Excellent summary of an entire musical genre…..

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I assume this new video is from the real Osama because a fake would do a better job matching the beard. In other words, the real Osama looks too fake to be an actual fake. This raises an interesting question: How hard would it be for the CIA to create a fake Osama who looks more real than the real one?

I don’t think it would be hard. A Hollywood special effects team could pound one out in a week. Then you just need to get the other intelligence agencies to say the voice is authenticated. Bam.

The first video of the fake Osama could be one of his typical wandering diatribes against capitalism and infidels and blah, blah, blah. Once the public, especially the terrorist cells with no direct contact back to the base cave, start to believe he’s real, you can begin to sprinkle in new topics and nudge the terrorists in whatever direction you like. Remember, there’s no such thing as a story too ridiculous when you’re talking about people who believe suicide is a good way to get laid.

By the third or fourth video, Osama could be telling his followers to tattoo “Al Qaeda” on their foreheads to show their devotion and lack of fear. He could explain that martyrdom has many levels, with death being the best payoff in virgins, but lots of opportunity for virgin action short of death. For example, you could just wound yourself and still get hand action from one virgin.

Within a few weeks, all the terrorists would end up in emergency rooms with tattoos on their foreheads and semi-martyr erections. Then you just arrest them, handcuff them behind their backs, and tell them the punchline, which goes like this: “By the way, that one virgin was you. And you had your chance in the ambulance on the way over”

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Before my pal Erik Davis, who sometimes writes about music, left for Burning Man, he dropped off a pile of stuff to a thrift store. One of the items he purged was an advance promotional CD of Beirut’s The Flying Club Cup, due out next month. Apparently, some anonymous person then acquired the CD and made it available on a P2P file-sharing network. Thing is, the CD was digitally “watermarked,” meaning that the uploaded tunes were identifiable as having come from Davis’s review copy. When Erik returned from Burning Man, his answering machine was steaming with angry messages from Ben Goldberg, proprietor of Beirut’s record label. Erik has written up his experience in a thoughtful essay titled “My Data Crime: The Ticking Time Bomb of the Watermarked Advance CD.” From the piece:

After giving me less than 24 hours to respond to his initial accusation—during which time I was rambling around the Black Rock desert in a fire truck with a flame thrower on the roof—the label owner went on the warpath. He sent out emails to all his publicist contacts and indy label buddies about my evil ways, and was in addition stirring up as much journalistic interest as possible, giving The Flying Club Cup a nice dose of early publicity while also being able to tar and feather a suddenly non-anonymous practitioner of the file-sharing arts.

I felt pretty shitty about all this. Last year I wrote extensively about Joanna Newsom’s Ys, which was famously leaked from a Pitchfork server, and I know the pain such leaks causes to artists and smaller labels alike. That said, I also know its not necessarily the worse thing in the life of a record, and I was pissed that Goldberg took to the wires before talking to me and trying to figure out why a 40-year-old guy who writes for righteous publications like Arthur would do something to fuck over a righteous independent label.

I called up a handful of my publicist friends, some of whom actually seemed to believe me, and eventually talked to Goldberg. I apologized, he explained his feelings, we bonded over our shared love of the Dead C. Hatchets were buried, and though I suspect my flow of advances might slow over the coming months, the prospect of being reviewed in Blender or Arthur will, in the end, keep most publicists supplying me with product—although the “product” in question will increasingly be a url. And people wonder why I mostly buy vinyl!

Als from the article:

This is in stark contrast to the data grenade I recently got from Warner Brothers: a CD advance of Mark Knopfler’s shitty new record, Kill to Get Crimson. This object is a pure, time capsule-worthy artifact of the copyright anxieties of the early twenty-first century. The cardboard sleeve is yellow and black and emblazoned with an enormous exclamation point, and features the following threat:

RESTRICTED RELEASE! WATERMARKED DISC!
Do Not Copy – The Music on this CD Has Been Watermarked With a Unique Identifier that Allows Us to Identify the Intended Recipient (You) as the Source of Any Unauthorized Copies.

My favorite thing here is how the text creates an addressee through the bullying use of “us” and “you”. The media organization announces that it is now an “us” acting like a data police force, and it then throws in the paranthetical second person “you” the way a cop shines a flashlight in your eyes. This “contract” creates a you that is already guilty. And you didn’t even ask for this thing to show up at your door!

On the flip side of the CD, “you” also find the bullshit claim that by opening the package, you are agreeing to the fat paragraph of legalese plastered below. This language includes the hilarious proviso that the CD can only be listened to by the recipient—no girlfriends, no dogs, no neighbors. When you rip open the package, you discover that bad cop has been replaced with good cop by way of a final note: “Thank You for Agreeing to our Restricted Release Terms. Please Enjoy the Music!”

How is anyone supposed to enjoy music after such an Orwellian negotiation!

Sometimes when I tell people I stopped buying music, they tell me I should ignore the big labels and look for the independents, which surely aren’t as bad.

Well, yes they are. Fuck ‘m all.

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I was absolutely amazed at the size of the police presence and the lengths to which they had gone to prevent the organisation of an effective protest. It seems they had totally surrounded all entry points into Hyde Park where the protesters where trying to gather – allowing them only one entry and exit point. They then set up stations blocking off various streets. It really looks like massive over kill – which will only fuel the negative public perception of the event. We the ordinary folks just watch on in childlike wonder while our leaders swan around playing ‘Nations’ with their friends.

More pictures at the link

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A four-year-old girl was asked to take down the hood of her cardigan while visiting a seaside amusement arcade.

Karen Lewis’s mother Cheryl, from Shrewsbury, said her daughter was upset following the incident at Les Harker’s Amusements in Rhyl during a holiday.

She said Karen was with her granddad playing on the 2p machine when a worker made the request because of “security”.

The arcade owner has defended the decision saying that his employee was only following instructions.

Didn’t we dispense with this “Befehl ist befehl” crap already?

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Woodrow Johnson was 15, and by the rules of the polygamous sect in which his family lived, he had a vice that could condemn them to hell: He liked to watch movies.

When his parents discovered his secret stash of DVDs, including the “Die Hard” series and comedies, they burned them and gave him an ultimatum. Stop watching movies, they said, or leave the family and church for good.

With television and the Internet also banned as wicked, along with short-sleeve shirts — a sign of immodesty — and staring at girls, let alone dating them, Woodrow made the wrenching decision to go. And so 10 months ago, with only a seventh-grade education and a suitcase of clothes, he was thrown into an unfamiliar world he had been taught to fear.

Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.

Disobedience is usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and state legal officials say the exodus of males — the expulsion of girls is rarer — also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives.