Awesome.

I found this hanging around online, unable to attribute the source, but I reckon you should read it.

The La Boétie Analysis (1552 or 1553)

Grasping the “La Boétie analysis” is a key to understanding advanced freedom strategies. La Boétie approached his subject like an outsider observing the strange phenomenon of political behaviour. He wrote like someone who had jumped out of “the system” and viewed it without preconceptions. He somehow unbrainwashed himself so he could adopt a “Martian viewpoint.”
What is so remarkable is that La Boétie did this in 1552 or 1553 – four-hundred-and-forty years ago! It is also interesting that modern tyrants use the same formula today to subjugate and dominate their victims. Here are the main elements of the La Boétie analysis as I see it:

1. The only power tyrants have is the power relinquished to them by their victims.
2. The tyrant is often a weak little man. He has no special qualities that set him apart from anyone else – yet the gullible idolize him.
3. The victims bring about their own subjection – they “win their enslavement.”
4. If without violence the tyrant is simply not obeyed, he becomes “naked and undone and as nothing.”
5. Once you resolve to serve no more, you are free.
6. We are all born free and naturally free.
7. Grown-up adults should adopt reason as their guide and never become slaves of anybody.
8. People can be enslaved through either force or deception.
9. When people lose their freedom through deceit, it is because they mislead themselves.
10. People born into slavery regard it as a natural condition.
11. In general, people are shaped more by their environment than by their natural capacities – if they allow it.
12. Habit and custom are powerful forces that keep people enslaved.
13. There are always some people who cannot be tamed, subjected, or enslaved. Even if freedom were to be entirely extinguished, these people would re-invent it.
14. Lovers of freedom tend to be ineffective because they are not known to one another.
15. People who lose their freedom also lose their valour (strength of mind, bravery).
16. Among free people there is competition to do good for humanity.
17. People seem to be most gullible towards those who deliberately set out to fool them. It is as if people have a need to be deceived.
18. Tyrants stupefy their victims with “pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes.”
19. Tyrants parade like “workers of magic.”
20. Tyrants can only give back part of what they first took from their victims.
21. Tyrants attain their positions through: (a) Force; (b) Birth; or (c) Election.
22. Tyrants create a power structure, consisting of a multi-layered hierarchy, staffed by a conspiracy of accomplices. Accomplices receive their positions as a favor from the tyrant.
23. The worst dregs of society gather around the tyrant – they are people of weak character who trade servility for unearned wealth.
24. Accomplices can profit greatly from their positions in the hierarchy.
25. If people withdraw their support, the tyrant topples over from his own corrupted weight.

This is your captain speaking.

Hello, evilboss reader (all one of you, I think).

Over time I’ve realised that my rage/interest is usually far too fleeting to engage in writing full-length blog posts. For this reason, I’ve set up a tumblr (I know, I’m insane) to document my day-to-day quick jots and interesting bits and pieces.

Said tumblr is located here: http://captainherp.tumblr.com.

You’ll see far more frequent updates from me, and a summary will be posted here at the end of every month (the first being 31 August).

Man se,
The Kap’n.

Possibly the most rage-inducing site I’ve seen all year.

If any of you have read some of my older posts, you’ll be aware by now that I’m a pretty avid KMFDM fan.

So, to set the scene:

I’m Googling along looking for KMFDM swag on sites I wouldn’t usually go for, namely a legal and good quality download of the Japanese MDFMK bonus tracks (because £22.99 is too much for two tracks). Now, thinking I’ve found something to do with what I’m after, I have the misfortune to stumble across the following site:

http://limegreenpickle.tripod.com/kmfdm.html

Now, to start with, the fact that it’s on tripod pretty much says everything about the level of content that’s going to be on there, and I’d mentally prepared myself to undergo the internet equivalent of having my brain spooned out with a rusty shovel.

In actuality, I underwent the internet equivalent of being raped, skinned, quartered, and left to rot in a ditch for eternity, and in my blind rage, I kept going back for more.

We’ll look at his KMFDM section first. It seemed like a pretty normal 90s, “i just got onto the information superhighway” style fan site at first, until I reached the following:

Well, before Symbols, at least. But Symbols was still pretty good, despite it’s couple of boring songs and 90% car commercial-type common techno music. Adios had like 4 or 5 good songs among the boring songs and car commercial music. But MDFMK kicks some royal ass! And now with KMFDM back, they’ve finally found their own groove within the new style!

Now, the perception that KMFDM albums went down after Nihil is pretty common among some fans, but I’d never heard “car commercial music”, so I reckoned something was up, so I read on. After about two more paragraphs, I hit “Fast Songs Vs. Slow Songs Vs. Boring Looooonnnnggg Songs”. It started off with what seemed to be a pretty valid observation on his part, but soon turned into a fucking huge rant where he started dissing a pretty large portion of the KMFDM discography that most fans define as some of the best. Naturally, my intrigue peaked.

I continue down his home page, and see him ranting about KMFDM’s pretty blatant use of a Slayer riff. Now, this is super-common knowledge, and shockingly enough it goes along the same lines as (OH GOD) sampling, which is pretty much the goddamn done thing with music. By the time I’d finished the page, I was pretty incensed, having seen the following:

Some have back-up singing by crappy female singers like cheryl wilson and not too crappy like Dorona Alberti and others.

Pretty much the defining feature of KMFDM is the female vocals… and he hates them? Cool story, bro.

The kicker, however, was this “holier than thou” tirade:

The world has been waiting for a band like this to gain recognition, and it has been around since the earliest 1980s! In a way, i wish KMFDM would gain the recognition it rightfully deserves, but then it would become popular. Popular leads to Trendy. Trendy leads to sickening (See “Du Hast” and “Beautiful People”). Sickening leads to the garbage, and nobody but the hardcore KMFDM fans would stick with them. All trends die (as another favorite band: Pantera so readily loves to point out!). That is why KMFDM is still alive. Trends ruin society because it makes people do things they wouldn’t normally like to do, just to impress others. So i say, “Keep KMFDM an almost underground band! Only the real people, like you and me can listen to them in peace and stomp on the people who only recognize KMFDM for ‘A Drug Against War’! It isn’t their only song, i hope you know!”

Well look at that, it’s another one of these “bawww mainstream” faggots. Even worse, he defines himself and his little bumfuck pals “the real people”, implying that pretty much 6.8 billion people don’t actually exist. Interesting.

I move on to his “reviews” of what is easily my favourite music.

JEGUS. FUCKNIMG. CHRIS.

This guy’s definition of review adequately matches my definition of drooling over a keyboard. Let’s take a look at his first review.

I’m not going to post it here, but you can claw your eyes out for yourself: What Do You Know Deutschland? “Review”.

Let’s see, his conception of a review for the first three tracks consists of saying “it’s very good” – okay, I could do that if I was a toddler. Then, you begin to see the idiocy that will become endemic as you look at his bullshit:

Next is CONILLON. Hmmm … it sounds neat, but it is one of those songs that just drones on and on. It is kinda boring and long. It sounds good at first, but goes on forever. ITCHY BITCHY is twisted, but pretty good. Entertaining, but kind of dumb.

To condense it, this pretty much comes out as “good but bad but good but bad but good but bad”.

Huh?

I don’t fucking get it. How can something be good and shit at once?

We now move on to the Don’t Blow Your Top review.

This just baffles me.

But this i think is when they started to sound like they are trying to force rhyme the words.

If this guy knew anything, he’d know that most KMFDM lyrics from this time-frame were just blatant rip-offs of Zappa (oh shit, something else for him to bitch about?!). He continues his juvenile reviewing style, where he practically just goes “er, x track is good… not much else to say really”.

However, if anything, this is the page that really flipped my switch from bemusement to clear rage: UAIOE “review”.

This isn’t a review of a CD. This is a tirade about “some rapper guy” (incidentally, his name was Morgan Adjei, and I believe he has now left this world). In fact, I genuinely find it difficult to write about this hellhole of a review – I believed I’d be able to harp on and on, but apparently this isn’t the case – it’s just… too stupid for words. I mean, what’s is even this guy’s his problem? It’s like heg got broad side school fed up the bone bulge. I can only implore you to read it for yourself and see where I’m coming from.

There are a few other “reviews” between that one and the one I’m going to head onto next, and I’m sure you can find them and cry on your own time – next is his XTORT review, and I have only one line to quote:

This, in my opinion is their best CD. POWER kinda creeped me out with its, “We’ve got the power,” bit. It sorta has a familiar Juke Joint Jezebel-type feel … very poppy and kinda annoying.

“It’s their best, but it’s annoying”. Yep, there’s the schizophrenic BAD BUD GOOD shit we’ve seen in every review so far.

Then in his Adios review, the following:

Nina Hagen has a wonderful voice … as soon as i heard it (not the computerized scary voice she did), i thought her voice resembled that of Bjork’s (Bjork is the most talented female singer this world has ever seen! Only narrow-minded trend-followers find her talentless in any way, because she has skill, and no one likes to admit that …

More of his elitist bullshit again, great – nice to see it doesn’t just stop at one paragraph.

As I roll through his site, it just seems like he’s one of these Hot Topic-raping idiots who hates the “mainstream” while also managing to have a command of English that is laughable, at best, and some sort of deranged concept of the definition of the word “review”.

I took to his guestbook (man, when was the last time you saw one of those?) to have it out with the guy. Here’s the exchange.

THE KAP’N: Jesus christ man, how can you claim to be a KMFDM fan and complain SO MUCH about EVERY SINGLE ONE of their albums, dude? SERIOUSLY

THE GUY: A true fan can see the faults of the things he enjoys. The false fan loves everything of the thing he enjoys just because it comes from/is associated with that thing, even if some of it sucks. I do say that when they make awesome songs they fucking rock, so… what’s you’re problem?

THE KAP’N: No, man. I can appreciate that there’s some KMFDM stuff that doesn’t hold my interest at all (instances: most of DBYT, quite a bit of WWIII), but I can say with 100% behind me that I don’t have issues with (seemingly, I don’t know your opinions of WWIII -> Krieg) EVERY SINGLE ALBUM. From what I read of your reviews, you seem to have issues with about half of every album they’ve made.

And man, true fan / false fan stuff is just posturing. A true fan is somebody who agrees completely and rigidly with the viewpoint of the person using the term. It’s often uncanny how your opinions are exactly those of a true fan.
Examples: “My point of view is the correct one, and if you disagree with me you’re not a true fan, and thus not worthy of my time.”
“Anyone who likes everything KMFDM does isn’t a true fan.”
“Anyone who likes Juke-Joint Jezebel isn’t a true fan”
“Anyone who likes Cheryl Wilson isn’t a true fan.”
“Anyone who likes Morgan Adjei (as you describe him, “THAT RAPPER GUY :(” ) isn’t a true fan.”

In conclusion: true fan? Bullshit.

THE GUY: sheesh, some people are kinda stupid aren’t they? I can still be a true fan and acknowledge the things I PERSONALLY don’t like. Others have their own things they PERSONALLY like or don’t like about EVERYTHING.
A true fan can admit these things without being blinded by the subject matter. Say if Sascha suddenly became a child rapist, would you still be the truer fan because you still love him, or would you decide not to associate with that? Just think straight, ok, and don’t get your head in a bunch.

THE KAP’N: Someone didn’t read my comment inbetween the other two, seeing as it totally invalidates his argument.

I clearly admitted that I don’t like everything they do – on the other hand, I can say, for instance, that I definitely like everything on NIHIL and XTORT – I can listen to those albums through without having some sort of aneurysm and desire to complain about it on the internet. What I’m picking out here is that you seem to have major issues with everything they put out – and you have a lot more to write on the negatives than the positives. I believe you described one song that you liked as “cool and fun and stuff” and then launched into a massive tirade about one that you don’t like.

As far as the child rapist point goes, that’s moot – because the simple and easiest response to that is “what a dick, still makes top tier music though” – you seem to be implying that I believe Sascha has some sort of Midas touch – I don’t.

What I can’t understand is how you can only seem to like a couple of tracks on each album, and the schizophrenic pace of your reviews, that goes along the lines of “It’s great.. but it’s boring.. but it’s good… but it’s annoying” and so on and so forth. Something can’t be great and shit at once, man.

THE GUY: These are old reviews, i was much younger, so there’s a lot less i knew how to say. But when someone thinks something is good, it’s natural that people leave it be, and don’t spend much time on it. When they want things to be changed, that’s when they talk more about it. That’s sort of a natural process that we all do. I love the majority of KMFDM’s work. But i can be critical of the shitty parts, too. Maybe you don’t think the same parts are shitty as i do – and that seems to be your entire issue here.

THE KAP’N: I find it hard to believe that (based on your about me page) those reviews were the epitome of your writing in your late teens/early 20s.

My main issue isn’t the fact that I dislike different parts of the KMFDM catalog to you (I find it reprehensible to call anything that I couldn’t make or exceed myself shitty), my issue is that you seem to give the things you like minimal lip service and ramble on about the “shitty” forever, turning your page into a massive bitchfest on the internet.

I can’t find words to respond to that last paragraph of shit. He’s still doing it, saying that his reviews aren’t good, but they are. wat.

UPDATE: Oh man, I did find words. According to his about me page, he was born in 1980. This means that the majority of his website was written late teens -> early 20s.

I’ve yet to have the honour of reading more bullshit from him yet, but I will update when I do.

However, just to prove that this guy really is a bit of a fucknut, take a look at this that I found whilst trawling his website (NSFW.. not really safe for your sanity either) :

http://limegreeneros.tripod.com/art/mariox.jpg (ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO CLICK)
That’s all folks!

THE KAP’N

How a drastically reduced Government would help the UK

A small, if not nonexistent Government, would benefit the UK immensely. That’s my point, and now I’m going to substantiate it.

To begin with, let’s look at a couple of major points of contention: the Monarchy, and devolution.

With a massively reduced Government, there would no longer be any need for a Monarchy. Logically, it would be abolished – there’s no need to keep the Monarchy in government when the government isn’t doing a whole lot. Their role of heading the armed forces, and such like would be abolished and control handed to the people.

The clamor regarding independence of Scotland, Wales, and so forth would end as the Westminster government reduced to such a size as to have no real effect on those two regions.

Now, onto things that the Government currently renders as “services” which you have to pay for whether or not you use them.

