StinkFight.com

Download episode 0070 of Clone The Homeless

THY WILL BE DONE. hy Will Be Done

Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean, being of sound mind and body, have a will-signing party. Their friends George Earth, Becky Haycox and Lydia Lam come over and sign as witnesses. Everyone has a great time, nibbling good food, giving each other backrubs, laughing, and chatting. They play with some electrical devices, then talk about personal stories about The Mentors, El Duce, MDC, Franco from MDC, Danny Plotnick, Moterbooty magazine, and Bomb touring with the Flaming Lips.

They talk about Jethro Tull (greatest band ever, sort of), people who don’t take care of their kids, why all humor is to stave off fear of death, fun with guns, home security and spy cameras, and they wonder if Kurt Cobain was murdered or offed himself.

Shawn replied (to the post below, about the new gun DJ and I bought today):

“I like that you went for the shotgun. It’s not the usual choice for home protection. That’s cool.”

I started to reply as a comment to that post, but decided my ranting reply was too long, so I started a new post:

===

I agree…most people get hand guns, which is scary, as people tend to take them out of the house, because they’re so small.

Shotguns require the background check and the ten-day waiting period, like pistols. But unlike pistols, shotguns don’t require registration. Because they’re harder to conceal. (This is why sawed-off shotguns are illegal.) But I don’t plan to ever take it outside the house, except to go to the shooting range, and I’ll have it empty and with a trigger lock then.

Proof that few people choose shotguns (at least in California, I imagine it’s different in Texas) is that the store had about 500 handguns to choose from and about a dozen shotguns. And they had a rack of books on handgun safety and use and ONE on shotgun use (I bought it), and it was mostly for hunters, with nothing on home protection.

We got the shotgun for home protection and to take on dates to the firing range. The place we bought the gun includes a free one-year membership at their range. The salesman seemed into the fact that we were a couple buying a gun. Everyone else in the shop was a lone male, and not many of them seemed chatty or friendly.

You don’t really need to practice accuracy in the same sense you do with rifles and pistols, you don’t “aim”, at least at close range, you more or less just “point” shotguns, the spray is much wider. They also don’t shoot as far, which is why cops use them in urban settings, the bullet on a rifle can travel a mile and kill someone. With a shotgun, it’s lethal to far less of a distance, something like under 100 yards. Powerful handguns can fire much further also.

Then we’ll only take the gun out of the drawer if someone is coming INTO our house, fire a warning shot in the ceiling first, and only shoot them if they have a weapon and they don’t stop after the warning. I hope to never use it. Especially since California is not a “shoot the bugler” state. In some states, (mostly in the south), you can shoot to kill if someone breaks into your house, even if they’re unarmed. In Texas, a guy recently shot and killed two buglers coming OUT of his NEIGHBOR’S house and didn’t go to prison. In California, you can usually only shoot an intruder if they come into your house, AND they have a knife or gun AND they seem like they’re going to use it.

Good news: the police are pretty bored in this town and incredibly fast at getting here. When I called about the guy trying to break in, they were here in under two minutes. I was still on the phone with the dispatcher when they knocked on my door.

I think that shotguns are better than pistols for home protection. Not only is there less chance of a stray bullet hitting a neighbor, shotguns are way more intimidating than pistols. They’re bigger, look way more redneck/crazy, and they are LOUD AS FUCK if you fire a warning, WAY louder than a handgun. And for warning shots, a pistol would put a little hole in the ceiling. A shotgun would remove a of couple feet of the ceiling. Better for scaring crazed junkies into being sensible.

We also bought a security camera system, six cameras, hard drive, 1000 bucks. Covered all the windows and the door with ‘em.

Shotguns start at 150 bucks. Way cheaper than security cameras, which is kind of sad, and is why more people own guns, I think. (We’ve spent more than the minimum on the gun. I don’t wanna cheap out on something that could jam or blow up, ya know?)

We got it because someone tried to break into our home last year, while we were home. I confronted the guy outside, and called the cops. They actually caught him. It was strange though, we live in an upscale neighborhood with little crime. But someone was mugged and cut last weekend in our town, DJ says that hasn’t happened in nearly 20 years of living here, nor has anyone ever tried to break in the house before last year.

And I think that the economy is going to collapse soon maybe, with gas prices going up, people may freak out.

I’m sane enough to only take the gun out if me or the wife were in mortal danger, which is really the only use to take a shotgun out, unless you’re a hunter. And believe it or not, I find the idea of sport hunting fairly barbaric. (Strange talk from a soon-to-be gun owner, but it’s how I feel.)

But that’s just opinion, I don’t think hunting should be illegal, I just personally find it distasteful. I’m probably a hypocrite, because I do eat meat. But then again, I have shot and killed a couple rabbits, skinned, cooked and eaten ‘em. And I think who anyone who eats meat should do that at least once, just so they know what they’re doing. When you buy meat in a store, you don’t think about the fact that something screams and bleeds and dies before you eat it. I reflect on that every time I eat something that was once alive, because I’ve done it start to finish myself a couple times. But on a day-to-day basis, I’m just too damn much of an animal lover to enjoy shooting them. Call me a disingenuous pussy, but that’s how I feel.

Michael W. Dean

p/s. Here is a PDF about self-defense gun laws in California.

Crocs.

Crocs were invented to make people who wear Birkenstocks look stylish.

=====

Birkenstocks:

“Social networking provides Websites to people who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a computer.”

–Michael W. Dean

We’ve set up a PayPal donations link where you can help us with the costs of producing all the free media we produce, in many fields. You can either make a one-time donation, or set up a monthly five-dollar automatic donation. Thanks!

Click the button below to go to the donations page:

My book $30 Film School was originally published by Muska & Lipman. Different pressings of it have also come out under the banner of Thomson Learning and Course Technology, all owned by the parent company, Thomson Learning. Thomson is a huge company and print a lot of the textbooks purchased by US schools. Thomson treated me OK and the book sold well, but in 2006, they were bought out by Cengage Learning, a UK company. Cengage is owned by multinational investment group, Apax.

The first printing of the second pressing of $30 Film School shipped without the DVD. I’m STILL fielding e-mails from irate buyers who write me about it. Those books are still in a warehouse somewhere and getting out to store shelves somehow, even though it came out two years ago and the books were supposed to be recalled and fixed, according to what I was told.

Cengage is recently getting even more sloppy with book production. A few months ago they asked me to do tech updates for third pressing of second edition of $30 Film School. I spent about 40 unpaid hours doing the updates, sent them in. When they sent me the third pressing of the second edition, they’d made none of my changes. This was, according them, a mistake on their part. (And they did send me the third pressing, you can tell the pressing by the last number on the descending numeric series on the the copyright page of any book.)

Worse than that, the book they sent was poorly bound and started falling apart after I’d read it for five minutes. And it was not a test copy. It was what they’d printed to ship.

