| | rant 238: welcome back to illinois
So I'm now back to being a resident of metropolitan Chicago, this time west of downtown, so I have a new el line, a new batch of middle class-suburban stores, a new Target/Home Depot, and a new zip code strangely like my old one. Best of all, I no longer live in St. Louis. It has its charms, but it also has severe drawbacks, most of which rest in that it has both the disadvantages of being a small city like Champaign or Bloomington (there's very little in the way of interesting) while also having the disadvantages of being in a big city (polluted as hell, crime, poverty, and a corrupt police department) without fully getting the advantages of either. Also, it might be the worst pizza city in America.
I "started" classes this week, even though they had us go through 3 classes during orientation week. I actually blew off a bit of orientation to do reading assignments so that my normal life of going to large stores and watching movies wasn't otherwise intruded upon. I also find it amusing that, according to a required book, law school orientation is supposed to give you enough motivation to get through three years, but I didn't really want to go on the third day because I was sick of listening to people tell us the same things over and over again ("it's a good idea to read your email!")
The last two days I've been reminded as to why I love the el vs. listening to NPR or 70s rock.
News radio hilarity: "Oh my gosh, the announcer totally said Robert Kennedy died of a brain tumor!" Not much to work with here, right? Granted, NPR has their humorous funny moments, but they're always couched in that left-moderate, pbs-friendly chuckling tone, the "I'm so clever I must have written for Atlantic Monthly once" or "I have a master's in something very important."
Train hilarity, Day 1: I saw a 60-year old, straight-laced businessman reading Rolling Stone magazine. I think I've written before about how far Rolling Stone has fallen, but how in the hell can you claim to be the relevant voice of 20-something rock and roll rebellion and be read by 60-year old Chicago Loop businessmen? Isn't that a fundamental violation? If it's not, I found it amusing nonetheless. No wonder Reader's Digest is doing poorly - they're losing audience to want-to-be hipster 60-year olds. I guess that's what you can expect when you're a music magazine and your most notable writer is your wholly mediocre 55+ year-old film critic.
Train hilarity, Day 2: The green line runs from downtown to the United Center to Garfield Park to Oak Park. If you don't know Chicago, that means you get a wide swatch of humanity. Anyway, I happened to sit in the back of the train and watch this nice, elderly, voted-for-Obama-'cause-it's-proper woman sit near the door. The next stop a Dave Chapelle look-a-like, a Fat-Ablert look-a-like, and Elwood Blues' balck cousin got on with copious uamounts of McDonalds and expletives. You know you're in for good conversation when 2 of the first 5 words spoken start with "n-i-g" and it's loud enough for the whole car to hear. It's even better when the wise-crackin' elderly black guy gets on and they start telling stories about people being stupid. The best is when they mention a girl they know and "I wish that bitch would croak so we could roll her ashes in a blunt and smoke it" while the elderly white woman just keeps the same look on her face the entire time.
God, I missed the trains.
As a closing note, my mom brought me a "copyright infringement notice" that was sent from their internet company dated from when I was staying at their house. I'm not going to lie - I download movies. I won't bore my many readers with why I believe what I download (which is not, mind you, hot new releases or current TV shows) is both legal and moral, suffice to say that I know most courts and legislatures disagree with me. They have a right to do so. They're wrong, but they have a right to be wrong.
What isn't right is claiming copyright infringement on a work in the public domain. From the Mediacom notice:
Name of Work: Charade (1963)
IP Address: xxx.xx.xxx.xx
Date: 2 Aug 2009 07:19:34 GM@
Reporting Agency: NBC UNIVERSAL
Um...yeah.... From IMDB:
"This film is public domain due to the failure to put the then-required copyright notice in the released print. The supposed copyright notice in the film failed to include the text "Copyright", "Copr." or "©", as was needed by pre-1989 US law (only the year and supposed copyright holder were listed)."
Furthermore, it's been released by multiple different companies over the last decade because of this (which a simple Amazon search reveals).
If someone has claimed copyright infringement when I was sharing Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, fine. You'd be legally correct, I suppose, if you're immoral. But you can't claim infringement if you have no more ownership of the copyright than I do. Fuck you, Jeff Zucker.
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| | Posted 8/23/2009 3:53 PM - 4 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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