by Matt | Oct 6, 2002 | Imported Entry
A strange thing happened this morning, something I didn’t think the parties involved would be childish enough to bring up. Pete instant messages Jason this morning claiming that we owe him $70+ each in back utility bills (electric and phone). I found this rather interesting, especially since we moved out on June 1st and Pete was in the apartment until the 18th. As far as I remember we paid utilities and rent (pro-rated) for the 18 days we weren’t there and called it even. Pete was also going to get the microwave and Jason was going to get the security deposit back. So, the question arises, is this magical $70 from the month of June or from the month of May and we just missed it. If it is indeed from May, then I’ll certainly pay my share. If it’s from June then we have nothing to discuss. In my opinion, I’m not going to pay for something I didn’t use. If I wasn’t there, I’m not paying for it. This isn’t ment to sound mean or threatening in any sort of way, I’m just being cautious with my money. So, if Pete would kindly produce a bill or statement saying what the utility charges are and when the payment period is, I will be more than glad to write him a check. If he’s unable to do that, I suggest he call the electic company and get a reprint. If I’m indeed responsible for a portion of the bill, I will of course pay it, but I want to make sure I am infact responsible for it first. I think that’s only fair.
There’s also the matter of the security deposit. Now, originally, we paid $300 when we moved in ($100 each) and minus cleaning and repairs, we were supposed to get the difference back when we moved out. Apparently, the check Pete has for Jason is only $48. That’s a long way from $300. To the best of my knowledge, I cleaned the kitchen, the upstair hallways, my room and my bathroom. Jason cleaned his room and his bathroom. When I left on the 1st, all of the above was clean and in a presentable manner. That means that between June 1st and the 18th, Pete only had to clean his room and the living room. Unless I’m mistaken as to the condition of the apartment, we should be getting much more than $48 back. Unless of course Pete didn’t clean anything or there was a major earthquake/flood/fire that we didn’t know about.
Now, maybe it’s just the sort of person I am, but the difference between the security deposit and the utilities seems rather nominal to me, and I would be evaluating whether or not it was even worth mentioning or just simply calling the whole thing a draw and getting on with my life especially given the fact that we’re not as “upset” about the small return on our security deposit as we rightly should be. But, that’s just the sort of person I AM.
It also bothers me that this is being brought up 4 months after that fact. In all this time, if Pete really needed that money badly, don’t you think he could have called, written, emailed, something. To me it seems irresponsible to deal with something like this and then put it on the back burner for 4 months and then bring it up again without warning. If the money was really that important, would it have been best to mention it while it was happening, or perhaps hold on to the bill so that things like this could be avoided in the future.
So, at some point this month, year, decade, Pete is apparently coming over to “collect” his money. If he’s reading this, I would suggest bringing the bills with him. I’m more than willing to give Pete every penny he deserves, and wouldn’t delay in doing so, but I want to see the bill first. Not to be mean or spiteful or anything, I just want to see what I’m paying for. I’m not really willing to give anyone a check with knowing with it’s going towards. That’s not a personal thing against Pete, I would do that with any other buisness, service or person. I’d also like to get a list of items that we were charged for from Royal Oaks (the last apartment) and see what, if any, Jason and I were responsible for. Plus I’m curious to see what they got away with charging us for.
I just thought this was an interesting little episode in the soap opera known as Savannah.
by Matt | Oct 4, 2002 | Imported Entry
Well, after a little razzle dazzle on my part, I came away from my shoot today with 4 rolls of film to be developed. Hopefully at least 1 frame of the film will be good enough to use for class on Tuesday. I pick up the film tomorrow so we’ll see. I should be ready to re-shoot something else if they didn’t turn out.
I don’t really have much else going on this weekend besides reshoots if needed. Tomorrow, Nagle and I are supposed to go to the batting cages for his birthday and at some point before that I’ll pick up my film. That’s about it.
Over the past few days I’ve just been working on projects, printing for my Buisness Practices class and hanging out with Lauren. I think we’re going to get some food in a bit so I should probably get cleaned up. Later.
by Matt | Oct 2, 2002 | Imported Entry
Just as I was about to give up on the music industry as a whole…
“The world’s five largest music companies and the three largest music retailers will pay $143.1 million to settle a CD price fixing case launched by New York and Florida two years ago, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Monday. In August 2000, most U.S. states joined in a lawsuit alleging that an industry practice called “minimum advertised pricing” (MAP) artificially inflated the price of CDs between 1995 and 2000, violating federal and state anti-trust laws. Under MAP, the labels subsidized advertising for retailers that agreed not to sell CDs below a certain price.”
