I Like This

This makes me laugh. Heartily.

I’ve been forcing this on people for the last week. It’s not brand new, but it is pretty damn hilarious. If only I had Mr. Koser’s email address. He was my awesome history teacher in high school and I bet he’d show it to his students. At least the students he liked.

Anyway, if you don’t like this, you’re unAmerican.

Comment carefully, comrades. The feds are watching…

Enjoy your chocorat, suckers.

The Best IM Conversation I’ve Ever Had

While my pal Murder over at www.murderliveshere.com is the master of blogging his IM conversations, I had to jack his shtick for this. Behold this delightful exchange I had today with Phroofie, mistress of www.phaeacrede.blogspot.com (and new addition to the ol’ Blogroll).

phaeatown: insert daily complaint about work
justin shatraw: insert reply of empathy and further complaint
phaeatown: insert slightly provkative joke referring to up coming nuptials
justin shatraw: insert slightly more provocative comment about hotel rooms
phaeatown: insert cold comment which suggests you’ve taken things too far
justin shatraw: insert backtracking, inquiry about weekend plans
phaeatown: insert exciting and even more provocative comment about being all alone and needing some one tall to help me lay some carpet

Beat.

phaeatown: insert awkward statement claiming that was a joke because of your length in response time
justin shatraw: insert statement about being in multiple conversations causing delay, as well as complexity of convention
phaeatown: insert embarrassed and understanding statement
justin shatraw: insert smarmy comment about laying carpet being a specialty
phaeatown: insert shock and disgust and address: 54 India St Apt 2

Fun.  Too bad frickin’ 54 India St is in the eastern time zone.

Who Will Protect Our Baby Vampires?

Something is in the air on the World Wide Web today. Perhaps it is some kind of cyber-full moon. I don’t know. But shit is getting wacky.

First, Traw friend and my fake son “Big Smooth” (AKA “Corzine” “The Georgia Peach”) was the subject of an absolutely brilliant Missed Connection. Check this one out — it warms the cockles of my heart:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/mis/446168938.html

Then came the SHADOWPEOPLE. You’d know them if you’ve seen them.

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/wan/446305361.html

But then, the real piece de resistance for the day. The one that simultaneous made me afraid for our children and fall out of my chair laughing at the same time:

Read the post here: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/wan/445783936.html

Real vampires as babies? That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in at least 7 years.

So consider these 3 things:

1) Love may come in the splatter of a vomit-filled balloon

2) The SHADOWPEOPLE are not fucking around; they’re collecting data

3) If we don’t protect our (vampire) children, who will?

Big Ups to Neil Peart

Special Trawtopia props to Neil Peart of Rush for being named by Blender Magazine as the second-worst lyricist in all of rock. Go Neil!

According to Blender, Peart’s lyrics are “richly awful tapestries of fantasy and science.”

Touche, Blender.

And though it’s true that Neil has been responsible for perpetrating some truly hilarious crimes against subtlety and craft – Subdivisions! The Trees! – you can’t really blame the guy. How can you expect a man to pen decent lyrics when he’s busy doing THIS:

Random Thoughts, Vol. 1

I don’t have much to go on today. Therefore, I present to you these random thoughts that have occurred to me over the last few days:

Random Thought #1 – I really hate words sometimes

Here’s an example of why I sometimes hate words: “artisan bread.” Ah yes, the bread crafted by the hardworking craftsmen of old Europe (by which I mean in the same factory and with the same nutritional value as Wonder Bread), imported specifically to your local generic deli to jack up the price of your sandwich by $3.

mmmm…words make it needlessly expensive.

Oh, Vault soda has a good new one, too. “Hybrid Energy Drink.” Y’know, “hybrid” like the type of car that gets great gas mileage and saves the environment. Drink this and you’ll do those things! Except you won’t. You’ll just get diabetes.

Fuck you, Vault. You’re soda. Deal with it.

Random Thought #2 – If George Clooney were elected President, would Ocean’s 11 be his cabinet?

According to “reliable” sources at Entertainmentwise.com, Brad Pitt has been talking up the idea of George Clooney running for president. (Read the somewhat confusing blurb here.) I think this would be great, but if — AND ONLY IF — he did so as the character Daniel Ocean. And his VP/sidekick would be none other than Rusty, played by Pitt himself. Here’s how the administration could break down.

• President of the United States – Danny Ocean (Clooney)
• Vice President – Rusty Ryan (Pitt)
• Secretary of State – Saul Bloom (Carl Reiner)
• Secretary of Treasury – Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould)
• Secretary of Defense – Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle)
• Attorney General – Linus Caldwell (Matt Damon)
• Secretary of Transportation – Frank Catton (Bernie Mac)
• Secretary of Energy – Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison)
• Secretaries of Education – Virgil and Turk Malloy (Casey Affleck & Scott Caan)
• Ambassador to China – Yen (Shaobo Qin)

Vote handsome in 2008

Now that’s the America in which I want to live. I also append to this list Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) as Secretary of Interior and Agent Caldwell (Bob Einstein – “Super Dave Osbourne”) as Secretary of Homeland Security. Totally.

