t has been well over a year since MrJames moved to Oregon. When MrJames lived with us, about every two or three months or so, he would whip up a batch of delicious salmon soup. I know, I know, many of you right now are going, “Eeew! Fish? In Soup?” but trust me, this stuff is the shit. If you like salmon, you like salmon soup.
     So, MrJames would concoct a cauldron-sized batch of yummy, delicious salmon soup, which we would proceed to devour in a week or less. It’s divine. And I hadn’t had any in over a year. It was killing me.
     I recently had a birthday, and it occurred to me that I should attempt to make a batch of salmon soup for myself, as a birthday treat. So, I consulted with MrJames on the particulars of the recipe, which isn’t difficult (and which I’m not giving away, because it’s a sacred secret recipe, much like my mother’s infamous sugar cookies), and proceeded to make salmon soup.
     I deviated slightly from the recipe to add some vegetable matter, just so I could convince myself I was having a well-rounded meal (corn and carrots, the two blandest veggies I could think of, so they wouldn’t affect the taste). The rice got away from me, as rice will do, and I ended up with a vat of salmon soup. Seriously, the soup damn near over-ran the pot. It was quite good. Not as good as MrJames’, but quite good. I was pleased.
     I checked on it this afternoon, thinking to have some for lunch, to discover that, overnight, the rice had drank up all of the broth, despite the fact that I pre-made the rice and let it soak up (I thought) all the liquid it would hold. So, beings as I was out of room in the original pot, I separated some of the ricey goodness into another pot, and added more milk. I now have two vat-sized cauldrons of salmon soup.
     I have no concept what I’m going to do with this stuff. I can pawn some off on my friends, and take some to work with me, but seriously, y’all, I could feed an army at this point. I hope this stuff freezes well, because there is no way I can eat all of this before it goes bad. I could be eating this batch of salmon soup for the rest of the year, and probably well into next year.
     In other news, I went to Wal-Mart last night — for soup ingredients, natch — and while there, found the niftiest thing. It was a vending machine for movie rentals. This must be new. It was, in fact, a RedBox. This is the coolest invention ever. It’s ingenious. Of course, I had to try it out. It’s pretty simple. You swipe your bank card or credit card, go through the touch screen menu to pick your movies, and the machine spits your movies out the side. It cost a buck a day a movie to rent movies, and you take them right back to the RedBox when you’re done, and stick them back into the side of the machine. RedBox charges your bank/credit card a dollar a day per movie until you bring them back. If you forget to return the movies, RedBox stops charging you after 25 days, and the movies are yours.
     This is brilliant. Neat, tidy, easy — I’m in love. I got Sweeney Todd and The Bucket List. Sweeney Todd was pretty good. I watched it last night while making soup. The singing got a bit tedious, but the story was good, and I liked the ending very much. The Bucket List is on deck for some time today.
     Speaking of movies, and other related media, have you seen anything about this?

     Threat Level reports that the MPAA now argues that it has the right to demand up to $150,000 in damages per illegally downloaded file, without having to proof that someone actually downloaded that file.
     Yes we know, this doesn’t make sense at all. Luckily, MPAA lawyer Marie van Uitert explains why copyright holders should be able to claim thousands of dollars without having to prove that a copyright infringement actually took place.

     Okay, MPAA, RIAA, all you anti-”pirate” people out there — Just stop it. Really. You lost. You can’t stop the pirates. (Yaaaarrr!) Unless your copyright protections include issuing a fully-functional Ed-209 with each and every CD and DVD, the pirates are just going to keep circumventing them (and frankly, they’ll probably figure a way around ED, too, and then you’ll have pirates with ED-209s running loose), and getting the music and the movies and the TV shows and whatever else there is to us, for free.
     And, in all seriousness, it’s not about the money. The days of paying the giant corporations exorbitant amounts of money for access to the artwork we enjoy is over. For example — let us assume, hypothetically, that there are a couple of TV shows I regularly torrent. (Of course, I would never torrent anything, as that would be illegal, and I’m a law-abiding citizen.) But for the sake of the example, let’s say there are. I would happily pay a small fee to download each episode of these shows to my computer. I have, in fact, used iTunes to do that very thing. But I am certainly not going to pay my cable company a ridiculous amount of money for entire channels and packages full of utter crap, just so I can watch the one or two shows that are worth a damn. I am happy to pay for a good product. I’m not dishing out a red cent to wade through shit, just to get to the small amount of good product. You know what that model is? That’s rewarding bad behavior, that’s what that is, and I won’t do it.
     As a matter of fact, if you’re a band, or a TV show, or a movie, or an artist of some sort, put up a damn website, and get a tip jar on that thing. If I like your work, I will happily come and pay you for it. Good work should be rewarded, and I’ll happily spend my hard-earned dollars to reward good work. I’ll be damned, however, if I’ll spend a dime on garbage, or to line the pockets of greedy corporate whores, if I can possibly prevent myself from doing so.
     Another thing to consider, especially concerning TV, and to a lesser extent, music and movies, do you know how much easier it would be, and how much more likely I’d be to spend my money on your product, if getting it was as easy as going to your website, giving you a buck or two, and downloading it to watch later, at my leisure? I’m not home for the majority of the TV I watch. I work nights. VCRs are a pain in the ass, TiVos are expensive, and I have to say, I really wasn’t impressed with my cable company’s “on-demand” service when I had it. If I could just wander over to your website when the fancy struck me and download an episode or two when I had a minute, I’d do that all the time.
     Much like the vending machine movie rentals up there, make it cheap and easy, and we’ll all start doing it, and you’ll make your money. Give us grief, and we’ll just say fuck it, and either steal it, or not participate at all. It’s pretty goddamn simple.

     (Photo credit: Jolly Roger.)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Controversies, Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.