INVASION OF THE BUN SNATCHERS

Just so you know it’s not all doom and gloom in this part of the world, today (Monday) was the Buddha’s Birthday, and also the day of the annual Cheung Chau Bun Festival – the highlight of which is this:

That’s the traditional bun snatching competition, which happens at midnight. They completed this year’s snatch about half an hour ago. This footage is from 2006, but it amounts to the same thing.

If yr not sure what they’re doing, that tower is covered with Cheung Chau-style steamed buns. The object is to climb the tower and stuff as many into yr sack as possible in three minutes. The higher you go, the more fortune for you and yr family.

It’s good fun, the festival is, though I’ve never been to one. It’s usually too hot and way too crowded to make it worth the effort, and besides, the bun snatching gig was only reinstated in 2005. It was banned in 1978 after a bun tower collapsed and over 100 people got hurt.

For more information, see: My Life As McDull. In fact, see it even if you don’t need more info about bun snatching.

Hands off my buns,

This is dF

HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC, PART 18,459

ITEM: The Recording Industry Association of America says that DRM – the copy control software that supposedly is the only thing keeping all of you thieving-ass pirate punk kids from ripping all yr CDs and sharing them for free with everyone, thus killing the music industry forever – is alive and well and not going anywhere.

Which is funny since all four major labels have taken so much crap from consumers over DRM that they all now offer DRM-free versions of songs on download services like iTunes and Amazon (albeit for a higher price than the DRM-ed versions).

Turns out the labels are just playing along until they can come up with new ways to sell digital music that are 100% DRMed. Says RIAA technology unit head David Hughes:

"(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM ... Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead."

Hughes admits that consumers might not appreciate DRM, but claims they generally don’t mind as long as it doesn’t get in the way of them being able to listen to their tunes and transfer them to new devices. Yeah, well, tell that to anyone who downloaded DRMed songs from the MSN Music Store. Under that model, if you buy DRMed music from someone that later goes out of business and won’t support DRM renewal, all that music you bought is useless. Too bad for you, suckas.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has just passed HR 4279, a.k.a. the PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property) Act of 2008.

Guess what it does? It gives the RIAA the legal power to send local cops to yr house to confiscate yr computer – even if you settled out of court and paid yr fine. Combine that law (which the RIAA lobbied for) with the RIAA’s ongoing legal position being argued in the courts that you have no legal right to rip a CD even for personal use, and you start to get a sense of just how much the RIAA hates yr goddamn guts.

You know, I think I preferred it when they tricked artists into doing documentaries about how hard it is to make money in the music business.

Little criminals,

This is dF

CHICKS DIG SLACKS

ITEM [via BoingBoing and Make The Logo Bigger]: When the aliens arrive a thousand years from now and sift through our radioactive ashes to see what kind of civilization we were, one they’ll learn from the computer archives is that in 1970, Earth females were hot for Earth men in slacks – who would then consummate the courtship by killing them and making rugs out of them.



Ad copy:

Though she was a tiger lady, our hero didn’t have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over her. That noble styling sure soothes the savage heart! If you’d like your own doll-to-doll carpeting, hunt up a pair of these he-man Mr. Leggs slacks. Such as our new automatic wash wear blend of 65% “Dacron®” and 35% rayon–incomparably wrinkle-resistant. About $12.95 at plush-carpeted stores.

O, those he-man copywriters of yesteryear. Truly they don’t write ‘em like this anymore. They wouldn’t dare. Unless it was in the context of a Ron Burgundy film.

Slacks motherfucker,

This is dF