substitute

The headline NASCAR looking to expand into the hip-hop lifestyle should be enough, but the press release itself takes it all the way. Pullquotes of note below:

• As for the messages and products in development specifically, Earnhardt said they will be dope because adidas "always keeps it clean."
  
  
• During the recent race weekend in Chicago, rapper and Chi-Town native Twista rolled to the club in a Red Bull painted NASCAR street ride to promote his new album Adrenaline Rush Oh-Seven which touts a NASCAR tie-in.
  
  
• Over the years, the sport's crossover into the urban demographic has been hit and miss, but today one could say it's "On and Poppin'."
  
  
• Team Red Bull driver Brian Vickers, who has made appearances on MTV's TRL, tried to do his thang with Bow Wow and throw up a paint scheme to promote the rapper's music, however, nothing panned out but the two are said to be buds and Bow Wow has since been to a few NASCAR races.

It's fresh and dope that they've discovered the 1985-era Run DMC Adidas phenomenon.

I hope they work their way forward to NWA soon!

Looks like Sparky the Intern is back from vacation and on duty helping small businesses with their web link strategy! Welcome, Sparky:

Hello,
I have found your website [YOUTH ENTERTAINMENT SOCIAL NETWORK] when searching the web on the topics related to my website theme.

I must say your site content is very good and I think we would benefit much from possible partnership - for example link exchange. This would bring more targeted traffic to our sites, plus increase our websites' weight at the search engines, as they give greater value to the links from the topic-related sites rather than irrelevant backlinks.

My website http://www.funeralprinter.com/ is definitely related to yours.

I would be glad to link to your site in return to you linking back to mine.
Feel free to email me direct to staff@funeralprinter.com to discuss the details on the possible partnership.

Hope for the fruitful cooperation,

Best regards,
Titus Gerard,
http://www.funeralprinter.com/

I dunno. Maybe we could do something with one of our teen suicide gloom bands, but. My favorite clip-art dead guy is the black dude with the burning, rage-filled eyes who is clearly a revenant bent on revenge.

The old "music industry" in the United States is dead. This has been clear for a decade now. Parts of it fall off occasionally, e.g., the entire retail store establishment. Those in charge cannot acknowledge that things have fundamentally changed to their disadvantage. Instead they're driven into ridiculous extremes: suing children, crippling computers and their own CDs and DVDs, attempting to dock the tuition accounts of college students, and buying risible legislation.

They have no choice. The music industry distributes its product via trucks through warehouses, and there is cash involved. Therefore they are in part controlled by organized crime. In the golden years of the 70s and 80s, so-called "cutout" or remaindered discount records were a cash equivalent, and everyone had some good times with the resulting piles of $50's. Lew Wasserman helped out his old buddy Ronald Reagan with slush money, and later there was a polite to-do about the Mafia and MCA.

Now imagine the reaction of the wise guys to the elimination of trucking and cash, the elimination of warehouses, and the elimination of networks of middlemen. The made man in the corner office isn't happy.

It's clear we need to get these guys out of the picture. They're trying to make money off something dead, and they aren't going to let it go. But they're armed, and wealthy, and very good at using legislation and muscle to keep a good thing going. What to do?

Another problem has been getting worse the last ten years: spam. Annoying email, most of it for illegal or fraudulent businesses, is gumming up the works badly. The spammers are winning the arms race, too: it gets harder and harder to filter their crap without losing legitimate communication. Worst of all, it can't be legislated out of existence because it originates offshore and is transmitted by zombie armies of compromised computers controlled by crafty Russians. So now we have another organized crime problem: the damn Russians won't stop spamming us and we can't do a thing about it.

I propose that we solve both problems simultaneously.

A mission of music executives, internet portal and technology managers, and suitably anonymous government figures will be sent to a Godfather-like summit with the Russian mob's top leaders. And we will say this to them:

"We know you're businessmen. And we respect that. We're businessmen too. And we have a problem for us that's an opportunity for you. If you want to come in and wipe out the guys who are holding back our music industry, the business is yours. Clearly you know how to sell on the Internet, and how to sell music for that matter. You're digitally sophisticated and you know how to get paid without trucks and wads of cash. Come on in and enjoy, and we'll overlook the crime wave as you whack all these bastards.

