Trying to be one Hoopy Frood

I caught you looking at porn

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:20:00 +0000

Alright, I guess the illegal immigrants can stay

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:54:00 +0000

Illegal immigrants pay BILLIONS in taxes

They end up paying taxes under fraudulent SS #'s, so they have no intention of ever filing for a return or collecting Social Security. Great! That's the only way there will ever be any money left in Social Security by the time I'm eligible to collect it.

1957 Last Original Neon Dunkin Donuts Sign Comes Down

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:59:00 +0000

Somehow all my local keywords and feeds missed this one. I stumbled upon it from Dvorak.org/blog (everyone take a drink now). I wonder if the neighbors would be upset if I offered to put this in my yard. Do you think this would clash with my 1200 sq ft house on a small dead end street?

Fewer people dying in Massachusetts

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:16:00 +0000

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/health/15844741/detail.html?rss=bos&psp=news

They can't figure out why fewer people are dying in Massachusetts (unless you fall)? Because they're all LEAVING! Everyone retires to "God's waiting room" in FL. The gravity is a little less there because the world "bulges" a little in the middle which places the equator a little further away from the pull of gravity. So those falls aren't as devastating. Okay, I'm stretching there. But seriously, with the economy in the shape it's in, particularly in Mass., the media has been talking about massive outflows of people and businesses from this state for a few years now.

Last one out please shut off the lights . . .

Cash price for gas?

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:31:00 +0000

I thought this was illegal in Massachusetts. I've been driving by BeeZee's on Rte 20 the past week or so and noticed this sign. You can't really see it too well in the picture but it has a separate price listed for cash or for credit card transactions. I thought there was a law in Massachusetts that gas stations couldn't charge different prices for cash or credit transactions.

I mean, in this market I can understand why they would want to, but still . . .

New music business model

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I was just watching a Chris Pirillo video podcast that was talking about software piracy - how it's not right. If someone worked hard to produce that software it's not right for someone to steal it. They offered it out there for what they thought it was worth. If you don't agree that it's worth that much, don't buy it. Use something else. There's a good chance that there's a free/open source alternative. If it's overpriced the market will not bear it - or so the theory goes.

He compared it to buying/stealing a car. But that is a bad analogy. A car is a physical object. It takes physical parts to manufacture it. It costs basically twice as much to make two cars as it does one. Conversely, it costs roughly the same to sell one computer program as it does to sell a million (minus middle man expenses).

Now when it comes to music it costs almost exactly the same to sell one MP3 as it does to sell a million (minus negligible bandwidth costs). And now thanks to the long tail of digital media, record companies can make money on back catalog that previously wasn't worthwhile to re-print. Throw it on a server. If someone wants to buy it, that's 99 cents you made that you wouldn't have had before. Money that was left on the table until now - and it's millions! Ask Apple.

But it's the part about charging what you think it's worth that kind of caught my ear. The music industry doesn't think like that. They're used to being in a physical object market and aren't adjusting well to this digital market.

But what I thought was interesting is taking a song and putting a value of say $10,000 to me. I put $10,000 worth of time and effort into it. Or I need to make $10,000 on this song to make songwriting a worthwhile venture. Now $10,000 may sound high but I equate it to a plumber or some such occupation that charges a high hourly rate. But you need to keep in mind that he's not generally doing that kind of work 40 hours per week. I'm not going to write 500 $10,000 songs per year. If I could make 3 $10,000 songs per year I would be happy. Hell, one would make me ecstatic.

Now I can charge $1 for each download and reach my goal when I sell 10,000 copies. Or I can sell it for $10 and only need 1000 sales. But the point is I can adjust that marketing curve to wherever it needs to be. If 20,000 will buy it for 50 cents - fine! Or if 200,000 will buy it for 5 cents - GREAT!

So I'm thinking of a model that adjusts to the old marketing curve - kinda like they do with electronics now. When a new gadget first comes out the early adopters pay a premium. Of course in this instance it

's to recoup the costs of R&D etc. Then when/if it hits the mass market then you can drop the price a little and sell more units to the general public.

