With all of the hub-bub going on over in Iran right now, the role of Twitter (and Facebook, and YouTube, but mostly Twitter) has become amazingly important. When it comes to freedom, Iran is not so awesome. Information control has been essential to how things have been run there since the overthrow of the Shah, and the basic rights of people to assemble, to protest, to speak against domination – these rights have been largely non-existent in any meaningful way. Instead, the Iranian government just keeps repeating the notion that their people are in fact free – maybe they hope that by saying it enough, this will become true.

Twitter and Facebook take a lot of shit from old-timers who don’t like or want to understand the new ways in which people communicate. I once taught with a “senior” teacher who berated a seventh grader for wanting to go into the video game industry when he grew up. In her antiquated disgust, she blabbered about how the kids these days just waste their time with video games. No future, etc. Little did this old gas-bag know that the video game industry had already been growing faster than the film industry for a few years.

Technology is a language. It also defines the way the people of Earth look at and understand their surroundings. If we want to be able to communicate in ways other than speaking, yelling, whispering or singing to anyone close enough to hear, we need technology. A feather dipped in ink. A woodcut ink-press. A typewriter. A fax. A blog. And most recently, text messsages, Twitter, and social networks.

The guys who invent these cool internet gadgets must be pretty blown away. I’ll bet they never imagined that their ideas could affect the outcome of world events. Congrats to them.

Check out this story from CNN about metal in Pakistan. Pretty interesting.

It’s no secret that China is home to the great fakers of the retail world. Let’s take, for example, an American brand, the Apple iPhone. Do you know about the Meizu M8 (pictured left)? Looks a lot like an iPhone, right? Or how about the iPhone Air, which is neither an iPhone, nor made of air. What about the CECT T5, pictured below and to the right? Other than having a little extra trunk-junk, this one looks really close, even down to the call screen and home button. It actually runs Windows Mobile 6.

Snatching intellectual property like the specific design of an iconic product and then flagrantly copying it as closely as possible? Eh, I dunno. It might be easier to justify if we were talking about medicine or some democracy-promoting technology. But the fact is that any of the Chinese bootleggers, whether making fake iPhones or anything else, are purely profit-driven and intellectually lazy. Of course Apple is also driven by profit – but at least their products are inspired and actually developed by people working at the company.

Think back to the ‘08 Beiging Olympics –  engineered by China to act as a demonstration of the country’s smarts, spirit and size, flecks of that same special brand of shady showmanship were everywhere. Do you remember the digitally-enhanced fireworks controversy? What about the 7-year-old girl who sang the national anthem, but was too ugly to represent the Chinese nation? A beautiful 9-year-old lip-synched the performance for the world to see. (Of course, no one was supposed to know about the actual performer.) And what about that whole thing with cloud seeding? China was literally controlling the weather during the opening ceremonies. That is crazy.

But the biggest deception came as Chinese government constructed what it called the “culture wall” – a three-meter high structure built along the official Olympic marathon course, designed to hide dilapidated slums and abject poverty in some of Beijing’s worst neighborhoods.

Obviously this has nothng to do with the Chinese people, but rather with their government’s obsession with keeping up appearances. It shouldn’t be too foreign a concept; after all, here in America beautiful women and men with fine clothing and spa-treated hair, nails and skin continue to blacken their lungs with cigarettes, clog their arteries with saturated fat and indulge in otherwise unhealthy habits. True, the national psychology of a country as large and storied as China needs to be respected; you can’t really blame people for wanting to return to the prestigious status they once enjoyed throughout the world.. But scamming your way to the top of the pile never really pans out.

Enter the beleaguered American real-estate market. A recent story on NPR detailed the novel tactic employed by seemingly desperate real-estate agents: actors are hired to walk dogs and have cookouts in a neighborhood where a potential sale might be made. In other words, the agent brings the prospective buyer to a home, where that consumer sees lots of appeal – friendly faces, a seemingly warm and robust community. The consumer surely factors these things into their home-buying decision, but little do they know that the guy on the grill and the hot girl walking a puggle are fakes, there to paint a picture that isn’t true.

And the line between what’s right and wrong? Well, it’s blurry – at least on paper, the only place where it really seems to matter – as evidenced by real estate developer Randy Denaro’s response to questions regarding the honesty of this tactic. With transparent disregard for all things, you  know, fair and honest, he says:

“Look around. You don’t see anybody impersonating a cop, do you? Because why? Because that would be illegal. It’s an image of a nice neighborhood, even if it’s not nice right now.”

Hey, at least American cheaters and fakes follow the law, right? 

You can’t plant your seeds in sour soil. That’s especially true if you’re talking about taking people’s money, or fucking with people’s lives vis-a-vis their real-estate. Are most Americans profit-driven and intellectually lazy? Wait – don’t answer. 

How about this – a little less “me” and a little more “we”.

Postscript: Oh, that NPR piece was an April Fool’s gag. But people should still be honest!

Although I’ve been yapping about the ills of corporate America for years, I’m not here to drag anyone through the mud. In fact, I know a number of good people who have, directly or indirectly, worked for Live Nation; in my role as musician, I’ve also played shows with tickets sold by Ticketmaster. I still have the stubs.

But concern regarding the planned merger between these two giant companies is justified. Most people seem concerned with the economics of the deal, citing a potential stranglehold on ticketing prices and other “fixes” which could yield an environment hostile to artists, promoters, unions, etc. – that is, hostile in a financial sense. Like I said, these concerns are surely justified. 

But the real threat posed by the creation of such a live-music monolith lies in the potential for centralized control of content – more specifically, it puts into question the quality and diversity of the content and performances which will be available to the public at the mainstream venues controlled by a possible TicketNation or LiveMaster. Live music performance is a huge component of Western culture – should the vast majority of those performances be controlled from coast to coast by one large corporation? Remember, a corporation’s primary interest is not necessarily the products and services it sells. By definition, a for-profit company’s number one motivation needs to always be the pursuit and acquisition of cash money profit – not powerful music or providing the people of America with moving performances.

Everyone knows that diversity is good for just about everything – biology, ecosystems, decision-making bodies, blah, blah, blah. Of course, that means diversity is also good for the marketplace of ideas that we shape with interesting songs, concept albums and reactionary haircuts. Despite reassurances or pandering meant to hush those questioning the intellectual and cultural safety of the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger, profit motive eclipses any other possible rationale for such a merger. That should be of concern to anyone who believes music is an important form of cultural expression.

In his year-end recap over at Punknews.org, Justin August wonders aloud about a potential collapse of “the vinyl bubble.” I don’t want to re-state Justin’s thoughts for fear of skewing his ideas, especially as you can read it all yourself here - though it has to do in part with saturation and silly commercialism. Justin makes an interesting point; one for which I myself have mixed feelings, especially as the main example cited is Vinyl Collective, the company of someone I consider a friend and a cool dude.

I’ve been wondering about vinyl for a while now. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I totally get why people love records and I myself have some vinyl that I’m fairly attached to. I also collected comics and toys for years when I was younger, so I completely understand the collector mentality. But isn’t collecting things kind of like, I dunno – weird and crazy?

We turn items into totems by assigning to them specific emotional or psychological values. From good luck charms and blessed figurines to religious ornaments and clear vinyl with purple splatter, these things only have the value we agree to see in them. Sadly, there are people out there who couldn’t care less about the physical objects you love the most. Today, collecting is an accepted behavior, even though it rarely serves any purpose beyond the novelty of the collection itself. Objects are cool because we think they’re cool, but our collections are really just paper, plastic, ink, and other raw materials. They’re shaped into things, and we love those things, but they’re still just things. So that’s my first beef with vinyl – it promotes fetishism with no real end other than to satisfy a personal compulsion. To me it’s uncomfortably close to cat hoarding, or keeping your own pee in soda bottles.

My other long-standing issue with vinyl is its fossil-fuel base. I’m sure there are challenges in making records out of a sustainable material that can also generate that luscious depth that only a great piece of vinyl can produce. But really, how can any band that says they are pro-environment put out vinyl? For that matter, what does it say about those who purchase records and fuel the demand for these fossil-fuel platters? Why not just include an African elephant tusk and some baby seal eyeballs with every purchase? (*Ducks as readers throw tomatoes*)

Not only that, but I am not into clutter. I want to have less stuff filling up my house, not more.

What do you think? Do we have to fess up to a bad habit, or am I a maroon?