Taxation

I reluctantly refer to this as a service, because it is frankly nothing more than legalised thievery (which is still unlawful). With a massively reduced government, taxation would not be necessary and the reasons for that will become clear as I detail the rest of these points. Remember, as I discuss the following “services”, that they are paid for by money that is STOLEN from you.

Parliament

The cost of running Parliament is £500m: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8208590.stm

With a government that extends little to no influence over the populace, there’s really no reason for a group of six hundred and forty six morons to sit in a rather large, fancy room issuing diktat to everyone else. What’s more, at the moment, the populace pay for this “service”. You pay for their cushy salaries, their ludicrous expense claims, their paper, the lights for the Palace of Westminster – pretty much their entire lives. Why should you?

Roads

The “road tax” that the DVLA harp on about doesn’t even go to the roads. That’s a fact. The roads, as of 2010, are in a worse state than they’ve ever been, regardless of your tax bills rising every year. People try to blame this on the winter, but it’s really Local Government’s fault for botching their repairs year-on-year.

If I were running roads, as a private company, this is how I would go for it. Charge a low rate for frequently used roads, and a higher rate for roads that people rarely use. It’s similar in concept to a road tax, except that you only pay for the roads that you use, and the funding goes straight to maintaining the roads, instead of getting lost in a web of crap along the way. Additionally, when you have companies competing against each other, they will damn well make sure that their roads are good quality and good value, else you’re just not going to pay them, are you?

Immigration

It doesn’t matter. Abolish the “Equal Opportunities” crap and let people be judged on their abilities. People have grown up, they don’t need to be given quotas of races to employ. If a black guy isn’t qualified as well as the white guy, don’t employ the black guy. If a woman is more qualified than a man, employ her. If a white guy is more qualified than a black guy, an asian, and a goddamn alien, employ him.

Beer / Petrol / Cigarettes

The only reason there is such a punitive tax on these items is that Government thinks it’s your mother and can tell you what’s good or bad for you. With no tax, these products will be immensely cheap.

War in Afghanistan / War on Terror / Army

As these wars are politically motivated and funded, the ending of the political establishment would in turn end these wars. The Army should be repurposed into a force solely for defending the people. I would assume, to defend their way of life, that people would probably contribute to maintaining the Army. Things like aircraft carriers and nukes, that we don’t really need if we’re only defending ourselves, could be sold to raise funds.

Terrorism

As terrorism is an immediate result of exercising a bellicose foreign policy and allying ourselves with those that do, immediately ceasing these activities should, in theory, cause terrorism to be a non-issue for us.

Crime

Fraud laws would continue to be enforced by what remains of Government and under Common Law. A small, public, police force could be maintained based on voluntary donation. People would be allowed to own any weapons they like (but not allowed to use them unlawfully).
The knowledge that probably everyone is packing heat would bring crime down considerably, in my eyes.
As well as this, an armed populace is great for national defence. Private police and fire services would be hirable to protect your house. If they didn’t do a good job of protecting you, you tell them to get shafted and go hire someone else.
All trials would take place in a court de jure with a jury of twelve good men/women. Magistrate’s courts would be abolished.

Education

An end to government-run education! Teachers no longer bound by inane regulations and the end to a government-mandated “curriculum”. You choose where to send your child. Local schools could be funded by a kitty of parents and charitable people chipping in. You can join any school you wish by joining in and paying into their kitty. With less regulation, the cost of schooling would be invariably cheaper and the education itself would be more substantial. Rather than paying for EVERY school in the country, you pay for the school that your child uses.

And now, for the most contentious points of the lot:

Health

The NHS should be abolished. It does not work. A free market healthcare system would be better in a plethora of ways.

NOTE: I AM NOT SUGGESTING AN AMERICAN STYLE SYSTEM

The healthcare system, as I would posit it, would be made up of individual doctors charging for their services.

All regulation of the healthcare industry would end and be replaced with fraud laws.
This means that if you want to become a cataract doctor, you study only things that are relevant to becoming a cataract doctor, and you go into practice as such. This could cut your student loan massively and bring your prices down.

If you want to be a family doctor, you are likely to only have to deal with the odd cough or cold. You do not need a huge education to do this.

If you were found to be acting outside your abilities, you would be directly liable in court to those that you deceived under fraud law.

For those that are genuinely too poor to afford expensive medical care or insurance to cover them for medical care, my suggestion is this. Trainees would offer medical care for free. Note that I am not suggesting that first-year students go around poking into people’s stomachs. Trainees sit in on and assist with paid operations until such time as their mentor thinks they are ready to perform an operation themselves. At this point, someone who otherwise could not afford medical care has the chance to have this operation for free. They would sign a waiver noting that it would be a trainee operating and that a fully qualified doctor would be there at all times if anything went wrong.

As well as that, doctors (before the advent of stupid regulations) would often offer their services charitably – there’s nothing to stop them doing that under this system.

