In a nutshell, the RIAA is tossing around the idea (with some wishy-washy terminology) that it might be illegal to convert your legally purchased CDs into MP3 format. This means a few things, but the most important of them is that it would be illegal to buy a CD from HMV and then load it onto your iPod.
Now, this article doesn't officially say that the RIAA said that. They say that the RIAA neither confirms nor denies this (at press-time that is). Do you know how ridiculous this? If the RIAA decides it's illegal, how do they monitor it? And what are the fines for listening to something I've purchased and am technically legally entitled to do what I want with?
Honestly, that's what gets me about this whole thing. To me, buying a CD is like investing in stocks. In a way, I own a piece of that record label. And for the label and the RIAA to tell me what I can and cannot do with something that is in my ownership is heinous and stupid. I own it. I purchased it. It is mine. It's like Microsoft saying "thanks for buying our computer. By the way, just because we feel like it, you're not allowed to use google.ca at all and can only do things our way - the Windows Live search." See what I mean? How can something you own only contain limited freedom?
Isn't limited freedom an oxymoron in itself?
Technically, North America is free. We live under a system of rules. Therefore, we are a Democratically-controlled Society, which is far different from being a "free nation". Of course, freedom isn't free, and as I have never personally paid for freedom, having my freedom limited is something I can't really gripe about. It's like complaining about the President when you never went to the polls. You don't have the right to complain.
But when I buy a CD and am told what to do with it, that's limiting the freedom I purchased when I bought the music. I bought that freedom. They can't limit it. I should be able to do whatever I want, so long as it doesn't actually break any of the laws of the Democratically-controlled Society I am in. Therefore, all I can't do with my purchased music is sell burned copies to people. (Since laws on downloading music with P2P software vary depending on the judge you talk to, and it's hard to catch, I'm assuming that it's "legal" in that sense. Technically, it's sharing, so it is withing Constitutional rights. But that's a different blog).
So what's my point? First of all, the RIAA is not within their rights to say I can't make an MP3 version of my disc if I so desire. Secondly, they can't monitor it anyways. So at this point what are they? Beauraucratic "music politicians" who don't understand the current music scene and never will because they don't partake. They make laws they can't monitor, use words they don't understand, and break laws from the Constitution in order to try and save a music industry that's dying.
News flash to the RIAA: The music industry isn't dying because of your downloading problem. It's dying because all of the new music sucks. That's why Metallica, AC/DC, Nirvana, and Iron Maiden still sell. Because they're good. If you quit releasing crap albums, maybe sales would pick up.
Thanks a lot, you American Idol jerks. You've made it possible to be a pop/rock star without having any real talent. Way to kill music. But that's a different blog too.
This here is a list of CDs I've downloaded or purchased recently: Annihilator - Alice In Hell Arch Enemy - Anthems Of Rebellion - Doomsday Machine - Rise of the Tyrant - Wages of Sin Behemoth - The Apostasy Between the Buried and Me - Colors Black Sabbath - Master of Reality - Paranoid Death - Individual Thought Patterns Devildriver - The Last Kind Words Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos FM Static - Critically Ashamed Judas Priest - Angel of Retribution Lamb of God - Sacrament Machine Head - Burn My Eyes - The Blackening Nile - Ithyphallic Opeth - Ghost Reveries Shadows Fall - The Art of Balance The Showdown - Temptation Come My Way Threat Signal - Under Reprisal Tree 63 - Sunday!
Wow...that's more than I realized.... on another note, I can easily recommend all of them! Find the kind of music that suits your taste (every album up there is metal except two, by the way).
For those of you that can't remember my problem (or never heard), please read the previous blog because I don't feel like re-typing it.
Recently I was asked to play in a folk band for one show, which happens to be the Battle of the Bands I was previously discussing. The drummer for that band is really into metal and the guitarist is into classical. Well, I've been working on a classical song that I can make metal without a problem. And I'm going to ask the folk band if we could perform it for me (as a favor) and then use that song as an advertisement for my band. Here's to hoping it works!
I keep putting blogs off to the last minute. I only have like 5 minutes to blog right now, so I'll try to type fast about what's going on in my life.
First of all. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Ok, now on to more pressing matters...
For those of you that do not know, my band, Seventh Gear, currently consists of me and one other dude because I fired our other guitarist last summer and we haven't had time to do auditions since. Stuff keeps getting in the way. And currently, things were looking great for us.
The Battle of the Bands was coming up and my bassist and I were involved. I had a bunch of classical and acoustic stuff prepared (and he plays that stuff too because he's a classical guitarist) and he was going to play that for me while I did the solos, distorted parts, and singing at the Battle of the Bands. And then at the end, I was going to be like "I'm going to shamelessly advertise my band here: we need more people. We need a sick drummer, an awesome guitarist, and a great singer. If you feel you meet any of those attributes, please come to a tryout. Contact me in the yearbook room [this is at our school] for more information. Thanks!"
And that would have worked because there are a lot of kids who already know what's going on and are talking about my band.
Unfortunately, Battle of the Bands is in February. And my bassist has decided that to finish his schoolwork (he's homeschooled and has to do extra work to get his high school diploma), he needs solitude. University deadlines are in March, and he's going to his grandparents place like 8 hours from where we live now in a week and a half. He'll be staying there for two months and then get home immediately after the Battle of the Bands - late February or early march.
This distresses me like crazy - because he's my best friend and because it kills band prospects at the moment. So once again, I'm at square one. I'm trying to get some other people at my school to do the classical thing for me. Hopefully I'll get some kids who want a gig to play with me. That'd be fantastic.
So, I haven't blogged for a while because I haven't been home, but now that I am home I'm going to take a couple minutes to talk about what I did over the Christmas holidays (because I know you're all dying to know). And I only have a couple minutes to do it, so here we go.
I spent Christmas at a relative's house. I got some gift cards, cash, CDs, and an 80GB iPod from my parents (). Very happy about that! I'm loading it with music (over 2500 songs so far). And I got some other stuff like books and everything, and they're pretty good, but I won't go into detail - although I got the book by Brian "Head" Welch of Korn about him becoming a Christian and everything - it was amazing! GREAT book.
I spent some time at my cottage too and wrote some really nice classical/acoustic style music for my metal band that's going to be placed into the beginning of a raging heavy song a la early Metallica. And I just had a great time relaxing.
Today, I'm off to go get some of the last Boxing Week (the week after Christmas) sales at a bunch of stores. Boxing Day/Week is only Canada, and it's the day we have after Christmas. It's another holiday. I really like it, so I'm going out to catch some of the sales while I can.
Have a good one and Happy New Year! I'll probably talk to you again tomorrow!
First things first: recently, my blogging has slowed down, and I blame it entirely on my birthday and Christmas. I've been very busy because of it - entertaining company, friends, grandparents, etc. You know the deal. I know my mantra is to deliver one blog a day, and at the moment, I've failed at that mantra. However, this is technically my vacation, so I hope I can be forgiven.
That being said, I probably won't be making a blog on Christmas Day. And I'm at my trailer from the 27th-29th, so no blogs then either because I don't have Internet there. So unfortunately for you, it might be a long week without me. Here's a tip though: if you spend your time waiting for my blog, get yourself a life and grab a cold beer and chill by the fire with the family. Enjoy your Christmas. Pull your fat white keester away from the computer screen and go kiss your wife (or your girlfriend) for the first time since you walked into your basement and found me on this site months ago. Don't waste your life - I may be the next Edgar Allen Poe, but I ain't no entertainer. I write what I like, and you might like it too, but come on! (PS. If any of the descriptions above are you, then I suggest you seek immediate help.)
But now onto my blog.
This is Christmas. The tree's up. The lights are on the houses and they are glowing in between the hours of six and eleven at night. The Muslims are making their impassioned speeches against the Christian faith, and people are claiming that Santa's elves are really children working in a slave sweat shop and that Christmas should be cancelled. Some idiot on the radio called in to say that he doesn't want to celebrate this "pagan" holiday no more, and some loser on Facebook made a Christmas event. Somebody's drinking milk and eating chocolate chips right now. Mothers everywhere are frantically trying to prepare the Christmas meal. Old, fat, balding men are planning to do their shopping on Christmas Eve at the local mall and end up buying their wives so useless it causes divorce everywhere. Some poor girl is dreaming about getting a baby brother for Christmas or a pony (only to send it off to make glue a year later when she realizes the saddle hurts her precious buttocks). A rich kid is dreaming that her parents got her that Mercedes she always wanted, and ninety percent of the 16 year old dudes want a Macbook.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but maybe we've blown this thing out of proportion. People always forget that Christmas has the word Christ in it - maybe because we're constantly replacing it with an X. It doesn't help that half the world claims to be Christian, and only two percent of them really know what that means and really live that life.
Then again, maybe Christmas is all about the specials. Dreamworks cashed in on 'em this year - did anybody watch the Shrek Christmas special? I wanted to. I missed it. The world ended because of it. Blew up. It's gone. Vamoose. Like paper burning in a fire.
Maybe the university kids are the only people who've got it right (heck, I ain't no saint. I just like to rant). I was talking to a friend of mine who goes to university and he said "I don't need anything this Christmas. I'm just glad to get home from college for a couple weeks. Eat some warm meals with my family, sit by a fire. The gifts aren't really important to me anymore."
Have we turned this too commercial?
There's a couple extremes to this: Is it SANTA or SATAN?
^^ That there is an extreme.
Maybe we should just lay off a little bit next year. Remember the point of Christmas is to remember Christ's birth and the importance of family. It's not all about one giant commercial.
And with that, I leave you with a final thought:
Merry Christmas, my friends. And God bless you as we enter the new year!
I really have some cool friends. I woke up and went to a friend's house in the morning, and then he drove out and picked up a couple other people and we drove to anther city and did some Christmas shopping. And my one friend got me a Halo 3 poster
And I got home at about 5 that evening and opened gifts. My sister got me Man On Fire (the bestest movie ever made) and my aunt got me a couple journals. One of them is called Wreck This Journal, and you basically do as the title says. You can wreck it or deface it however you want. I've chewed on one of the pages, sprayed another with Axe and Tag, and kept on going. I want to borrow somebody's lighter so I can burn a page. I've torn strips out of one page, played mini putt with a page I ripped out and crumpled up, etc. Wrote backwards, drew circles, poked holes in pages, the list goes on and on. I hocked a lugie on one page...somehow it dried up...
The other journal my aunt got me is much more serious. It's called a Moleskine and it is the same journal used by Picasso, Van Gogh, Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin. It's really neat. It's pocket-sized and I can take it everywhere, so it'll be good for inspiration.
My parents got me an incredible gift, and it was very expensive, so it's half Christmas as well. They got me the Zakk Wylde pickup set, so EMG-81 and EMG-85. Aka the best metal pickups in the world! So I'm extremely psyched, but I have to wait to get a guy to set up my guitar for it. My JEM counterfeit is designed for passive pickups, and these are active, so this dude I know is going to weld stuff out and install the pickups, put on new strings and set up the guitar for $60. Pretty sweet price.
After I opened gifts I went out to a Christmas Mystery Theatre Dinner. One of the best meals I've ever had, and it was made by a university student who's a good friend of mine and has had kitchen training in the Yukon. An unbelievable several-course meal.
I had to leave a little early, so I missed the gift-trading that went on afterwards, but I went home and set up for a movie festival at my house. my friends started arriving at 10 and were there until 5:15 in the morning. One of them stayed overnight and was there until 3 this afternoon.
And that was my birthday. It was an awesome way to start the year!
For those of you who do not keep up with the news or are simply unfamiliar with Canadian/international affairs. Aqsa Parvez is a 16-year old Muslim girl from Mississauga. As part of Muslim tradition (although the Qur'an never says it's requred), she is supposed to wear a hijab, which is similar to a scarf. She felt neglected and disliked at school because of her hijab, so in September of this year, she started to remove it when she got to school. Her father wanted her to wear loose track pants, but when she got to school she removed those and changed into tighter jeans to fit into what most newspapers call the "gangster" culture/style. Her father was evidently against this kind of clothing and also against her not wearing her hijab.
Her father may have physically abused her, and she couldn't take it so much that she went to a friend's house and started living there. Her father came to visit her and asked why she had moved. She said she wanted to "get more out of life". Her father said that was fine and that she could live with her friend. He also said another couple of things: 1. If you want to come home to pick up some of your stuff every now and then, I'm OK with that. 2. If you want to move back in with your mother and I, then that's OK too. You can live there and eat with us. You don't have to talk with us (this is, in my mind, like having an apartment in a house without paying rent).
Aqsa believed that her and her father were in an agreement, and on Monday, December 10th, she went to her house to pick up some clothes. Her father strangled her, possibly with her own hijab. Then he called the cops and said that he may have killed his daughter. When he was asked why he did it, he said it was because he "wanted her to come home".
Well, she's never coming home now.
There are a few things that I think went wrong here: 1. The father was unaware of Canada's policies when it comes to "honour killings" (as these are called. He supposedly killed his daughter for his family's honour). 2. The hijab did not cause this. I think this is a common misconception. 3. What did cause this is a father to kill his daughter was ultra-conservatism.
And to be honest with you, Muslims don't have to wear a hijab. And the Qur'an never says to kill anybody. And also, it says that killing one human is like killing all humanity.
Therefore the cause was not Muslim beliefs.
There is talk about banning the hijab. That won't work. France and Germany did it; they still suffer honour killings. So clearly that's not the solution.
The solution is education. Most of the honour kills happen in Muslim countries, which have (not coincidentally) the highest illiteracy rate in the world. When people come to Canada, I personally think that they should be expected to have a good knowledge of English (unless they can prove they are a refugee who risk danger of being killed if they stay in their own country because they don't know the language). They don't necessarily need to know the language immediately, but we should encourage they take classes so they can start giving back to the community. Nothing against immigrants, but a large number of them just go on pensions or take money from our (easy-to-abuse) system without giving anything back to the community. A large number of them don't have jobs. To be a taxi driver is considered an immigrant success story. That's disappointing. They move here, or are supposed to move here, for new prospects. And I think they should get those.
That's a problem that we need to fix as a country as well. It's not just about them finding good jobs - it's about us helping them find new jobs. Currently, the Canadian government gives them $10,000 dollars to help get them started. (I wish I got $10,000 to help me get started when I came out of the womb, but that's sadly not the case.) The Canadian government should not give them money. They should tell them to go find an apartment or a house and find a job, and also allow them to keep their education as a status here instead of making them go through our system (which we do and as a result a lot of very educated immigrants are jobless).
There are a lot of other things we need to fix with immigration, but that's another blog.
Right now, I'm more concerned about Aqsa Parvez. May she rest in peace.
I think we can fix it with better education for immigrants (her father immigrated from Pakistan seven years ago). What do you think?
PS. I am writing a song about this. When it is finished, I will post it on the blog.
I had something else to post about, but it can wait until tomorrow when I have nothing to blog about.
Today in my sociolgy class we were talking about China's one-child rule. China only allows parents to have one kid and if they plan on having a second, they are forced to become infertile. 50% of the people (at least) are infertile. And the girl presenting this topic asked if we thought it was within China's right to do that to people (force them to have one child and be infertile after).
And one kid said "Yes for the sake of their economy, I think so." He's entitled to his opinion. I'm OK with his opinion.
But then we talked about global warming - and this is where that kid annoys me - and the girl who presented that topic asked "Do you think that countries should invest in reverse global warming, or do you think that it would be a huge blog to our global economy?"
And the kid says "Well, if you value the economy over our environment, there's something wrong with you."
And I'm thinking "If you value the economy over people's rights and libterties then there's something wrong with you!" How can somebody be so atrocious as to value the environment over the economy and the economy over people's freedom?? That's insanity!
And another thing about that question ablout global warming: We can't reverse global warming. This world is always reactive, and we're far too late to be reactive at this point.
Let me tell you my analogy for global warming: its like the world has gone bowling. They threw the bowling ball down the lane, and it is now 2 feet away from hitting the pins. But now the world wants to stop the ball!
They can't. When I said that, the girl presenting globabl warming said "We have to start somewhere."
No. What we need is to be proactive. We need to start planning NOW, assuming that they're right and global warming is going to massively change the way our planet works. We need to try and slow down the ball that we threw just to buy some more time, and we need to make a game plan. The world's not going to explode - people forget that. It's going to change. Let's plan for the change then, instead of being so naive in our thinking and assume that we can reverse the changes we've already (supposedly) made on our environment.
If you want to see the rest of my beliefs on global warming, one of my first blogs was on the subject. Feel free to check it out.
And with views like mine, I think I should be running for President instead of these war-mongering politicians who are honestly out to destroy freedom of speech. God save us all.
I've noticed that it's hard to separate myself from the people that I love. It doesn't matter who it is - whether it's a good friend, a certain girl, or family - I can't NOT talk to them without driving myself insane.
Not talking to people you love is like smoking. There's a three day hump, and then you throw up.
Let me tell you about my current problem.
I love this girl - and for privacy's sake, let's say her name is Ash. And she's dating this dude - let's say his name is Bill.
And Ash is the girl of my dreams. I'm not joking. She's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, and I love her to death (for more reasons than just her beauty, but if I was going to tell you all of them, it would be called a book, not a blog).
And her and Bill have had their good times, I guess, but Bill is the definition of a loser. I mean, the guy's a jerk. He cheated on her before (more than once) and Ash dumped him for about a day before going back to him.
And now he's cheated on her again.
I keep telling Ash that she could have so much more (aka ME). But she just gets angry with me...I don't know what to do.
I don't feel like I have too many more options here...I'm considering not talking to her anymore, but I can't do it. It drives me insane.
I start off my day and check my phone, and she's sent me a text "good morning". And it doesn't stop until we go to bed and say goodnight to each other. A couple days ago I sent 2000 texts to her.
If I don't talk to her...well, you saw the hump thing.
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Nathan_393's blogs, last updated : December 3, 2008
). Very happy about that! I'm loading it with music (over 2500 songs so far). And I got some other stuff like books and everything, and they're pretty good, but I won't go into detail - although I got the book by Brian "Head" Welch of Korn about him becoming a Christian and everything - it was amazing! GREAT book.
