My summers are always bad times for the blog. Mostly because I have nothing to write about - school's out, work is either nonexistent or best not spoken of (learned that lesson, thank you), and my personal life has tended towards the quiet in the past, barring certain memorable moments.

This year is a "work: mostly nonexistent" year, and my personal life is...well, those of you I expect to care already know, but suffice to say that even if you call it "interesting", it's not been interesting in the sense that makes for anything I feel comfortable writing about for a public audience. And Canadian parliamentary politics? Frankly,  they're embarassing at this point and I can count the participants that actually deserve any more exposure than they already get on one hand, two at most.

With the special bonus this year that all the pithy little things I might think about posting about on the spur of the moment end up as Facebook statuses, Twitter updates or both - I've always tended to save LJ for more drawn out ramblings, but what happens when those dry up? Well, I look silly, yes, but besides that.

I'll try and update you all, though, clear my backlog and attempt to make yet another start. (how many is this now?)

( Ask me about law school and my impending entry into the real world )

Aside from that....well, Samantha and the puppy have returned from whence they came, so it's just me and an all-growed-up Penelope in the apartment right now. I've been trying, with a surprising amount of success (I actually get out more than my sister these days, which she recounts with chagrin) to be more social and get out of the house more - though I'm still kind of out of the social loop at law school (for some reason that I again can't identify), I'm meeting some pretty cool non-law acquaintances, and generally having some good times. Even made it to Bluesfest last night (well, Thursday night, more accurately) to see a couple of shows with Natasha - she's been out of town a lot the last few months, and it was good to catch up with her, and even better to see Metric live.

My sister is finally learning to drive, and I'm making an attempt at studying for the learner's exam as well - keeping in mind that this is all subject to a vision test which, for me, is actually in doubt. :) Also, at her...encouragement, I've replaced my trusty cane on a trial basis with a pair of forearm crutches. I can has balance? Perhaps! In other "new toy" news - I finally got myself a smartphone, but, me being me, I went for a Google Android-based phone (specifically, the HTC Magic - I kind of wanted to wait for the Hero, but I couldn't trust that a non-terrible Rogers data plan would be available outside the wake of the iPhone 3GS release.) So far, I'm loving it - like my sister says about her Blackberry, it's like having the world at your fingertips - and I love the potential for dramatic customisability. Like I was saying to Nathan, it's like the iPhone platform is the Mac and Android is the PC of smartphones. (and what's Blackberry in this masterful analogy? Hush.)

I think we're more or less caught up at this point, barring a bit (okay, a lot) of glossing over things, and it's getting crazy late out here yet again, so I think I shall head to bed. Adios, my slowly withering audience. :P

I know that not all of you see my posted links on Facebook (and/or Twitter now) - I tend to post my "links without comment" or my "links with one-line snark" over there because it seems more appropriate, whereas I try and go into more depth in here (the emphasis, I will admit before anyone gets on my case for infrequent posting, is on 'try').

So I've bought one digital album today (Metric's Fantasies), and BitTorrented one (Lacuna Coil's Shallow Life). I fully intended to buy both - they're both by bands I admire and want to support (I've actually seen LC live, and would have seen Metric if they hadn't shown up during exam season. At least they'll be back sooner than Paradise Lost! - oh, I kill myself.)

The difference? I could buy Fantasies, because Metric's webstore sells to Canada, whereas Shallow Life was only being sold digitally on iTunes (which does sell to Canada, and apparently recently removed its DRM, but still requires me to use its software and the AAC format, neither of which play nice with my non-iPod MP3 player), and Rhapsody and Amazon (which don't sell to Canada, despite the latter's intriguing promise a year ago.).

Given that Metric didn't work with a label for this album, Last.fm recently went subscriber-only here, and Pandora continues to be not fully available here either, the right target of blame is probably the main common factor:  negotiating distribution licenses with Canada's branch of the RIAA (so I've changed this entry's title from "Amazon Fail, Part Two", but I'd still like to know how the original ended up - were any of you paying attention and can enlighten me? Was there an actual explanation or an embarassing climbdown? Or both? Are we supposed to be boycotting Amazon right now?) - but, seriously, here it is, my thoughts on yaoi music marketing.

I'm not a die-hard "music/information wants to be free!" type - I'm happy to compensate artists because, frankly, the world needs artists and the days of noble patrons are over and done. But the record labels are an artifact of an age where wide-scale distribution needed middlemen between media and their consumers in a way that the Internet has largely made obsolete (which is the same reason that newspapers and broadcast TV are having tough times of late, but at least the newspapers haven't tried to criminalise millions to preserve their failing business models, and the broadcast networks are actually doing a decent job with Hulu, CTV Digital, and the like - even if the split between Comedy Central and The Comedy Network's websites enrages me on a daily basis) and, if they're not prepared to adapt, then they need to get out of the way, and government needs to grow a backbone and stop enabling them.

