Bakerstreet

We headed out to Space View park early this morning.

Go Discovery!

Booster sep

Boosters tumbling away after separation

Video of launch:

Discovery Launch from wRitErsbLock on Vimeo.

So Pink Floyd songs may soon not be available on iTunes and other stores that offer downloads of their music. Why? Well it seems that they won a lawsuit against EMI concerning their record contract. Their contract states that their songs can not be sold as singles and since at online music stores you can buy their songs individually that is a breach of contract. so only online stores that sell just the full album will be able to sell their music and not may of them would likely do that.

I have been reading comments on sites that are reporting on it and some people are upset at them for even bringing the lawsuit. Most say that they should have no control how their music is sold, that people that want just one song will not buy their music, pirate just the song they want, or just listen to only the song they want to. Some say that people should be able to buy just the songs they like. They seem to think that artists shouldn’t be allowed to dictate how they buy the artists work.

I think most people will agree that music is an art form. now looking at most CDs that are out are mostly full of songs that stand alone, each an individual on it’s own, kind of like a short story and the album a collection of short stories. Well then considering this, you would think that buying a song is the same as buying a short story, you can read it anytime you like without needing to read or buy any of the other stories in the book. This works great, but would this plan work for a novel?

‘I’d like to buy chapter 10 of War and Peace please’

Yes I could read just chapter 10 of War and Peace or just one chapter of any book. It may make sense, it might even be satisfying, but do you see the full picture, do you understand the full story? Could you truly say you had read it? How about movies? Most have chapter stops, you can jump to your favorite scene and watch just that, But if you buy Fight Club having never seen it (you’ve never seen Fight Club!) and just watched chapter 4, would you know what the whole movie is about? How about just watching one chapter of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil? How about just one chapter of a David Lynch movie… oh wait, David Lynch movies only have one chapter because… He wants you to watch the WHOLE movie. I guess you have to fast forward to the scene you want (unless you have a copy released before he made the studios remove the chapters stops)!

So would a writer or director want the publisher/studio selling individual chapters of their book/movie? I admit that I have read just a chapter of a book and watched just a part of a movie, but I had already either seen or read the rest of it. Sure, music is different, each song has to stand on it’s own, while a chapter of a book might make no sense if read on it’s own, the same with a movie,

So what is so wrong about Floyd, or any other artist, wanting you to have the whole story? Money is a great song, but in the context of Dark Side of the Moon it is brilliant. Mother is made clearer in the whole story told within The Wall, the same could be said of most of their albums. They are also not the only artists that paint a broader picture with the album as opposed to just a song.

Being an artist, I can understand wanting you vision to remain the way you want it to. Hell, even as a photographer I want to print the photo as I want it, and if the viewer just focuses on one part of it, I at least want them to see the full photograph as I wanted them to.

In case you don’t get the joke, THE ONE pronounces nuclear er I mean Corpsman as corpseman. Of course since he can do no wrong, he must have been using the politically correct term for Zombies!

I got a LEGO VW Bug for Christmas

Here we started, it has 1600 pieces and two instruction books

Dashboard

inside, I knocked off the speedo and when I put it back I didn’t notice it was sideways, I’ll have to fix it

Coming along

Engine

finished

How about a little story?

Bob lives in a modest cookie cutter house with his wife and two kids. Him and his wife work hard and have a good life together. The Bob family is in perfect health. Bob is in peak condition, he jogs ten miles to work and back every day. He eats healthy, works out and gets a physical every year. He eats meats, seafood and vegetables in moderate healthy portions, he only occasionally drinks wine and has never ever smoked. His body inside and out is prefect. His heart is strong and beats like a perfectly tuned engine, in fact, every organ in his body is in peak condition. his wife and kids are in similar condition

Frank is Bob’s next door neighbor, almost everything about Franks life is the same as Bob’s, he has a wife and two kids, lives in the same type of cookie cutter house, works for the same company, does about the same thing as Bob. The differences are mostly personal, Frank doesn’t jog to work, he takes his car when he does go in, but he mostly telecommutes. His body is in no where near the condition that Bob’s is. He is twice the weight he should be, he sits all day on his couch and works on his computer, all the while eating snacks and twinkies, his lunch is usually two large pizzas that he has delivered and dinner is whatever greasy fast food that his wife picks up on her way home from work. Frank smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and drinks heavily. His arteries are severely clogged, his liver resembles a little black rock and his lungs are black with cancerous growths.

