It’s another entirely to, upon having someone start using the treadmill next to you in a busy row of them, without them even so much as looking at you, no “hi”, nothing, *immediately* get off your treadmill and move to the treadmill all the way down the line. I didn’t even notice at first, because I was setting up, but the first time I looked around, about a minute into my workout, I spotted her.

I wasn’t sweaty (just started my workout), I’d never seen her before so there wasn’t some past transgression that she could’ve held a grudge about, headphones weren’t overly loud, and I was totally minding my business (as I always try to, for the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph), so there was just no reason whatsoever to be that downright rude.

Stuff like that doesn’t make it any easier for people to get along. My feelings weren’t hurt or anything, and given the nature of modern life, this shouldn’t have been that surprising, but still, it’s kind of amazing to see how much distrust people have for each other in everyday situations.

Hallmark:

Email: info@hallmark.com

Or call them at 1-800-HALLMARK

(While you’re at it, tell them that my mom is pissed as hell that they keep fucking with the Hallmark Channel line-up, especially because they took “The Waltons” and “Walker, Texas Ranger” off. Might be a different division, but that’s really not our problem, is it?)

De Beers:

clientservices@debeers.com

Or call them (toll-free this year!) at 1 (888) 376 9230

If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.

Have fun!

For a little while there, before they lost their collective minds, AdBrite was solid, but now they’re just another fucked company. Google AdSense rejected me. AdToll is really not knocking my socks off. I haven’t looked at Yahoo! yet, but I’m really not sure I want to jump through yet another set of hoops to give up some of my screen real estate to products and services that I don’t actually endorse personally.

So, yeah, during the course of writing this article, otherwise known as “thinking out loud about shit that no one gives a rat’s ass about”, I’ve decided to start a pilot program called “MOTHERFUCK ADS”. I’ll be hiding the ad section of the sidebar for now, but if you do decide that you want to buy ads from me, suck@mybigblackcock.com and we’ll talk.

As I just told someone who was talking about the movie “Brazil”, “My day was like Brazil.”

I don’t have them very often, but this afternoon was one of those afternoons that made me want a drink. I’m in no danger of acting on that impulse whatsoever (before you say anything: no, really, I’m not), but still, I know that stupid, stupid feeling when something’s kicked you in the gut so hard that you just want to numb it all too well, so as I drove home from Hell, I contemplated what could possibly make it go away. On the short list were the following: booze (Honestly, even if I were that weak, I’m too broke to afford it today), food (See above for the most part; I’m not spending my last $1.79 in cash on a McDonald’s shake any more than I am a bottle of Mad Dog), Xanax (Why fuck up the rest of my day by making myself THAT numb if I’m not actually experiencing anxiety? Also: habit forming), retail therapy (Again, no money, plus, where would I go? I’ve seen everything in all the book, toy, game and comic shops around here), friends (I’d just have to talk to them about my day, and for a few hours after I got home, even, I had no desire to talk about my day), sexual gratification (Give me a break; I’m hard to coax into sex in a good mood, I’ve got no partner nearby, and the thought of masturbating while screaming about my hatred of the government makes me think of, well, Warren Ellis), and so it went for a while, until I realized that the answer was music. I had music with me. I didn’t want to hear everything I had with me, so I skipped around a bit, and in time, I found songs that accompanied every single emotion I was feeling, and helped me get them out in some sort of responsible, healthy way. I found comfort, I found sadness, I found an outlet for rage, I found irony, and I even had a little time left over for laughter.

Unfortunately, to get back to soul-destroying, gross bureaucratic incompetence, when I got home, I wanted to put up a playlist widget of the songs I had on during my ride home today that didn’t involve me hosting anything locally, and it was like pulling teeth finding a working one that isn’t totally handcuffed. It really is like the bitter, pathetic, greedy pricks who run the bigger companies in the music business don’t want anyone to listen to music. I’m not even talking about people who don’t want you to listen to music without paying, I am clearly saying that these people don’t feel that the public has any right to listen to any music, period, no matter who the rightsholders are, or what license they give to the public to hear it. If they could make whistling a capital offense, they would, just to keep music locked up nice and tight in the vaults next to the Kruegerrands and the pictures of themselves with nude boys.

