I’m not bitching here. I appreciate the work that they do, really, but you can see my beef, right? I didn’t just shovel seven feet of snow off of my driveway. I also shoveled it off about six feet worth of road too. Yes they plowed the road, but they never even came close to plowing all of it, and it was like this from the first snowfall on.
I’m really not complaining. We were able to get out of the house thanks to them. I will always tip my hat to the plow drivers. It’s just… Damn it.
Who’s been walking on my snow?
(The answer is… a skunk. Not much of a mystery, but it’s better than what I had.)
I fell off the weight watchers wagon during the holidays. I clawed my way back on in January. Then the weather went to hell in a hand basket in February and I fell off hard again. I am back to my old junk food ways. The plan is to get back on the wagon when life calms down a little in a week or two. I will be just as militant in my weight watchers as I was in the fall, don’t worry about that.
That’s not what this post is about though. This post, as the title suggests, is about Blasphemy with a capital B.
Seeing as Spring is coming quickly upon us, the world turns its junk food eye to the Easter holiday. That means one thing and one thing only. Cadbury Mini Eggs. The single greatest junk food ever created by human brilliance. The genius of the Mini Eggs cannot be overstated. Word on the street though is that Cadbury will soon be stopping all operation within the United States. That means that Mini Egg lovers like me need to get them while they can! Fortunately for my sweet tooth (singular. There is literally only one tooth left in my rotten head. Well… not literally, more like figuratively… for now) I’m off the weight watchers wagon and can indulge my love for the heavenly decadence of Cadbury’s finest confection.
I bought two bags at a CVS last night. When I came home I eagerly opened one, dumped the contents into a bowl, and prepared for junk food bliss.
But wait…
What’s going on here?
The colors are all wrong! Did Hershey’s screw things up on us?
I popped one into my mouth, not even worrying about the huge red flag that should have been waving in my clueless, unsuspecting face.
Wait a tic…
What’s going on here?
This is dark chocolate! What What What? Dark Chocolate?
BLASPHEMY!!!!
I checked the bag I just opened. Sure enough, it says dark chocolate. I am insulted. I am offended. They took the greatest thing on Earth and took a giant crap all over it. Dark chocolate? No. Mini Eggs must be only the finest milk chocolate. Only the best will do! Not some faux chocolate kick in the balls. Never! Never, I say!
I said I bought two bags last night. The other one is milk chocolate. That means some clueless rouge of a CVS employee mixed two different products into the same bin. Damn his or her eyes!
Dark chocolate mini eggs. How dare they? How Dare they!
This is a place holder. The prompt for today is mystery and I have an idea for it, but it was dark when I left home today and it will be dark when I get home. This is yet another shot of my favorite spot on Canobie Lake. It’s mysterious if you are wondering what goes down in those ice fishing huts… I guess.
Today’s Blogging 101 challenge is to build a blogroll and add links to your page.
No.
I have links to some of my other pages, but that’s not what they want. They want links to other blogs. This is another community building exercise.
No.
I have nothing against building up the wordpress.com community, I just really hate blogrolls. When I am reading your blog I want to read your blog. I don’t give shit one about other pages that you read. I don’t expect you to give shit one about other pages I read.
No. I hate blogrolls. I will not add one to this page.
Here are a couple of records I’ve been listening to a lot lately. I have found these through Google searches for new music and I literally know nothing about any of the artists, aside from knowing that I like the records.
Club Meds by Dan Mangan and Blacksmith. I don’t recall what I was searching for when I found this, but I liked it enough to spin through it about three times during work today.
Teeth Dreams by The Hold Steady. This band’s singer might turn some people off, but if the band ever decided to replace him I will literally smack them all across their idiot faces. This voice is PERFECT for this band. Perfect, I say!
Warmth? Really? After the winter we’ve had they want me to take a picture that represents warmth? Yeah, right.
Okay… One more day…
I’m intrigued by the whole Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke lawsuit. It’s obvious to anyone who has functioning ears that the Robin Thicke song is blatantly stolen from the Marvin Gaye song. It’s painfully clear. The right group won the case. It’s just that simple.
What’s bugging me is the crap that’s gone on around the case. First off, many people are commenting on stories saying that they disagree with the decision. I write those people off as not having functioning ears. I’m sorry. There are copyright rules regarding sampling, and you are allowed to use portions of an existing work within your new work. Courtesy dictates that you credit the source material. That’s not what happened here. They took the heart and soul of the song and just stole it. It’s blatant.
Why then did the Robin Thicke team sue the Marvin Gaye team? You read that right. Someone representing Gaye’s estate made a comment that the songs were very similar so Robin Thicke actually sued the Gaye estate. Really? Is that really how it happened? The case that was decided this week was the Gaye estate’s counter suit. I mean… guys… you blatantly stole the song and then had the audacity to sue the owner of the original song when they dared question your motives? You deserved to lose the whole thing just as a punishment for your stupidity. Chances are if you had kept your mouths shut NOTHING WOULD EVER HAVE COME OUT OF IT! Your little pop song would have dropped off the charts and gone away forever the way all little pop songs do. It was stupid to respond and now you’re paying the price financially.
As for the Gaye estate… what is this injunction crap? That is totally the wrong move. First of all, as just mentioned, it’s a pop song that’s already fallen off the charts. How many copies of it do you expect them to sell from now on? I’ll tell you how many. Not many! Second, stopping the sales doesn’t do anything except bring more attention. What you should have done is asked the court to put Marvin Gaye’s name into both the writing and publishing credits. That way what few copies do sell from now on would result in income. That, on top of the huge cash settlement, would have put Mr Gaye’s family into a very nice financial position for the foreseeable future. Instead you now look like sore winners who aren’t happy with 7+ million dollars. Bad move, folks. Bad move.
Of course all of this mess could have been avoided if the folks who took credit for writing the Thicke song had just been courteous and professional and included Marvin Gaye’s name in the credit from day one. Credibility wise there is nothing wrong with borrowing from your influences, so long as you give credit where credit is due. If it really was just “the groove” that you took, then fine. It wasn’t. You took everything from the original song’s backing track. You should have given Marvin Gaye a writing credit from the start. That would have been the right thing to do, and you would have looked AWESOME doing it. Everyone in the business would have taken notice of it and I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say you would have come off as heroes to the R&B community. That move would have been a great one.
I should note that I keep saying they should have given Marvin Gaye a writing and publishing credit. I realize that I don’t know for sure that Marvin Gaye wrote the song. I believe he did, but if so I don’t know if there were other people collaborating. I should say that the writers of the original song should be given credit on the song that stole from them.
So there. Blogging 101 asked us to write a post based on something we commented on yesterday. Normally I would say that the things I comment on really aren’t anyone’s business besides me and the person who wrote the post that I commented on. In this case though, I was probably going to write something about this anyway. So there you go.
*edits* I knew that he spelled his last name Gaye, with an e, but at about the same time “Sexual Healing” was climbing the charts I had a classmate who spelled his last name without the e, Gay. For some reason in this post I went with Pete’s spelling instead of Marvin’s. Fixed.
Today’s challenge is to leave comments on at least four posts. Done. You know, I thought this was going to be writing prompts. It seems that very little of the blogging 101 assignments have involved actual blogging. I am losing interest at a remarkable rate.
I just reread last night’s email I was supposed to bookmark the posts I commented on. I’ll need them for a future day’s challenge.
Um… no. I am already following every blog I commented on (hence my pulling them from the Reader), I’m not bookmarking them too.
I think I might be done with blogging 101.
Almost didn’t make it.