Welfare

Welfare would ultimately be phased out at a government level.

There are four groups of people on welfare:

People in genuine hardship due to their conditions/abilities etc.
People in temporary hardship due to economic conditions.
People in hardship due to lacking skills to support themselves.
Twats.

For economic conditions, the solution is to fix the economy.
For skills, the solution is to provide them with skills.
For genuine hardship, something may need to be done.
Twats can fuck off.

Charities could be set up to help people develop some skill to get to work. The internet is also a great source of skills and the ideals of learning for yourself need to be given some credence.

For those in genuine hardship, charities are definitely an option. However, companies could easily work at bringing in some way to involve these people in the working world – i.e. working from home, etc.

Democracy

With a government as small as has been detailed, do you really need to have democracy?
The saying goes “no taxation without representation” – if you’re not being taxed, it doesn’t really matter – does it?

Economy

The easiest way to fix the economy is to cancel all fraudulent debts (i.e. credit cards, overdrafts, etc) and to outlaw fractional reserve banking, because it is fraud, and then to return to a commodity money system. Eliminating tax increases productivity and gives people more money in their pocket with which to better themselves, contribute to charities as they see fit, etc.

And for the pointless points:

Environment

Bullshitting around over carbon means nothing. Polluters should be brought before a jury by any and all people that they impact.

The EU

Would soon expel us if we didn’t pay them anymore.

CCTV

No draconian government, no CCTV all over the place.

Culture, Media and Sport

If it’s any good, it doesn’t need Government help to be good. The BBC should no longer be permitted to extort money just because people have televisions. It would run as a business, just like every other broadcaster.

International Development

Is a fucking joke. Totally unnecessary. The money never makes a difference to the lives of those people anyway.

Drugs

Totally okay to own and use.

Transport

Trains and buses are run by private businesses. They have a need to be competitive, else they die. No tax on fuel means that their costs plummet, so ultimately, the consumer wins in the form of lower prices.

And back to the beginning:

Taxation

With tax abolished, people would earn more, get more with their money and all of these reforms would be made possible as people would be able to pay for these services as they use them out of their own pockets. It’s pretty simple, really.

If there’s anything that I haven’t made clear, you don’t understand, or would like to contest, please leave a comment and we’ll see what we can do!

The Bastard Child of Socialism and Political Correctness: Whiny Fucktards

Let’s get right into this one. Let’s say, for example, that the word “green” offends you.

The grass is green.

Oh whoops, I offended you.

Now, in this case, if you go whining about it to someone, they’ll tell you to shut the fuck up and get over yourself, because you’re an overbearing twat.

However, let’s take a look at some words that our idiotic excuse for a society has come up with in the last few decades, and their translations into normal English:

• African-American (Black)
• Visually Challenged (Blind)
• Hir(s) (A stupid gender-neutral pronoun)
• Deferred Success (Failure)
• Negative Patient Care Outcome (Death)

When did we all become such fucking pussies? Not just for letting people invent these “words”, but standing by and letting them become acceptable?

African-American? First, not all black people are from Africa. Secondly, not all of them are American. But if you spotted say, a British black guy in America, Americans would all stumble over themselves to say “African-American”, and the guy would be thinking “Wow, these people are a bunch of cunts”.

Visually Challenged? This goes for all the other ‘challenges’ as well. Face it – these people are blind, deaf, or retarded. Their life isn’t a bloody gameshow, and I’m sure they don’t wake up thinking: “Oh boy, what challenges will I face today?” They don’t need your mollycoddling.

Gender neutral pronouns. There’s only one thing that these “words” do, and that’s neuter the English language. Hey, idiots – how much information is conveyed in a pronoun?

Don’t answer that, I’ll answer it for you: shit-tons. Way to fuck up the English language, assholes. Shut up and go back to using words that are well-established and everyone apart from you doesn’t have a problem with.

Deferred Success. Oh shit, look, they made a mistake, they fucked up and they failed. That’s their own damn fault, and let’s face it, some people won’t ever succeed. It’s called failing, and it happens to everyone. Keeping people inside their cushioned ball of “everything’s good, and everything’s fine” will just set them up for a big lovely fall (and probably make them into hobos, who will then try to fucking rob me).

Negative Patient Care Outcome. Wow, do I even need to tackle this one?
You’re obviously not going to offend the dead person, so this is obviously just one to stop your feelings being hurt. Aww, diddums. Face facts, you fucked up, someone died. Shit happens, you can’t absolve yourself by calling it a “negative outcome”. Deal with it.

To sum that up:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

So anyway, that’s a small slice of the bunch of the crap that the PC Brigade has invented over the past 20 years. If any of you have been reading my posts for any length of time, you know that I’m a blunt twat who will tell it how it fucking is. So let’s continue.

What has this (and the benefits culture fostered by our lovely Labour Party) done for us?

