Posted on

Get $5 to $20 For Having Bought Music

In case you hadn’t heard, several music companies recently made a settlement in response to a class-action suit alleging price-fixing of music. If you bought any “prerecorded Music Products, consisting of compact discs, cassettes and vinyl albums, from one or more retailers during the period January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000” then you are eligible to receive from $5 to $20, depending on the amount of people who file claims. Initially I was a little skeptical about this, but after reading this story on Wired.com telling of the surprising lack of respondents I decided to file a claim. If you haven’t done so already, file your claim; you have until March 2nd. The only problem with publicizing this too well is that if enough people respond to drive the settlement per person below $5, all of the money goes to charity. This sounds a little too convenient, although I’ll hold out my hopes for now.

Posted on

SmarTruck II and Clueless MD Drivers

The U.S. Army unveiled the “SmarTruck II,” a protoype vehicle with lots of technological bells and whistles, at the Detroit Auto Show. It really reminded me of something…

Oh yeah, I think I saw one of these while stuck in traffic last weekend. Oh wait, I’m wrong. That was some asshole in a Hummer H2 passing everybody on the right shoulder in the snow. I just have to vent, because the snow this weekend, while beautiful in the way it transformed the landscape, caused all kinds of problems on the roads. There was an eight-car pileup on Route 70 because people in Maryland panic at the first sight of a snowflake, much less a pretty good snowfall. It didn’t take much to cause fender benders all over the area when people on the roads were too oblivious to change the way they drive in the snow. “Uh oh, I’m on a bridge and am sliding a little on the ice. What should I do? I think I’ll slam on my brakes and turn the wheel. Hey, where’d that guard rail come from? Why are all of those cars coming at me all of a sudden? Hey, there’s the other guard rail!” DUH!

I was just too stupid to listen to local traffic reports and got stuck for an hour in that mess. Which is when I saw the asshole somehow decide that he was entitled to make use of the right shoulder AND push his way across three lanes of traffic AND illegally turnaround in the median strip. Did I mention the word “asshole” enough yet? So much for making a family-safe blog…

Posted on

Homer To Pitch Reebok Classics

Matt Groening was never above marketing The Simpsons (Butterfinger, Burger King, and an endless list of T-Shirts etc., to name but a few), so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at this. However, I have this feeling that if it continues, they’ll just get way overexposed and lose their appeal. Then again, it could be argued that this already happened several seasons ago, so maybe my concerns are unfounded.

I’m still waiting for the triumphant return of Conan O’Brien as a writer for the series; only he can bring the show back to its halcyon days of hilarity.