it, The Consumer is getting ready to climb the net and beat their opponent silly. DRM, to date, has been an abysmal failure. Sony BMG recently was accused of installing malware on consumer's computers via its DRM software and had to release a "patch" to overcome it. No consumer I know wants to be limited in how they use their legally purchased music, but the music companies STILL don't get it. Don't believe me? Read this little ditty that came from a Times article I read just this morning:

After years of battling users of free peer-to-peer file-sharing networks (and the software companies that support them), the recording industry now identifies "casual piracy" - the simple copying and sharing of CD's with friends - as the biggest threat to its bottom line.

That, my friends, turns my blood cold. The only thing that can come from this is an even more draconian attempt by the RIAA and the music industry to limit what we do with our legally purchased music. How, exactly, is this different than copying a cassette tape? And does the RIAA interfering with the use of my music infringe upon my fair-use rights guaranteed in copyright law? I think it does and as a consumer, the music industry would do well to listen to me and others like me. We purchase their music ( or at least the stuff that's worth buying nowadays) and will cease doing so when it becomes too cumbersome to simply load a CD into our players and press play. As it stands now, different DRM schemes from different companies make interoperability a quaint fantasy. The music companies can't even decide upon ONE copyright protection scheme so how can we possibly expect them to agree on what is important to consumers? The sad fact is that music companies are not interested one whit in artists' rights. They are only interested in their bottom lines. And until that paradigm changes, we'll all suffer for it...............

Friday Fives

1. What is your favorite noise to hear?

That single isolated note from an oboe followed by the rich tapestry of an orchestra tuning itself to it. Gets me every time..........

2. If you could live in any era of time, what would you choose and why?

18th century Vienna: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Enough said. Of course I'd need my Life Longevity pills so I could witness the flowering of all three, so to that end, I'd need to live in the future first.

3. You just found $50 while cleaning your house. Where do you decide to spend it?

I'd use it to buy our Thanksgiving turkey.

4. What magazines to you subscribe to/read on a normal basis?

I don't currently subscribe to any magazines. I get all my juicy gossip and fashion advice on the interweb.

5. If you could witness any event in history, but not change anything about it, what would you choose and why?

That's a tough one. I think I would've liked to see the premier of Beethoven's 9th symphony. It is said that the composer had to be turned towards the audience to hear its thundering applause. A tragic and ironic moment to be sure, but I think that seeing his face upon realizing the outpouring of love for his grandest symphony may have moved me to tears.

George W. Bush & the Temple of Doom

I love being right. Not only does it serve my sense of ego ( who doesn't like to be right? ) but more importantly, when things play out as I had predicted, my thought and logic processes-- two things near and dear to me-- get validated. Why this sudden rumination? The Republicans, dear reader, are imploding. Those good folks who have lead our country into our current economic, political, ideological, scientific and domestic morass are starting to show their true colors to Everyman Joe. It's almost too good to be true. Sad that it takes this much scandal and bad judgment to wake Idiot America up, but still welcome. Better late than never.....so they say. What will eventually come from all of this has yet to be determined, but it sure is a hoot to watch. Much as the Jews weep over the ruins of the temple that Herod built, the Republicans must be fast erecting their own Wailing Wall to weep over the house that W. built. So many cracks have appeared in Bush's Temple that one more might just bring the whole teetering contraption down. Let's look at the Temple's current state of affairs..............

• Plamegate continues to nip at the President's heels. Even when he's out of the country ( provoking mass anti-Bush demonstrations ) he can't escape this transparent retaliation against someone at odds with his administration's policies. Funny thing is, the Republicans have just started their own investigation into how details about the U.S.'s secret prisons were leaked to the Washington Post. As Salon reports, Senator Frist and House Speaker Hastert were first "alarmed" by the "dangerous trend" concerning the leaking of sensitive information. This smacks of so much irony; apparently the outing of a CIA undercover operative doesn't alarm these folks. They quickly changed their story though when it was revealed--by Trent Lott nonetheless-- that the leak was most likely connected to Republicans. Now they seem more worried about the existence of these secret prisons rather than how they came to light. Secret prisons in the shadow of Abu Ghraib does not look good for our Fearless Leader. But its a nice seque into the next crack in George's Temple!

• Dick "Big Time" Cheney has spent the better part of the past week lobbying in the Senate for a CIA exemption on torture. When confronted with this astonishing fact, Bush and mouthpiece Scott McClellan answered with their usual directness. Scott suggested we check out Dick's website for answers. WTF? For this administration to be contemplating government-sanctioned torture is almost unthinkable. Apparently, the Geneva Conventions don't apply to the War on Terror. Rumsfeld and Co. plan to get their faulty intelligence........one way or the other.
  

• All 8 members of the crack Dover, Pennsylvania school board who approved the inclusion of Intelligent Design in biology classes were given the heave-ho. I now have renewed faith in my home state. Now if Rick Santorum would just spontaneously combust................

• In light of "scooter" Libby's indictment, Bush is sending everyone back to ethics school! Wow, I feel better now. The Times also reports that Libby is accepting donations for his legal defense; sorry Salvation Army, I already gave!!
  

• Senator Carl M. Levin released a 2002 intelligence report to the Times detailing how the administration was warned about likely faulty intelligence. Of course, little things like this were not going to deter Our Fearless Leader from marching us to war, so he ( and a good many others ) used this information to convince the American people that war was justified. This is a particularly damning piece of information and I hope it serves as the kindling that will light a much larger, all-consuming bonfire.

• Tom Delay may actually have implicated himself in the fund-raising scandal swirling around him. In what amounts to an admission of guilt, Delay " acknowledged that he knew about and supported a plan to transfer $190,000 in mostly corporate campaign contributions from his political action committee in Texas to the RNC in Washington and then back to Republican candidates in Texas. " Who did he say this to? The lead prosecutor Ronnie Earle. Delay may want to get a copy of " Campaign-finance Money Laundering For Dummies " and skip to chapter 5 where it covers the topic of "the coverup". Silly me.........he probably doesn't read.

None of this changes the fact that we have 3 more years under this corrupt, inept administration, but at least with all of this drama, it will be fun to watch. With Bush's popularity at an all time low, he is desperately clinging to the events of 9/11 to keep his administration afloat. He invokes it constantly, using it as a pretext for his War on Terror and to keep the "fear of a terrorist attack" alive and well. If I didn't know better, I'd say he's planning a sequel to building his Temple of Doom: George W. Bush & the Last Crusade.