[Link]
Yah… you can suck it now. Oh, and just so that you know… you STILL aren’t getting my MP3s you ass-hats. I wonder if CD prices might actually go back down now. I doubt it.
by Matt | Oct 1, 2002 | Imported Entry
Damn Avalon all to hell. I hate Boston and it’s awesomness. Actually, more accuratly, I hate the fact that my school isn’t IN Boston and I get to miss whats probably the best line up Avalon has ever had. I’m gelous, sad and a little angry all at once. Of course I’m over exagerating a bit, but I do have to miss some great shows this month.
This month, at Avalon:
Oct 10th – Dave Seaman
Oct 17th – Tiesto
Oct 24th – Sasha
Oct 31st – Paul Van Dyk
Nov 2nd – Carl Cox
Why me? Why couldn’t I have seen three of my favorite DJs (Tiesto, Sasha & PVD) back to back to back. Aw nuts.
by Matt | Sep 30, 2002 | Imported Entry
Well, it’s a soft spot as far as being a consumer whore goes. Video games I’m afraid, are my weakness. It’s no surprise that I happen to like an industry that is treated by the public in much the same way that it’s customers are treated: with snubbed noses and raised eyebrows. Lawmakers continually lead crusades against video game makers in an attempt to censor or outright destroy the one thing we have left that makes us geeks happy. I’m a geek. I use the term proudly. In schools across the world, geeks are misunderstood and frowned apon. Any child who knows more about a computer than an adult simply must be “odd” or “warped” in some way. The truth is that we’re smarter than you and you’re scared shitless but you don’t want to admit it. “You” being a general term for “The Man” (see last entry below for an explanation of “The Man”). We, the average geek, have the hand eye coordination of a ninja, the brain power of a rocket scientist and the cool dry wit of Bruce Willis and Harison Ford combined. We can and will reciet the front side bus speeds of our graphics cards on a whim and can tell you the model numbers for the entire arsenal in Counter-Strike. We will bitch-slap you with our AK-47s from half-way across de_dust. You will take it and like it. We are geeks. We game, therefor we are.
*cough*
Ok, maybe that was a bit much. The point is that UT2k3 was released secretly to some retailers Saturday and pre-orders have already been shipped. According to UPS tracking, my personal pre-order shall be here tomorrow (Monday). For the rest of you that means that tomorrow (also Monday) you’d better get your arses down to your friendly neighborhood Electronic Boutiques or CompUSAs and pick up a copy if you haven’t done so already. You can expect a full and complete review sometime tomorrow night. Well… maybe. I might be too busy blowing shit up to stop drooling let alone form complete and coherent thoughts tomorrow night so we’ll just leave that review as a possibility. Definatly by mid-week.
G’night.
by Matt | Sep 29, 2002 | Imported Entry
You know… usually a day doesn’t go by where I don’t hear of something else that pisses me off. I don’t know what kind of diseased funk this country has gotten itself into but everything is taking the fast track to the shitter and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. Everything from corporate America to the music industry, price of gas and commercials before the movies at the cinemas. THIS SHIT DIDN’T USE TO HAPPEN!!!!!!!! Why doesn’t anybody see this?!?!?! Why is everyone O.K. with being charged $2.50 at an ATM? Today, like most days, is no exception. In fact, today I’ve come across at least a dozen things that really really piss me off. And now I’ll share them with you in hopes that someone else MIGHT be slightly annoyed as well. Maybe if enough people don’t like what the worlds coming to we can turn it around and change it. The odds of that happening are pretty fucking slim, but it’s worth a shot.
Before I get to all the things that are pissing me off today, I’d like to hypothesize as to some of the reasons why all this is happening. My first thought is that the gene-pool got real shallow real quick. Think about it. How many times have you see someone cross 3 lanes of traffic and nearly kill 20 people only to think “man that guy is dumb”? Now think about how often you did that 10 years ago. How often did we hear about guns in schools, people suing McDonalds for being fat, SUVs, cell phones etc? STUPID PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO KILL US! I can say, without fear of being mistaken, that the person that designed the first consumer SUV (note: not for commercial or industry use, where they might need a larger vehicle) was a raving ass-hat. “Gee, this thing only gets 2.5 miles to the gallon, but it can transport the entire ass-hat soccer team so I guess it’s a good idea.” We should find that guy and hit him with a really big stick until he apologizes.