That's the reverse of what they're doing with a lot of CD's and DVD's. They have them on sale the first week, presumably to boost chart numbers. Then it goes to the regular over-price. But who the hell pays attention to charts anymore. Everything is a niche. The long tail economy on the web is fragmenting the music industry. It used to be the top 100 artists selling 1,000,000 records. Now there is more money made on the 1,000,000 bottom selling artists selling 100 records. The math may be a little off, but the point is in there somewhere.

So how about if we had a model in place for songs where you sell the song the first week or month for $1 then it drops a little, then a little more. Your 1,000 die-hard fans that Jonathan Coulton and Wil Wheaton talked about that would buy anything you make - and pay a premium for it - they'll buy it up. Then if they talk about it enough and it catches on you can lower the price to entice the second tier crowd. To me this seems to solve a problem of money left on the table. If there's a guy that kinda likes my song but isn't going to risk his buck, but would buy it if it were trivially priced at 5 cents or something ridiculous, why shouldn't I collect those nickels?

Or would it even be worth it to say that I'll give the song away for free after making that $10,000. If I've got a good enough audience that likes me and wants other people to find me they will help me get to that $10,000. And then when it's free even more people are likely to download it and get introduced to me. And I've gotten what I wanted out of the song.

Anyhow, just something I had percolating around in my head and had to write it out to see if it made any sense at all.

Happy Pi Day

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Happy Pi Day

. . . these 15, er, 10 commandments, er, 15

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:49:00 +0000

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/15552980/detail.html?rss=bos&psp=news

So now there are new sins that have "evolved" to address today's society. Were these in small print on the back of the 10 commandments and we never saw them before? Can we look back at some of the old ones and maybe update them too? We can add new ones but can we repeal old, outdated sins?

Squeeze my lemon

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:51:00 +0000

A friend of mine just sent me this video about all the germs found on lemons in your drinks in restaurants. My opinion? Meh! Germophobic bitch! Those germs are there, always have been. They're everywhere. If you take a swab of your kitchen counter I can almost guarantee there will be fecal bacteria there too. It just is. And you don't even want to know about your kitchen sponge. (Get the thing wet and nuke it for 3-4 min every few days.) Who knows how it gets there. But we've been living with it. I've been getting lemons in my water for years and haven't gotten sick. "That which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger."

My uneducated opinion is that the combination of the vitamin C content and the acidity of the lemon more than offset any germs, including any germs that may have been in the water itself. So, I will continue to squeeze my lemon. hahaha Just to be totally safe I think I'll stick with Jack and Coke with a lime. The Jack will certainly kill anything harmful. I'm just drinking it to be safe . . .

How the hell did they even do this "study"? Did they have a freakin' petri dish at the table with them? Did the lady herself maybe drop a deuce and not wash her hands while she was at the restaurant? Either way if I were the waiter and I saw that shit I know I'd be wiping my ass with the lady's steak! Maybe even a shot of special sauce for good measure. ;)

Church urges hanky panky among members

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:19:00 +0000

Church urges hanky panky among members

I'm moving to Florida and finding religion!

Actually I had to search through my Diggs to find this one but I knew I remembered a couple who went for 100 days of sex!

3 hours of MTV from 1983

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:55:00 +0000

Nostalgic. Back when they used to play . . . wait for it . . . music. No, you didn't even have to wait for it. It was music, 24 hours a day.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5905210375134304831

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5141974708608716448

Thanks to Wil Wheaton for making my afternoon. I'm just letting this play in the background. It's like listening to MTV back when they were good, but having the DVR capability I have now and being able to rewind if I miss the beginning of a good song.

Outsourcing Gone Too Far

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:53:00 +0000

I got this in my e-mail the other day:

I was depressed last night so I called Lifeline.

Got          a call center in Pakistan .

I          told them I was suicidal.

They          got all excited and asked if I could drive a          truck.

Does God really hate fags?

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:01:00 +0000

RE: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,324966,00.html and GodHatesFags.com

I saw this yesterday on Digg or somewhere. And I agree with one of the comments I saw. They were pretty much saying how we're all for free speech and all but if some government entity knocked down the door of that church and "disappeared" those retarded zealots I don't think anyone would be up in arms about 1st amendment rights etc.