I’ve talked to some people higher up the food chain than me in the publishing biz, and they say that these are not isolated problems, and that the new owners, Cengage, seem to care more about profits than making decent products.

MWD

I’ve been a Bank of America customer since 1993. I have three accounts with them, my personal account, joint account with my wife, and a corporate account for my business.

I recently tried to have one of the companies I do business with switch over from sending me checks to doing direct deposit. Should be simple enough. But being dyslexic, I accidentally switched two numbers in my account number on the form I faxed them. They wired my next payment, the princely sum of $86.90, into someone else’s account. This was due to my own error, and I told Bank of America this when I called them about it on April 4th.

BofA told me I had to have the company that sent the money revert the error. I called that company. They told me that BofA had to take care of it. I called BofA back. BofA said they could see my money on their screen in that other person’s account. I asked them to please move it into my account. They said they couldn’t, but that they would transfer it out of the person’s account and put a hold onto it until I filed a complaint, the complaint was reviewed, and then, if the bank decided in my favor, I would get the money back. I filed a complaint.

This turned into over a month of near-daily calls, waiting on hold, being transfered, being told something was put into my record of actions taken, finding out later that it had not been. I felt like I was getting the runaround.

Finally, I was told that I’d been talking to the wrong department, and was transfered over to the “W-Bar” department, who told me I should be talking to the “Electronic Claims Service department.” They told me that the money would be refunded to my account after I signed the affidavit they were mailing me. The affidavit never arrived. I called back, waited on hold more, and was finally told that they had denied my claim again, but never bothered to tell me.

All in all I spent probably 20 hours on the phone dealing with this tiny issue. This seems like a lot of work for a paltry sum of $86.90, and it probably is, but I feel that Bank of America has screwed me. They said they took the money out of that other account, they won’t give it back to me, so that means they are keeping it. On the schoolyard, that’s called stealing your lunch money. On the street, it’s a mugging. I’m not sure what it’s called in the corporate world, but I don’t like it.

This all makes me think about an internal Bank of America document I once saw. (I was a temp worker and signed no NDA, so I feel that I am free to mention this.) I was temping in San Francisco at Bank of America in 1998, right after Bank of America was bought out by NationsBank (the North Carolina firm you’ve never heard of that owns Bank of America). The document was a PowerPoint presentation for internal use. I was asked to format it, using text that already existed. The basic premise of the text, as far as I could tell, was this: “Poor customers cost Bank of America money, we don’t want them. But it’s illegal for us to refuse to service them. Let’s try to find ways to make their banking experience so unpleasant that they go elsewhere.” The document suggested leaving them on hold for an extra long time, nickel-and-dime them with charge after charge, and outright refusing to settle up with things upon initial filing of complaints. Make poor people stress over their little bit of money until they give up.

The office at BofA where I was doing this work was almost empty. Most lower-level and mid-level people had been laid off. The lady in charge of creating the PowerPoint presentation had a corner office and was the most nervous person I’ve ever worked for. She was so worried that she would be next under the corporate hatchet that she was literally screaming at me, and everyone else, for no reason. It was the only temp job I’ve ever had where I called my employment agency and asked to be removed from the job.

Nothing I’ve stated here is slander, because none of it is untrue. I am willing to sign an affidavit that all of it is true, including and especially the part about the internal Bank of America document enumerating ways to get rid of poor people as BofA clients.

– Michael W. Dean

p.s. Here’s a list of controversies about Bank of America, many of which seem to me like they’re a result of the types of policies outlined in the PowerPoint presentation I mentioned.

because MySpace sucks. ’nuff said.

It had gotten to the point where I spent more time on there deleteing spam, blocking whores and dodging phishing links than talking to anyone.

No one noticed or contacted me after I deleted it, none of my 400+ “friends”. See how important it is to have a MySpace account?

Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny chat on the phone and there’s no way these two talkers could interview one or the other. So they rap together, in a concentric hypertextual parenthetical way, TCP over IP, about how to make money by releasing things for free, the coming apocalypse, a secret underground lair, and much more.

Indie media mavericks Michael W. Dean and Joseph Matheny interview each other. (Part two of two. from alterati.com)

Get the podcast here.

Had an interesting conversation via e-mail with a chap named Ken Restivo. Ken wrote me out of the blue and asked me

Subject: Were you in a band that played in the 1990s and did this song?

By any chance, were you in a band that played at the Edinburgh Castle bar on Geary in San Francisco some time in the late 1990’s, that had a song with the lyrics:

“I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck her one more time!”??
-ken

It took me a while to place it (I do so much fucking art I can’t remember it all), but it was a song I wrote about suicide called “Golden Gate Bridge” (MP3 here.)

The band he saw was a short-lived project called “Strychnine Blotter Party ^* .” Only played seven gigs, and only once at the club he mentioned. And the line is “I don’t wanna die! I just wanna fuck you one more time!” But I must say I am DAMN impressed that he remembered the show/band/song/me from that one show. We only played that club once. Don’t know how he found me from that, either. (Please chime in with a comment if you’re reading this, Ken.)

So Ken and I hit it off and I told him a bit about my rock history in San Fran, and we got into a discussion of drugs. Specifically, why musicians gravitate toward heroin:

Ken Wrote:

….I am fascinated by how many musicians are so fucking high so much of the time, and how susceptible we-all are to addiction. MUCH higher than the general population– it seems to be a disease that targets musicians.
Michael W. Dean wrote:

Well, musicians have low self-esteem and huge egos, and heroin compliments that. lol…..

Ken Wrote:

It’s gotta be more than that. Politicians and CEO’s also have HUMONGOUS egos, and low self-esteem (which is really the same thing), and they don’t tend to get addicted to anything except money and power (and kinky sex).

Michael W. Dean wrote:
CEOs and politicians are wired differently and prefer cocaine. And when they like kink, it’s usually paying someone to dominate them, whereas musicians tend to like to dominate their lovers, and get it free. A lot.

Also…..what you say is totally true, but captains of industry have some real confidence, believe everything they do is right, whereas musicians are stunted adolescents, their bravado is that of a scared little boy whistling in the dark. All musicians…from Stooges-wannabe doods in leather jackets to crotch-grabbing gangsta rappers….musicians are riddled with self-doubt. CEOs are absolutely positive they’re doing the right thing with every step.

And remember, with anyone, the number of tattoos is inversely proportionate to the amount of self-esteem.

Heroin makes you feel warm and makes you dream. Musicians are dreamers. Coke makes you feel like you could kick God’s ass, which appeals to CEOs.

——–

(This is by no means me giving myself the “final word” on this….anyone who wants to chime in, please do so).

===========

* Fun little Strychnine Blotter Party side note. Sean Keefe, our fucking great drummer, went home to visit his parents back east, and we had a rehearsal scheduled the day he got back. He called me from the airport and said “Hey…can you pick me up a burrito please? I’m broke and hungry.” I said “Sure” (he was playing free as a sideman in my band where it was all my songs, so of course I fed him if he asked).

He said “I spent my last money getting a shoe shine at the airport. You know…if you don’t look good, you can’t play good.”

—-

And if you wanna see some of the most painful web design ever, here’s the Strychnine Blotter Party web page I made in 1997. I quickly realized “this is hard on the eye, but it was fun to make” and moved on to easy-to-read as my main rule for web design. Unfortunately, most people on MySpace have never realized this.

—–

And here’s the lyrics to “Golden Gate Bridge”:

(by the way, the song is not the usual ABABABC song structure. It’s ABCABC. Few songs are.)

Lyrics:
Standing on the Golden Gate bridge.
looking for the girl who did not like to live
look for the girl with the atropine eyes,
as she flies!

I’ve got cabin-fever
I’ve been in my head for far too long
my brains are blowing out from pressure-jealousy
my strings are melting and I’m sure that I can fly-
maybe I’ll try!

(pre-chorus):
It’s another fucking sunset and
I’m checking out tonight.
Slipping into sleep, your memory slaps me awake.
I don’t want to die.
I want to fuck you one more time.

(Chorus):
I don’t want to die!
I can hurt you more alive
if that keeps me here for one more day
it’s all I need to say
stumbling through this world with all my lies
failing comically at all I try
I feel I’d like to die
but it hurts even to try
why should I try?

nausea, sweet nausea
anticipate my bane
sanctify and vilify to keep us both alive
I’ll just go to sleep
tomorrow means another chance at being sane

(pre-chorus, chorus) out…

Hate Fed Love video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAUw2znLK-E

Bomb live in Houston in 1992, at Emo’s.

Bomb at the peak of their rockatude, and me really skinny and cute. And drinking beer.

More vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/dwarfbilly
all vids from this show:
http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=dwarfbilly&p=r

Shot on analog video by dwarfbilly (Glen Fader). Thank you Glen, so much, for shooting the many vids, for not losing the tapes like so many have done, and for putting on the ‘tube.

–

Note: unlike most Bomb shows, I remember this one well. And also remember that between sound check and the show, I got some paper and a pen from the bartender, sat outside, watched the sun set in the summer night, and decided, “I’m going to be a writer”, and began writing my first novel.

DEFINING MOMENTS IN MY LIFE:
–Read an entire book myself - age 5
–Heard the Partridge Family, fell in love with music - age 7
–Interest in science - age 8
–Molested by teenage boy - age 8
–Parents’ divorce - age 8
–Got into studying electronics - age 9
–Got into ham radio, realized there was a world out there - age 10
–Loved the local library - entire childhood
–Discovered sister’s Rolling Stones records - age 9
–Discovered sister’s boyfriend’s Frank Zappa records, realized the world wasn’t the way adults told me it was - age 10
–Stole a look at teacher’s grade book when she was out and learned that my IQ is 143 - age 10
–Smoked pot - age 11
–Read “Steal This Book” - age 12
–Got caught shoplifting, first and last time I did (stealing shotgun shells to make bombs, never made any) - age 12
–Had sex, started to play guitar, and took LSD - age 14
–Read “The Book of the Subgenius” (while tripping). Decided I wanted to start my own fake cult one day - age 16
–Had GREAT sex - age 17
–Kicked out of boarding school - age 17
–Discovered Dr. Gene Scott (while tripping) Reinforced my desire to start my own fake cult one day - age 18
–Became a father - age 19
–Discovered punk rock (from Skip Lunch), while on LSD, formulated “The Hum of the Universe” theory on the spot - age 19
–Left home, moved to DC , saw Dischord punk bands live, met them, hung out with them - age 20
–Put out first record - age 21
–Moved to San Francisco - age 22
–Started Bomb - age 22
–Discovered heroin - age 23
–Toured the US with Bomb - age 23-age 29
–Toured Europe with Bomb - age 27
–Bomb signed to major label- age 28
–Bomb broke up because of my drug use - age 29
–Got first computer (8086, couldn’t get online with it, but could write and edit) - age 29
–Learned to type (in one night, while shooting coke) age 29
–Got sober - age 30
–Went back to college - age 32-33
-Got on the Internet (on hand-me-down 386 from my other sister) - age 32
–got DSL internet connection - age 33
–Put on a suit, joined the corporate work force (but wrote my novel on their time) - age 33-37
–Self-published first book - age 35
–Relapsed on drugs, nearly died - age 35
–Got sober again - two weeks later
–Started making films - age 36
–Made my first feature film: age 37
–Moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco (it’s not uncool to be ambitious in LA Like it is in San Fran) - age 37
–Started to make a living as a writer and filmmaker - age 38
–Discovered D/s - age 41
–Met the woman of my dreams - age 41
–Daughter died from leukemia - age 42
–Got married, moved out to the country/burbs - age 42
–Discovered podcasting - age 42
–Started using BitTorrent to share massive amounts of MY media with the world - age 43
–got 10 Mbps fiber optic internet connection - age 43

===

Pretty fun stuff.

So, my friends, post your list as a reply.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAnYj-iNrPQ
Little thing I made that shows examples of good and bad background music for use with talking. Is useful info for both video production and podcast production.

Goes with this O’Reilly article I wrote,
“Put Your Photos on TV, Part 1″:
http://tinyurl.com/2xxnvf

Michael W. Dean
Media Consultant

So, after decades of doling out free advice to anyone who asks, I’m hanging up a shingle and starting to charge. I have to do this, I don’t have time to answer all the “help me with my project!” e-mails AND have a life AND make a living.

My rates are reasonable, and negotiable. Sliding scale. Info here:

http://www.michaelwdean.com

THE PLUMP BUFFET - a romantic kinky curvy cat cult comedy. (I really like this one.)

Subscribe FREE at Podiobooks.com

WEB:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-plump-buffet/
RSS:
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/the-plump-buffet/feed/

(to subscribe in iTunes, go to “advanced / subscribe to podcast) and paste that URL into the little window.)

VALENTINE’S DAY RELEASE!
A Submission and Coffee production.

“The Plump Buffet” is a cast-production radio play about a sex cult in the desert, and they’re all cats.

WARNING: “The Plump Buffet” is comedic literature with sexual motifs. If you are not of legal age, you should not listen. You are also not to listen if you are easily offended by such material. But compared to network TV, it’s a wholesome story, no one dies.

TAGLINES:
–THE PLUMP BUFFET: it’s not a love triangle, it’s a love polygon.

–THE PLUMP BUFFET is “Fritz the Cat” meets “Showdown at Waco.”

–50 women aren’t 50 times the fun, they’re 50 times the hassle. And one of them always feels like killing you.

