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Thursday, January 9, 2003
 

We Media, Redux. I have a short piece in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review on a topic that will be... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
10:32:21 PM    Comment []

Clear Channel may be somewhat popular netcasts, but there is certainly no accounting for those listener's tastes. Am I naive to see the abdication of the big bully Clear Channel as a good sign for independent media gaining a greater foothold in Net Radio? [waves Clear Channel bye bye] Some interesting Wired quotes below.

Radio Ditches Webcasts En Masse. Internet radio faces more trouble as about 150 Clear Channel stations pull the plug on their Web feeds. It leaves the surviving webcasters wondering if listeners will abandon ship, too. By Randy Dotinga. [Wired News]

[...]

Maintaining streams won't be easy considering the medium's complications and expense. Traditional radio stations seem to be especially vulnerable.

Whoo hooo! Let's hear it for NONtraditional radio then, thankyouverymuch. Traditional radio SUCKS! If you doubted my commitment to this view, see the next posting down.

Music stations, however, can't get around another cost: royalties for the performers of songs played on the Internet. (Thanks to a quirk in the law, performers don't get royalties when their work plays over the airwaves. But thanks to a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, webcasters have to pay.)

Webcasting itself can cost $1,000 or more per month, and many stations complain that streaming providers are unreliable.

Another reason why the DMCA is such a big fat steaming pile of fucking shit!

But dead air could be even more costly. In December, the ratings service Arbitron said online listeners -- about 320,000 of them per week -- made Clear Channel's stations the most popular radio network on the Internet. The company is sure to lose that title now.

"If radio listeners can't listen to broadcast stations on the Web, they're going to find alternatives," Hanson said. "Broadcast radio will never get them back, or at least they will have a hard time."

Once more, let's hear it for overthrowing the bullshit reign of broadcast radio. Let's bring in LIBERAL talk show hosts, musicians that aren't a member of that bullshit monopoly protection industry--REAL independent artists. Let's loop and chunk and be dialogic. Let's reinvent things and end run these motherfuckers. Traditional radio is dead; long live Internet Radio.

Miasma
12:49:44 AM    Comment []


Here's the thing that the FCC doesn't take into account. They say turning off a radio or TV is always the basic choice if you don't like what you hear (old media delete key). But none of the ratings systems or commissioned studies take into account nonlisteners driven away by generic taped program shit with no local or public service content (can't even tell where the broadcast is from, let alone catch a tornado warning), and advertising SO OBNOXIOUS it drives listeners to their own custom mix CDs.

Miasma <---has not listened to radio in the car since 1984, at least 8 cross country road trips ago, several to Alaska

Wired News: Radio: Where's the Diversity? [Daypop Top 40]

At the Future of Music Coalition's annual policy summit held here this week, people representing musicians, record labels, consumers and others charged that radio deregulation since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act has destroyed diversity on the airwaves.

Amid grumbling that radio consolidation has led to a rash of bad music and rampant "payola" schemes that hurt independent artists, policy makers offered a sympathetic ear.

"If you don't have the money to play in the system, you are shut out," said Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on the topic of radio payola. "You've got to pay to play."


12:34:43 AM    Comment []

Very nearly every example is dead on. I love stylistic imitation exercises! This is so much fun! I can't help but honor the wonderful writers by quoting my favorites, what in my judgment at least, are the best of the best.

Miasma

"examples of prose from The Lord Of The Rings if it were written by other authors" [Daypop Top 40]

jayjay writes:

If I were to tell you the true story behind the unmaking of that ring...that ring!...you would think me mad. Horrors such as are scribed in ancient tomes of eldritch evil cannot compare to the terror...the cruel, cold, braincrushing terror!...that we felt in the lair of that foul spirit which raimed itself in arachnid form, that vile scavenger, that horrid arcane leech lingering at the border's of Sauron's Black Land...