Bob works hard to take care of himself and it shows, Frank doesn’t care and doesn’t even try.

Sadly Frank’s lungs and liver are failing, his heart is working harder then it needs to to pump blood around his large body. Frank is not going to last much longer. You see, Frank doesn’t need money, that won’t help him, Frank needs new lungs and a new liver. It’s wrong that poor Frank has no way to get the things that he needs to continue living, it’s criminal even. Then there is that horrible Bob guy, he has his perfect body while Frank wastes away. But this isn’t a sad story, don’t worry, it has a happy ending. You see in this world, there is government healthcare, Everyone gets cared for. So if Frank doesn’t have what he needs, that’s OK, you see, Bob has what Frank needs. So we’ll take a prefect lung from Bob, he does have two, and we’ll take half his perfect liver and we’ll give them to Frank.

Yay, now Frank can go back to eating his Yummy greasy burgers, and his ciggies and booze, and Bob, well he’s fine too, so what if he doesn’t have the lung capacity to jog to work anymore, that’s what cars are for! Hmm, Frank’s wife and kids are not looking good, maybe we need to get Bobs prefect little wife on the table…and when do his kids turn 18?

David Swensen comments that the government should examine their profiles and lifestyles before helping Frank, but there are no ‘death panels’ in this story, everyone is treated equally! Thanks for commenting David.

i am posting this from my new cellphone! Now i can not blog while away from a computer.

Yea I know I haven’t been blogging much lately, but in my defense, I have been working on my screenplay/novel. It is mostly written in my head, now I just have to get it typed out. if you know me then you know that I type really slow. So far I have maybe 50 pages typed up, just a couple of hundred more to go! maybe I’ll post some of it here for you guys to read, though I think most of my regular readers have given up on my blogging!

More photos from the town hall, we got there around 4:30 or so.

the gentleman in the light blue shirt showed up and started taking pictures of the protesters

when asked why he was taking photos of us he turned tail and ran

taking off in his SUV

WOW, I hope they checked her for guns and bombs, she looks dangerous.

Newsperson from Fox35

the crowd early in the evening

This car showed up with oregon plates, WTF?

of course it was full of ProBama signs

Don’t tread on me.

crowd getting longer, still more then an hour before they will let us in.

I counted over 150 in a rough count up to the corner at about 6:30. the line went around the front of the building and down the road a ways.

finally inside, there was room for 125 and they let about 30 in from the line outside. the rest were all union and Alan’s supporters that were let in before the ‘mobsters’

us with Alan!

here is the crowd inside, remember only 30 were from outside and a few of those were pro Obamacare. notice the human child shields in use in front.

Alan’s kids took 3 seats that could have been used by those that waited over 2 hours outside, and he played them like a violin every time anyone raised their voice.

He also used them to cut the meeting short, their bedtime came up a lot.

looking up something in the bill someone in the crowd mentions.

it’s in here some where…

there’s only over 1000 pages, shouldn’t be hard to find.

here it is. Oh you are misreading it, I’m a harvard grad, you are just… well a rube!

the company you keep, side by side with Gary Siplin.

Alan’s press secretary and former member of the unbiased media Todd Jurkowski was manning the mic

Kids bed time, one more question, we started with a pro and we’ll end with a pro question. I’ll give Grayson credit for telling todd to ask 2 more questions and end with an against question. the crowd wasn’t pleased, the meeting lasted only about 1 hour and only slightly over a dozen questions were asked.

after the meeting. we missed what happened outside and the line stretched way down the road making it at least twice as long as the last time I had seen it.

UPDATE: video @ pereiraville

UPDATE 2: Instalanche! Thanks Glenn. Welcome Instapundit readers, take a look around

So if Muslim Americans showed up at a town hall meeting to protest O’care, would the democrats have the balls to call them un-american and terrorists? We know Nancy has the biggest balls of the democrats but I’m sure she wouldn’t think of it. Not that they could get into a townhall to protest anyway, they would have to make their way through the jungle of plants!