PROMOS:
2-meg MP3 promo: http://www.askdollie.com/temp/PB-PlumpBuffet-Promo.mp3
14-meg WAV promo: http://www.askdollie.com/temp/PB-PlumpBuffet-Promo.wav

A very cool guy named Torodd Eriksen from a town called Kirkenes (in Norway, on the Russian border) asked me to come tour the region with DIY or DIE and do Q&A and filmmaking seminars. He wrote me:

And after Kirkenes and Norway - you do the same thing in Russia. Russian societies are so hungry for artistic and political impulses. Generally speaking Russia is a safe country, but still it is one of the most unsafe countries for journalists. For that reason alone the skills and tools of citizen-journalism and documentation is very important in Russia……..

Beautiful sunny downtown Kirkenes:

I replied:

Three years ago I would have jumped to do this, and probably would have tried to meet a pretty girl there, get married, and stay.

However, now I’m married here, really happy, and feel I don’t want to travel in an unstable region where journalists get kidnapped. I basically believe I would be considered a “journalist” by some people, because I write for this well-known media company O’Reilly, for the O’Reilly Digital Media site:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/3220

How about this. Why don’t you tour this region in my stead, show DIY or DIE, keep the money, and you can bring a laptop and I’ll do a Skype Webcam question-and-answer period at each show? You can hook me up to the video projector, you’ll take questions from the audience, translate to English, ask me, I’ll answer, and you can translate back.
Much respect,

MWD

Debra Jean Dean reads the US Constitution:
http://www.debrajeandean.com/constitution/index.htm

Free Creative Commons audio book.

United States Constitution (with all amendments), read by Debra Jean Dean, engineered by Michael W. Dean

Audio file covered by Creative Commons, feel free to share and link.

“The best recording with the best voice of any free, non-DRM audiobook of
the US Constitution, anywhere.”

Jim Goad is my favorite writer. Hands down. I’ve only read one book by him, The Redneck Manifesto (Full title - The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats, and I’ve read a few posts on his blog, but I love the guy.

There aren’t many books I’d consider reviewing ten years after they came out, and this one tops that very short list. I’ve read The Redneck Manifesto four times, and am reading it a fifth time now. I’ve bought about a dozen copies on Amazon (used, sorry Jim…like most of your readers, I can’t afford retail for luxury items), one at a time, and sent them to friends. I think this book is the most no-nonsense explanation of the history of the western world ever produced. (And it’s heavily annotated, if you wanna check the sources. I did. They checked out.) The Redneck Manifesto should be required reading in college, if not high school and grade school. (Though I’m sure that would lead to lawsuits.)

Many people consider The Redneck Manifesto to be a dangerous book…Racist even. I maintain that it is not racist at all (if anything, it’s anti-racist), but it is indeed dangerous, as are most less-than-popular truths.

There are a few basic premises of the book. First, that poor white people are the ONLY racial/ethnic/social group that it’s still OK to make fun of. That if you were a person in charge of a TV or movie studio, or the editor of a paper, and you treated Jews, blacks, lesbians, Mexicans, Asians or anyone else the way they treat rednecks on TV and in movies, you’d lose your job. Many examples are given, but one of my favorites is that newspapers (including the New York Times) often spell out southern white speech phonetically in interviews and articles to show the accent. If you did that with Ebonics, you’d be fired, and probably sued.

Goad goes on to give a pretty compelling argument of why white guilt for slavery is a crock. At least poor white guilt. Says that the descendants of plantation slave owners are far more likely to drive BMWs than pickup trucks. And maintains that white indentured servants suffered as much, often more, and in greater numbers, than black slaves. (Indentured servants were not owned, and were whipped harder, sort of the way people beat the shit out of rental cars, but not cars they themselves own.)

This is stuff that’s basically true, but makes people want to kill you when you say it out loud. Which is a sort of racism on it’s own. It’s OK for any group to bemoan their past, except poor whites.

He states that white people are blamed for everything, but as a poor white man, as is with a poor man of any color, he has no control over the policies of his government, the media, or his ancestors.

He writes that questioning economic policies he has no control over is often looked at as racist, even when it’s not. He says that the questioning world banking (a concept so fucked and complex that many it takes an advanced degree to even begin to understand it) is not anti-semitic, it’s just anti-getting ripped off. He says that suggesting welfare reform is not racist, it’s just about money. He states: “I don’t want to pay for anyone’s baby, no matter what the color.”

Goad contends that racial prejudice has its current and historical basis in rich whites wanting to keep poor whites and poor blacks divided and fighting…That if poor blacks and poor whites realized that race wars are all bullshit and banded together, they would be a majority, and could take over the world, possibly in a very bloody manner for the rich whites.

Goad points out that rich whites find it easy to be politically correctly racially sensitive because they live in mostly-white gated communities. They don’t have to deal with black rage because it can’t reach them. And that rednecks and white working stiffs have always lived in neighborhoods that are far more racially integrated than the rich whites who poo poo the rednecks for noticing that race exists. Says that while there are no more segregated water fountains, people still are, and always will be, segregated along the color GREEN.

Goad says again and again, in funny and eloquent ways, what I feel is a very important simple truth: It’s not about race, it’s about class.

I love this part:

For all the showboat sympathy that the white middle and upper classes display toward black suffering, they don’t spend much time living or working alongside their downtrodden jungle bruddas. The redneck truck driver and the black gas-pumper share more life experiences than either guy shares with the corduroy-jacketed college professor or perfume-stinking society matron whose tear ducts gush with self-serving weepiness over abstract notions of injustice.

and:

Both Martin Luther King and Malcom X were shot to the ground at a time when they seemed to be transcending narrow white/black divisions and phrasing the battle in class terms.

Goad talks about how there aren’t many great working-class writers because the working class is too damn busy working to write.

I love this, because I lived it. It was harder than eating nails to launch my professional writing career while holding a day job. I had to work hard 60 hours a week in the evenings and weekends while still working 40 hours a week for over a decade. My dad couldn’t just write a check to send me to an expensive journalism school.

(My siblings went to good colleges, but parents took out second and third mortgages to send them, and kids took out loans.

(My parents were farmers until the year I was born. My family looked middle class, but were struggling.)

True to his name, Goad (which is his real name), loves to goad the reader. Some of it has a bit of a “a Modest Proposal” feel, especially the title of chapter ten: “Several Compelling Arguments for the Enslavement of All White Liberals”, which is actually one of my favorite chapters, even though I don’t favor the enslavement of anyone. And don’t think Goad does either.

I love Goad because he’s got a lot to say, but just wants to be left alone. I can dig it. He and I are both widely read people who both probably have a better day when our phones don’t ring. Goad complains about society because he doesn’t comfortably fit in to what it expects of him. One of my favorite lines in the book nails this well:

Interracial dating doesn’t bother me, but the very concept of dating does.

The Redneck Manifesto is all stunningly great. It’s amazing writing about amazing thoughts, and I highly recommend you buy the book today….Especially if you’re rich…buy ten copies, new, and hand them out at the country club.

