The Weeklies #151

The Weekly Geek Purchase. This week I bought myself a Pogoplug. What’s a Pogoplug? It lets me connect all my external hard drives – the ones with my music, videos and pictures – to my router and share with any computer on my home network or, better, THE WORLD!
The Weekly Fall Fail. Apparently there are thousands of people everywhere using their GPS-enabled cell phones to find their way out of corn mazes. That just ain’t right.
The Weekly Gadget Devotion. Late actor Tony Curtis was laid to rest earlier this week. Buried with him? His iPhone. Now that’s dedication. Or just really strange product placement.
The Weekly Read. I’ve made a vow this October to get into the spirit of the month and read nothing but scary books. The first? Ghost Road Blues Jonathan Mayberry. The verdict? It was pretty good but not perfect. The book’s setting – rural Pennsylvania – was perfect for this ghost story. The execution was good and the writing was strong. But two things kept it from being perfect. First, it didn’t really scare me. Second, it was the first novel in a trilogy and, as such, didn’t really have an ending. Will I read the second book in the series? Sure. Already bought it.
The Weekly Music. Joe Satriani is a guy with a problem. Joe’s one of the most brilliant guitarist who’s ever picked up the instrument and he churns out a steady stream of really solid instrumental guitar albums. The problem? How to keep each one sounding fresh an avoid each album sounding the same. His latest – Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards – doesn’t provide a completely original set of Satriani songs but it does prove just how good he is. Does it redefine the guitarist? Absolutely not. Is it worth checking out? Definitely.
The Weekly Schadenfreude. Have you caught TLC’s Sister Wives? I haven’t but this much is clear to me. Going on television doing something illegal is stupid. Polygamy is illegal. Therefore, going on television being polygamous all over the place is probably not the brightest idea. So why are these people surprised that – wow – all of the sudden they’re being investigated?
The Weekly Asshat. Gene Simmons. The Kiss bassist has always been a lovable asshole but perhaps we’re starting to see the real Gene when he talked about music piracy.

Make sure your brand is protected. Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don’t let anybody cross that line. The music industry was asleep at the wheel, and didn’t have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we’re left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There’s no industry.

Look, I get that piracy is wrong but it’s not like the music industry didn’t set itself up for miserable failure early on in the whole digital music revolution. Stealing is wrong. Prosecuting kids is too.
The Weekly Question. What scares you the most?