This is from a few weeks ago. It’s 40 minutes long, so it’s possibly only of interest to other Nine Inch Nails fans.

Tyrannosaurus Reznor: best nickname ever.

Update: I googled Tyrannosaurus Reznor and found this. The song is ‘Pilgrimage’ from The Fragile.

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

[...]

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

“These guys weren’t making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

“The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn’t even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

“There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,” he said.

I’m downloading six torrents as I type this; nobody’s going to stop downloading music and films because of this trial. If anything, it will only make people less likely to pay for music and films, since everyone has been given fresh evidence that record companies and film studios are run by unpleasant people. I’ll never buy a CD again, but if I had the money I’d buy a Pirate Bay t-shirt to show my support for Messrs. Neij, Svartholm Warg, Lundstrom and Sunde, who are nothing short of internet heroes.

Long live The Pirate Bay!

This is what YouTube was made for – Scar from The Lion King singing Richard Cheese and Lounge Against The Machine’s cover of ‘Down with the Sickness’ by Disturbed. Awesome.

‘Last Caress’ by AFI (Misfits Cover).

Lousy camera work, but otherwise splendid. And I have to agree with the YouTube commenter who said that Davey looked way better back then, before he became stupidly muscular and covered in tattoos.

‘The Ballad Of Sal Villanueva’ by Taking Back Sunday.

Maddeningly unhinged and brilliant. (The studio version is more coherent and audible.) This line-up collapsed in bitter acrimony sometime not long after this tour and the band has kind of sucked ever since.

Someone is going to say something along the lines of “this music is shit.” And in a very narrow sense such a person may be right, but since this is my blog, and since I’ll post whatever I damn well like, fuck you, this stuff pwns.

A Wordle based on the lyrics from all the songs on the Alkaline Trio album From Here To Infirmary. I think it’s an interesting way of using the site. I’m a bit disappointed with the result, but it might work better on other albums.

Update: Here’s The Downward Spiral:

Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this. So…

The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice that happens more often than not. There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it. There are a number of scams they employ to pull this off which is beyond the scope of this note.

StubHub.com is an example of a re-seller / scalper. So is TicketsNow.com.

Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

Trent explains elsewhere in the post that Nine Inch Nails doesn’t participate in this scam and asks fans not to support scalpers.

According to some forum posts on nin.com, there’s a reasonable-to-good chance that the band will play an arena show in Amsterdam sometime around the 8th or 9th of July. Just doing my bit to keep the rumour mill going; maybe if fans drum up enough excitement about it Trent will feel like he has to do it.

You’re going to GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!

Post the fucking tour dates already!

Generation Kill is a HBO miniseries about a platoon of marines involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In Ireland, it’s shown on FX on Sky Digital (channel 164). If you have any interest in the Iraq war, or like war movies, or just like good television, then you should probably check it out. It’s the best thing I’ve seen on TV in years.

Here’s an NYTimes review in case you want to read more about it.

A deep-down aversion to A-R-T is one big reason half of America stays away from fiction. They’re afraid they’ll come across a sentence like: “She looked out the window and saw the reflection of her own pale face against the drifted snow.” Something girlish and moody like that.

These are guys who like to play video games in which you shoot people and spatter their blood on the wall. And what they might go for is manly fiction: perhaps “Read my book, buttface,” said the novelist standing in the dim doorway of Brad’s garage. “Pick it up and read it.” “I ain’t gonna read your book, it’s got a lot of weird words like ‘languid’ and ‘luminous’ in it,” said Brad. He wondered if that was a real gun in the novelist’s hand. It was. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Blood spattered all over the garage and his workbench. Blood glittered on the gunstock that Brad had been sanding for his shotgun. He wouldn’t be sanding it no more. No sir.

Something like that.

Read the rest of it; it’s smashing stuff.

A US teenager killed his mother and wounded his father in revenge after they took away his violent computer game, a judge has ruled.

The defence team for Daniel Petric, 17, had argued his addiction to the Halo 3 game, in which players shoot invading aliens, had made him insane.

But the judge rejected this, saying he had planned revenge for weeks.

Read the whole article; it’s disgusting. The guy is either genuinely crazy or an absolutely terrible human. Either way, he should be kept away from the public. See how much Halo you get to play in prison, you sick fuck.

Well, this Jew objects. I mean, for Christ’s sake, it’s Christmas. Can’t we call a thing by its name? Hannukah is a minor holiday of a minority religion. New Year’s Day is merely a day on the calendar. It’s a holiday season because it’s Christmas. I love Christmas. I don’t celebrate it, but I love it; I love the season, the lights, the chestnuts, the message of peace. I love the way our most Jewish city, New York, looks on Christmas. “Holiday” isn’t a holiday. It’s a way of avoiding offense. But who, exactly, is offended? This is what I don’t understand.

This atheist couldn’t agree more.

I love the way he draws Palin.

Link.