I remember an interview with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Rolling Stone in 1992. The mag asked the band who they were voting for. Flea said something to the effect of “I’m voting for Bill Clinton. He’s the first president since Kennedy with a wife worth fucking. I don’t want a guy married to a woman who looks like Barbara Bush with his finger on the button.”

At the time, I agreed. However, I no longer think Hillary is “worth fucking.” Nothing to do with her age…I love mature quail. Nor is it her politics (though I really don’t love them). It’s something I can’t really put my finger on, something deep inside her that comes out when she speaks….but she’s just no longer worth fucking.

(Though I think Hilary’s “wife” Bill, is still worth fucking, for an old guy. That rascally chubby chaser will always be a sex god in my book.)

I almost considered voting for Dennis Kucinich because his wife, Elizabeth Harper:

but Dennis didn’t make it to the ballot.

This one’s mine. It’s shorter, and a little more fun. Essay, not multiple choice.  You’re not limited to five answers.

There’s a quote floating around the Interweb, mis-attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler. Wikipedia says the actual author(s) are unknown, but it’s an interesting quote.

Quote basically says that democracies fail after about 200 years (give or take) because the lazy bums in the society vote in people who will allow them to not work. (My father-in-law says at that point they become, at best, socialist, and at worst, dictatorships.)

Here’s the quiz. Do you think it’s true that:
A. Historically,  democracies fail after about 200 years
B. It’s because the lazy bums in the society vote in people who will allow them to not work
C. At that point they become, at best, socialist, and at worst, dictatorships
? ? ?
—–
Here’s the quote:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

 

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

 

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage.

(From The XLog):

The right to use sex toys is getting an activist in Alexander City, Alabama, all hot and bothered.

Loretta Nall, a gubernatorial candidate in 2006, is steamed at Alabama’s Attorney General Troy King over his intent to prosecute adult shop owners for selling sex toys. So she’s taking matters into her own hands by asking touchy Americans to deluge him with sex toys.

Nall has organized a “Sex Toy Drive” and is asking all masturbators to get off their Purple Penetrators and hit King where it hurts, by ramming his mailbox with sex toys in protest.

“King is pushing this thing, but he doesn’t need to be sticking his nose in people’s business,” Nall said. “He’s making Alabamians look like backwater rednecks.”

It seems to be working. The naughty novelties have already starting penetrating King’s office, with ball gags, rectum plugs, and Hello Kitty massagers creating a stir with the stiff conservative.

Nall is practicing what she preaches. “I personally sent him a penetrable pink pig,” she said. “I was thinking of dressing up as a penis to his next appearance, but then people would confuse me for that big dick.”

Love it. Almost makes me wish I lived in Alabama (what am I saying?!) so I’d have a reason to send in a contribution.

In a general, hands-off-me way, I kinda like the idea of government. Good mechanism for providing roads, education, food and pharmaceutical safety, international treaties, things like that. Heck, even a defensive military isn’t a bad thing. But when government comes into my bedroom I get testy.

They can have my sex toys when they pry them from my slippery, dead hands.

-DJD

Come January 1, 2008, France will extend its ban on smoking to bars, discotheques, restaurants, hotels, casinos and cafes.

It’s the end of the world, and I feel sick.

I love it. Kids today are so fucking stupid that someone finally figured out a way to charge money to play “air guitar.”

(The upside is that less kids will be forming actual bands, which is good, because most bands suck. And I’ve also turned into the guy I used to hate, the guy who actually wants to live a quiet life and knocks on neighbors’ doors and says “TURN DOWN THAT MUSIC!” when they practice with their shitty bands)

At 04:39 AM 12/21/2007, Skip Lunch wrote:

BRIAN: You know what they say,…no junk, no soul. I mean, look at Chevy Chase!

comments?

Michael W. Dean wrote:
Ehhhhh…..hmmmmm…….a lot of junkie artists start to suck when they get clean (Aerosmith comes to mind) or are still good but never as incendiary as when they were young and strung (Iggy comes to mind). But I think it’s more that they get clean around the age people start to suck anyway.

Overall junk sucks the soul, it doesn’t add soul, at least after a while.

That said, there is something to be said for the struggle and desperation of junk life producing conflict, which makes for great stories. Also, when people get clean, they often go into a safer phase of their life, like “Jesus, I should have been dead a million times…I need to start working out, eating right, and write some middle-of-the-road crossover hit singles!”

And if they’re rich they have mortgages on multiple mansions, and have high-dollar lawyers, managers and other handlers, and many people depending on them for a paycheck, so they tend to do ballads and such, or just keep writing the same tired song over and over.

Remember, five years before he died, Jerry Garcia said something like “I hate playing in the Grateful Dead. I’d quit, except the band employs all my friends.” (He finally died in rehab kicking smack and coke.)

My new vlog is called “Pettin’ Cats and Talkin’ Back (with Michael W. Dean)”

Here’s me telling the LSD bus story

Please post a comment there (and here) if you’d like

Great essay on the Clash (and why Joe Strummer was probably ill-suited to represent the working class”)

By Jim Goad, one of my all-time favorite writers.

Jim wrote the amazing 1998 book The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats. A lot of people say it’s racist but I contend it’s merely against being racist against whites. The Redneck Manifesto book gets a lot of shit, partially because a lot of white-pride folk dig the book too, but I’ll add my line from my book Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women:

I have heard the defensive constructs about the difference between white power and white pride. But how come people who profess white pride never possess any qualities that instill any in me?

But Jim Goad makes me happy. He’s funny as hell, and right on, and says stuff a lot of people think, but are too politically correct to say.

A few quotes from Jim Goad that I really dig, (and I’m paraphrasing from memory, but the meaning is intact):

“There aren’t a lot of great working-class writers. The working class are too tired from working to write.”

“The problem with armchair coffee shop socialists who yell ‘Workers of the world unite!’ is that most of them have never worked a day in their life.”

“Rich white people invented racism to keep poor blacks and whites from uniting and killing them. A black worker and a white worker sitting next to each other on the assembly line have far more in common than the white worker has with the white owner of the factory.”

(That last one sort of reminds me of a line in the recent Colbert book):

“Upper-middle class is a meaningless term created by the Upperclass to keep the Middle class from joining with the Lower class when the revolution comes.”

And as for Joe Strummer, I still have and wear a Rudimentary Peni t-shirt. It’s my favorite shirt. I wear it mainly because of their song “Rotten to the Core”:

Have you Realised that Rock Stars
Always seem to lie so much?
John Lydon once said he cared
But he never really gave a fuck
Said he’d use the money he made
So that people would have somewhere to go
But now he lives in the USA
and Snorts Coke after the Show.

Why is it that Rock Stars
Always seem to lie so much?
Joe Strummer once said he cared,
but he never really gave a fuck
Said he’d use the money he made
To set up a radio station to make the
Airwaves full of something more than Shit
Have you noticed we’re still Waiting?

