A Whole Bunch of Totally Unrelated Stuff

I don't think I have too much to write on any one given topic today. But the topics are building up. So: compendium post.

First of all, I'd like to tell Jen she was right and I was wrong. iTunes is freakin' awesome.

I've been getting my music mostly by means of Limewire for the past year or so. I have found an awful lot of stuff residing out there on other people's hard drives. Alas, my musical tastes are eclectic enough that I haven't found everything I'm looking for...not even close. My friend Jason tipped me off to SHAREZ, which has entire albums, not just single songs. Downside: the selection, while voluminous, is heavily slanted towards world music. Nothing wrong with that...just not what I'm looking for.

Enter iTunes. So far, there's all of one group (The Proclaimers) that's woefully underrepresented at the iTunes store. Other than that, though, it's just as Jen said: you can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars if you're not careful...especially since everything is so CHEAP! Each song is 99 cents, and an album, regardless of length, is $9.99. Try getting the London West End 2006 production of Evita for $9.99 anywhere else.
I've found euphonium compilations, many of them. For those of you who have no idea what a euphonium is, it's a sort of tenor tuba...I used to play it in high school band, and I was heavily into brass band culture then, the sort of thing that generally only exists in Britain.
I've found obscure albums by groups like Moxy Fruvous. I've found albums by (undeservedly) obscure groups like The Paperboys. And this morning I found the coup de grace: an album by Matthew Osborne.
Matt Osborne (1973-2004) was a crackerjack musician from here in Waterloo and something of a friend of mine. He was probably the most talented guitarist I've ever run across in my life, a tireless champion of new and emerging artists, and an all-around nice guy. We lost touch when I left Laurier, and I was shocked and greatly saddened when I read of his passing. I really wish I had set my fear aside and let him guide me into the music scene, as he was forever trying to do.
Now, according to the site, all four of Matt's albums have been reissued. That wasn't the case as little as six months ago--hell, I don't believe that website existed six months ago--and so I was pleasantly stunned to find Matt's last release in the iTunes store.

If anyone ever asks me what gift would make my heart sing, I always answer a Chapters gift card does the trick every time. Now I can add that an iTunes card does the same thing.

---------------------------------------------

I'm going to take a serious look at the Green Party whenever the next federal election rolls around. I don't support all their initiatives--I tend to agree with Stephen Harper, for instance, when he calls Kyoto a 'socialist scheme' to redistribute wealth on a global scale. But I do like that the Greens tend to think outside the box in a way that the mainline parties just don't.
Take, for instance, their stance on gas prices. Last I heard, they want them increased...doubled, I think. Now before you howl in outrage, note that they would cut income taxes proportionally so that the whole thing would be revenue-neutral.
I like that thinking. Reward people for being environmentally responsible.
I think you're going to see the Greens get stronger and stronger over the next several electoral terms, and I predict they'll form a government within 25 years.

---------------------------------

I am so heartily sick of the Conrad Black trial. I'd like to avoid it but it's taken over Macleans magazine like a fungus. Know what would be nice? A website/TV channel/podcast/whatever devoted entirely to celebrity trials. The various means of access would be widely published in the mainstream media, but that's it, at least until a verdict is rendered. Those of us who have the slightest interest in this sort of thing could then go wallow in it. The site could have full video, a full transcript, an analysis of every syllable uttered, an exhaustive description of what the accused is wearing, everything. The rest of us could then be left in peace.
Come to think of it, this idea could be expanded. I've long lamented that so-called "reality" television isn't shunted off to its own network. Every single day, my local paper chooses to put what I feel is questionable content on its front page. Yesterday, it was a picture of a two-year-old sitting on a statue. Above the fold. They didn't even publish the day before (holiday: world stops) or the day before that (Sunday: world stops) meaning there was...supposedly...three whole days of news backed up since their last edition.
Today, there's an article titled "Lifting weights can reverse ravages of time". Are either of these things news? The second, perhaps. Do they belong on the front page of a paper that purportedly serves a city of well over half a million? I don't think so. I can't wait for the day when our personal media assistants (PMAs) cull the news for us as we sleep to present the kinds of stories each of us finds relevant. Fragmentation of the mediasphere, baby. It's coming.

-------------------------------------------

There is much hand-wringing going on here in Waterloo Region over the large number of disappearing factory jobs. There have been upwards of a dozen plant closures in this city over the past decade, and there are doubtless more on the way. The overall employment level is actually up; there is just a huge ongoing shift in the nature of employment, away from manufacturing and towards service and technology.
I don't pretend to understand the underlying economics. The high dollar is often cited, which I could maybe accept if the loonie was trading at significantly above a dollar U.S. What I do know is that corporations will generally go where it's cheapest to operate...where the taxes are low, the labour laws lax, the environmental regulations non-existent. You can't really blame them. Blame instead the overarching societal motive to pursue profit at any cost...and to define profit so narrowly and over such a short term.
This is yet another reason we need One World Government: to abolish multinationals. It'd be nice to see humanity come to the realization that "nations" are figments of a tortured imagination. We are all one "nation": any assertion to the contrary is based on primitive us-versus-them thinking. This will come to pass, if we allow ourselves to grow up. Right now, our species is deep in the throes of adolescence. I hope we get through it intact, I really do.