The next person who tries to give me the “But Scott, don’t you think that creators *deserve* to be paid?” spiel is going to be spitting out my left sneaker. No, as a creator, I don’t think I *deserve* to be paid for every bit of whimsy I fart out of my ass like it’s some goddamned birthright, nor do I think anyone else does, especially not the folks who throw in with the corporate accountants who are whining about their gravy train evaporating because the world at large built a better mouse trap (one that should legally be covered under the Audio Home Recording Act and similar laws, like I’ve been saying for the past 10 years). I create things when I create them because I can’t help but do it, not because of some illusion that I should gain fame and fortune for doing it. I’m not a teenager anymore, so “Let’s start a band, get a lot of chicks and make money!” no longer applies. Sometimes I create for the joy that it brings me, and sometimes I create because it’s the only way I know to put sadness in perspective. If people get something out of what I create, that’s fantastic, and if they choose to show their appreciation monetarily, that’s even more fantastic, but this idea that creative people are somehow *entitled* to be paid for everything we do whether the general public asks for it or not, and in a lot of cases, repaid over and over again by the same people for the same things, well, it’s a concept invented by spoiled, ridiculous, greedy people, and not one they should be paid for no matter how much money it’s made people over the years. With the amount of entertainment and educational choices competing for peoples’ attention these days, each of us who creates is fortunate every time anyone acknowledges what we’ve made in a positive way, never mind paying us, as there are literally billions of other ways people could occupy themselves. Unless those people have specifically commissioned us to create something for them (and hey, a lot of times, those folks don’t pay us either, and usually have much better lawyers than consumers do!), I don’t think we’re *entitled* to jack shit. Again, I’m not going to say that I don’t like getting paid. It’s awesome. I will say that I am realistic, smart and humble enough not to expect or demand payment for what I create for creation’s sake, though, and the sooner the artists of the world (and the real lampreys among the people who make a living by selling our ideas to the public at a markup; let me make it clear, I don’t think everyone on the business side of the entertainment industry is inherently awful) get the hint on that front, the better off the world will be.

And so, it is in the honor of the incompetent people in the entertainment industry who fucked up the possibility of me putting a nice little, download-free music player at the bottom of this article, as well as the incompetent people in government who fucked up my day so hardcore that I present to you “Ride Home From Hell”, a 5 song suite of other peoples’ work that really fits together well and perfectly captures my mood this afternoon. Hopefully none of the artists whose work is represented here get pissed off, as I’m at least vaguely acquainted with a couple of them. If y’all are, send a takedown notice and it’s gone, fine, you win, no one gets to hear the nice pretty music without slipping you a twenty. A nice little 5 song player that’d let you skip back and forth on tracks, see song titles and so forth would have been great, but after reading this, you know how that went. If you’re not willing to listen to 5 songs without prejudice, you probably don’t want to download this, but if you want a window into what it’s like to be in a car with me when I’m alone and in a really bad mood, this is for you.

That’s probably fairly similar to what Obama should do to the people in the financial sector who are whining about losing their retention bonuses. Reagan was a little ridiculous, as the people who keep the planes from falling out of the sky are slightly more essential than the people who’ve lost us a fuckload of money by pretty much looting the financial market. In this case, though, I think the shoe fits.

The argument the companies are giving is that ditching those bonuses or forcing them to non-tender existing bonuses in some way would inhibit their ability to hire and retain “the best and brightest” in the business.

Given what “the best and brightest” have done for us in recent years, I say “fuck ‘em”. Let them earn a living, as well as our trust. Put a tight, loophole-free (as much as that’s possible, anyway) five year freeze on bonuses like that within the financial sector, and then we’ll go back to the drawing board and see if anyone in the business should be rewarded for the job they’ve done. Five years of frivolous extra income for folks who already make a ton of money is nothing compared to the entire lifetimes of money their industry has lost of other peoples’ money. I think they’ll live. If financial companies really wanna totally piss away the money they’d spend on retention bonuses like they’ve been addicted to doing, have them give it to teachers who love their jobs, are great at what they do, but can’t really make ends meet on a teacher’s salary. Oh, and have them spend some of it on a plan to reform tenure, so that lousy teachers who, like these folks who fucked up the financial system, shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing can be rooted out of the system, too.

Now, I’m far from an expert, so if you have a differing opinion that makes sense and isn’t just regurgitated partisan rhetoric of some sort or another (my argument here isn’t based upon talking points from either side of the fence; it just seems to make good sense to me), I am all ears. Throw me a comment and we’ll talk.

Yep, my incomplete short list is something like Torquemada (“Let’s face it…you can’t Torquemada anything!”), Hitler, Stalin, J. Edgar Hoover, Mark David Chapman, Michael Alig and some guy who posts Sammy Hagar albums on the ‘net.

Oh, and Stacy London. Man, she’s awful.