WTF was hurricane Andrew? I’m watching the news and they are talking about this ‘hurricane’ that supposedly struck Miami on 8/17/92. OK, I pretty sure there has never been a ‘hurricane Andrew’ as they keep saying, the only hurricane ever was Katrina that the black-people-hating Bushitler unleashed with his weather machine on Na’leans. Those lying MSM vast-right-wing-conspiracy-theory creating bastards trying to rewrite history and make their leader Bushitler look good. Next they’ll be making up something like Florida getting hit by 4 hurricanes in 2004 or some BS like that! Don’t believe them! There was only Katrina.

So I wonder if the big O, Pelosi, and the rest of the donkeys would call them terrorists?

The name on the caller ID was unfamiliar but that’s not unusual for my work phone, most of the calls I receive come from other employees and not clients.

sherlock – my department, can I help you?
caller – Hi, sherlock, it’s Chris Muir.

Holy cow Chris Muir called me! I had emailed him earlier and he was nice enough to call me back with a reply, that’s so cool! Of course now WB is envious, but he did comment on her site today.

It’s WB’s birthday.

It’s also my brother Tony’s birthday.

Happy birthday to both, I hope you have a good day.

New shirt available:

The liberals had 8 years to insult and attack President Bush, now it’s our turn to criticize the messiah! Please, no racist bullshit, there are plenty of buck fush bumper stickers and t shirts out there!

It was just outside of EPCOT, when the drugs began to take hold.

It was 4:30 in the morning when I got to the starting line. the crowds had already gathered to watch the start of the race which was still one and a half hours away. I stood eating a banana and drinking a coke to try to stay awake, the banana finished I considered the peels fate, i could hardly leave to dispose of it and lose my spot could I? I wondered if sabotage was allowed for the race, would one less runner offer a better chance for WB? Alas an employee came around picking up garbage so I never got the chance to find out. The countdown had started, I could hear it over the loudspeaker and then the fireworks erupted as the race started.

I was on the side of a highway, a mass of runners moving past me in the dark night, illuminated by the streetlights, the sound of their feet pounding on the asphalt echoing in the morning cold. most of them dressed as runners should, their numbers black on their white bibs, almost glowing and visible before their faces and bodies came into view. Some dressed as characters, Tinkerbell, Minnie Mouse, fairies and princesses. A large gentlemen wearing fairy wings and nothing but a thong below the waist went past… Jesus Christ, what are these God Damn animals? Poor bastards would see him soon enough!

It was at mile four when through the dawning morning WB drifted into view, she slowed, handing me an almost empty water bottle and dead batteries from her camera. I took a photo and she was off again into the morning mist. The crowd had thinned as the runners had gone on. I left this viewing area towards the monorail that would take me into the Magic Kingdom to watch the next part of the race. The mob made their collective way and crammed into the cars. We moved along the tracks above the throbbing mass of runners below making their way to the finish.

I arrived at the transportation center and made my way to the monorail that would take me into the Magic Kingdom. Most of the mass had stayed to watch the runners passing by, so the car was not as crowded as the other had been. I reached the house of the mouse and made my way to main street where the runners were to go by. The wait was fairly short, after Mr Incredible went by,  WB came out of the mass of runners a few minutes later, once again, she shed extra weight, posed for a photo and she was off again. I met up with J&R and we quickly rushed to the castle to see WB come out through the front and weave her way around the path, stopping to pose for another photographer and she was gone, lost in the mass once again.

J&R and me made our way to the bus stop to the next viewing area. We were crammed into the bus and hauled to Animal Kingdom and walked to the viewing area, stopping on the way to get refreshments. The heat had started to kick in, I’ve never been able to properly explain myself in this climate. We had found a shaded area to wait, the runners passing us in waves as we stood watching, Mr Incredible had come and gone, yet WB had yet to pass, she had lost time somewhere along the route, a few Minnies and fairies had gone by, as had Santa. WB finally made her appearance, grabbing my refreshing Coke to drink and she was off again, we watched as she faded into the distance and we made our way back to the meat tube to be taken back to where we had come from, back to the beginning, back to the end of this ordeal.

We made it to the finish line, but we had time to waste. we decided to find some shade and sit, waiting for WBs finish time to get closer. When the time came, we returned to the viewing stand to wait for the end of WBs quest. she arrived triumphantly to the finish line after 7 hours of running, along with all the finishers of the race, for some this would be another in a long line of finishes, for others it would be the only time, the high water mark of their lives that would crest here in the land of imagination and dreams before receding back to their normal everyday lives.

With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson!