Popularity

I'm not going off on one of my rants about banking but I put my money into one and what does the bank do? They put it into massive R.O.I. (return on investment) schemes and scams that regular Joe Blows don't even have access to; they do things with it that would land me in the hoochcow if I tried the same; or they give me negligible interest for lending it to them while charging crippling interest to then lend it to someone in need. All the while charging me money to get my own money and making it as inconvenient as possible to do so. Bankers are just bully, gangster middlemen and they represent the biggest rip job there is.

But I'm sitting here looking at a cable bill of $172 and thinking this might be second place. What do we get for our cable TV dollar? We get local network news, sports and entertainment shows that, yes kids, used to be FREE! Maybe if we snip that Rogers or Telus umbilical chord it might still be! Anybody tried that lately? Probly doesn't work any more since the advent of compulsory digital. I dunno. What else do we get? Popular shows from mostly American networks just about all of which are available for 8 bucks a month on Netflix or somewhere else online. We also get the inconvenience of having to watch the shows when the stations air them. Or record them. We also get one more thing: commercials which pay for the shows many many times over. Yet cable crooks STILL have the balls to charge and charge exhorbitantly for that which should be free.

I listened to Chilliwack Greatest Hits this morning and recently watched Searching For Sugarman, the Oscar winning doc about Sixto Rodriguez. You can find both Rodriguez albums and Chilliwacks Greatest hits in their entirety on youtube. I highly recommend them! They may not be your style but the talent and the inexplicable obscurity are undeniable. And just about anyone can think of a dozen things that are overrated or underrated. Why? What exactly IS popularity and who forces it to happen? Is this just another thing dictated by the maximization of profit? Sounds a bit paranoid and conspiratorial if that's not a made up word... but if it becomes popular, if the right agencies give it their stamp of approval, then it will be completely legit due to popular usage. Maybe there are no popularity police because if there are, they sure missed the botanical barge on marijuana! But if there are, who are the people behind these agencies who profit from popularity? That's what has my mental gears grinding today. And what, if anything, is popular and as yet doesn't have a price tag or a meter attached to it?

This made me think of the new fad in major metropolitan areas called oxygen bars where people pay to inhale pure oxygen.

Breathe as much as you can today my friends. While it remains free to do so...