Well, let’s trim this down into one sentence:

It’s given us a bunch of whiny, self-entitled idiots who think they can leech off everyone else because, I don’t know, they were born with a stupid finger and some missing ribs, and the Government has told them that they’re disabled (even though they really aren’t) and therefore entitled to the world being handed to them on a silver platter.

Okay, maybe that sentence was a bit long. Maybe they get a platinum platter as well – they are “disabled” after all.

But wait! That’s not everything!

We also have morons who think that everything they do is brilliant, even when it’s shit, because the schools were too afraid to let them lose the sack race, in case their feelings got hurt, and now they’re too sheltered to take it on the nose when someone tells them that they suck!

How brilliant is that? Somehow, we’ve managed to change a race of people with some common sense into a bunch of prats who cry when they stub their toe!

No wonder our males are being bashed around by women, when they’re being told that they’re worse than women, that they’re evil and malevolent and that women can’t possibly be that way, because they’re all sunshine and lollipops and can do no wrong (obviously).

Let’s put the reality check machine on full throttle now and destroy some PreConceptions:

• Some people are destined to do badly.
• Not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, or politician.
• You are probably stupid. You also probably suck.
• You should also know how to deal with it.
• Disabled people – they’re disabled, but they don’t need you to hold them all the time.
• “Disabled” people – are not fucking disabled, tell them to get on with their lives.
• Black people – are black. (Shock horror!)
• There can be only one winner.
• 90% of the time, you aren’t that winner.
• Affectionate gender-based terminology is not sexual harassment.
• Women are not the same as men, no matter how much you wish that to be true.
• Smoking – you don’t like it? Boo hoo, find somewhere else rather than forcing people out.
• Jokes are funny – if you don’t like them, don’t fucking listen, okay?

If I offended anyone with any of that post - great!

Captain Butthurt: A Followup

In relation to this post I made in July.

I feel rather vindicated now, as I appear to not be the only one who has committed the (apparently unforgivable) crime of converting precious FLACs to MP3.

A RAR file with the name “NIN-071509-ESTEBANF.rar” is now floating around the inter nets, containing ~160kbps VBR MP3s.

On the other hand, my MP3s were a far, far higher bit rate, and I didn’t tag it all with my own damn name.

Who’s worse?

Up to you.

muse.mu shop: part of The Continuing Chronicles

Re-hashing a title, Kap’n?

You bet I am.

So, let’s fill in a little backstory here. Muse’s new album, The Resistance, is due to drop on the 14th September. The first single, Uprising, was released on the 7th.

I preordered both of these from the muse.mu webstore on the 10th and 20th of August, respectively. The money was taken, in both cases, two days after my order was placed.

So, I check around on the muse.mu order status page around the 5th. Lo and behold, a change in status on the single!

Not so fast, Mr. Kap’n. Turns out my single item order had been “dispatched in part”! So, I assumed they’d made a cockup in reporting my order status, and decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and wait to see if I received it on release date. Release date came and went, and a bunch of people had received theirs, so, I drop an email to the shop support line.

Since late Friday, this order has been showing the status “Dispatched
in part”.

Seeing as the single was released today, I would’ve expected it to
show up today, having been posted on Friday.

However, seeing as the status is “Dispatched in part”, I am confused -
how can a single item be dispatched in part? What does this mean?

Thanks in advance for your help,
The Kap’n (obviously not my real name)

A response to that dropped into my inbox the next day:

Thank you for contacting Muse.

After checking your order we can see that the goods have still to be despatched.
We have passed this to the relevant department to get this issue resolved for you as quickly as possible.
We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your continued patience.

Regards
Customer Services
Muse

Okay, so what this e-mail says to me is that in Emery Fulfilment (the company behind this store) world, “dispatched in part” actually means “uh, guys, are we supposed to send the order out?”

I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and left it a few more days to see if they’d actually tried to sort anything out. I heard absolutely nothing from them.

So, the 11th rolls around, and I’m getting a tad restless. I call the (frankly rather difficult to find) phone number for this shop.
To start with, it’s an 0844 number, so they’re making money off my complaint – lucky them. Secondly, after three days, no change with my order. They’re still saying “well, guys, er, we don’t really know what’s going on”.

If anyone can point out to me how this is a good way to do business, I’d be amazed. Here’s how I see the idea of doing business coming out of this fulfilment service:

• Take customer’s money.
• Sit on item.
• Sit on item some more.
• Sit on item a bit more.
• I dunno, have a cup of tea.
• Sit on the item a bit more.
• Oh crap, do we actually have to send this?
• I can’t find an envelope.
• I’ve got one!
• Brilliant, let’s pop this down the post office, shall we?

However, in this case, they unfortunately decided to do this to me. After my phone call around noon, I followed up with a call just before close of business at 4:30 to see why I hadn’t had my dispatch email yet.
You see, in my world, as soon as possible means getting on the phone to the warehouse and telling them the parcel needs to go out today. In muse.mu store speak, this appears to mean “email the warehouse and hope they look at it”.

