I started this post about 6 hours ago, managed to write the title and paste in a single link, and then was assaulted by a storm of messaging that only recently abated.

I had loads of fun stuff to talk about, but I think it's passed through my body like so much bad smelling air, so I'll just have to wing it and see what I can piece together from fragments of IM sessions and ideas that remain spattered about the inside of my skull.

This is the link I managed to paste here before I got distracted. Let me have a little look at it and then we'll figure out why it motivated me to post...

...

Aaaah yes. Of course. It's a piracy thing. This has been charging in and out of my mind for a couple of months since Tycho spun the napster issue on its side just so:

It was their activities under Hilary Rosen that truly unleashed Peer to Peer file sharing to begin with, with a barrage of legal attacks that amounted to the most fabulous PR campaign ever. I said at the time that if my Mom knows about Napster, then they fucked up big-time. Let's say these guys do start arresting people for downloading music, for having these files. I don't share their view that this terror will cause people to stop doing these things. Here's what I think it will do: instigate a mass evolution in public digital consciousness. Because that's the other way it turns out - instead of people being scared, they defend themselves with new technologies designed to obfuscate their origins. Because if regular people, my mom included, begin to understand the personal and political ramifications of encryption? Think about it. It's not impossible.

I'm not sure if this is a prediction, but if it isn't it should be. Maybe even a postulation, as I think that's exactly how it's going to go down. Here we go:
1: Big company with stupid people at the helm sues a fairly large chunk of humans (let's say 1000 in one go) for having copyrighted material shared over the net. It'll probably be a rather showy affair with FBI seizing computers from helpless kiddies or leading uni sysadmins away from their IT labs in handcuffs.
2: Filesharing takes a slight haitus for a couple of days as net users who aren't already using encrypted P2P clients or networks change over. More paranoid users may start to encrypt their entire systems, or change from strong encryption to fucking bloody hell, there aren't enough computers in the world encryption. My mum asks me if I'll show her how to encrypt her grade 2 class's report cards.
3: Music/entertainment companies are back at square one, and finally have to address the problem in a proactive manner, changing with the times and garnering support from around the globe by introducing technologies and ideas which add value and entertainment for consumers.

Or

3b: Music/entertainment companies continue their theme of kneejerk reactions and sink massive piles of cash into purchasing huge clusters of supercomputers to try cracking the codes on Little Timmy's hard drive so they can throw the little criminal in jail for downloading Tatu videos from the internet.

.. Ok, there's more but I'm sick of this rant and you can tell where it's going I'm sure. Let's move on.

Moving right along:

The last couple of days have been spent rather industriously looking for laptop computers. I started off looking to spend about $3K on a centrino notebook, brands of choice being Acer and Toshiba, with a slight detour via Sony. I nearly went to Harvey Norman and leased an Acer laptop this afternoon, but was saved by some words of wisdom from Jum:

[14:43] Jum: we just have differnt priorities
[14:43] Jaymis: hehe, your opinion is invalid in this case jum. you will regret it if you get a digi without rechargable batteries. you will regret it very much. I know this, and I don't want you to do this.
[14:43] Jum: you want constant state of the art
[14:43] Jum: i want somehting that will work for ages cos im a jew

Note: Jum is not actually Jewish, this is a racial slur. Jaymis.com does not endorse racial slurs of any type unless they're being made by a minority group member, because, well equality is all about letting minority groups get away with acts which would land the majority of the population in court, right?

[16:04] Jaymis: I was close to going to harvey norman and getting laptop, but I've decided that I'm going to get a factory refurb acer one.. they're uber cheep
[16:04] Jaymis: not refurbished though.. just phased out
[16:04] Jum: yea
[16:04] Jum: that sounds like the way to go
[16:04] Jum: harvye norman is super dodgy
[16:05] Jaymis: jah.. when you said I was always for cutting edge it made me think - I'm not usually like that for desktop stuff, but I was actually looking at very recent laptop tech, and decided to go looking at the most recently superceeded models = fuckloads cheeper

So the current option is one of these, and it's been standing for a good 10 hours now. Ok, shopping is boring unless somebody's buying, or stealing, so let's move on to the stealing:

This auction for The Video Camera Most Lusted After by a Jaymis Between the Ages of Zero and Seven Thousand struck me as pretty great in terms of getting amazing gear for buggerall money, and this line in the auction -
Our Independent movie studio (ANXT FILMS)filed for bankruptcy yesterday. We are going to sell our complete movie studio on Yahoo Auctions this week!!!
- prompted me to send the following email to the seller:
Hi, you mentioned on your auction that your company has gone under and that you will be selling studio gear sometime soon. I'm so very sorry to hear that you haven't been able to make enough money to keep things going, and am sure that you'll be able to get back into things soon enough. In the meantime, I'm a digi film student and multimedia artist, and have a little budget for gear at the moment. I was wondering what other gear you may be selling? At the moment I am very interested in your XL1, especially if it's going to be in the region of $1000ish.

Jaymis

I was pleasantly surprised to receive 2 emails in reply. Well, I was pleased until I actually read the emails, which smelt so strongly of scam Christopher Scase came back from the dead and started shambling around outside my house cackling "brains brains brains brains brains":

To complete this transaction, please email me your address so I can get your
package ready to ship. I offer to use via Western Union Money Transfer (http://www.westernunion.com/) or Money Gram (http://www.moneygram.com/) and post service DHL (http://www.dhl.com/) or any another post service.

Andrey Babievskiy
Ukraine, Kiev 18000
Shevcenko 108, 43.

This is an interesting email to receive, for several reasons, most pertinent being:
1: The auction was supposed to have been an Australian seller. Last time I checked Kiev was just outside Australia's borders.
2: The auction was of course in Australian dollars. Not US dollars.
3: Most important of all: I hadn't even BID on the item. I was strongly considering doing so before the auction ran out, but now, well I have another email to read before I make up my mind don't I. It could all be a big mistake...

Email Number Two, as if I really needed more convincing:

I can use only that method of payment that I wrote to you! I so have written to you because I with the church help children to the orphans here on Ukraine and I should the gift sell for such small price! I wait from you of the fast answer and I hope that you will enter my rule and quickly will help me and patient to children which have suffered in airaccident! I wait from you of the fast answer!

...

...

Wow.

...

That's all I got. Wow.

Musically: The last few days have been pretty damn crazy. Between new albums from Muse (Absolution) and Hybrid (Morning Sci-fi), being put onto Mew - Frengers by Lukie (which was immediately snaffled up by Doug as a Song of the Week (yep, that's a downloadable link kiddies, make with the right clicking). I don't think this track is really indicative of the overall Mew sound, but it's bloody good and I'll post my pick of the album a little later.)

Bloody hell, far too many words in those parenthesis, I've lost my place. Aah yes, Music.

In between all this stuff I've been listening to Evanescence - Bring me to life which was pimped out by Jum on Friday. It took me 2 days to latch onto it, but now I have it on repeat, and it's spent a couple of hours on repeat between listens of the above new albums plus some Hot Hot Heat (whose gig was AWESOME. Did I mention it was AWESOME? Because it was AWESOME), Death Cab for Cutie, Kid Kay Ferris, and various Rainer-mediated smatterings of olskool electronica ala Orbital, Photek and old old Underworld.

There's much much more in my brain, but it's 3:25am and I have been bullied into going to uni by the killer combination of Haj (for whom I bought the domain Hajley.com tonight, so I will be able to link her soon) and my parents, working as a diabolical team of Jaymis-to-uni-go-makers. Here's a summary of other stuff I need to make known to you by way of finger-wiggling over the next couple of arbitrary time blocks:

Stencils, how good are stencils (yes you clever bastards, that is the stuff I was referring to the other day.

Other cool stuff on ebay that I wouldn't mind a couple of.

Digital Cameras: Or the tiny and sexy vs big and functional vs somewhere in the middle mental debate I'm having with me.
(For future reference Big and Functional is currently in the lead)

What's with this neighbourhood: Why the fuck did my mother have to hose a pool of blood off our front paving on Saturday morning?

Getting traffic infringement tickets: For neither Fun nor Profit, but I'm still smiling and thinking that I've paid $75 for the right to conduct business while I'm driving around.
(Just to clear this up, until it's illegal to smoke - and especially to ROLL FUCKING CIGARETTES - while driving I shall continue to operate my handheld mobile phone. Sorry officer, I'm a criminal, at least I didn't stencil a smiley face on your helmet.

How much haranguing are you going to get when I have a laptop and can flop it out and do the finger wiggling thing whenever I damn well feel like it. Bloody hell, you people are in for it.

Wow, that post took way too long to sort out and get posted. I found out the reason though, it's something along the lines of, well exactly along the lines of this:
http://www.movabletype.org/support/index.php?act=ST&f=19&t=11546
So now trackback auto discoverthingy is disabled, and my posts are posting. Lucky I did a forum search before doing something crazy like reinstalling MT.

i beat dave to commenting

I commented. I just commented direct to jay. Before you commented here. So like, fuck you.

3b is probably the most likely RIAA path. You see, these companys are retarded about money. MONEY MONEY MONEY RIGHT FUCKIN NOW.

To compete with music piracy, you're going to have to do crazy shit like lower your prices. Which is something the RIAA hasn't had to do... ever really. And my guess would be that they'll do anything to have that tasty little rip off back.

They would want to be slowly creeping the prices higher and higher and seeing if it works out good in sales. But mp3's have gone and fucked that. Good. I hope the huge record companys fail. I'll laugh.

Of course the MPAA has been a bit quieter. And who are they going to blame? Fuck. No ones going to see Gigli at the movies, they're sure as fuck not going to bother pirating it. So whos fault is it movies are dreck?

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/news/story.jsp?story=434778
Yours. Expect to have your SMS monitered and be sued for saying 'Man that was a gay movie. I'm going to sex Dave'. And you fuckin well should be.

This is a public service announcement. I've changed it so that comments can be anonymous.

You don't need to type a pretend email address in anymore.

Yay.

Jay.

Oh, and it's not a race to comment. Don't go all slashdot on me now kiddies, comments are ranked by their offensiveness, humour content, and the amount of jaylove they express and then are printed out and filed in my pants.

First is just the first of the losers. Or something, fuck I hated those no fear shirts.

Jay called you a loser jum. I wouldn't take that shit. Go and punch him out.

Of course I shouldn't say things like that now. I could go to jail for 2 years. Because Senator Luddite Motherfuckwit Alston is trying to pass more of his retarded shit through the fuckin inbred government.

http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_4-2_4008-4_116473,00.html

So I also shouldn't suggest that smoking pot is a lot of fun and you should try it, I shouldn't mention that metal ball bearings really fuck up police horses so its good to take some to that protest. And protests get more coverage if they turn a bit violent, so I urge you to work up the crowd into a frenzy.

But they'll probably just throw me in jail for giving people links to scabies. Which I think is a link that the senator really needs to see.

Fuck it.

I am in amsterdam. This keyboard is weird.

We have spent too much money already in the first day here. So much for budgeting. We bought a large bag of weed for 12 euros and that's cheaper than the joints you can buy in the cafes. Every guy here seems to be intent on picking up my girlfriend even when I'm sitting right there with her.

We went to a sex show last night where lots of people bone each other on the stage. That was... interesting. It's like pron in your living room... only they're actually *in* your living room. My girlfriend liked it a lot but wouldn't agree to get up on the stage.

The keyboard is wierd cause your stoned.

This comment - http://www.jaymis.com/archive/000172.html - is a comment from someone who isn't me, and is a pretty damn good comment I must say.

p.s. Nuts.

Dave: Mars.
X: What?
Dave: Thats Mars. In the sky.
X: Just looks like an orange dot.
Dave: Its not an orange dot. Its mars.
X: .... alright.
Dave: No its not fuckin alright. THAT IS MARS MOTHERFUCKER. ITS ANOTHER GODDAMN PLANET AND ITS A LONG WAY AWAY.. YOU EVEN BEEN TO ULARU? DID YOU THINK 'FUCK ME, THATS A BIG ROCK?' WELL IT DOESNT HAVE SHIT ON MARS. MARS IS FUCKIN HUUUUUGE MAN. AND ITS GOT ALL THIS FUCKIN SPACE BETWEEN IT AND HERE FULL OF BLACK HOLES AND NO AIR AND SHIT. THE MOTHERFUCKING BITS OF LIGHT HITTING YOUR RETINA HAVE FUCKIN BOUNCED OFF THIS CUNT, TRAVELED A REALLY FUCKIN LONG WAY REALLY FUCKING QUICKLY AND YOU SHOULD BE SUITABLY IMPRESSED.
X: Okay.

