I keep getting an interesting piece of spam.

“Better than Botox?”

I never open it, so I don’t know what they’re selling.

But, honestly – how could it possible be better than taking a potentially deadly medical toxin and injecting it directly under the skin?

Official Notice

As my brother has found, Metallica is trying to prove that they’re better at lawsuits than at music. How else could one explain their latest lawsuit, proclaiming that they own the E – F chord progression?

It certainly doesn’t suggest that they’re superior musicians.

This raises an interesting point, however. If Metallica sets the precedent, then we could get Arlo Guthrie to file suit on his father’s behalf to show that the Guthrie estate owns the D – G – A chord progression. All we need then is for Jimmy Buffett to file a claim that use of the G – D – A chord progression causes confusion with “Margaritaville”, and ninety percent of modern country music will disappear overnight.

Artist: Jewel
Label: Atlantic
Genre: Pop
Rating: ** (2 out of 4)
Availability: Widely Available / iTunes Music Store Download

Jewel’s first album arrived without fanfare – a tiny little folk album in a sea of mass-produced pop and hard-driving rock. An insane schedule of tours through venues that most artists avoided built the album (and the artist) a strong fan following until Jewel finally managed to appear on the charts. The thing everybody saw in Pieces of You was raw talent. This Alaskan-born singer wrote and played songs that ranged from love ballads to harsh, political statements, and sang them with a voice that could switch from little-girl-lost whisper to full-bodied-big-bad-mama bellow with all the effort of flipping a light switch.

Then Jewel discovered that she had breasts.

That might sound just a little bit unfair. Allow me to explain.

0304 is an album about appearances. At least, that’s what Jewel says. The first single track, “Intuition”, is a satire aimed at the modern trend toward selling oneself as a product (as evidenced by Jewel’s sexy new video). In many ways, the entire album reflects a similar attitude as Jewel investigates the images behind relationships and being American. And the overarching examination is the way in which we can sell sex and the image of stupidity as being positive.

Unfortunately for Jewel’s fans, however, the satire has a way of becoming the reality.

It took a while for me to convince myself that 0304 would be worth purchasing. I’ve witnessed Jewel slowly transforming herself from a folk-rock goddess to a pop-rock baby – first the sound (“Standing Still”), then the look (the video for “Intuition”). I have to admit that I am glad that I bought 0304, but not as happy as I should be.

Jewel hasn’t lost her ability as a lyricist – even if she’s missing some of her edge these days. The twists and turns are still clever and still given to showing off her vocal ability, but she can’t seem to bring herself to make a specific political statement in her music, any more. Even in her track “America”, Jewel’s one reference to the standing administration manages to be both shamelessly direct and politically vague.

Everywhere I go, seems like Bush is on TV
We shed blood in the name of liberty-uh-huh
All right
The circus tents are dead, but the sideshow is doing well
The Osbournes and Anna Nicole are too freaky 2 tell-uh-huh
All right

Mm-hm. And how does this make you feel? You know, considering the boost that “Hands” got on the charts after she played it for a post-9/11 tribute concert, Jewel might not really want to offend Bush all that much. Of course, that would be more of a sales choice than an artistic one…

Oh – and see that snappy way she replaced the word “to” with the number “2”? How very hip of her. Had she just replace “too”, as well, she would be so hip that she couldn’t see over her own pelvis.

Didn’t Prince do the whole number/word replacement thing back in the 80’s? And didn’t he also replace the word “I” with a graphic of an eye? Now, that was stylish.

You see that kind of desparate attempt to be hip all over the album – from Jewel’s day-glo suit on the cover art to the song titles (“Run 2 U”, “2 Find U”, “2 Become 1”, “You&Me=Love”), and even the songs themselves.

Frankly, I have no problem with Jewel trying to sell herself as the thinking man’s Britney Spears.

What I do have a problem with is a boring album. Yes, I’m glad I bought the whole thing. Because, frankly, “Intuition” is a catchy tune. And some of the songs do manage to capture Jewel’s old flair. I’m also glad that I didn’t just buy a single, because then I might have convinced myself that the rest of the songs might actually be good. The fact is that most of this material plays like the filler that DJ’s play between their more block-rockin’ beats in those dance clubs where drunk sorority girls like to grind against the star jocks. Aside from a couple of stand-out tracks, the entire effort comes across lacklustre and generic. Switch her out for any pop-diva-of-the-moment, and the album plays almost exactly the same.