Random Thought #3 – Why am I sick? I live in California!

But seriously. My sinuses are more pressuring than a car salesman who coaches high school football for fun. I get this every October, which made sense to me when I lived where there were SEASONS.

This bites.

Now with less Meth, More Hallucinogens!

Good thing I have to get on a plane tomorrow morning at 7am and fly to Seattle. Time to eat 10 Sudafed and talk to God’s dog.

Even the Internet Hates Me

YouTube outright insulted me today. I clicked on my profile and was struck by this sudden, uncalled-for assertion.

Fuck you, YouTube. That’s so uncalled for.

Out of the Box: Why Radiohead Might Just Destroy the Music Industry (We Hope)

A few weeks back, when the loyal Trawhordes were slavering for new material, I couldn’t promise much: the life of the Traw is rife with distractions (i.e. 6 fantasy football drafts), and I knew it would take some pretty monstrous news to bring me a-bloggin’.

Like many of you, I expected the desire to delve into the mysteries of Dragon Wars to be the siren which called me back, but alas: turns out there’s only so many ways you can say “Guh?”

Luckily, this morning brought a shocking bit of news which has since wended its way throughout the deepest canyons of the internets, leaving a trail of elated Anglophiles and (we imagine) distraught music executives in its wake: Radiohead are releasing a new record! Next week!! And you won’t be seeing it in stores until 2008!

Guh?

Yep, as it turns out, those mopey moppets from Oxford aren’t just innovative and brilliant in their musical endeavours: they’re now about as far out on the leading edge of the music business as anyone has been in years.

Here’s the innovation:

1. Radiohead does not have a label.

2. Following from (1), their new record In Rainbows will not be sold as a CD in your local Best Buy (yet), but rather offered as a digital download direct from their website, and/or a £40 double-LP/CD giant boxset, which is available to pre-order now and ships worldwide in early December.

3. Oh yeah: the price of the digital download is 100% at your discretion. As in, if you think it’s worth $50, you can pay $50 for it; if you think it’s worth a dime, you can pay a dime.

And here’s the genius:

1. I won’t speculate about the nature of Radiohead’s 10+ year relationship with Capitol Records. Capitol certainly did their part in helping Radiohead become one of the biggest bands in the world, but having fulfilling their contract, its hard to argue that the band has much else to gain from the relationship. It seems reasonable to assume that most things they lose out on by not staying with Capitol or another major (i.e. money and muscle to promote their records) is offset by cutting out the triple-threat middlemen of label, distributor, and retailer.

2. The formats offered with the initial release of In Rainbows shows that Radiohead, or whoever came up with the idea, has a pretty shrewd understanding of their audience and the marketplace they are dealing with. On the one hand, you have a lavish, expensive box set replete with vinyl, liner notes, photos…basically everything that traditional record collector nerds love to throw our money at. Money which, again, isn’t being filtered through a multinational corporation or two before it gets to Thom Yorke’s bank account. On the other extreme, you have mp3 downloads for the “casual fan,” which, again, aren’t coming through a titan like Apple or even Amazon, but are being sold direct through the band’s own website.

3. Most genius of all, the “name-your-own” pricing for the aforementioned mp3s. This isn’t just a cute PR move designed to make Radiohead look consumer-friendly. It’s an idea that shows great recognition of the realities of selling music in 2007. As unprotected files, these songs are sure to be up on Soulseek, Bit Torrent, and any other filesharing service you can think of within hours of their release to the public, which would usually mean that about 2/3 of the people who download them at all would be doing it illegally (i.e. free). Even if 1/3 of downloaders agreed to pay a standard $9.99 for the album, the file-sharing majority would ensure that, in essence, Radiohead would end up with about $3.33 for each copy of the record out there.

By offering the record themselves for next to nothing, and with the added guarantee that you’re not going to have to hunt through hundreds of fakes to find the real deal, Radiohead give their fans a pretty unshakable incentive to go to the source for their fix, and knowing the nature of their fanbase, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fair amount of people tossing a couple bucks their way. Y’know, just to show the love.

There are, of course, some lingering questions: What’s going to happen with the CD release next year? How much traffic can Radiohead.com handle? How many people are willing to spend $80 on a record you can legally download for free? How would this business model translate for a band without Radiohead’s clout? Ultimately, is In Rainbows even any good?

Regardless of how it plays out, this whole thing is fascinating to me. For years, the litany of the industry has been “Think outside the box – adapt or die,” and along come the industry’s favorite sons with a plan of their own: leave the whole damn box behind.