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| Thank Goodness Women Can Count On Pink February 28th, 2006 -- Not much of a post today. I've got more kitchen horribleness to deal with. Check it out:  Also, I just got a little digital camera. It's basically a cell phone camera without the cell phone, so it takes little tiny low-res pictures, but it's good enough for this stuff. Also, here's me and Claire looking like gangstas:  But, the subject of this post is this, which I think is high-larious. Pink is fighting the man. Someone needs to put the man on notice, because his butt is now on the line. Pink is all about female empowerment, because nothing is more empowering to women than watching a nearly naked skinny and pretty girl dancing around and being confident and whoring herself out to the public. See, she was raised to question authority. Because nothing is more typical of our culture than a wholesale rejection of individuality and an unthinking comittment to authority in whatever form, so it's nice to see someone finally questioning it. Also, in the "Keith makes someone mad while arguing on the internet" book, chapter big number, check out this page and in particular this post. I made the mistake of thinking that the comments section was for, well, comments, so I made this comment, and the lady replied and some other people threw in some comments. I thought I made some decent points, she made some decent points, and I said I didn't expect much of the discussion, because we've been through it before. So, she makes another post, I respond, and instead of dealing with what I said, she bans me. How's that for open debate? I emailed her a few times, asking why I'd been banned, she didn't respond, and she puts up a comment saying I had nothing new to say and that she had won. All of my further attempts to comment have been blocked. What a class-A hypocrite. UPDATE -- hey there, folks! Also, big thanks to James for being a good and decent person. Think fast, girls reading! 
Keith |
| From the Archives: Tiny Gods For Sale February 24th, 2006 -- I'm going to start reposting some of the old stuff I've written, maybe I'll do it every Friday, so you guys finally have something to look forward to on Friday besides a weekend full of non-work, relaxation, spectator sports, and enjoyment. Here's the first one, from February 16th, 2004: I've been curious as to how to make a band successful, for obvious reasons, over the past few months. Specifically, I've been interested in the marketing aspect. The main means seem to be things like interviews, pictures, videos, and merchandise (t-shirts, stickers, etc.) However, why do marketing folk choose these things? Why would a picture of a musician make that musician's songs more compelling or interesting and worthy of a CD or concert ticket purchase? Why do we care what Eminem's mom thinks of him or where Christina Aguilera shops? Why do we want to pay someone else to wear an overpriced shirt marketing Toby Keith? There are a couple of reasons for each, I'm sure. You might buy a sticker because you want the world to know that New Found Glory is "amazing". You might watch a special on Courtney Love much like you'd watch a freak show, to see the weird alien lifestyle of a spoiled celebrity. You might watch a video for the artistic aspect, to see how to tell an ambiguous story in three-and-a-half minutes. You might listen to an interview with David Bazaan because you're curious as to why he curses all the time (except when he plays the Cornerstone Festival, of course.) However, I think there's one thing that ties all of these marketing techniques together--they all try to make the potential fan identify himself with the musician. Videos invent the myth that makes musicians more than just people that play guitar and sing, they turn them into those really cool or funny or sexy or interesting people that you would want to be friends with in real life, that you'd love to be able to hang around. Interviews bring you into the musician's world, make him seem like a friend of yours, just like a soap opera does. Stickers, posters, etc. do a similar thing in that they bring the musician into your world. In other words, all three things are designed to make you, the consumer, feel like you will be a better and happier person if you just fill in those last pieces of the puzzle, by buying a CD or going to their concert. John Calvin said that the human mind is an "idol factory", that we invent things to worship when what's actually there to worship is something we don't want to worship. For those of you that really have no idea what worship is, think of this: archeologists say that, in 10,000 years, the archeologists of that day will look back upon our time and, when trying to figure out which buildings we worshipped in, they'll look not at our churches but at our malls. That's right, what we worship is the object of the stuff that we buy. We spend billions every year buying clothes to adorn and gadgets to amuse the real gods of our age, ourselves. That's why I think the ultimate marketing technique would be to somehow incorporate thousands of people into your band, to make the band not just a projection of the fan, but to actually have the fan in the band itself. Sound crazy? Well, it's actually already been done, by Five Iron Frenzy. They had a sign-up list at all of their shows, and when they released their live album they included the name of every single person that signed up for their list as "background singers". So, what should we do? Should I actively encourage self-adulation among our fans? I don't know. If you do, let us know on the forum, where you can get to know the real band and pretend like you're an important part of our band! Well, you are, really, but mostly because you give us money. We like that. Well, we haven't actually made any money yet, but when we do, I'm sure we'll like it. Keith |
