No, no, no, said Chicken-licken

Not at all happy with eMusic today, as I discovered that starting next month they're going to cut my download allowance in half.  Or double the price, whichever suits you better.  I've been using eMusic off and on since 2003 and a member continuously since early 2005 and I think this is a pretty shitty reward for my loyalty.

I do understand the soundness of this repricing as a business move, as eMusic is finally deploying itself to move out of 3rd place behind iTunes and Amazon.  To this end it's finally doing business with major labels (specifically Sony) and promises that formerly out-of-reach artists like Springsteen and the Clash and Beyonce will soon be available.  Now, Ms. Knowles I give not a fig for and I already have everything I want by The Boss and the Four Horsemen, so I can't say I think I stand to benefit much by this development.  But I'm glad that my scrappy little eMusic is ready to play with the big kids, and they're going to be getting a whole lot of new customers who generally don't give a fig for the Cold War Kids or Six Degrees Records while still appreciating the low impact on their bank account.

I just wish there was some sort of grandfathering plan for long-time members, which would IMO be truly in the indie spirit eMusic's operated under until now.  But no: instead of the 65 downloads/month I've been getting for $15 - cheap! - I'm only to get 37.  (Not even 38 - fuckers wouldn't even eat half a free download!  Argh.)   Which comes out to something like $.43 apiece and compared to the big kids is still cheap, but am I mollified?  Not by this.

Neither by eMusic's version of easement, which is promising a one-time bonus pack of 25 downloads sometime in August.  Almost an insult when I remember it was a no-limit service back when I first signed up.

OTOH, they are instituting album pricing.  Finally.  No album will be charged for more than 12 downloads, no matter how many tracks are involved.  This helps - just a little.

All this aside, I'm sticking with eMusic for the immediate future.  Not just for the price, but because the selection is enormous and as a service it's the best way I've found yet to discover stuff I'd never hear of otherwise.  And even with the changes I still think they've got a better business model than their competitors.

For now, anyway.  Because loyalty is such a fickle thing when it goes unrewarded for too long.

P.S. I know that as news this price increase is almost a month old but I just found out about it two days ago, and rather circuitously at that.  eMusic certainly didn't go out of its way to inform me.  Which is another reason I'm not at all happy with it.

Let's get a few things straight here:

1. Michael Jackson was a pedophile.
2. He made an assload of money singing a love song to a rat.  A goddam rat, people.
3. He wanted to be anyone but himself.  All that face surgery?  You think?  Of course, not all of it was his fault - see the demented Iraqi torturer's rant in Three Kings on how racism in America made Michael Jackson hate himself - but still.  Think of the good he might have done with all that money if he'd put even some of it towards worthwhile causes instead of cushioning his own pain.
4. Or buying the Beatles catalog.  Which he then licensed for commercials.  Un-fucking-forgivable.
5. He was the one anointed himself King of Pop.  He had no right.  Not even Sting would ever stoop to that level of Pretentious Twat-itude.
   
6. All you people going baa-baa-baa wahhh Michael Jackson is dead and gnashing your teeth and rending your garments - it's not about him.  It's all about you.  It always has been.  It's about the loss of your childhood and the impending realization you're going to die someday and all that shit that MTV (and MJ) never filled you in on.  So buck up, stop trying to relive your halcyon Princess Diana days, and get on with your life.
   

May wasn't even over when we got news of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, shot down while he was ushering at his church - the one place he wouldn't wear a bulletproof vest.  Members of the Austin pro-choice community were saddened and outraged by this news as Dr. Tiller was a good friend to the community and the women it served - one of only two providers in the entire United States brave enough to perform medically-necessary third trimester abortions.

On Thursday evening June 4 the Lilith Fund and other members of the Texas pro-choice movement sponsored a candlelight vigil to honor Dr. Tiller's memory.  It was a lovely night for the service and a hush fell over Butler Park near Ladybird Lake as a hundred and more gathered to pay tribute to this dedicated man slain before his time.

Waiting for the service to begin

"When you come here bring only love"

Dark approaches

Candles are lit

A call to renewed action in defense of the right to choose

The rest of Saturday was hauling ass to Marfa via Carlsbad and Van Horn.  Pretty scenery but I wouldn't recommend the route to anyone in a hurry, especially Rt. 54 if it's just rained.  I hit one of the low-water crossings too fast to see it was flooded and if there had been more than 6 inches I might still be in the rental car somewhere downstream.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Van Horn to Marfa was just plain dreary except for this particular oddity visible from 10 miles away:

Air Force blimp, Rt. 90

Got into town too late and exhausted to partake of any Saturday night activities.  In fact this time my Marfa experience was limited to a motel room with a non-functioning TV remote and an early-Sunday hour in the laundromat.  At least they try and make doing laundry a little interesting there by giving the machines names.

Tumbleweed laundromat, Marfa

Laundry done, I blew town and was back in Austin by late afternoon.  I regret not getting into the Paisano again this time, but in fact it would have been a waste of a good room, so wasted I was from driving through desert storms much of the day.

Hotel Paisano

Downtown Marfa early on a Sunday

The rain broke Friday night so Saturday I packed up early and hit the road, looking for a good trail somewhere in the National Forest.  Drove from Ruidoso to Cloudcroft via the Mescalero reservation, which was all kinds of pretty.  So was the Lincoln Forest once I got off the main roads.

Lincoln Nat'l Forest, FS Road 04

A little bit in Road 04 I found a trail marked 251 leading up into the Lucas Canyon and got out for a stroll.  Which was all kinds of pretty in itself.

Lucas Canyon trailhead

Lower down in Lucas Canyon

Trail further up

I would have liked to go farther if time (and my lungs) had permitted it.  Looks like I was getting to the best part when I had to turn around.

Into the birch in upper Lucas Canyon

It did indeed rain like hell the next day.  Before the worst of it rolled in I got out for a quick look at the Skyline campground, where I've stayed every other time I've been in Ruidoso.

Skyline Rec. Area, Lincoln Nat'l Forest

Skyline is 9k-something feet up, which I now recall made sleeping a little problematical the last time I was there in 2001.  Breath comes hard that high.  Nevertheless, I poked around in the mist long enough to gather some pine deadfall for the fire I knew I'd be building back in the cabin as soon as the rain started in earnest.

Storybook Cabins, Ruidoso

This was my lodging at Storybook Cabins in the upper canyon.  Really nice little place, spacious and well-furnished.  I only wish I'd gotten to spend more time there, especially on the front porch.

Storybook Cabins front porch

As it was the rain drove me inside and I spent most of Friday in one of the armchairs in front of the fireplace, watching Deadwood DVDs.  Which didn't exactly suck either, not once I got the fire roaring.

Storybook cabins interior

Made it to Ruidoso without incident, unless you want to count the knot in my back from driving all day.  Next time I'm taking the direct route for sure - hadn't realized there's fuck-all to see between Brady and Roswell.

I'm staying at one of the cabin-resorts in the upper canyon, in what is almost certainly the nicest, most well-apppointed lodging I've had in a long time if not ever.  Pictures tomorrow if there's enough light - it's supposed to rain for the first time in months.  This evening though I'm out on the porch enjoying the smell of the woods, the chill-ish air (6400 ft.), the total absence of mosquitoes, and the hummingbirds using the feeder 8 feet away.

Some pics from today's drive:

At work outside of San Angelo

Remarkable only in that I can never remember seeing two cherry-pickers on the same project before.

Windmills near Big Spring

Birds over the Pecos River, Roswell

Downtown Roswell

Hondo Valley

Leaving tomorrow morning for another 4-day mini-vacation, this time in Ruidoso NM with a stop in Marfa on the way back.  I recently bought a Flip camcorder and have yet to try it out, so maybe I’ll have something to post that moves when I get home this time.

Weather’s beautiful in Austin, clear and warm and dry which is a relief after weeks of nasty nasty humidity.  The weather report tells me I’ll experience highs in the 60s in Ruidoso and it’s going to feel weird packing a jacket this late in the year but nothing beats being prepared.

Mostly I’m looking forward to the trip itself, not only the destination.  I’m taking the long route out, San Angelo and Big Spring to Roswell with two-lanes the whole way.  I’ve actually made this exact drive before, back in 01 on my way to newmoonie in Austin NV, and remember it as eleven-plus hours to Ruidoso.  Which makes it a good thing I like to drive.

Hope to get in some updates on the way, as I’m told my various accommodations have wifi.  I know I plan to take lots of pics.  Either way, expect updates after I get back Sunday or maybe before.

The last few weeks have been about rediscovering the joys of steamed soybeans.  Of course now they’re called edamame and cost too much even in a freezer bag at HEB, which is one of the reasons I took so long to sample them again: pretentious rebranding sushi-lover crap when they’re just soybeans, fer chrissake.  Then again I don’t suppose most sushi-bar patrons, at least in this country, have ever encountered them in any other form before.  I just got lucky, I suppose.

Musical fruit

When I was about 11 the former local garden-store mogul’s estate across the road got divided up and one of the plots purchased by an elderly couple who loved growing their own food.  It was they as much as my hippie siblings responsible for my mother’s sudden, all-pervasive, cataclysmic health-food kick the next year: it was bad enough that we were already banned Twinkies but did we have to start choking down the Dessicated Beef Liver pills now too?  All I knew was that seemingly without warning way too many of our shopping trips into West Chester centered around The Great Pumpkin (at the time, the only granola haven for miles around) and we were single-handedly keeping the Rodale Press in business.

Anyway, our neighbors’ main crop was soybeans – way too many for just themselves, so they gave us half or more of their crop each year.  All we had to do every fall was fetch the uprooted plants back to our house, pull the pods off them, steam the pods and shell the beans for the freezer.  For several years we had thawed soybeans with pretty much every dinner – no more peas, carrots, lima beans or what-have-you – and bad as the food was at Westtown, I was only too glad to start boarding there because nobody would hear of serving those little green fuckers.

(The stripping and shelling parts of the process were long and tedious sessions around the table on our back porch, all work done by my parents and myself; E. was still living with us then but rarely around when there was that kind of work to be done.  I don’t blame him.  We had at least one family crisis come and go over a mound of soybean pods, when I went off with some Young Friends for a weekend “conference” and was discovered to have gone to Atlantic City instead.  “If we’re going to be sitting around working this out, no reason not to keep our hands busy,” my father pronounced grimly.)

Once I left for college I promised I’d never eat a soybean again and have largely honored that all this time.  But one day recently I bought a bag just out of curiosity – and perhaps a need to get over myself – and thawed it out and had some ‘beans with a little butter and salt and pepper alongside a steak and baked potato and, lo and behold, I’ve wanted to eat little since.  Soybeans go great with everything, green and crunchy buggers that they are.  I forgot that not only do I really do like the taste as well as the crunch, but that they’re firm enough to deceive my constant cravings for starch-like materials.  

It’s an unexpected but welcome way of claiming a part of my earlier years thought long-lost – one little bite brings all the memories of that back porch and those late summers shelling on it back instantly, listening to my stations on the radio and hoping they’d play something my parents would like. My father winced at Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” and said it sounded nothing like the Roberta Flack song of the same name that I knew he really liked.  Well, he gave it a shot at least.

I wonder what else we have that’s our childhood in just a taste or two?

As part of the ongoing frenzy of tear it down and build something new and shoddy that is present-day Austin, the School for the Blind and Visually Impaired on 45th St. is getting some major kind of facelift.  Actually I don't know if the result will be shoddy, but it sure is a mess in the front yard right about now.  Even their marquee admits it.

Well no, it doesn't always, but whatever

Myself I'm wishing they had more room on the sign so they could put up something like "Our students can't see the mess so don't let it bother you either," but that's probably me just being insensitive.

Keep to the paved areas, please

Closer to home, someone finally did something about the collapsing-on-itself storefront on 50th St. that looked like this awhile back:

Urban renewal just waiting to happen

Now you just know there was no way they were going to let that stand, not in increasingly-appearance-conscious Hyde Park, not to mention letting prime real estate go without generating revenue for long.  I was hoping for a renovation to turn it into a small grocery kind of like the long-standing one on Avenue B, but of course whoever went for the rental housing instead.

Whoops, too late to stop it now

And it doesn't look too bad, I concede.  At least the building's got its right angles back again.  Hate to be inside during a hailstorm, though.

I suppose that shed to the right is next in line.  Can't wait to see what they do with that.