"Look over there! It's Indiana Ford!"

Well, it's only been 2 months since I published here, which means I only have the sketches of 4 or 5 posts to flesh out. Maybe having a lot to talk about will make my commentary light and brief.

First things first, perhaps the most exciting picture I've ever seen:

The first picture of Harrison Ford on the "Indiana Jones IV" set. Does he look dead? Yes, but I'll take a dead Harrison Ford in a fedora over a live Brendan Fraser in a mummy anyday. I'm not even going to say anything else about this, because when the moon is full and I can't stop humming the Indiana Jones themesong, I'm sure I'll blog about this again. Blog blog.

In totally unrelated news, the Copyright Royalty Board's fee hike for streaming internet radio is set to go into effect in a couple weeks. I mentioned this is an earlier post but I've started to understand it more, based on my own research and the PR pummeling the WXPN has been handing out all day (XPN silenced all of its streaming channels for the day to protest the rate increase; for more on that, see the link at the end).
It seems that the real culprit is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, "which designateded online broadcasts as performances requiring royalties, as opposed to radio broadcasts which must pay only songwriters." Supposedly there are about 3 people in the world thinking that the rate increase is a step forward for working musicians; everyone else recognizes that internet streams are often amateur and/or nonprofit-based, thus giving exposure to artists without deep Payola pockets or strong followings.

Between a total of 2 1/2 hours in the car each day (exclusive of the 8 1/2 hours I'm at work) and a computer that I'm pretty sure is moonlighting as a Luddite, updating this thing has been a bit of a nightmare. It has gotten to the point, however, that I have so much to talk about (perhaps because of the 2 1/2 hours narrated by the radio) that I'm going to force myself to be more timely with this. By the end of the weekend I'll have at least 1 more post, barring the further devolution of my laptop (or, "If a problem comes along, I will certainly whip it").

In the meantime, think about this: why is it that there are only two maladies that are treated to the "the" treatment? "The Plague" and "The Hiccups." Are these on equal footing? Seriously, we don't even say "The Cancer" or "The AIDS." And if you try to say "I have hiccups" it sounds somehow empty and devoid of its fake menace...weird.

Click here to sign XPN's online petition to support the bipartisan Internet Radio Equality Act of 2007, or "IREA" for those of you who enjoy the Cockney or Jamaican shorthand for Irritable Bowl Syndrome; say it out loud, it's fun.