| Wasted Time February 21st, 2006 -- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I just wrote huuuuge post about a whole bunch of stuff and my computer crashed. Maybe it's good, because I complained about our local music scene in great detail. Since I'm currently trying to book gigs at our local clubs and get us radio play on our local radio stations, I guess I can just chalk this one up to a nice cathartic and solitary experience. Kind of like journals were before they went live. But, rest assured, your favorite local band, The Wind-Ups, is currently trying to dupe a local club or two into letting us bring our hundreds of fans into their clubs and spend a lot of money. It's now just a matter of time. Keith |
| Happy Valentine's Day, Wal-Mart February 12th, 2006 -- Wal-Mart. How I love you. I don't love you because of your stores, because, well, I'm married, so I don't shop, but I love you because you make all of the right people mad. I love that Manhattan doesn't allow you in, that your presence destroys those small stores that sell crap and charge too much, that you allow millions and millions of people to save money by not having to spend days out of their weeks shopping at twenty different stores. I love that, since you destroy all of the crappy general stores, that you encourage the growth of funky niche stores. I love that Without a Trace made an episode about how evil you are, that liberals say no one wants to work for you, that people line up in droves to work for you, that Paris Hilton doesn't know who you are. I like that people invent ways to hate you ("they cost the government money by not paying for health care!" Ha ha ha ha.) You are awesome. Keith |
| I Think I'm a Fat Supremacist February 9th, 2006 -- Everyone has their own prejudices. Some hate Christians, some hate Jews, some hate a particular race, some (read: all) hate Canadians, some hate stupid people, some people hate everybody. As for me, I hate skinny people. Not naturally skinny people, though. Fit people. People who spend more than an hour a day excercising, more than $200 a month on a gym membership, who eat food that tastes terrible, all in order to be their skinny selves. I hate you. Maybe some of it is jealousy, because, no, I'm not terribly fit. If I could trade myself now for myself as a 19 year old, I would. But a lot of it is genuine ill-will towards those who do things they hate and don't do things they love in order to be fit, and then the real topper is when they try to convince the world that we all should take on their lifestyle and deprive ourselves of the good things in life and work extra hard, just to be fit. I see the body as being like a car -- you only have so many miles, so many turns on the engine, and then you poop out. Why would I waste those on a jogging track? It's probably good to get some exercise, I'm sure, but anytime I exercise I'm haunted by the fact that I'm only doing it because I work a white-collar job and I eat too much. If my body is a car, it's sitting in the garage, finding websites for companies which, for twenty dollars, will photoshop my cat's head onto a marine's body. Gyms are for people who need exercise but can't think of a way to expend their energy in a productive way. Do you not have yards? Well, go plant a garden. Not enough energy expenditure? Well, do it quickly. Bah. Keith |
| It's Still Tuesday for Eight More Minutes . . . February 7th, 2006 -- So if I post really quickly it still counts, right? We'll see. Life is kind of overwhelming right now, with a lot of work (which I'm thankful for), and I'm in the middle of a huge kitchen overhaul. Our house currently has no hot water, has not had hot water since yesterday, and it won't have hot water until tomorrow. What a mess. I don't think I realized that our buying a house would entail that I become an amateur electrician, carpenter, painter, and plumber, and an occasional pest control specialist. Yikes. I think I'm also going to turn this page into a more bloggy existence, since that's what all of the cool and not cool people are doing. So I'm only going to occasionally post humongous essays, and it might not be on a Tuesday. I know, the world has truly turned upside down. It's just that I often think of stuff to say during the week and think "I should write about that" and then Tuesday comes and my brain says " . . . . " So, watch out, kids. Keith |
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