Strawberries and David Bowie References

I had such a horrible night last night. I had a headache, my outlines were going as well as Larry Craig's appeals and Jon called in the middle of "House" to tell me that his class ended early, forcing me to miss the second half of the one hour of the day I had to myself and my own enjoyment. I was not pleased. But I feel slightly better about today for a few reasons:

1) Charlie was a strawberry for Halloween and specifically, my apartment complex's pet costume contest. He lost, but whatever. I half-heartedly aimed to win by going to Petsmart and buying a costume yesterday. He whole-heartedly wanted to sniff all the other dogs' private areas. One of us got our wish and that's enough for me.



2) A new Zero Punctuation review (see my post below).

3) "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" comes out tonight at midnight. You can either get it free or pay $5, here. I'm not going to lie - it's not my cup of tea. It's kind of dance/hip-hop/rap. Few genres can get so far from my own musical tastes, although it's interesting and worth a listen, and I must admit it's growing on me.

"So why are you promoting it on your limited-audience but irritatingly vocal blog, Yee?" Because it's produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. But contrary to what some of you might be thinking, that fact in and of itself is not enough for me to endorse music that I don't care for. Trent Reznor got Marilyn Manson his first big break, but I'd never tell you to go out and buy "Antichrist Superstar". I know that a lot of NIN fans are also devout in their following of someone I think of as the second creepiest person alive (after Michael Jackson), but I'm not one of them.*

But I digress. The reason I am telling you to go and at least listen to "NiggyTardust" is because record labels are dying. File-sharing is not going to go away and the labels are doing all they can to encourage it by doing foolish things like charging $35 in Australia for a NIN CD.** Radiohead already has offered their latest CD for "whatever the consumer wants to pay for it", whether it be $1 or $40. "NiggyTardust" is doing the same thing and will probably get a lot more recognition when it's not suffering under the thumb of a label. This is only the beginning of the trend. The recording industry can't stop it. I don't think that's a bad thing. Using something as expansive as the internet for a marketing playground will churn out a lot of crap music. But how is that different from record labels these days? (Have you heard the Britney Spears album? Heaven help our ears.) But it'll also produce a lot of ingenuity that would never have been heard if it had been up to a record label. It's all about accessibility. I want to be open-minded enough. Do you?

*The exception being some of Manson's covers. They're pretty good if you feel there's not enough gothiness in some of your standard 80s hits.

**The more fool thing to do was to tell Reznor that they were doing that because his fans were willing to pay that. Telling a person like Reznor that you're basically screwing over his fans is like jumping on Danny Bonaduce's face without warning - you're going to end up in bad shape and people will just tell you that you only have yourself to blame.