Close of business came and went. Still nothing. I will be phoning back tomorrow, every four hours, and the day after, every four hours, until that package is sent. My caller log is going to be bright red.

But wait guys, that’s not all! The incompetence can only continue!

The box-set order went from “awaiting stock” to “dispatched” on the 10th. I decided to ask about this while I was on the phone. It turns out, “dispatched” means “awaiting packaging”! Isn’t this amazing, how they seem to have a different dictionary to the rest of the fucking planet?

It’s getting beyond a joke. I’ve spent £65 with them in the past month, they’ve cocked up one order that was supposed to be with me on or around release date, and they’re in the process of cocking up another order with the same kind of promise behind it.

They will get no more of my money, but while they still owe me their end of the trade, I’ll be kicking up a fuss…

Wait, what am I talking about? At the muse.mu store, there is no such thing as trade, you give them money so that they can pretend they’re doing something in their jobs.

I wonder why people pirate – does it have anything to do with situations like this, by any chance?

UPDATE

After five days of chasing my first order, it has finally been dispatched. I didn’t receive an email, so, I had to call the 0844 number again to confirm something that should have been automated.

After three days of limbo, the second order has been confirmed as shipped. Again, no emails were received.

Diabolical customer service. From now on, I’ll support bands I like by writing them a cheque or something, at least that way I don’t have to go careening after my money.

The Continuing Chronicles of the Good Ship Peter Mandelson

So here, we are, back again. Mandelson’s taken another holiday with his lobbyist pals and come back with the sea air in his lungs, and another policy U-turn. Oh my, I’m shocked.

Well then, here’s our latest bit of gold from the office of the Prime Minister Business Secretary.

Apparently, the provisions in the government’s Digital Britain programme weren’t enough, and Mandelson’s department is now backing graduated response measures for piracy. Yes, the same measures ruled unconstitutional in France and blasted by the EU.

Now, to start with, let’s look at the technical issues with these measures.
Without deep-packet inspection, which is a huge invasion of privacy (that I wouldn’t put past the Labour Government), there’s no way to tell what’s being downloaded.

Therefore, the scheme doesn’t make provisions for legal P2P downloads, as a major point.
Secondly, there’s the problem of unsecured WiFi, shared connections, and their ilk. This raises several questions, for instance: Is it fair to cut a household’s internet connection based on a single person?

Mandelson also proves that, along with record and movie company execs, that he does not understand the Internet, or the electorate (although that wouldn’t worry him, would it?).
Cut off a household’s internet, you say? I’m sure that mobile providers won’t go so far to cut their mobile phone internet and mobile “dongle” broadband and lose massive amounts of money. Is the government also going to introduce a “no-fly” list for internet cafes?

On top of all this, by excluding people from the intermanets, not only do you cut them off from friends and family, you also break access to all those wonderful “e-government” initiatives you’ve put forward.
Collateral, I suppose – the same collateral as going against your “Prime Minister” (I say those words tentatively in relation to Mr. Brown), who said that the internet was now as important as “roads, bridges and trains”?

I’m sure that if I copied a CD and shared it out whilst on a bridge, I would be banned from using all the bridges in the country as well.

The fact of the matter is, there’s no real logic behind cutting people off the internet. Not only do you screw them around bigtime, but here’s the kicker. You expect someone who’s been kicked off the internet for sharing music… to go and buy more music, legally. Whoever thought of this is/was absolutely insane. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see that that strategy will never work.

Here’s that again:

1. Person A shares music on the internets.
2. Record label has a hissy fit, complains to the government.
3. The government ignores any kind of legal system, and goes right ahead and cuts off the “offender”.
4. Record label expects Person A to go out and buy their wares.

So, as we can see, the record labels have been as far even.

Moving on from that, let’s have a look at why the whole “pirates make us lose money” spiel is totally wrong.
Here’s my experience.

I started torrenting quite a while back, and most of the music I was getting wasn’t very good, so, I didn’t particularly care. Now, as I was schlepping across the internets, I came across Tool. I really liked these guys, so I bought their CDs. From there, I went on to discover related acts, explore genres, all through “illegal” downloads, and bought more and more CDs and vinyl.

So, let’s have a look at this:

Is that losing money for the labels and artists? I wouldn’t have purchased a single one of those CDs or records had I never torrented. On top of that, I’ve bought stupid amounts of merchandise, attended live shows – and I’m one of those evil copyright infringers!

I might follow this up at a later date with the common anti-p2p arguments, but for now: this is why we can’t have nice things.

eBay: How NOT to get me to view your listings. *L@@K* RARE

The moment you let average Joe type on the internet is the moment that scholars and advocates of the English language the world over cry in unison.

The worst case of this is our venerable institution, the eBay listing. Unfortunately for those that know how to use the English language, the average eBay seller has little to no grasp of how to write words on the inter net, and even less chance of writing something that may be conducive of making a sale, unless they sell to their own idiot brethren.

