"Are you ever planning on blogging again?" my wife gently reminded me this afternoon, interrupting my carefully planned day of sloth. Which is a fair point. So let us recap some of the highlights of the past week, shall we?
1. Winter finally arrived, kinda sorta, to Iqaluit. There is snow on the ground and it appears it won't be going anywhere until June or so. Which is fine because mid-November is insanely late for snow to finally settle in. Plus, all the dust was getting tiring to deal with. We're still getting some above zero temperatures, and it actually rained for awhile on Friday. People around town have this "what the fuck is going on" look quite a bit.
The bay, of course, remains unfrozen and today we got a late arriving fuel tanker, which is quite possibly the latest I've seen a ship in Frobisher Bay. Perhaps a coast guard vessel or an ice breaker, but that would be about it. The latest I've seen the bay freeze up would be around the second week of December. We'll see what happens this year.
I don't want to be screaming "Climate Change!" all the time because the simple fact of the matter is we don't know if it is or not. It's certainly unusual weather. I've heard stories from long-time residents of Iqaluit of when the bay would be frozen solid by mid-October 25 years ago. So yeah, it feels like there is something going on, but I really don't want to be screaming that it's happening because I simply don't know. However, it does feel weird.
2. The odd thing about going bald is that I probably get my hair cut more now than when I had a full head of it. Back then if I wanted to go a couple of months without and just go shaggy, well, I could get away with it. But now, after about six weeks my hair starts to get deeply bushy on the side and remains sadly sparse on top. Since there are standing orders among my friends to shoot me if I ever try a comb over, it means going to the barber.
It's best not to think about the $25-30 I spend for a 15 minute trim.
Anyway, my regular barber, Scotty, has been AWOL for the last couple of months but I noticed he was back in the office. Seems he slipped and managed to break his shoulder and collarbone, which is bad given his profession. He was there and I decided to get my hair cut. It's been awhile, so I couldn't recall if the trimmer was set on a two or a three. I went with a two. Which Scotty did with great gusto. A pair of scissors did not touch my head once during the 10 minutes or so I was in there. I suspect the trimmer might be easier on his shoulder than dealing with the scissors.
Let's just call the look scalped and leave it at that shall we. On the upside, I likely won't need to get my hair cut again until the end of January.
3. Work continues to do its best to kill me, which I find oddly pleasing. There are rumours I may be a masochist, but what the hell, there are worse things to be.
Last Five
1. All my lovin' - Me First and Gimmie Gimmies
2. My father's ghost - Ron Hynes*
3. Diamonds and pearls - Prince
4. Working day - Ben Folds and Nick Hornsby
5. Momsong - The Be Good Tanyas
2 comments:
The Beatles thing could also be seen as an admission of label failure; keep in mind that they have not avoided iTunes as some Luddite effort to avoid technology.
More, the Beatles' camp did not want to make the huge revenue sacrifice that iTunes forces upon artists and labels. Vis - a band like the Beatles would have made approximately $3.50 a CD. And consumers had to buy a CD to get a given song.
Now fans will just buy the songs; iTunes pays its artists in the neighbourhood of .07 cents a song. A desire on the part of a fan for a copy of a given song, say 'She Loves You', would have previously netted the band $3.50, as the consumer was forced to buy a CD. Now they will make a nickel.
This move is actually a recognition on the band and label's part that everyone who would possibly buy a Beatles' album already has, and that the only sales left are of the shitty low revenue iTunes variety.
This is easily the most intelligent commentary I've read so far on the reason for this move on the part of the Beatles. It makes sense when you explain in that way. I suspect most people just don't understand how iTunes royalties structure works.
Although I do wonder how much they lost in revenue by people just downloading their music over the past decade. You're getting into some weird accountant balance sheets trying to weigh CD sales vs iTunes vs torrent downloads.
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