My friend Symon pointed out to me that I invented the idea of using the word “Rockstar” with a trademark symbol after it in my 2000 book, Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women.

Everytime the word  “Rockstar” appeared in the book (it appeared often), I put a trademark symbol after it. Like in this page scan from the book (red arrow added by me today):

My book came out one year before the company Rockstar drinks started doing the same thing.

Anyone dare me to send them a cease-and-desist letter?

I make it a point to never turn down an interview. Ever. I tell people this in my books, and in person, and it’s a matter of pride for me. I don’t care if it’s NPR, the BBC, or some kid in his bedroom with a e-zine that no one reads, I do every interview, and take time with it.

I got a request from a guy the other day to be interviewed on his podcast. He hasn’t started the podcast yet, so essentially has no audience. But I immediately said “I’ll do it.”

The next day, I changed my mind. See, the guy had mentioned people he’s friends with that I’m friends with. (This is common, gives some legitimacy, and I have no problem with it. I do it myself when trying to get people to do stuff for me.) He mentioned three people I know. I like two of them a lot, and respect their work. But the third was an ex-sex partner who stalked me hard after I dumped her. For years.

This morning I woke up and sent the guy this:

You know what, I’m going to decline this interview.
I don’t want to think about ___________, and communicating with someone who is friends with her makes me think about her.
I mean no disrespect to you, I checked out your stuff and it’s solid. But whatever she told you that would made you think I’d respond favorably to having her name mentioned when approaching me…..whatever it was, it wasn’t the truth.

She’s a “predator posing as a house pet”. Which is not to say she’s dangerous, but she is the most annoying person I’ve ever encountered. She does not know the meaning of “You’re bothering me. Go away.” If she and I lived in the same city, I’d have long ago taken her to court and put a restraining order on her for her years of endless harassment by phone, e-mail, MySpace, and snail mail.
Good luck with your podcast,
Respectfully,

MWD

I told my friend Skip about it, and he asked me “so what’s the story? What did I miss? I replied:

I dumped this chick I had when I moved to LA. She’s in Frisko.
I had her down to LA to stay a week once. I dropped her after, because she was calling me every day after I told her to call me less.
She started calling me more. I said “Just go away”. She kept at it. I blocked her e-mail address, she made new ones. I moved. She got my new phone number. I told her about 30 times, in an escalating yelling voice “GO THE FUCK AWAY AND NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN!!!!!”
She kept it up. she still, to this day, writes me letters and mails packages to my PO box. I throw them in the trash at the post office without opening them. She still e-mails me once in a while, all weepy with “please like me” shit in the sig line. I delete them unread and she eventually starts a new e-mail address to try to get through to me. She knows I want nothing to do with her, and knows I’m now married, and still sends me stuff.

She has systematically followed in my footsteps, becoming a filmmaker, and an advocate of DIY artists. I’m fine with that, only mention it because it seems pertinent to the story. I don’t mind influencing people, but I really value my privacy.

The chick has unresolved daddy issues from 35 years ago that have nothing to do with me, but she insists they do and that I need to help her solve them. She’s told me that.

The guy who contacted me is a podcaster in Frisko who wanted to interview me via Skype, dropped her name, along with a few of my real friends’ names, as people he knows, to get me to want to do something with him. She probably told him that I’m her friend.

I almost would have done it anyway, but he also said “I can do it by Skype or come to LA to interview you”, I thought that was very odd (it’s a fucking long drive). I imagined she’d jump out of his trunk or something when he got to my house.

–MWD

There’s a post on BoingBong about Scott Beale from LaughingSquid (cool guy and cool site), getting a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers at Best Buy for merely blogging about someone making parody Best Buy shirts. After BoingBoing blogged about it, Best Buy sent a apology to Scott. Boing Boing blogged that, and linked the letter.

(Read the above paragraph out loud, and you really get a good feel for the “he said/she said” nature of the blogosphere. And we’re not done here today…Not by a long shot….):

So….the comments on BoingBoing contain some of the usual to-be-expected “This is an outrage! Best Buy is worse than Hitler!!!” reactions….mostly people complaining that that the lawyer-penned apology didn’t have Best Buy on its knees groveling and licking Scott’s butthole. Best Buy simply sent a typical lawyer apology.

I replied:

Looks fine to me.

Corporations carefully watch for making any “admissions of guilt” in writing, and I’d say this is the best anyone could hope to get for something like this.

Again, there was more whining from the peanut gallery, including a rather sane comment of someone saying

Ah. OK. I’m just always interested in alternatives to the megacorps, and electronics is one area where they (alternatives, that is) seem to be few and far between.

I posted this response, a reply to all the posters:

A lot of people these days say that they’re “interested in alternatives to the megacorps”, and it’s a decent proposal.

But really, no matter where you buy it, the stuff you’re buying is made by megacorps. You can order your flat-screen TV or iPhone or Vista Laptop or any device with a microprocessor from a mom-and-pop store online, but they’re getting it from the manufacture, who is always a megacorp….a megacorp that most likely utilizes near-slave labor in China to put the stuff together.

I like to “shop locally” and “support the little guy”, but a lot of these conversations devolve quickly into “more indie than thou”. Even if you’re running Linux, you’re running it on a chip made by a megacorp. It is impossible to make a chip as fast as a Duo-core in your basement.

I go where the price is best, where the selection is good, and where they let me walk around and poke stuff for hours without bugging me. I’m not going to stop shopping somewhere because they sent someone a lawyer letter (even if that someone, Scott Beale, is someone I know and consider a very decent guy.)

Megacorps send lawyer letters. It’s what they do. When someone owns intellectual property in the old-world model, if they don’t over-police their property, they’re underpolicing it, which is problematic when someone commits a truly huge infraction, like widescale actual bootlegging. It looks bad in court if they haven’t been “defending their claim.”

It is fine and good to blog about it when it’s out of line, like with this instance, but it’s not going to keep me out of the store.

That said, I don’t shop much at Best Buy, because they don’t sell stuff I do buy. (They do, incidentally, carry media that I created.)

Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com

At 01:36 AM 12/7/2007, Chris <gedgec@gmail.com> wrote:

My name is Chris and I help with the running of www.godfrey-diy.co.uk

I was looking for sites containing anything DIY related and I found your site diynow.org in Google. I was wondering if you would exchange links with us as……

No. Our sites are not about related topics. At all.

www.diynow.org is the site for my book on do-it-yourself music creation and promotion. It has nothing to do with home improvement. You’re confused because of the difference between the UK and US meanings of “DIY”.

Good luck,
MWD

…via e-mail today. Felt too good not to post, there’s so much history here.

Skip is my longest-running friend. Met him in college in 1982. He turned me onto punk rock. He lives in China now.

————————-

At 02:59 PM 12/5/2007, Skip wrote:

…..yeah i figgered as such. we can say tho that yer first punk band was with greg?

