Derelict! Neglector! But I have excuses:
Jury Duty: Don’t even try to tell a judge and prosecutor that you would not convict someone of a drug felony, after trial, because you know incarceration is a failed solution to non-violent crimes. It does get you thrown off a jury, that’s for sure, but man, were they unhappy with moi, the judge because she wanted no discussion of sentencing, and the prosecutor because she didn’t believe me. But 1) no one (unless famous or rich) who goes to trial for a drug felony gets anything other than some sort of incarceration, if convicted, and 2) I told the prosecutor that I’d committed the last four years of my working life to these issues.
Emusic: my free 50 downloads are swell and swelling my hard drive(s). They don’t make it easy to find good music, pushing some real garbage, but if you have the focus to search via your favored genre by album and then slog through all their offerings, you can use the ‘save for later’ function and set up a stable of backup albums if, for instance, your download period begins to end before you use your 90 downloads for $20 per month. But let’s hand it to Emusic for keeping things in the mp3 format. The way the RIAA (yeah, that’s right, I linked to it) has been making a sweep of music blogs lately, I suspect that won’t last for long, unless Emusic has beefed up a bullpen of lawyers.
And since I’m too lazy and broke to set up a way to burn my vinyl to disc, I used the 50 free downloads to grab some hard-to-find-ish stuff on cd. Hence:
A.R.Kane is better known as half (with Colourbox) of the one-off outfit M/A/R/S, of “Pump Up the Volume” left-field-hit fame. “Crazy Blue” opened up their 1988 stunner, Sixty-Nine. Hard to believe it’s not the new TV on the Radio, right? Later stuff is dismissable, avoid it like rabies.
Malcolm Middleton is the instrumental half of Arab Strap, on whom I’ve posted before. His two solo albums, the scarce and loose 5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine and the more proffessional Into the Woods are especially effective if you take glee in that exceptional expertise the Scottish have at creating a dour mood — through pop music!
Stop Loving Everything 