My friends probably dont have as much fun with me when they're not stoned too.

Dave, how many marijuana related deaths are there each year in Australia?

Whats the equivalent numbers for alcohol, nicotine?

What about other illegal recreational drugs? E? Heroin?

This is for an ongoing argument i'm having with my folks. I'm trying to convince them that marijuana should be legalised (or atleast de-criminalised).

I figured that if anyone were to know the rough figures off the top of their head it might be you.

For marijuana related deaths my guess would be zero. It depends on how far you take the 'related'. If you mean 'this person died because they had bud' or if you mean 'this person died because they walked into front of a truck when they were stoned'.

Former is probably 0. Latter is probably a few more, but probably pales in comparison to the amount of injuries/deaths caused by people being pissed.

Right now, there isn't a whole lot of evidence that bud causes long term irriversible damage. If you ask a reformed 40-a-day they'll tell you that cruddy lungs are reversable.

There is some pretty good evidence though that if you have a mental illness, you shouldn't be getting in to the bud. SOMETHINGS WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN YOU CRAZY FUCKO. DONT ENCOURAGE IT. That ones pretty obvious.

But a lot of people don't know they have a mental illness. Or it hasn't made itself obvious yet. Bud will bring it right out. And you wont have fun going through that.

You could probably kill yourself with most other drugs. Meth Psycosis wouldn't be fun. But hitting these points isn't really recreational using, its abuse and a bit on the fuckin' silly side. Having your blood slowly turning toxic, scratching your tactile nerves that have been firing constantly for 30 hours until you bleed, not knowing what you're doing until after you've done it and having an explosively violent temper. These things are not good and if you take too much of something like ice, you could easily hit that point. But ice is for shitheads. You'd probably recover. Theres a small chance you'd get strung out and stay like that. But none of this is death.

Herion can kill motherfuckers. Not a lot of people try and get away with a recreational herion habit. But often it isn't the drug that fucks you up. Seen trainspotting? You know the scene with the syringe cam? The needle has black specks of shit in it. Thats what fucked him up. The lifestyle herion addiction leads to isn't terribly healthy though.

You could argue that clean, cheap, consistant herion would kill less people and reduce the crime level and things. But herion isn't pretty.

Just pick a close friend out in your head. And think about them slowly turned into a pale, wasted, useless person with a whole lot of needle marks.

The media likes to occasionally run 'poor young junkie' stories to pull at peoples heart strings and make the cops pull off a couple more herion hauls.

But you've got no fuckin idea what they would have put their friends and family through long before they overdosed in a stairwell.

Regardless of the quality of the smack, the rooms they can inject it in and the knowledge of the staff dealing with them when they take a little too much will all improve matters for junkies. But they're pretty tragic people.

Legalising as far as I can see wouldn't hurt anything. There's lots of young straight-edgers and old people who would cut my bollocks off for saying it. But it wouldn't. If they actually did it, the people above would have a hissy fit and protest outside bud cafès and weed markets. But they'd get bored. They might even get high by accident and change their minds.

The vast majority of people under 25 are pretty calm about weed. Fuck. I've dropped my weed in front of many random strangers working at coles or video ezy, none of them kicked the shit out of me or had me arrested. You can pull out a smallish stash and throw it to people at a party. It wont make any of them feel uncomfortable. Pull out a glock and hand it to them to play with and most people will shit their pants no matter how much they play counterstrike or what shitty hollywood movies.

Because people know that guns are a fuckload more dangerous than daves little bag with a smiley face on it.

Fuckthisrant.

Hey James! Get off your lazy bum and write me an email ok! I have lots of interesting news and I'm sure you don't but I still want to hear it and make sure you haven't forgotten about your fantastic friend, Vic! So, get it together, man and send me an email instead of crapping on with meaningless shit about elephants and trains. Luv ya, Vic