So, let’s take a look at some of the techniques that these people think will make their questionable internet items oh-so much more attractive to a prospective buyer. Clicking the smaller pictures will lead to a screenshot of the whole listing.

1) L@@K

This is probably one of the most annoying eBay “techniques”. Now, you might think you’re being clever, because the @ symbol looks a little bit like an eye. However, this is one of the things that pretty much immediately screams to me to not look an auction.
For one, you come across as that annoying market stall proprietor who just won’t shut up and let you look around.
Secondly, it’s pretty obnoxious to see as I’m scrolling the listings, and I’ll likely completely ignore the listing out of spite and go and bid on a competing auction that doesn’t sink to the level of cocking about with symbols to try and garner views. Incidentally, this item didn’t sell.

2) TYPING YOUR DESCRIPTION IN ALL CAPS

Here’s another thing that really riles me. Just because you want to catch someone’s attention doesn’t mean that YOU SUDDENLY HAVE TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS AND DISREGARD PUNCTUATION AND ALL OTHER DEVICES MEANT TO MAKE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE READABLE BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY THE ONLY WAY TO GET SOMEONE’S ATTENTION IS TO USE CAPITAL LETTERS ALL THE TIME ISN’T THAT RIGHT. I mean, seriously. If I were to type this entire blog post in that fashion, nobody would even attempt to decipher that crap, as much as caps lock is, as they say, cruise control for cool.

Using all caps and no punctuation doesn’t make you persuasive. It makes your writing (if it can be called that) a pain to read, or at worst, makes people not even bother reading your description and sequentially not bidding on whatever piece of crap you’re selling.

If there’s another item similar to one that has an all caps item description, I will go for the one that takes the time out to recognise punctuation and lowercase. They may be small, eBay sellers, but they need love too, y’know?

3) RARE and deceptive descriptions

Another one from the same listing! These are potentially the most maddening and exasperating of eBay auctions – namely, the ones that overplay themselves through the use of blatant deception and misinformation.

Firstly, let’s tackle the use of “RARE” and its variants, *RARE*, MEGA RARE, ULTRA RARE and SUPER RARE.

No, your mass produced item that you’re selling on eBay is not “RARE”, in capital letters or otherwise. Here is the dictionary definition of rare:

(of a thing) not found in large numbers and consequently of interest or value.

In this case, unless your item is numbered with less than 5,000 made, or one of the last surviving copies of something old, I hazard the guess that it’s probably not rare.

On top of that, there’s the moronic description of this particular CD. When you don’t know what it is that you’re selling, don’t try to sell it.
For one, Broken is an EP, not a single. It is not limited edition. It has eight tracks, not six, and if you go one page back on eBay, hot damn, there are eight of the same.
It’s shocking that people think they can get away with lying to someone about a mass produced CD in the age where information about the item being sold is simply one or two clicks away. I’d like to think these are all honest mistakes, but there is some serious manipulation of the truth going on in eBay listings.

4) Keyword Stuffing

This is one of my pet hates. Here’s the scenario:

Opportunistic seller is selling something relating to one thing, and decides, just so they show up in more searches, to spam the end of their auction title with related, yet unrelated words blogs hosting service anger management.

Pretty annoying, huh?

Not only does it make your listing look like you had a fit and started randomly typing onto the end of your title, it makes your listing show up in searches where people may or may not give a shit about your item – usually not.

5) Excessive use of exclamation marks!!

This one really pisses me off!!!

For some reason, people seem to think that ending every sentence with exclamation marks makes their listing look more professional!!!!

Wow, that got very old, very fast. Put simply, exclamation marks were never made to be used in that way, and abusing them simply makes you look silly. I’d rather you not even use them than use them like a moron.

6) Bad spelling

I’d think this one is pretty self-evident. If you can’t use a spell checker, how the hell did you get on the internet? Seriously, bad spelling in an auction description is not going to make me part with my money.

7) Stock Photos

If you can’t be bothered to take a photo of what you’re selling, so instead find one on Google Images, then you really aren’t doing yourself any favours. Where’s the proof that you have it? How can we see the condition? As is often said on these internets, pics or it didn’t happen.

Honourable Mention

I saw some pretty funny stuff whilst farming eBay for the screenshots in this blog post. Here’s the best one:

Not only is it pretty badly written, but “no returns as it is a great item”? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something so funny as an excuse for not offering refunds.

So yeah, that was a quick overview of the worst possible ways to put people off your item.
The secret to success on eBay? Take a good picture of your article, and write a description in proper English that’s easy to read, truthful, and not patronising.

Pretty easy really.

Theme Switch

Based on the features that we need, and the features offered, we’ve made the switch to the iNove theme. Not only does it serve our purposes better, but it’s pretty snazzy-looking too, if I do say so myself.