My second theory is actually an age old one. That this is the end times, Armageddon is approaching and we’re all fucked. Who else could invent MTV but the devil? Come on now, think about. Put your “I’m not religious so you must be wrong” dogma away and think about it. The whole “entertainment” industry is crap, there’s nothing good on TV, Frank Sinatra is dead, baseball has disenchanted sports fans, mothers don’t stay home with their kids and teach them whats right and wrong, there are shootings in ELEMENTARY schools, the government is fucking everything up and somehow Justin Temberlake is allowed to live. What other explanation can there be but the existence of pure evil?
Speaking of pure evil, my last and final possibility involves just that. Not satanic evil mind you, but the evil of man. Corporate man to be exact. Yup, the phrase “damn the man” has never been so aptly used than in today’s society. Who’s trying to make you pay for downloading songs? The man. Who’s trying to cover up the fact that their new line of cars will kill you instantly on impact? The man. Who’s scared of kids having a good time and outlaws events with more than 20 people? Yup, you guessed it, the man. Pop music, fatty foods, health and “beauty” products, gas prices, CD prices, The Gap, Microsoft, the downfall of western culture… all easily blamable on “the man.” I mentioned yesterday an article that pointed out that CDs should only cost a dollar or two. This is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Companies, marketing teams, board of directors, and people like them, deciding to sell a consumer product at a 1500% percent mark-up only because they can and people are stupid enough to buy it.
All this crap makes me sick. There’s not much I can do about it either. Believe me I try though. I’ve written a total of 7 letters of my congressman. I’ve even considered writing one to our president but I figured he’d never be able to figure out words with more than 4 letters. I’m by no means a perfect person, forsaking all consumer goods and living in a cave with nothing but a computer and a home-spun linen cloth. No, I sit at home, in my leather office chair, drinking a Mt.Dew, with my New Balance sneakers on, downloading music and pondering which major film brand to put in my expensive camera next. Like I said, I’m not perfect. I’m far from it. But I do my part. I refuse to buy an SUV, I don’t wear anything made my Nike, I bought an AMD processor and didn’t pay full retail price for Windows XP. I don’t shop at Walmart if I can avoid it, I read Jack Kerouac on the weekends instead of watching Sunday Night Football on NBC and I download as much music as humanly possible. That’s right, fuck the RIAA, fuck Britney Spears, fuck congress, their laws and the horses they rode in on. This is the one thing I’ve picked to be completely and totally adamant on. I will NOT ever stop downloading music. I will only buy import CDs or from small independent artists. I will make a stand. My bumper stickers (anti-RIAA and Pro MP3) are already on my car. Damn the man, damn him as soon, as often and as hard as possible.
“Damn the man, save the Empire”
*breathe*
Ok, so now you know the reasons behind my anger. Now, how about a few specifics to liven up your day. I hope you enjoy the evilness that is our world:
Fuck you, RIAA and your attempts to shame people into not downloading music.
M.U.S.I.C stands for something other than Must Unite and Sack Idiotic Congressmen, although I wish it didn’t.
The RAVE Act, whose acronym stands for “Reducing Americans’ Vunerability to Ecstacy” is vague and useless. Great to see that “the system” is really at work. Good job boys. Read more.
War. Are you people insane? Wait… you are. Nevermind.
Another great idea: Record Labels Request Online Sabotage Rights. Umm, no thank you. I don’t want the future of the internet to be determined by the same people who gave the green light to a Justin Timberlake solo album.
What a good idea… charging for something that should be free. What’s next, ATMs that charge you for using them… wait a second. Uh oh.
Stealing commissions… now that’s just wrong.
Alright, and to finish all this ranting and raving up, here’s an actual quote from an artist on the M.U.S.I.C website. Enjoy the stupidity of people who should know better.
“Musiq, Singer, Platinum Award Winning Urban Music Artist, “AIJUSWANASEING: “I think that people do need to be educated on the seriousness of music piracy because it cuts into hard working people’s money, especially the artists—people like me.”
Ok…
A: Your name is Musiq and your cd is called “AIJUSWANASEING”. You sir, are a moron.
B: You’re an “urban” cover artist. You don’t “work hard.” You cover Stevie Wonder tunes you ass-hat.
C: Aren’t you being a tad self-centered, especially considering your house probably costs more money than anyone who’s ever downloaded anything you “yelled in the microphone and recorded” might ever see.
Stupid people piss me off. A lot.
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