Where is the flaxen-haired, politically-charged diva with a guitar that played at the Lilith Fair of yesteryear?

Jewel, o Jewel – why have you forsaken us?

Can anybody explain to me why some of the best modern plays for the theatre (Proof, On the Razzle, Copenhagen, Hapgood, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead) find their inspiration in mathematics, physics, or quantum theory?

News.Scotsman.com files a report that suggests Bush may soon be losing a favorite playmate.

British PM Tony Blair of the Labor Party is being called to account for the evidence he presented when he asked the houses of Parliament to approve Britain’s entry into Iraq. Some members of Parliament – including Robin Cook (who resigned a cabinet position in protest of England’s activity in the Middle East) – have stated that they are not happy with the results so far, and that they will not accept Blair’s Bush-style backpedaling on the issue of WMD.

See, the usually-reasonable Blair told the Parliament that Saddam had weapons. Big weapons. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Including one time when he told them that Saddam had weapons that would be ready to use in 45 minutes.

But we haven’t found any of those weapons. And we haven’t found any evidence of active factories. In fact, we haven’t found much of anything in Iraq – despite Bush and Blair telling us that the WMD’s would be lying around like candy from a smashed piñata once we got in.

In America, Bush has been backpedaling furiously – and the people have been eating it up with a spoon. We’ve gone from “Iraq’s a big piñata and the WMD’s are the sour balls, see?” through “The weapons are really well hidden,” through “We went into this to see if there were any weapons,” to “Well, maybe there were no weapons, after all – but we really went in for the people.” And many Americans have been accepting that line.

Robin “We are Not Amused” Cook, however, isn’t buying it from Blair. And so it seems to go with most of Parliament.

“We didn’t go to war in order that some months down the line the Government could write an even better dossier on the programmes. We went to war because we were told there were weapons.”

There’s Mr. Cook, speaking directly to the heart of the matter (much as he always has) and stating the case simply. We were told there were weapons. We were not told that we wanted to see if there were weapons. We were not told that Saddam might have been planning to one day build weapons. We were not told that one of Saddam’s sons had a shrine to the Bush daughters in his palace (although I’ll give them points – that is a bit creepy). And we were not told that we were going in for the people of Iraq – because we were already trying to help the people through diplomatic means.

We were told there were weapons.

Period.

And, what’s more, the Parliament is now telling Tony Blair that he had better produce Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, because only that solid evidence will serve to justify the statements he made to the Parliament. And it was on those statements that the Parliament decided to throw Britain’s support behind Bush.

I seem to recall that Britain has something called a “Vote of No Confidence”...

Ah, remember the days when the United States worked hard to be a good influence on the world, and we constantly portrayed the Soviet Union as being the enemy of the people and a spreading evil? Remember those? Remember how we used to talk about our justice system, and our belief that all people are innocent until proven guilty, and that we were better than the Soviets because they just sent people to Siberia for looking at them funny while we had due process of law?

Those were the good old days.

The Moscow Times reports that Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov is “stealing a page” from Bush’s war on terror (I think they meant “borrowing a page”, but I digress) and calling for a new law to let Russian investigators detain suspected terrorists for thirty days without filing charges.

For those of you keeping score, Boris Gryzlov is referring to the now-infamous USA Patriot Act, which gives the government the right to detain suspected terrorists (and terrorist sympathizers, unwitting dupes of terrorists, and political opponents…) indefinitely.

Tell me quick – ain’t that a kick in the head? The new democracy that was once the yin to our yang – failing to protect the Civil Rights that we held so dear – is now backsliding on those same issues because they want to follow our example. We have raised the bar on denial of civil rights. Praise God and pass the ammunition, we’ve hit the big time.

It’s chilling to think that CNN could actually run a poll in which they asked people if it was all right for us to sacrifice some of our Constitutional rights in exchange for better national security. It’s even more chilling to think that most of the respondents replied that, yes – they did feel safety was more important than freedom.

And now, in our rush to protect ourselves by selling our freedoms, we have provided an excellent example to the rest of the world. Emerging governments see just how we treat freedom – and oppresive governments that want to keep up the appearance of decency can always claim that they’re just following our lead.

The one comfort this article offers is the reminder that the Patriot Act runs out in October of 2005.