-The Ring-Journal of an Anonymous Hobbit, by H.P. Lovecraft

Eowyn felt her heart flutter when she saw him. His raven hair flew in the breeze off the plain, and his piercing eyes caught her gaze as if by magic. He bore a kingly attitude; surely he was a prince. Her mind turned to forbidden things, things which would be forbidden to the King's niece, but surely allowed for a free shieldmaiden. She knew that she was made to love this ranger.

-Mark of the King, Danielle Steele

Byan Ekers writes:

Smeagol writhed in corruption, his lifelong attempts to collectivize the Hobbit economy had twisted his soul and body and brought ruin to the Shire. "Precious," he muttered. "Precious colective good giving according to need." He shuddered at the thought of the unbroken individual standing proudly over a conquered plain with the Ring, and felt jealous that the wholesome power could not be his.

-Lord of the Rings, by Ayn Rand.

gonsoron writes:

"Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!"

"I can not, will not hold the One. You have a slim chance, but I have none. I will not take it on a boat, I will not take it across a moat. I cannot take it under Moria, that's one thing I can't do for ya. I would not bring it into Mordor, I would not make it to the border."

-excerpt from Dr. Suess's FOTR.

Mighty Maximino writes:

By Neal Stephenson (heavily borrowed, and eerily appropriate)

Frodo, the Deliverator, belongs to an elite order, a Fellowship of nine members only. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his only mission that matters. His armor is silver like the light of the full moon, jangling only slightly with its decorative gems. An arrow will bounce off its dwarvenmesh weave like a hammer off an anvil, but excess perspiration wafts through it like the winds over the charred plains of Gorgoroth. All the arrows of all the hunters in the world couldn't cut it against this one.

When they gave him the job, they gave him a sword. The Deliverator never looks for trouble, but some Orc might come after him anyway---might want his armor, or his cargo. The sword is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of sword a Hobbit would carry; it cuts quickly into load-bearing beams without visible effort, and when you get done using it around evil, you have to sheathe it, because it glows in the dark.

Ranchoth writes:

The King of the Nazgul (KotN) fingered the safety buckle that secured the shortsword in it's scabbard. It was modeled after the Gladius design, making it wholly inadequate for going up against Elven armour, but it was perfectly suited for being jammed in the collarbone of a Hobbit 'merc, without calling too much attention to it's owner. His XO, "Camel" Khamul had used a similar weapon in numerous CoIN missions in North Gondor, where he had been sent to disrupt "Elrond's" supply fellowships sneaking down the Is-ild-ur trail. The KotN smiled, even without a head. This mission was almost going to be a mead-run. Taking out a squad of sleeping halflings was going to be easier than slaying Wyvyrns sitting on a tarmac...

-Hunt for the Ring, Tom Clancy

Nerrie writes:

Of the great War of the Ring, and the tast Of that Forbidden power, the long and Arduous trek, thru[base '] fiery, blasted plains With faithful Hobbits and treacherous beasts To Chaos[base '] edge, and there to cast the One To endless fire and eternal death: Sing Heav[base ']nly Muse, that in Rivendell did[base ']st First teach of the Rings of Power forgéd, In the beginning how the Dark Lord Sauron Brought into the world from fiery depths Of Doom this ring of gold, pouréd into[base ']t His Malice and his Evil; I now Invoke thy Aid to my Adventrous song That struggle as it might to take to th[base ']air Though will I drag from bottomless perdition Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime And justifie the ways of men to Elves.

LotR, by John Milton

RadioWave writes:

We were 20 steps from the exit when the giant flaming Balrons first appeared over our heads. These weren't your normal giant flaming Balrons but some sort of interdimensional Maia that would sit and spin in mid air before dissolving before your very eyes and sneaking up behind you. Gandalf had the pipe and I had the ring which, so far, I had been able to resist trading to the local drug lords for another package of white. Gandalf was shouting random Macrohydration spells while simultaneously trying to not trip over his robes and fall face first into the local pools of goo. Legolas took another drink from his flask and, once again, began explaining how elves were different than humans and much, much mellower.

