Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I’m horribly inconsistent at this Friday 10 thing, so here’s this week’s list, and the last two have been updated with the answer key and credit for the correct guesses. Here’s one, and the one before that one.

For this week, drop a comment if you know the artist and the song.

1. Ramones, “Beat on the Brat” [Solonor] – “With a brat like that always on your back, what can you do?”
2. “We make more profits when we blow off their heads.”
3. “You got it drownin’ out the radio.”
4. “You know the roaches so big, you know they got bones.”
5. The Clash, “London Calling” [Solonor] – “All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust.”
6. “I got a wall of sound so profound, I can always hear it call.”
7. “I won’t push you unless you have a net.”
8. “Cold turkey, nerves shook, all the stress repressed.”
9. “God used me as a hammer, boys, to beat his weary drum today.”
10. “They move so smooth, but have no answers.”

Over at the Anvil & Sprocket, we rate movies as “Keepers,” “Renters,” and “Bombs.” Ebert & Roeper use their thumbs. Everybody else who works solo (including Ebert’s solo column) uses stars or a similar symbol – except for “Entertainment Weekly,” who prefers to treat the films (and their readers) as if they were still in grade school.

I like our system. Stars and grade-school report cards always seemed arbitrary at best (especially when I was in grade school). And apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so, as evidenced by Roger Ebert’s review of Slither.

There are better movies opening this weekend. There are better movies opening every weekend. But “Slither” has a competence to it, an ability to manipulate obligatory horror scenes in a way that works. Given my theory of the star rating system, which suggests movies should be rated by their genres, “Slither” gets two if “28 Days Later” gets three. On the other hand, “Basic Instinct 2” also opens today, and in the genre of slick and classy big-star thrillers, if “Fatal Attraction” gets 2-1/2 stars, then “Basic Instinct 2” gets 1-1/2. On the third hand, a lot of people would probably enjoy “Basic Instinct 2” more than “Slither.” One of these days, I’m going to have to take that star rating system and feed it to a meat-eating slime-slug.

Yahoo! News reports that the UMD could soon go the way of the Betamax.

Disappointing sales have slowed the flow of movies on the proprietary Universal Media Disc to a mere trickle. At least two major studios have completely stopped releasing movies on UMD, while others are either toying with the idea or drastically cutting back.

And retailers also are cutting the amount of shelf space they’ve been devoting to UMD movies, amid talk that Wal-Mart is about to dump the category entirely.

There are lots of probable reasons for why UMD is selling so poorly, and the article touches on a couple of them. First, there is the seeming glut of titles. While launch titles are a good thing, there were so many on the market so fast that they outstripped consumers’ abilities to keep up. Second, there’s the fact that there is no way to hook the PSP into a television to play it on a larger screen – which ties into the release of the video iPod, which can play movies through your regular television.

I think there are two things that are being ignored, however. First is the price mark. The only thing most UMD releases have to offer is portability (provided you’ve already shelled out for a PSP). Beyond that, their features are limited compared to DVD’s and their convenience is crippled by being bound to a single handheld device. Yet every UMD I have seen has been priced in a range comparable to full DVD releases, so buying a DVD and a UMD of the same movie effectively doubles the price. Suddenly, I find myself paying $45 for House of Flying Daggers rather than $20 – 25. Or, rather, somebody finds themselves paying $45 – I own neither a PSP nor a copy of House of Flying Daggers.

Which brings us to the second major complication – DRM and copy protection. Sony’s Benjamin Feingold does the convulsive backhanded-swipe at his customers (who, as the MPAA and RIAA have told us, are all thieves) by saying, “I think a lot of people are ripping content and sticking it onto the device rather than purchasing.” This may be true. After all, if I legitimately purchase the device and the content, fair use should grant me the ability to put that content onto the device without having to purchase the content all over again. But not only are my DVD’s DRM-encrypted, Sony has gone to great lengths to make certain that UMD’s aren’t used for piracy. This means no blank UMD’s to record onto (although the technology is there) and no devices capable of reading unencrypted UMD’s.

This not only flies in the face of fair use, it limits the ability of independent artists to get their work before the public. Independent filmmakers might dig the idea of having UMD copies of their films when they go to festivals. Imagine handing a UMD to anybody in a suit who was carrying a PSP. Imagine being able to sell your content online to customers looking for something other than Sahara for their portable viewing pleasure. But in their quest to deny users their own Fair Use rights, Sony has also closed this new venue to all but the most powerful Hollywood studios.

If Sony wants to save the UMD format, they need compatibility with full-size televisions, competitive prices that recognize the actual comparative value of the product, recordability to follow fair use guidelines and an architecture that allows independent artists access. Without any of that, their fancy discs won’t even make for good coasters.

This time around I let the player run for eleven songs instead of ten – but I’d already typed up the eleven lines. So there’s one extra on the list today!

Answers for the previous two lists will be posted later today.