MWD wrote:

I’d rather not.

Anyway, I think my first punk band was the Armless Children lineup before Greg and his brother, the lineup with Doug on bass and Tony Yanik on drums and me on guitar and singing.

Skip wrote:

he was actually a goupie for the earlier Salamanca crew, Punk London. [worst name ever???" ] so.. Bob-o-matic was Cattaragus’s only true punk musician. ,,

MWD wrote:
My first band that played a gig was called “London/US Air.” Did I ever tell you that? Cover band in Westfield, on vacation from church farm school, when I was 15.
Keyboard player is now the Dean of Sweetbriar college (private all-girls college in Virginia. Damn, I’m glad no one ever gave me that job….)

All my long-term friends, except you, Jay and Doug, have PhDs or are lawyers.

Skip wrote:

ANYWAY. I didn’t think that you played “punk guitar ” that good, cause you were “too good and musical”.

MWD wrote:
At that time I was too good to play punk, but not good enough to play the prog rock I wanted to play. I didn’t really come onto my own until I was 18, switched to bass, and wrote punk rock bass lines for prog rock songs we wrote in Baby Opaque. (Drummer of that band is a tenured English proff with a PhD, as you know.)

Skip wrote:

I saw your band The Armless Children, not yet punk really, and never greg boltz n the nutz. that was prolly strange ..at MARSHALL DILLONS disco?

MWD wrote:

Yup. At a country and western battle of the bands.  Our friend Rowdy Remmington talked a redneck out of shooting us while we were on stage.

Skip wrote:

But what really impressed me was when you send me the baby opaque.
not even the music so much as that when i heard that you took a CONSTRUCTION job for the summer to pay for it!

I imagine skinny li’l you shirtless up on  a girder, sweating.

MWD wrote:
I’m glad anyone still pictures me skinny. But nope. No traipsing on girders. I mostly swept up after the guys with actual skills. But I did sweat. It was in Virginia in the Summer. And made four bucks an hour.

Skip wrote:

Talk about selling your soul for rock n roll…….that takes big balls and dedication. sacrifice baby.
placard:

“Will work construction jobs for Punk”

MWD wrote:
I did paid medical research to help pay for the recording of my DC band, “The Day I Lost My Virginity.” I was a guinea pig.
And I did that again in San Fran to pay for the pressing of “to Elvis in hell.”

In DC it was something called “anti-steroids.” I’ve never heard of them since, so I don’t think they passed the tests.
In San Fran it was a study where they paid me to be shot up with cocaine, then made me play video games and measured my response times. I almost got kicked out of the study for asking “Can I PLEASE just go in the bathroom and masturbate?????” I even offered to let them follow me in with their clipboards and watch. All in the interest of science, of course.

I asked my father-in-law (a self-described “curmudgeon”) what his politics are and he said “It depends on the issue. If it’s abortion, I’m left of Nancy Pelosi. If it’s social welfare, I’m right of Genghis Khan.” (Keep in mind this is a guy who votes Republican but has long been a registered Democrat so he can vote against the more capable democratic candidate in the primaries.)

(And I really like the guy. He’s kind, funny, and far more intelligent and interesting to talk to than a lot of people I know.)

While I don’t agree with his extremes, it really got me thinking….I’m kind of the same way. I oppose unbridled spending on social welfare, and I am pro-choice.

But the thing me and my father-in-law have in common politically in a larger way is “It depends on the issue.”

Republicans with fiscal policies that I consider sound probably want to put me in jail for saying “fuck” on the Internet (or in my back yard). They’re usually not pro-choice, and are often convinced that the Rapture is coming soon anyway, so “Why NOT let industry dump battery acid into a river, why not kill little brown people on the other side of the globe because their shacks are built on top of the oil that God meant for us, and why not secretly read Michael Dean’s e-mail because he likes to say ‘fuck’ on the Internet? I mean, hell, Michael Dean was once involved in some sort of underground organization called BOMB!”

Conversely, the liberals with views that match mine on the importance of civil liberties, and of having a defensive rather than offensive military, keeping abortions legal, having well-funded schools (even if they teach evolution), having freely available medical marijuana, being able to say “fuck” on the Internet, and a lot of other issues, are often the same people who want to, at best, tax me to death, control every aspect of my life, regulate everything in America to an absurd degree, dissolve even a defensive military, grant the rights of citizens to non-citizens….etc. And some of them recently passed a law in Calabasas, California (one town over from me) that makes it illegal to smoke a cigarette in the backyard of a home you own. And if you rent, you can’t smoke IN YOUR APARTMENT in that town.

In a word, I feel like liberals want to protect me from my own ignorance. I feel this is counterintuitive to the relatively sound ground plans of the founding fathers.

But I have an idea to write a sensible, compassionate book about this subject….the subject that “In a two-party system, there’s no one on either side who really represents me. At all. Why can’t I do it take-out menu style, picking one guy to represent one issue from column A, another from column B, etc.?”

I’m tossing around the idea for this book now. I think a need and a market exists for it. True, there are a few books that touch on the subject, but most are written by loons like Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter and Glen Beck.

I’ll keep on the book idea. Stay tuned for further developments.

–MWD

 
Article I wrote on the O’Reilly Digital Media site:

http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2007/11/29/anarchy-vs-digital-copyright.html

A cool, well meaning dude wrote me an e-mail critiquing my new voiceover resume site, www.michaeldeanvoice.com.

I won’t reprint his e-mail here, because I didn’t ask his permission, and he took a lot of time with it, and I don’t want to look like I’m slamming him (I’m not). But here’s the reply I sent him:

—-

Hey sir,
I appreciate you doing this offlist, and for taking all the time to critique it. Some good comments here.

First, please look at the site again, I believe I already changed it before you wrote your letter…My podcast link is gone, the font colors are changed, and there are Flash players so you don’t have to leave the page.

As for the “1997 design”, well, I learned HTML in 1996, perfected my style with it in 1997, and actually haven’t changed a bit since then. But I like it. I think it looks good in this day and age, and not like most other sites. You think StinkFight looks better, but it’s a Word Press template, and looks like all the other Word Press sites. People often tell me to update my Web sites’ look, but they invariably suggest I homogenize it into the latest flavor. That’s not for me.

Yes, having a YouTube video seems “below the fold”, but that video has gone viral, it’s had 127,000 hits in about ten days. I’d like to think my voice contributed in some small way to that.

I’ll look into the site you suggested, Voice123.com, I did briefly a few months ago, but it seemed like a lot of wannabes to me. I’ll look at it more closely though, and consider buying space to put a reel on there. But I’m generally offended by sites that “talk to me” when I load them, and the voices that load at me as soon as I go to that site, the ones put there by the site’s owner, sound horribly generic to me.