"In return we ask only one thing: stop the spam. It's bad for business for us, and it can't be a long-term business for you either. Technology changes, you know that. If you walk away from spam we'll hand you the key to digital music, and that's not going away. Deal?"

The result in my utopia would be a short, exciting series of gangland murders, followed by the emergence of slightly too expensive but totally functional music download services. And spam will go to about 5% what it is now; the government and tech people can take credit for this.

I for one am willing to pay 10% more on my music downloads for this deal.

threepunchstuff was kind enough to link me to a Salon.com article on the subprime mortgage mess, which quotes my old blog at length. Neato.

Zeroed out balance, they were crap ghetto credit, goodbye.

1) HSBC. Polite and pleasant operator transfers me to "win-back" guy. He talks too fast reading the script and is hard to understand due to an accent, but very nice. After two attempts to sell me back, including a fairly pathetic 2% cashback offer and waiving the membership fee, he folds and agrees to cancel it and send me written confirmation.

2) Juniper/Apple Credit. Same type of operator transfers me to win-back guy. He is a "relationship manager" which makes me think of Dr. Neil Clark Warren. He doesn't try to give me any deals. Instead he first tries to sell me on how great the card is, and is not chagrined at all to learn that I have 8% less interest and ten times the limit elsewhere. Then he issues a warning: if I cancel the card, it could have an adverse effect on my credit rating! He says this once and I point out that closing the account after paying it off is probably not a minus. In a more ominous tone he asks me to reconsider because it could seriously be a negative MARK on my CREDIT RATING if i canceled. "Oh no you don't," I say. "Enough with the threats; that is not cool. Immediately cancel the account and send me written confirmation." He folds too.

Nice bullying, Juniper/Apple!

This just in from Dover Motor Speedway and VISA to my email inbox:



Cup Race at Dover to be named the "Autism Speaks 400 presented by Visa"

Gosh, the Asburgers at this stadium are delicious. And with the choice, convenience, acceptance, and security of VISA I could make them happen!

A shitty doctor who gave me bad medical care 17 years ago is now up on FORTY SEVEN FELONY COUNTS for doing, well, what he did to me: overcharging and charging for nonexistent services.

Odd that I reported him back then and only now is the bastard on the hook. You don't forget a name like "Mario Rosenberg." (He's an Argentine.)

The guy literally stuck something up my ass and then overcharged me for it. I recall telling my next doctor the story and he said "Mario did that?" Yeah, and Luigi helped.

via la_lisa, an appeal to save the integrity of chocolate from adulterous chocobusiness scheming.

I'm not a huge fan of cocoa butter myself (hurf white chocolate bleah) but it's PART OF CHOCOLATE. You can't replace it with partially hydrogenated neat's foot oil or something and call it chocolate. It Would Be Wrong.

I BOLGED about it over at buzznet: http://ignatz.buzznet.com/user/journal/191271/ to get the TEENS involved.

Yes, this is weak stupid bourgeois activism. I'm a suburban white kid who likes to cook. Go stuff it.

I blame brainflak

salome_st_john also if I NEVER see another roller derby photo again I will be so excited and I have friends in roller derby I AM SO SICK OF IT

substitute yup. we should franchise it to junior high schools and retire rich

salome_st_john oh christ best idea ever

substitute has the roller derby cute girls indie boys movie happened yet? it'll be like the Singles or Breakfast Club for this generation of blurpsters. The Postal Service playing as our heroine goes for the gold. Pardon me while I have a small seizure, here

salome_st_john ONE BLEACH MARTUNI COMING UP

substitute GLOBBLE
The sounds of the 90s, the roller derby excitement of the millennium, and the girls you love: It's Henry Rollins' Saturday Night Derby show! With special guest host Ben Gibbard and musical appearances by AFI, Ozomatli, and Juliette and the Licks!

salome_st_john I just peed

substitute I'm going to hell, aren't I.

salome_st_john luckily I'll be driving