Disclaimers, Caveats, and Provisos.

Below is a short play that I have written. You’re welcome America!

A milion years ago I used to write a lot of plays and I always find that it is a fun medium to slip back into. I like it because I think that the largely dialogue-driven nature of playwriting lends itself toward experiments in absurdity. Because it is more like life, which is pretty absurd.

This short play happened because: 1) the other day I read that most people can’t tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in blind taste tests, and 2) because I was in the mood to write a short play.

Disclaimers, caveats, and provisos:

- I don’t mean to pick on punk rock, it is just an easy target.

- I do mean to pick on Metalica because I’m still pissed about Napster.

- If, as Arthur C. Clarke said, there is a point when technology becomes indistinguishable from magic, I think that there is also a point when Capitalism will become indistinguishable from religion.

- If you need to buy a car, just get a Subaru.

- Also, this play is not very good.

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The Public Domain

I saw the smartest note on a website the other day. It said, “We do not own these images. All images are assumed to be in the public domain and will be removed upon request of the owner.”

How smart is that?!

The editors here at Standardkink would like to say: We do not own these images. All images are assumed to be in the public domain and will be removed upon request of the owner.

(Tangentially: Hey remember that time that Metallica sued Napster over copyright infringement or something and that Lars Ulrich son of a bitch showed up to court with boxes and boxes of paperwork identifying all of the people – his fans – who had been downloading his music? Yeah, that guy is a dick.)

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Fruit Loopy.

How come really fancy hotels don’t have complimentary continental breakfast?

That’s not a poem or anything, I’m really asking.

A few weeks ago I stayed in a really crappy little motel and got some free Fruit Loops, terrible coffee and a rock hard blueberry muffin out of the deal. I was very please!

But I recently made a reservation for a really fancy pants hotel and guess what? No complimentary continental breakfast! And the hotel has a restaurant in it and everything! So it’s not like the concept of people eating food just escaped them! No! It’s because they want you to wake up and be all like, “Well gee, I’m hungry gosh darn it! And I would really love a rock hard blueberry muffin right now.” So then you go through your luggage because you’re sure that you packed some muffins, so you dig around in your bag, but beneath the leather straps and gimp mask and ball gag and tub of liquid latex all you find is your back-up ball gag. So then you’re all like, “Well, I guess I should go see if they have any muffins at this restaurant I keep hearing about.” And then BAM! you end up spending a hundred and fifty dollars on eggs Benedict and a cup of fair-trade coffee!

When all you wanted was a crappy, dried out muffin and maybe some Fruit Loops if they’re on offer.

They are manipulating you! Playing upon your most fundamental need for substance! It is a racket! A trick! A sham! A fiat! A gambit! A gauntlet! A hootenanny! A shake down! A bloom’en shame! A hold up! A stick up! A despotism! An Orwellian nightmare of free market capitalism run amuck! A Kafkaesque nightmare of unseen power manipulating your fundamental essence! A Dickensian nightmare of not being given “more” food even when you ask nicely, with your big puppy dog eyes and empty bowl and empty stomach and – quite frankly – your empty heart!

Okay, I know that not all of that is actually true or accurate and some of those things I just said don’t even make any sense in this context … sorry? I got excited. BUT LOOK AT ALL THOSE WORDS I KNOW!

The one place where this whole thing is especially true, but not annoying to me, is Las Vegas. OF COURSE they aren’t gong to give you a free breakfast in Las Vegas! But they make up for it by selling you steak and eggs for a nickel at 4 in the morning. AND they let you play keno while you’re eating! The no free breakfast in Vegas I can understand and respect because the intentions of Vegas are very apparent and it is part of the deal you enter into. They want your money, you want to have a good time and get to use your ball gag. Done. This is the same logic that made it ok for Jay-Z to nark out a bunch of his fans during that late 1990s Napster lawsuit, but not ok for Metallica to do it. As a rapper Jay-Z made it clear that he was in it for the fame and money. Okay, cool, I can live with that. Metallica, on the other hand, was supposedly all about the music and all that inarticulate white man rage and the anti-establishmentarianism-ness, dammit! They had long hair! But then Lars “even my pets think I’m a douche bag” Ulrich personally wheels a titanic full of download records into the courtroom, records with the IP addresses and names of people whose only crime was liking Metallica in the first place. What a fucking prick. I was never a big Metallica fan before that, but since then I have become an anti-Metallica proselytizer.

Um … but I fear that I might have strayed off topic a bit …

I guess the real question to come out of this whole rumination is this: why do you travel with so many ball gags?

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Ke$ha, Still Better than Metallica.

So if you happen to actually know me, which most of you do (except for the one guy in Denmark who stumbled across this blog looking for naked pictures of Jessica Alba, sucker!), then you probably know that I have been on a regrettable Ke$ha bender the last few months. I am not simply a Ke$ha apologist, no I’m an advocate, an apostle if you will.

With the notable exception of the Black Eyed Peas, I try not to proselytize about my Pop music predilections (yes, I am purposefully trying to use large words so that I sound less lame. Is it working?), however sometimes Pop music comes along that is just the right mix of engineered and yet somehow invigoratingly not sterile. Also, I have been going through some difficult times and Ke$ha’s music is both fun and completely lacking any emotional resonance, so it works for me in that way too.

Anyway, why bring this up other than to embarrass myself on the internet? Because I came across this article: The Anti-Gaga, in a recent NEWSWEEK and I found it to be sort of interesting and humanizing. I mean, yes, she is still kind of just a dumb pop star girl, but I think that the idea of this music as a sort of anti-glam self-expression-for-the-poor is interesting, especially in an era when all of the symbols and sounds of punk have been appropriated by the marketing machine, maybe there is something to the idea of getting the marketing machine to propagate the anti- (‘anti-‘ whatever, it doesn’t really make any difference).

Or am I just intellectualizing?

That might be possible too.

Anyway, while you’re scoffing, I should tell you that my taste in music is just as good as yours, only I remember that Elvis was Pop once, so were your precious Beatles, so were the Stones. I argue that Metallica always was, so too Rancid, Nine Inch Nails, The Smiths, The Stranglers. Shit, Nirvana was somebody’s Pop music too.

Anyway, read the article, or don’t. It is an exercise in freedom.

Here is Ke$ha’s “TiK-ToK” video. The video is both low-budget and low-concept, but I challenge you to play it and not get this song stuck in your head.



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Inside Pandora's Box: Techno Music

Help!

I recently started using Pandora Radio when I sit down to work or write or what-have-you. It is free and pretty easy to use and very customizable. Well, my relationship with Pandora is still pretty new. We are just past that honeymoon phase and we are finally getting to really get to know each other and for some reason she thinks that I like techno.

I do not like techno.

In fact, I contend that no one does, or ever has, liked techno.

I confessed to Pandora – in a moment of human honesty – that I enjoy some occasional Moby and some Massive Attack and sometimes Fatboy Slim and now she’s all like, “Maybe you will like some DJ AM.”

No Pandora, no, I would not like some DJ AM.

Also, these online radio stations should have a NO METALLICA button. I think all of life should have a NO METALLICA button, but that’s just me.

On a slightly related note, I spent three years crafting my Yahoo music station to get it just perfect and then Yahoo got rid of the customizable stations. I was so mad I peed in an envelope and mailed it to the Yahoo offices. I hadn’t been that mad since George Bush got legally elected president for the first time.

Anyway, to sum up, I do not like techno.

Here is Pandora.
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