Random thoughts and questions

Can we include Twitter posts? I've got this friend who's really cool, but they're a 20 year old poet and ohhhhh the vaguebooking.

If it weren't for urbandictionary.com I wouldn't have a clue what you half of you guys are talking about most days.

k, here we go.

If I leave bet you'll wish id stayed,
Make you regret all the things you said to me.
You know that time cant help us now...
If i leave this way..

My girlfriend lost her job and is now opening an Etsy store to sell bead necklaces and bracelets. I can count on all of you for purchases right?

Good lord, yes. I once had a dessert at my favourite local fancy-pants restaurant that made me physically angry.

Check it: freshly made donuts with cardamom ice-cream, sprinkled with gold flecks and drizzled in rosemary syrup. Holy fucksticks, right? I mean, that was easily the greatest thing I've ever had in my mouth. It was hot and cold and sweet all at the same time. So my reaction was like Johnny Depp in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, where he shoots the cook for making too good a meal in order to restore balance to the universe - I literally got angry that I was eating it, because I knew that it was going to be over really soon and I also knew there was no way I could afford to have it on a regular basis. I believe I literally said at the table "Fuck you, dessert, for being so delicious."

It's been pointed out to me that normal humans do not act this way.

Does the fishmonger/smoker/whatever you got it from have a website? I went to the local smoked fish place and the women there gave me the smokehouse's e-mail address and suggested I ask them about it. So I'd like to provide a link to an example of it if possible.

Hang in there! He's not wurth it! Defiantly!

Little did I know, I'm a lawbreaker!

Oh yeah! I've broken that law a lot. Especially in college.

There are only a few states that have it on the books still: Virginia, Michigan, Mississippi, and Florida. So unless you've lived there, you haven't. :)

There are still plenty of other silly blue laws on the books, as my SO just reminded me, like the city he grew up in, where it's illegal to beat your wife on the courthouse steps on a Sunday (I suppose it's perfectly ok the rest of the time!)

Only if you've got the "lewdly and lasciviously" part down. I hope you do. Everyone should.

Oh god, it's like sharecropping.

Here are some recipes that came up for it, I can't attest to their quality:

Recipe 1 (uses eight pounds of salmon + smoker)
Recipe 2 (two fillets + smoker)
Recipe 3 (maple teriyaki, large side of salmon + smoker)

This recipe is from Food Network (grill & cedar planks)

You can find a lot more online.

Here's an online retailer in Oregon who sells it, but I haven't tried theirs.

My mom spends a lot of time writing calligraphy at her desk, which requires her to keep her back straight and upright at all times. The problem is she has back problems (scoliosis) and I really want her to have a chair with proper back support instead of the stool she's using now. Any recommendations on what kind of chair she could use during one of her writing sessions?

I have an old friend who treats facebook as a combination of vaguebook/whingebook. The pattern and timeframe is always the same. She will make the initial post, wait about three hours for the comments and questions of "What's wrong?" to roll in, like those posts then continue the game by giving vague answers an hour apart. The worst incident was when she took photos of herself in hospital and wouldn't give an answer even to long-term friends and family. My wife, who has known her for 30 years, wasn't able to get a straight answer either so she rang her, only to find out that she was just having some blood taken. She has changed so much since she joined facebook that they barely speak these days. I recently closed my account so thankfully I no longer have to put up with it.

That sort of shit goes beyond needy and well into manipulative. I can't imagine how anyone retains friends (on FB or otherwise) with that kind of idiotic behavior.

If a member leaves a successful band and they continue to play the material he helped write/record/promote/whatever, does he still get royalties, or did the financial association end when he left?

Assuming bands split money rather than pay salaries and they bring someone new in, do they distribute the loss in ownership to cover the new guy?

I'm pretty sure that would depend on the contract the band has with the record label.

Yeah, makes sense...I'm just wondering what's typical for some arbitrary definition of "typical". Does Michael Schenker still get money when the Scorpions play the songs he helped write, that kind of thing. He still plays Scorpions songs in concert- does he pay them money? It's by no means a detailed or specific question, just idle curiousity.

I'm also assuming that in established bands like, say KISS, the newly inducted guitarists don't make the same kind of money that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley do. Which has to sting a bit.

I told a friend to post a picture of an ultrasound without comment once, but mostly because I wanted to fuck with her friends more than vaguebook. She almost did it, but was worried she'd give her mother a heart attack. Or her boyfriend. One of the two was going to flip the fuck out. Still would have been hilarious.

When it comes to royalties there's generally a separate royalty for being the writer of a track and being a performer. If someone leaves a band they'd still get all appropriate royalties if they were the writer of a song, they'd continue to get royalties for when their recordings of the songs were played, and they might get royalties if the band continues to play them live (I don't think that often happens though.) There have been cases where bands rerecord older tracks and get the new version sent out as the official version to cut out the older member from the performance royalties. And there's also session musicians who can get anywhere from full performance royalties (atypical) to simply being paid a flat fee for their performance.

This is generally why the writers of songs are much better off than the performers and you can look at wealth lists of bands with a core of one or two writers being much higher in wealth lists even if the rest of the band has been with the band the whole time. Although the music industry is changing back to performance fees for live gigs being the main money earners even for the huge acts with permanent playtime of their songs. Although the smash hit Christmas song that gets played every year until eternity is considered a great earner by pretty much everyone.

Live performances are a different deal than record sales, and my guess is that there's a separate agreement between the ex-bandmate and the rest of the band for that. My inclination is to think that amicable splits involve a sort of "live and let live" where either party gets to play the songs without having to pay the other, provided it's a solo artist vs. the rest of the band. If the departed artist forms another group, my guess is that the new group can't play material from the original band since that would mean people who didn't help write those songs would be profiting off of them.

This is all just guesswork on my part, though.

ETA: Or what Millie said.

Unless he sold away his rights, he gets royalties. And yes, it's better to be the writer of the old hits, who the left the band, than the replacement bass player unless the others are really the sharing kind.

Just wrote out a couple of simple math/logic game puzzle thingies; would anybody be willing to test them for me? :D /looks around hopefully

Paging AaronSofaer. ;)

Is that a serious question?

Thanks, now my head hurts!

Ooh ooh I like puzzles. Puzzles are awesome!

No, I just remember it making the rounds ages ago and thought I'd post it since we were talking about "puzzles". Here's the Wikipedia article explaining it.

THE PLANE NEVER TAKES OFF.

Thanks so much, Aaron! Puzzles sent! They're really easy though, so don't expect too much. >_<

Thank you NASA, for spending billions and billions of dollars in order to provide me with a constant stream of top quality background images for my Windows Desktop.

All of the session work I've done has been a payment on the day. It's usually an hourly rate with a minimum payment of 3 hours. I occasionally get asked to join in during live gigs later on, but the payment for that is still a flat fee. Obviously, if you get a writing credit you will see royalties, but unless it's a hit, you won't see much at all.

I know a guy who had Bonnie Raitt cover one of his songs and turn it into a hit (can't remember the song off hand) and before he would play it at his own gigs, he would comment that the royalties from that one song alone paid for his house and dental work.

I think I'm experiencing some withdrawals from my steroids. Annoying. Of course, the weather dropped 40 degrees here over the last 24 hours, so maybe I'm just feeling that. Weather man....weather.

Apparently we live near a fire station. The siren sounds pretty similar to the tornado sirens I grew up with. I've jumped at it a few times, especially when it's windy out like today.

Does PA even get tornadoes?

A better question is, why do Pennsylvania fire engines need the Doom Siren on them? We live near a fire station AND a tornado siren, and there's no mistaking one for the other.