I can only get away with this because my wife never reads my blogs. :p

I am really happy with my Congressman, Lloyd Doggett, for many reasons but especially because he not only responds when I email him with an issue, but if he has a major update on something I have harrassed him about then he sends it to me. I wrote him several weeks ago about the FCC trying to line the pockets of fat cats. (My biggest concern was that allowing even larger corporations increases the liklihood that fiascos like Enron and Worldcom/MCI would happen in the media world and even more people would be damaged.) Anyway, he sent me this email today.

After another throughly enjoyable viewing of the Food Channel‘s show “Good Eats” with Alton Brown, I was inspired to recreate Alton’s instructions for building a smoker from scratch. Alton runs a great show that mixes cooking with science — so you find out WHY to cook a certain way instead of just HOW — and he had a short tirade expaining why commercial cookers are substandard so he’d just build his own. (Friends of mine can request a full copy of the show from me — the rest of you can buy the DVD when it comes out.) Me and a couple buddies followed Alton’s lead and here’s the low-down.

Huge performance today by the Yankee, Tyler Hamilton, he of the broken collarbone. He went off the front of the peleton for about 190 km during today’s stage, and finished by himself about 2 minutes before everyone else. Puts him in striking distance of third place in the time trial on Saturday.

Best part was his huge, crap-eating grin for the last 3 or so kilometers, once he realized he was going to win the stage. It’s great to see athletes who love to do what they do.

Senator Mitch McConnel, GOP-Kentucky, has taken up the defense of tasty food by quoting America’s Finest News Source. Seems that in a prescient move (WSJ.com’s Best of the Web Today calls this ‘Life imitates “The Onion”’), The Onion ran an article spoofing the then suprising tobacco settlements, and pending suits against gun manufacturers by running a ficticious story about a jury verdict finding that “(Hersheys’) knowingly and willfully marketing rich, fatty candy bars containing chocolate and other ingredients of negligible nutritional value.”

While I’m glad to see that our elected representatives are using reputable sources, not like that dubious British Government, it’s kind of sad that what passed as satire three short years ago is now actual news.

One last thing – I’ve been dying to find a replacement for www.satirewire.com. Any suggestions?

Sucker music pirates should call him… Ally?

The baddest of the bad, Michael Jackson, the same guy who was on the Jackson 5 (In French!), believe it or not, has issued a statement condemming the latest overkill in the file sharing wars. Seems that the Record Industry and some in Congress, notably Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Cali, though I’m betting that there are a couple of GOP types teaming up with these trial lawyers on this legislation.

I’ll admit to having dabbled in Napster and snapped up some doozies such as ‘Oops, I Did It Again’ before Napster was shut down; however, since then I’ve cleaned them off my hard drive. And I’ll admit that I stopped swapping songs because of potential legal action (That, and a couple of really crappy downloads, and the arrivial of some decent, legal alternatives). However, federal prison seems excessively harsh to me for swiping a couple of MP3’s.

I’m firmly behind intellectual property rights, but I’d be willing to bet that the drop off in CD sales is more closely tied to the recession in 2000 than to file sharing. The failure to rebound could be a result of the industry publishing crap (with a few exceptions). Who wants to buy ‘My Diary” et al to get ‘Oops?’

Used to be that you could grab a 45 with the hit you wanted. CD singles never really reached their potential. I firmly put the blame for this on the Record Companies (who never passed along the cost savings gained by switching to CD’s from tapes and LP’s) for keeping prices of CD singles up there with prices of entire albums on cassette. Apple’s Music Store has a model which might be able to re-capture the market for 45’s, and bring back the separation between the album artist and the one-hit wonder.