- Hunter S. Thompson

tracer writes:

Legolas allowed himself the luxury of allowing himself the luxury of a stray thought. What new treachery is this? he mused at the form coming slowly toward them through the world-haze. He reached out with senses sharpened by years of Elvish training. It looks like ... no! That cannot be! It must be a vision. Nazgul spies must have poisoned my lembas.

But the self within himself knew that his lembas was uncorrupted, that the vision that he saw now was not merely of a possible future but of an inevitable future. Yet still it strode closer, and closer, its pointed white hat contrasting sharply with the dull oceans of unbroken forestland and mountainrock behind it.

Galdalf lives!

"I am no longer Gandalf the Grey," the wizard intoned, his white stillrobes glistening in the day's heat. "Through the Trial of the Balrog I came close to death, but now the sleeper has awakened! I shall now be called ... Gandalf-Muad'Dib, the Mithrandir, the Lisan Al'Maia!"

-- from Ring Messiah, by Frank Herbert

Michael Ellis writes:

On this particular evening, something changed hands quietly in the back of a hobbit-hole in the Shire many miles from the dark realm of Mordor. A small, metallic something. Something which could be accurately described as a circular loop of shining metal.

The land of Middle Earth was almost oblivious to the change of ownership, which was wonderful for the two parties concerned. The trade went unnoticed among the citizens of Rivendell, it escaped the Nazgul completely, and even the dark lord himself continued straight on with his day without noticing. This was a pity for him, because it was exactly the thing he had been searching for all these years.

-- from The Mostly Harmless Ring of Power, by Douglas Adams

ITR champion writes:

In summer, the scorching sun above Middle-earth sears the land. Perched high on the dome of the sky, it bakes everything down, forcing the Hobbits, the Elves and the men to do their work quickly and retreat to their homes, staying in the cool shade while the orb of light attacks them from overhead. During the winter, on the other hand, the sun only climbs above the horizon for a few hours each day, and then dips back and plunges the world into darkness. The snow drives downward, the winds howl, and everyone, men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Orcs, can feel the chill penetrating to their bones.

Frodo had set out from his home in the Shire, hoping for a chance to see the real Middle-earth. While his official purpose for the journey was to destroy a magic ring in the fires of Mount Doom, he had really accepted the invitation to join the quest because he viewed it as an opportunity to experience the genuine outside world. He had heard stories, of course, about how Hobbits who left the Shire, although naïve and ambitious at first, would eventually turn against the other cultures with scorn, and would long for their cozy hobbit-holes, their elaborate tea parties, their pipes of tobacco before second breakfreast. [base "]Is it true what they say about hobbits who journey eastward, that we all eventually lose the spirit of adventure and just want to return to our cozy homes after a few months,[per thou] he asked Gandalf once as they sat around the campfire, but the wizard declined to provide a direct answer.

Regardless, he had remained inquisitive during the flight from the Nazgul and the stay at Rivendell. But as each day passed and the winter grew colder and more ominous, the dark bulks of the Misty Mountains loomed on the horizon up ahead. Their peaks seeming to be lost in the cloud cover, the mountains dwarfed everything, blotted out everything. Their massive bulks weighed on the members of the Fellowship, and the swirling snow seemed to wrap around them, cutting off and suffocating them. There, on the slopes of the Caradhras, Frodo suddenly felt small and insignificant, as if nothing that a little Hobbit could achieve would ever amount to anything more than that, snowflakes whirling in a storm.

from A Passage to Mordor, by E. M. Forster

diddlysquat writes:

WB Yeats

The Lake Isle of The Grey Havens

I will arise and sail now, and sail to the Grey Havens, And a small tower build there, of mithril and magic made: Nine ent friends will I have there, a hole for the hobbit free, And live alone in the pipe weed glade.
12:17:29 AM    Comment []



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