I just can't believe how many people will blindly follow these fucktards. But somehow it's not considered terrorism if it's Christianity. As far as I'm concerned these people are just as bad if not worse that al Quaeda. Same m.o. Distort one tiny little part of the sacred text of your particular religion to justify doing things that are totally against everything else that text stands for. Someone should proofread these freakin' things for loopholes. Didn't the early Christians have lawyers?

Notice that you'll never hear about cults of radical atheists strapping explosives to themselves or flying planes into buildings to make a point. I guess no promise of an afterlife (with 72 virgins *) helps you make those types of decisions a little more clearly.

I just can't imagine how these people can justify being like that. Do they really think they'll be standing in front of St. Peter and he's gonna go, "Yeah, great job representing the Big Guy. He really hates those homos. He hates the damn platypuses too, but that's okay. At least you got that message out about the queers." Doesn't the bible say "judge not, lest ye be judged" too?

I wish more religious people could just be like the Amish. Let us have our little community and live the way we want - zipper and velcro free. We don't care if you live our way or not. Just leave us the fuck alone.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Steven Weinberg (1933 - ), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

* Why is it 72 virgins anyway? These people apparently aren't very good at math. How could there be 72 virgins left for every one of these mental defects? And are they really that friggin' horny? I mean, I like a good piece of ass as much as the next guy, but it ain't worth a TNT vest. And there are women getting into this shit now too. What the hell do they get?

The math reminds me of when the Jehova's come to the door and tell me there are only 10,000 spots in heaven. There's got to already be more than 10,000 Jehova's witnesses alive - and probably more than that dead already. Do they bump somebody already there if someone more pure gets there after them? What if you were number 10,000 and you recruited me and I was just a little bit better than you and bumped you out of your slot. How bad would that suck?

Do They Know? Do they freakin' care?

noreply@blogger.com (HoopyFrood42) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:17:00 +0000

You know, I was just putting together a CD of Christmas songs and I'm listening to "Do They Know It's Christmas?" What a piss-poor, rude, obnoxious, zealous Judeo-Christian-centric song that is! First off, they are predominantly Muslim in Africa. So no, they don't fucking CARE if it's Christmas or not. In fact, they don't care so much so that they're brethren had to fly a couple planes into some predominantly Christian buildings just to show how much they don't care about Christmas or the whole Western aka Christian way of life. "It's Christmas time and there's no need to be afraid." Well, the Bush administration would have you believe differently.

"Say a prayer for the Other ones." Fuck them. They took those little kids right after the plane crashed on the island. And they dress in rags and left Charlie for dead hanging in a tree. They kidnapped Michael's kid off the boat. Screw the Others . . . oh, that line wasn't about the Others on Lost? Never mind.

"Where the only bells that are ringing are the clanging chimes of doom." Man, you just don't hear enough about chimes of doom in Christmas songs these days. Nothing makes it feel more like a Christmas song than a few reindeer bells and a good mention of doom, oh yeah, and dread and fear too. That's lyrical gold right there.

And "There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time." Yeah, 'cause that's just what they need is a fucking blizzard right now. That would clear up all their troubles and woes. "Look, Boateng, it is snowing. Now I will have to walk five miles up hill both ways in the snow with no shoes - in a fucking loincloth - to get to the market. Where's MY fucking global warming?!"

"Here's to you, raise a glass for everyone, here's to them, underneath that burning sun." Yeah, shit, we're partying it the fuck up over here. We spent more money on beer alone for this party than your whole village makes in a year. So, hey, bottom's up! Enjoy that burning fucking sun though. Must be rough.

And my absolute favorite line in that song is the one Bono belts out. "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you." That is one of the rudest, most insensitive things I've ever heard in my life. "Yeah, God, thanks for letting them starve and not me. Phew! Nice one. Yay, God." It is my opinion that Bono is so deeply involved in charities to this day just out of guilt and shame for getting that line pulled out of a hat and belting it out with such gusto.

Even notice how it's Sting singing, then Bono comes in harmonizing. Then for that last line Sting steps out as if to say, "I ain't touching that line with a ten foot pole." Shoved Bono right under the bus on that one.

That's my rant for today. Just had to get that out while it was fresh in my mind.

Merry X-mas to all, and to all a good night. Except for the Africans. 'Cause Santa's not sliding down the chimney into your thatch roof hut this Christmas. Sorry.