Although, given the many attempts by Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft to push bills to the Senate that would extend it indefinitely, we may not have that comfort for long.

Neil Gaiman called it “world-changing-unless-it-doesn’t”. Tycho of Penny Arcade fame calls it, “a model for compensation, lined up with the other models for compensation, like at the police station.”

Scott McCloud calls it, “about time.”

It’s BitPass, silly. And it’ll change the way we look at providing content on the web. Unless, of course, it doesn’t.

Those of you who have been paying attention to Scott McCloud’s increasingly evangelistic spiel on the benefits and future of webcomics will recognize BitPass by a different name – micropayments. A system by which cartoonists (and other online content providers) are able to make money off of their content without the messy business of subscriptions or $10.00 a pop prices.

As with McCloud’s current micropayment experiment (The Right Number), content can be provided at a rock-bottom price. In this case, TRN is provided for $0.25 an issue. Investigation of BitPass’s site reveals that you can, in fact, price your content right down to one cent – but keep in mind that they take 15% of your total transactions as their fee. As to an upper limit – there is none. And the take on content priced above $5.00 is larger (BitPass takes only 5% plus a fifty cent flat fee). In the end, you can price yourself into the bargain basement or shoot the moon.

The people on the purchasing end buy BitPass cards, which come in at a minimum of three dollars. A $3.00 card puts $3.00 into your BitPass account. When you click the link to read (for example) McCloud’s comic, you are presented with a login screen for your BitPass account. You log in, it asks you to approve the purchase (25 Cents will be deducted – Do you wish to make this purchase?), you click the approve button, and your account goes down to $2.75. And, once you’ve purchased the comic, you don’t have to purchase it again. Your BitPass account lists the item as purchased and allows you to access it any time you wish to.

It’s an empowering idea for content providers. Finally, you have an option for compensation that doesn’t require an exorbitant minimum price that will push you out of your market.

Of course, in order to work, it’ll need more than just a snappy business plan and that oh-so-simple and oh-so-easy website. It’ll need users on both sides. It’ll need consumers to buy the cards, and content providers to give the consumers a reason to buy.

It’s a vicious cycle. The providers need to give the consumers content before they’ll buy in – and the consumers need to buy in before providers feel comfortable registering. As I write this, only four websites are signed up as content providers – but that’s one more than there was when I bought my first BitPass card last week.

The content available is varied. Comics from Scott McCloud, indie rock mp3’s – in general, the picture that you get is that if you can stick it up on the web for download or viewing, you can charge for it.

There are some amazing possibilities here. Consider the case of Salon.com – which currently requires readers to subscribe to a Premium account for some content, or sit through an ad for a day pass. Now, consider if you could change it to an ad for a day pass, or one cent for a column. Or five cents for a major investigative article. Or $3.00 for one of their mp3’s they offer to premium subscribers.

Consider offering a book through CafePress’ stores (if they ever get their publishing wing going) and an html version for a nominal BitPass fee.

Got an indie band? Offer your album by the song or as a complete package – all for less than the cost of a CD-R.

Draw a webcomic? For one cent, your readers can download a high-resolution, print-quality version of your latest strip. Or, for two dollars, they can download the doublepluscool desktop background you’ve just drawn. Twenty-five cents gets them access to a fifty-page side story for your current storyline – or five dollars gets them access to the three-hundred page story you’ve created around a fan-favorite background character.

Of course, there are some uses that, frankly, would be abusive. For instance, it’s unlikely that I’ll start charging my readers one cent to click a “more” link on the ArtMachine. Ever.

Why?

Because it would just be plain abusive. Plus, I have a very small, very limited readership. And charging people to read my random ramblings is not only a bad idea for an artist – it’s poor business sense. However, I would consider posting downloadable mp3’s of my albums for a small BitPass fee. Or posting ebooks for a small BitPass fee.

So, there are three things that will determine whether BitPass is here to stay or is just a blip on the radar.

The first one is the content providers. Will they trust the new system enough to try it? Or will they sit back and wait, depriving BitPass of the content it needs to make it?

The second one is the content consumers. Will they buy into the system? Are they willing to go through the rigamarole (as Tycho calls it) of purchasing and redeeming cards? And is even one cent going to be too much to charge your audience for your content?

And the third is the reasonable nature of the content providers. Let’s face it – for this to work, those of us who provide content will have to avoid getting greedy. Just because you can charge for something that you post doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. A blog that charges to read its entire entries is going to disappear off of the blogrolls doubleplusquick.