1. Indigo Girls, “Closer to Fine” [Thud] – “I woke up with a headache like my head against a board.”
2. Kunal Ganjawala and Vasundhara Das, “Salaam Namaste” [no guesses] – “Aa mil jaa phir gale, haste haste”
3. Jewel, “Little Sister” [no guesses] – “We spill the pills and sweep them under the rug.”
4. Mike Nesmith, “Little Red Rider” [no guesses] – “Nobody was home in the town I called home.”
5. Tori Amos, “Father Lucifer” – “You always did prefer the drizzle to the rain.”
6. Talking Heads, “Psycho Killer” [Fred] – “I hate people when they’re not polite.”
7. Jill Sobule, “Merry Christmas from the Family” [no guesses] – “It’s margaritas when the eggnog’s gone.”
8. U2, “Vertigo” [no guesses] – “There’s bullets ripping sky of ink with gold”
9. Jonathan Coulton, “My Monkey” [no guesses] – “Every monkey needs alone time.”
10. Momus, “Tamagotchi Press Officer” [no guesses] – “We are dismayed by your attempts to invade his privacy – please, go away.”
11. Poe, “Control” [Fred] – “You may be King for the moment…”

Imagine it. A fast food franchise with the standard menu of any other link in the chain. The difference? All of the ingredients are available to play with and make new creations – you have the freedom to try new uses for the machines and for the individual patties, buns, pocket-shaped hot apple pies, etc. A true, open-source fast food chain.

Of course, as long as you’ve worked at pretty much any standard fast food restaurant, you’ll realize that the employees have been running their own underground open-source restaurant for decades. Check out this LiveJournal entry with the accompanying comments discussion where McDonalds’ employees discuss the bootleg foods they’ve made in their breaks at the World’s Blandest Restaurant (“Mediocrity served daily!”). Some of the creations sound like they would be much better than the menu offerings they’re based on. Too bad I can’t really walk into a McDonalds’ and request an Orange Julius – I might actually eat there once in a while, then.

I’ve done that before a lot – but with turkey deli meat and mustard… and.. without the filet steamer… what does the steamer add? this is interesting.

Also. An Orange Julis. 21 once cold cup, ice cream, orange juice, put on a flurry lid, and mix it carefully in the flurry machine. mmmmmmmmm.

[link via BoingBoing]

That would be my high score over at my current timewaster, De-Animator. It’s a flash game based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft – in much the same way that Re-Animator was based on the same work. Which is to say the name of the character is the same and maybe one line has been pulled from the story. But it’s still fun for a few minutes gametime.

Yes, yes, it’s been a while since one was posted. But here it is now, and answers will be posted soon for the last few weeks, too.

For those who came in late, here’s the drill. If you know the artist and the song for the lyric, drop a comment. And after some confusion on the last list, comment moderation is turned off – so your answer should appear instantly.

1. Serge Gainsbourg – “Qui est in qui est out” [no guesses] – “Je te renvoie à ta science-fiction.”
2. Weezer, “Island in the Sun” [no guesses] – “And it makes me feel so fine I can’t control my brain.”
3. Hair – “Easy to be Hard” [no guesses] – “Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?”
4. Frank Zappa, “Zomby Woof” [no guesses] – “Three-hundred years ago, thought I might get some sleep.”
5. Kate Bush, “Big Stripey Lie” [no guesses] – “Your name is being called by sacred things that are not addressed”
6. Dropkick Murphys, “Barroom Hero” [no guesses] – “He’s a big, strong man with a child’s mind – don’t you take his booze away.”
7. Jack Johnson, “Better Together” [no guesses] – “I believe in memories, they look so, so pretty when I sleep.”
8. Queen, “Bicycle Race” [Fred] – “You say Coke, I say caine. You say John, I say Wayne.”
9. Iggy Pop, “Nazi Girlfriend” [no guesses] – “Her French is perfect, so’s her butt.”
10. Johnny Cash, “Delia’s Gone” [Thud] – “Found her in her parlor and I tied her to her chair.”

Via pesky’ (and also commented on by Thud), the legislature in Tennessee has successfully abolished poverty, provided free medical care to 100% of its citizens, guaranteed each child in its educational system at least an M.A., and is now giving away a free turkey with all the fixin’s to every family every week to help feed the less fortunate. How else could you explain their sudden fascination with ridding the state of sex toys? (Copy of the law can be found here.)

Senate Bill 3794 (House Bill 3798), legislation that would make it illegal to sell, advertise, publish or exhibit to another person “any three-dimensional device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs….� For that matter, if you offer to show someone your dildo collection—or possess a vibrator with the intent to show it to someone—you’d be violating this proposed state law. And don’t even think about wholesaling those three-dimensional sex toys.

Of course, the bill does make it perfectly legal for doctors to prescribe these devices to their patients – which leads me to believe the TN legislature might just be setting up a cushy retirement job for Dr./Senator Frist.

By the way: According to Section 1, Sub-section 39-17-921 etc. etc. look for the section next to an upper-case “C,” it’s legal to sell and buy (and, presumably, display) such devices as long as one acts in their capacity as an employee of “Any library of any public or private school, college or university in this state.” Which begs the question – does this mean that college libraries could start checking these three-dimensional devices out to their students?