Donald Sterling and Civil Liberty (non-jazz)

It's hard to argue with the exile of the execrable L.A. Clippers basketball owner Donald Sterling. The famous taped conversation apparently represents just another episode in a foul ongoing racist pattern. But I really wish he wasn't quite the jerk that he is, because his case gives the push-back against the loss of civil liberties a bad name.

We're in an era where privacy is undergoing a full frontal attack. Between public cameras, internet surveillance and NSA snooping, there just doesn't seem any limit to what people think they're entitled to know about us. Although I know the Sterling case is not "formal," as when government or media is involved, the idea that we have the right to know if our conversations are being recorded is being eroded, as is the premise that if you're told they're not being recorded, what you say in private won't be used to publicly hang you. The story of Sterling's loathsome behavior and subsequent punishment has the effect of, if not justifying, at least affirming the ongoing impingement on our right to privacy.  

Do we really have to begin to guard all our private thoughts in a diary that is kept under lock and key? Do we have to sweep the room for bugging devices before we conduct intimate conversations? It creeps me out any time someone's private conversations are used to publicly hang them. I can't help thinking that someone at some time could have used what I said in my home to punish me; not racist rants, but I've had jobs and bosses that I complained about in language that could no doubt have been used against me. And god knows I've said things about the government that would probably get my butt in trouble. 

So, go ahead and hang Sterling, but please don't throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater.

Riff-Master 2000 App (NSA-Approved).

Hemingway-or Charlie Sheen

Ernest Hemingway Foundation, your efforts to rebrand the novelist's image have not gone unnoticed.  OK, so you got Ogilvy and Mather, a fancy-dancy Chicago public relations and advertising firm to take on the campaign pro bono (what better use of a fancy-dancy Chicago p.r. and ad firm's time?), but we at the Institute and our hard working cadre of unpaid interns have brought this idea to a new level by creating-with the help of our friends at the NSA-the Riff-Master 2000 App@

Riffmaster-2000 Magnified 2 Billion X

Here's how it works: Because of our relationship with insiders at the NSA, we are privy to, well, all the information there is. We analyze your phone records, your internet surfing records, your school records. We also talk to the priest who blessed you, the Imam who berated you and the Rabbi who circumcised you.
 
Then, we use our Juicy Logarithms@ and Jumbo Computers@ to cross reference this mountain, this Himalaya of information, with our musical data base.
                      
Put this together with a real-time log of your retinal movements and BOOM: The real sound track of your life. 

This is no one-size-fits-all-muzak-to-make-you-shop-faster-at-Walmart's, baby-This is putting your Prism dollars to work for YOU!

Ok, still not clear? Let me give an example. It's 8:00 AM. Our profile says you average 6.9 hours of sleep per night, with 3.1 average REM cycles and hungover 12.4% of the time. You score 72 on the Whipsnade Grogginess Scale, with sexual proclivities averaging 53 on the Mitchum-Loren Curve.Your playlist starts the first minute before you wake up with Dream, moves you seamlessly to A Day in The Life, No Sleep Blues (depending), Best of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, Touch Me in the Morning, Monday, Monday (maybe)...

Anyway, you get the idea. It completely frees the RIff Lobe of your frontal cortex to perform more important chores, like remembering the name of that rhythm guitar player who so impressed you in a 1975 Meters concert; the kind of thing that would otherwise have woken you up in the middle of the night.

So, act now, before someone hacks into our data base. Oh, but with the NSA, that would be impossible. Ok, take your time. 

Available as a free download, or in the Premium Cortex Implantation version for $99.00 (subject to local taxes).
                                                     

The Institute and the NSA. Unbeatable.