It’s interesting to consider. Now that content providers have the ability to ask compensation for their content, we’ll have to learn the how and when to give it away for free and when to charge for it.

And that may be a hard lesson for some to learn.

“My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over,” Mr. Bush said. “The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.”
-Bush Opens Africa Trip With Denunciation of Slavery,
The New York Times

Now, I ask you – does that sound like a man who says we need to strike down Affirmative Action because racism is ancient history?

Or does it sound like somebody who needs the spin?
After playing down the importance of Africa for years, denying assistance to international relief funds, and sending Colin Powell on a tour of Africa as a token gesture, our Fearless Leader has finally deigned to put a wary foot outside of Washington and actually visit some of these nations.

“Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions.”

Now, one could forgive Bush his little dramatic slip there – after all, I’ve always said that Al Gore should be forgiven for getting all over-dramatic and claiming that he helped to invent the Internet when what he really did was publicize it. But, just to point this out – slavery existed in the colonies long before they became independent states. It’s more like a group of loosely-aligned colonies founded on the sweat and blood of their captive laborers became a nation that preached equality while maintaining its slaves. Mostly because the southern conservatives of the day refused to sign any declaration that required them to give up their free laborers (much like the southern conservatives of toda—no, that’s too easy).

Of course, one doubts that Bush’s comments are even intended for the people of Africa. As has been pointed out many times before by many prominent African Americans – Africa is not America. The American institution of slavery is considered a dark, violent part of Africa’s history, but it’s not nearly the sort of issue to Africans that it is to African Americans. They’re more concerned with their own issues – like poverty, famine, illiteracy, and the rapid spread of HIV and AIDS. Most of those waiting for an apology from the southern conservatives of 1776 are in America.

Five days, five countries – fifteen-minute speeches.

Bush isn’t really tiring himself out to prove he’s interested in Africa, is he?

Of course, that’s only to be expected. After all, the last time this administration sent anybody to Africa, it was Colin Powell. And that was in the early days of Bush’s term. It’s a measure of the significance of that gesture that many Africans were quoted as calling Powell an “Uncle Tom” – a distinctly American turn of phrase.

Then, shortly after, there was the African attempt to raise funds for AIDS relief, to which Bush responded by brushing them off with a token donation. His reason at the time was that AIDS wasn’t as significant a problem in the USA as it is in Africa – which suggests that Bush might possibly have missed the point. Entirely.

To be perfectly blunt on the subject, Bush has never considered Africa important, and he has not changed. All that’s changed is his sudden desire to convert the African American vote over to the Republican party as quickly as he possibly can. And to accomplish that goal, he’s spending millions in taxpayer money on what is – frankly – a massive photo opportunity. His new AIDS program is fast becoming a sick joke (for more information, check out Planned Parenthood’s report). He has said time and again for over three years that he does not consider Africa a priority in American foreign policy. He completely ignored brewing crises on the African continent – crises that have drawn the attention of the international community at large – while steamrolling the U.N. and plunging our military forces into Iraq after making a shaky case (at best) for military intervention.

Now that Bush’s support in the African American community has actually decreased from the previous election, Bush has planned a five day tour of five nations. Each visit apparently laced with rhetoric aimed at the voters at home, and not at the people of the countries he’s visiting.

From Florida to Washington, from Washington to the aircraft carriers, and from the aircraft carriers to Goree Island and to Senegal, Bush is spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money to make himself look like a better person than he really is.

Bush is ready to shatter political fundraising records by pulling down over $200 million. But that’s not where the real power is in his campaign machine.

The real power is in the wheeling and dealing he does with the taxpayer money and the office of the President to build his image on our dime.

Now – somebody play “Hail to the Chief”.

I’m back from my weekend away. As a matter of fact, I’ve been back for a whie, now, but NBA Street Vol. 2 for the PS2 is a harsh mistress….

But I have gone into reviews.thudfactor.com and given you reviews of two DVD’s. This time around, the honorees are 24 Hour Party People (Renter) and The Incredible Hulk Returns / Trial of the Incredible Hulk (Keeper).

And Lou Ferrigno is still a better Hulk than Eric Bana’s face plastered on some CG.

So, I’m heading out for the weekend – if I’m not back by Tuesday, don’t bother notifying the authorities – I’ll find my own way home.