Why exactly should I pay twice as much for a CD that I will use precisely once - to rip it to my PC/Zen - and then have it sit in a drawer? What is the rationale behind region control on intangible goods? Why, why, why are you people insisting on making it so much of a pain for me to actually give you money?

The problem with running the game you want to be playing in is that clubbing the slower players upside the head with hints is called "railroading" instead of "being a team player". I may just need to improve at dropping breadcrumbs for them, but argh, when they ignore a perfectly good hint about where the assassins that came after a PC have been seen (after the sorceress set the lot on fire and ran them off) to chase after a red herring instead, I start to get all self-doubting.

(and yes, I'm talking about my D&D game after coming back from a perfectly good party - who, exactly, did you think you were reading about again? :P)

I suppose I do need to catch some of you up, but I'm going to bed now instead. You can wait. Nyah.

(This is more inside-the-Queensway (though, ironically, I live about 100m outside the Queensway) stuff that nobody outside Ottawa likely cares about. For that matter, nobody at all probably should care about it, but such is life!)

I've been following, with much schadenfreude, the circular firing squad that the US Republican party has turned into in the aftermath of the 2008 election, and the tug of war between hewing to the 30% dittohead far-right monster that they created (oh, the delicious irony), and reaching out to the mushy middle that might get them re-elected at some point before everyone who remembers most of the previous decade has died or succumbed to a mysterious strain of contagious amnesia.

The CPC has had a similar, though less dramatic, rift in it (between old Reformers and old Tories) for the entirety of its existence that people like...say, me...are quite surprised to have seen successfully papered over for this long. Power imposes a certain discipline and tends to do unfortunate things to principles, though. So I had an idea of what Michael Ignatieff was trying to do by calling attention to the recent controversy over Brian Mulroney's CPC membership and the treatment of the former PM by Harper and the CPC leadership - the same thing that the Obama White House was doing in March by pointing and laughing at Republicans having to apologise for diffidently pointing out that Rush Limbaugh might be a little bit divisive.

One small problem: pointing out your opponent's schizophrenic relationship with a polarising public figure is only helpful in two broad situations. 

1. When the cracks in the other party are so unstable that one good kick would break them apart - and therefore, you can gain politically by splintering the opposition. This might well be true with the federal Conservatives, but not noticably worse than it has been for years. I think that there are only two kicks that would be good enough - Harper leaving the leadership for some reason, or possibly losing an election (I say possibly because frankly, the CPC have always seemed more comfortable in Opposition. Shades of Reform there- and, to be evenhanded about it, segments of the NDP: it's easier to be principled when you don't actually have to make any decisions.)


2. Or, when you're on the right side of public opinion regarding the polarising figure, and can thereby gain electorally by tarring your opponent with guilt by association. To the extent that anyone cares about Brian Mulroney today (as opposed to the 10% approval rating he had when he left office, and what it did to poor sacrificial Kim Campbell, whom, in an amusing aside, my nine-year-old self was looking forward to having as a first female prime minister), it's difficult to argue that more voters think well of him than not. I don't expect a huge backfire on Ignatieff for this, as much as Harper is trying to create one - again, the electorate has more important things to worry about right now.

While I agree that Harper's handling of the situation has been somewhat two-faced and arguably ungracious, behaviour of this sort from the Prime Minister is neither new, nor any more likely to hurt him politically than at any other point during his tenure.

(fake edit: while I was polishing this entry, I came upon last night's post on this "issue" by G&M blogger Robert Silver, which I generally agree with. In true blogosphere tradition, this won't stop me from posting myself.)

1. It took the US bleeding out lives and treasure through an unwinnable war and a worsening economic crisis to make people stop and take a deeper look at the situation. As impressed as I am by him, I still find it hard to believe that he'd have won if he hadn't had W as an act to follow.
2. Communicators like Obama are rare birds. If it's actually necessary that a leader who's interested in governing well also be one such in order to win, then the majority of leaders we actually get will still be partisan hacks instead, because the system rewards partisan hackery, barring a few outliers

I just don't see a sea change as having already happened, and I'm concerned about what happens when the rough waters we're in pass (assuming, for the moment, that they will.) Will we give in to our worse natures and go back to the same old "leaders"?