get the f***ing wax out of your silicon hippie ears – meet the artist: "in order to get the green light for the universal/polygram merger, seagrams promised their shareholders a return on cuts, not profits. they have a huge artist stable raped from three established major labels and two thirds has got to go, bringing it down to a trim, wealthy machine made up of just the plump ripe sellers. millions of sales are now required to cover the increasing overheads at these labels. overheads increased through ludicrous executive bonus payouts, inflated expense accounts and the quest for the porsche. the artist is put to work harder and faster, in order to feed the machine.

[...] their utter dependence on the radio means that the good ship thethe is abandoned as soon as the fear of no-play takes hold. they can think of no alternative and why should they when they can swiftly move on to the next act on the plank (step forward beck, whoops! step forward nine inch nails...oh dear, no doubt...ouch! chris cornell...?) one act after another has fallen into the ocean. being signed to the universal conglomerate has been like being trapped on a cruise on the mary celeste. the lights are on but nobody's home."
– excerpts from thethe versus the corporate monster by matt johnson.

matt johnson has decided to offer track by track/week by week free downloads of his latest album nakedself on thethe.com.

"newsblogger is the ultimate tool for tracking, filtering, and sharing up-to-the-minute news on your web site. by combining moreover's headlines from over 1,500 sources with blogger's ability to instantly post to your web site, newsblogger lets you read, comment on, and publish news in four easy steps."

this crazy tool makes one almost feeling like a journalist watching the ticker news dropping in...

with this "real" scooter i would not feel embarassed on viennese streets (where too many people are riding the micro skate scooter currently).

phew! lots of lots of resources to everything what a web developer needs: w3schools.

disport at the airport: "makollig jezvahted and levdaroum debahzted, please come to the information desk".

.ws – a new top-level domain available via website.ws.

napster will be shut down. bad news, indeed. however, this won't stop the development of similar tools or the evolution of music commerce to a next stage. i just hate the pathos that is now being built around "good artists" and "bad music industry" (you bad, bad music industry, you!).

it is close to hypocrisy someone daring to ask the artists "we haven't heard much from you. why?". it was a greed for comfort, paired with the unappeasable need of stardom, an ignorant behaviour, that gave so much power to the music market. most of us went to the big music stores instead to the local dealers. far too many rely on zeitgeist reviews about music and concerts defining their musical taste. and there is a general disinterest about everything that is different from mainstream (which also leads to mainstreaming the underground).

subversive drifts – they are here, everywhere. with or without napster. but if one does not care, it certainly remains invisible. and most of the listeners, concert goers and music buyers simply do not care anymore. it's almost ridiculous to use "artist" as a word for the music makers (the dreamers of the dream). musicians are rather traded as icons on posters, role models in commercials (so-called video clips) and headlines in the yellow press than people creating art. which is definitely also a mistake by the music industry. but did they not react on our attitude? did not we (and the artists themselves) silently accept each of their turns to gain more "power" – on both sides? did we not pay even the steadily increasing prices for cds, concert tickets and memorabilia? are we not pretty consumers and are they not beloved seducers building a nice couple believing to fulfill each other's desires?

now everything turns out to be wrong. all wrong. those who still visit the tiny little record store at the other end of the city (unless it has gone bancrupt) knew it all the time. high fidelity.

we won't impress those who have to judge about the idea of napster (not to mention the music industry) with our inabilities to take responsibility for and keep some track of truth to ourselves. if it is not my cup of tea to care about music, i should be mature enough to admit.

music on the net is the unstoppable sex machine at the moment. and if we are lucky it will make up for some of our lapses.

only a few will be able to measure how glad i am having found this: mitsuhiro takemura works 1996-1999... dedicated to old friends.

"the clash of ideas brings forth the spark of truth" – aboriginal proverb

for those who are interested in web gossip and “internet scandal”: watch the weblogs for jennicam... (yawn!)

holy moly, i consider this rather a bizarre insight into the psychological abyss of young urban american's self-understanding: hello teenage america!

btw: since natacha merrit seems to be a big gossip thing out there, too, i heartly welcome all the unfortunate users being pointed here by google: you won't find the merit of merrit pictures you probably expected to in this area.