This story makes me so happy I can hardly stand it. Well, not this specific story, although I do like it, but the fact that someone over at the RIAA pirated an absolute metric crapton of TV episodes.
And then to make the "Well, it was just someone using our IP address" excuse… People, it doesn't get any better than that. Particularly when you can prove that, no, those IP addresses actually do belong to the RIAA.
It's like the happiest little Christmas story ever.
Climbing into our cab was a relief. The shadow stretched out into the ambient darkness as the cabbie pulled away from the curb, and I felt my shoulders loosen as she spread out, the sensation like exhaling after holding my breath for too long. I actually had a tension headache pinching behind my eyes. She purred in my head at the meager freedom and commenced cataloging the myriad of upsetting tastes and scents ground into the upholstery and footwells.
“Where to, sir?” The cabbie twisted in his seat to look at us. He was a young man, hat on backwards over short bleach blonde hair, which looked odd with his very Arabic face. His eyes were red and sleepy, and he gave me a big, lazy grin.
“Corner of Concord and Lambert,” Irish replied, settling in beside me and putting one arm around me. I settled in against his side, pretending I was cold for the look of the thing. I didn’t even bother to ask how he knew where to go. Instead, I had to smile at what my shadow had found in her explorations. The cabbie had two plastic baggies full of what tasted like very good weed crammed under the driver’s seat, and we could feel and taste the residue coating the inside of the car like a shimmer of oil on the surface of a puddle.
“Got it.” He turned left, barely making it through a yellow light, apparently not stoned enough to forget to start the meter. He turned the radio up, filling the car with Lady Gaga and plenty of bass. Bad Romance, one of the shadow’s favorites. The speakers and windows resonated with the beat, and the shadow thrummed along with the melody, occasionally referencing the back of my head for the meaning of a particular lyric, but mostly riding the vibrations like a surfer rode the waves at the beach.
Well, at least he wouldn’t be listening in. To be sure, I had the shadow divert some attention to breaking up any of the sounds coming from the back seat. Read more >>
Hang on… isn't insider trading illegal, period? Why do we need a special law to stop Congresspeople from doing it? We put Martha Stewart in jail for this, didn't we? We can put Martha Freakin' Stewart in jail, but not a congressperson? WTF, people?
Keeping Them Honest, the AC360 staff called every U.S. legislator to go on the record about the STOCK act, a bill that would bar lawmakers from trading stocks using nonpublic information. Here's Anderson's report: http://on.cnn.com/sCSiRB
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN, TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth Fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE, AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY, AND YET— Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or else what’s the point—”