I sound like a stoned surfer with a slight lisp. I’m not going to get work doing dog food or hemroid cream or Chevy truck commercials. Nor would I want to, even if it paid a lot. But a lot of people really love my voice, and keep asking me to do free work, so I think there’s a demand for me to get more paid work. I just don’t want to do it the “normal” way. I never do anything “the normal way.”

Basically I make a living making media, and I mostly do it my own way.

Check out the CV link I’ve added to the page. None of it is “below the fold”. I do a lot of different things: writing books, making films, producing and creating music, writing for different media sites, and I’ve done paid voice work.

Usually when I’m starting out with new things, people tell me to “do it the way everyone else is doing it”, I don’t, and end up making a name for myself doing it my way anyway.

Most of the work I get from any of the many different things I do for pay is from referrals from people I know anyway, so I’m not that concerned with looking like the latest flavor.

Respectfully,
MWD

There’s a post today on BoingBoing about the band The Romantics suing the makers of the game Guitar Hero for using a “sound alike” band to cover their song “What I Like About You” for the game. (Using a sound a like means the company still has to pay royalties for the use of the song, but about half what they’d have to pay to use the origional recording.)

A bunch of people posted replies basically slamming the Romantics for suing. I posted this reply:

——–

I know copyright enforcement seems really unhip to a lot of folks these days, but copyright is a right guaranteed in the US Constitution. (”…To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries….”)

I happen to really like the US Constitution, ALL of it, and really hate to see it stepped on. It seems to me that a lot of people these days yell loudly when their rights are violated, but then want to violate the rights of others whenever it feels convenient.

Do the commenters here who are bemoaning the enforcement of this Romantics issue think the Constitution should be changed?

And if copyright law should be enforced for one, it should be enforced for all, regardless of perceived artistic merit. (By the way, most of the music I like is really dark: Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bauhaus, etc, but I think “What I like About You” is a particularly well-crafted pop song, it rocks, and I respect it for that.)
I know that old-school media companies tend to be WAY overly proactive about going after all perceived “violations”, really selfish about trying to extend copyright law for too long, and often slam Fair Use as illegal use. And I think the Internet has changed the playing field to the point where copyright law needs some reinterpretation.

People are making inroads. Among them are Creative Commons. I dig Creative Commons and use it on some (not all) of my projects. I also give away some art, and there are millions of people doing that.

But I also maintain copyright on some projects, for a number of reasons. And I feel strongly that the underlying principals of copyright law are sound, and should be upheld. For all.

Tom Waits successfully sued Frito Lay when Frito Lay used a “sound alike” singer to record a song SIMILAR to one of Waits’ songs (it wasn’t even one of his own songs) for a commercial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Waits#Lawsuits

I’m fine with that, but probably for different reasons that some folks here, who probably are fine with it because Waits is good and the Romantics are “shitty”.

Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com

The fake emo commercial that Alan did (that DJ and I did the voiceover for) has gone viral, 34,000 views in a few days. The comments section has devolved into a bunch of kids arguing about “what is emo?”, with a bunch of other kids saying that emo is for pussies.

Some adventurous anthropologist on there decided to look up “emo” in Microsoft Vista Library:

Emo (pronounced /ˈiːmoʊ/) is a style of rock music which describes several independent variations of music with common stylistic roots. As such, use of the term has been the subject of much debate. In the mid-1980s, the term emo described a subgenre of hardcore punk which originated in the Washington, DC music scene.

Old man Dean decided to set ‘em straight on the history. I posted this:

I saw the first emo band, “Rites of Spring” in DC (at “Food for Thought” restaurant) in 1985. It was NOT a wimpy gig, except for the hippie sound guy. He was worried about the slam dancing and split with the speakers mid set. The singer (Guy - now of Fugazi) finished the set yelling, without a mic. A fist fight broke out in the crowd. Nobody cried.

By the way, one of the parties in the fist fight was Ian MacKaye. And the other band that played that night was Grey Matter. I don’t remember a lot about the show because it was so frenetic, and almost over before it started. It was a great night. Oh yeah, Grey Matter played the coolest cover of “I am the Walrus” I’ve ever heard.

Maybe emo is wimpy now, but it wasn’t back when I first heard the term.

–Michael W. Dean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RDw9yx7gEM

“Now That’s What I Call Emo : YouTube Edition”

Fake commercial my friend Alan ( fallofautumndistro) made. Pretty damn funny.
I did the voiceover (and Debra Jean did the “apathetic diary girl” voice).

–MWD

(Post on Web forum board of Cavern Club, a very cool bar in the city of Exeter, UK where I showed DIY or DIE. Post is some punker’s response to the club owner posting my “DIY or DIE on Zune” press release. Below the punker’s response is my response to him.)

———————

edx wrote: Am I missing something here?
I presume the films makers at the very least empathise with the subject they are documenting? Actively choosing to hand this over to a multi national like Microsoft hardly seems inline with what I imagine the subject of this film to be.
The film itself might be available for free but it’s not being hosted by Microsoft for any reason other than to help shift some corporate product.
Hey! Maybe this is some sort of ironic comment on the relationship between DIY and corporate ideals circa 2007?!?

——-

Michael W. Dean replied: This is a ridiculous statement. And these sentiments are usually posted by someone who lives with their parents, or eats out of a dumpster. And the poster was usually six years old when I started putting out my own records booking my own tours.

I’ve been defending this film for five years.

I made this film to share art and to reach people, not to make money. And no money was exchanged in either direction with Microsoft (they got content, I got hits.)

And for what it’s worth, Microsoft came to me, I did not go to them.

I made money at the film over the past five years, but put it most of it back into promoting the film. (Not that there’s anything wrong with making money, but personally, after food and shelter, I basically spend all my money on art supplies, and on getting my art out to the world.)

(I toured US and Europe with the film, among other things, to bring it to the people. Showed it at Cavern Club too, had a blast. Thanks guys!)

I’ve replied to this “punker than thou” accusation at length, by the way.

Here:
http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/11/13/punker-than-thou/ (post “Punker than thou”)
and here:
http://tinyurl.com/39u6ur

Here is a list of the artists in my film who are selling their songs on the Zune Marketplace: Mike Watt, Fugazi, Lydia Lunch, Dave Brockie (in Gwar), J Mascis, Madigan Shive (in Bonfire Madigan), Steve Albini (in Big Black), Lynn Breedlove (in Tribe 8 ), J.G. Thirlwell (as Foetus) and Eric McFadden.

They are all selling their songs on Apple’s iTunes store too, except Steve Albini (though the record he engineered for Nirvana is certainly on there.)

I had nothing to do with getting these artists on either site, but none of these folks are fools. (Which is why I chose to interview them.)

All these artists’ songs, on both sites, are encoded with DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions. And are for sale.

Not that I feel there’s anything wrong with selling music, I do it myself with my own songs.

But note: I am GIVING away “DIY or DIE” for FREE, in NEAR DVD QUALITY, with NO DRM.
————&#