Apart from the fact that the phrase “new tax” gets most people in a gun-polishin’, survivalist-cabin-buyin’, Libertarian-votin’ mood, the music industry has apparently completely missed the fact that there’s at least one enormous industry firmly in front of it in line: Pornographers!
You heard that right. Do you really think the first thing the geeks who originally developed the Internet thought, when they were done soldering the last wire in place, was “hey, now I can share music with someone”?
Okay, this has been bugging me for aeons, and if someone has the time and patience to search for more archived videos of old Gillette shaving advertisements, I’m sure you’ll be able to retire rich off the money you’ll raise from this sure-fire class action lawsuit. For now, I’m avoiding the whole thing, because to research this post I had to search for terms like “shaving” and “video,” and if you’ve ever done something like that you know you’ll get results that would make you want to stick pins into your brain in the hope of destroying the synapses holding those visual memories.
Years ago, I received some deep wisdom from an extraordinary, modern-day Vietnamese philosopher. Oddly enough, this philosopher appeared on late-night television, surrounded by bikini-clad women, and was aggressively hawking his real estate seminars.
Nevertheless, I learned several important lessons from him, the most prominent among them (for me, at least) being the following (reproduced from memory):
“So I come to the United States, I tell people I want to be rich. They look at me and say ‘You crazy! You poor guy, you poor immigrant, you barely speak English, lots of other people smarter than you, they not rich, how you think you going to get rich? You crazy!’”
“You know what I say to these people? I say ‘You are a loser! Get out of my way! I make it somehow!‘”
I’ve been trying to ignore the insults that Sergey Brin’s throwing at me via his little automated-ridicule-generator (also known as Google AdSense), but I’m beginning to take umbrage at the subjects of the ads appearing most frequently on this blog. A small sample, with comments (and the irony is that by listing these ads, I am driving up the likelihood that they’ll be displayed even more often):
“Scalp Problems?” — THIS is the best this multi-billion-dollar internet juggernaut can do when confronted by the word “Scalpel”? We’re doomed, I tell you, doomed!
“Relationship Counseling” — Yeah, I think I’ll get some counseling…ON THE INTERNET. That will work well.
“Fix Your Marriage” — Doing just fine, thanks! All four of them! So far none of them’s found out about the others!
“Inside a Boyfriend’s Mind” — Women always say they want to know what men are thinking. Trust me, they don’t. As Larry Miller says, if they did, they’d never stop slapping us.
“Do Men Want Intimacy?” — Arrgh! No. We want food, big flat-screen televisions, and maybe private jets.
So trust me, Sergey — I’m keeping track, here. You’re on my list for when the Revolution comes, my friend.
But in the meantime, keep those checks coming.
And hey, all you readers — keep clicking on those ads!
Apologies for the short gap in posting. I’ve been thinking about how to respond to a surprising “cease and desist” letter I received last week. Normally, these things shower down upon me like snow in January, to as little effect, but this one was different.
You see, it was signed by a few people whose name I recognized: Bill Gates (yeah, the Microsoft guy — former minion of mine, now in open rebellion, due for a comeuppance, long story), Sergey Brin (Google, same basic siutation), Jeffrey Bezos (CEO of amazon.com) and Pierre Omidyar (EBay dude).
Rather than try to summarize the letter, I’ll just reproduce it here in its entirety:
Technologists are eternal optimists, in that they blithely assume that their new products will never turn manifestly evil.
But of course, even the most innocuous inventions can misfire, even when one is not actively seeking to use them for harm (and don’t let any guy fool you — the first thing any normal guy thinks when he’s confronted with a new device or technology is “How could I break this?” Another part of him is only a step behind, thinking “How can I use this as a weapon?” A slightly lower layer, a sort of ever-present meta-theme permeating all guys’ thoughts, of course, is “How can I use this to attract the babes?” ).
Given the U.S.’s recent successful shootdown of its own satellite, some people have suggested I post a piece I circulated a little while back on a private list. So, here it is, with an addendum.
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As a parent of young children, I have developed a low-cost solution to the nation’s ballistic missile defense needs: Three-year-olds!
Because relentless Valentine’s Day advertising by DeBeers (subtle hidden message to him: “if you buy her a diamond, she’ll sleep with you!”; subtle hidden message to her: “if he doesn’t buy you a diamond, you shouldn’t sleep with him!”) doesn’t make people insecure enough this time of year, now comes the Wall Street Journal to report that, through advanced brain imaging technology, it is now possible to scientifically confirm the existence of true, unending love.
This immediately eliminates the comfortable illusion clung to by much of the populace that people who claim they still feel like teenagers towards each other are either 1) mentally deranged or 2) lying through their teeth. It’s about as cruel as scientifically proving that billionaires really are ecstatically happy, leading deeply fulfilling lives, and regarding less-wealthy people as substantially inferior to themselves, rather than, say, walking around with fake smiles while they’re screaming inside. Continue Reading »
