What’s with this people?  Every time I go into a Hair Cuttery in search of a haircut, I get blank stares, and get asked something on the order of, “what can we do for you?“  My standard answer is, “Strangely enough, I’m here for a haircut.”

Are they expecting me to come in looking to buy furniture or something?   I just find it a bit ridiculous that every time I go in, I have to tell them I want a haircut.  It’s not just me either.  Any time I’m waiting for someone who can run clippers and scissors, I see other guys come in and get the same treatment.

Next time, I think I’ll ask if they sell Buicks.

Today, the BBC is reporting that Bigchoice, err.. Blockbuster Video has lined up on the Blu-Ray side of the HD video disc war. It seems that BD titles were rented quite a bit more than HD-DVD titles at the 250 Blockbuster test locations.

In general, I don’t particular care one way or another who wins the format war, but I’ll say that HD-DVD does have some things in their favor, even if they’re the 2007 equivalent of VHS to BD’s Beta. For instance, HD-DVD’s don’t seem to be suffering from the disc rot problems currently being reported over on the AVS Forums. Further, HD-DVD lacks the extra layer of DRM, BD+ that is available on the BD side of the house.  In my book, the less DRM, the better, preferably, none.

Why no DRM?  It has nothing to do with piracy.  Pirates already have proven themselves wildly successful at circumventing copy controls on all sorts of media (VHS, CD-ROM, DVD, various digital music formats even).  DRM has to do with you & me, the consumers.  The ones that pay for their content.  You see, according to the RIAA or MPAA, if we want to shift our media to a different format, preserving our investment, we should have to re-purchase the media.  Don’t even get me started on the commercials urging you to “own it on DVD today!“  You know what you own?  A disc and the box it came in.  What you don’t own is the content that you were led to buy.

In a perfect world, what would I choose?  Blu-Ray’s technical superiority, no DRM, and the dual-format publication system that lots of HD-DVDs are using now (standard def DVD on one side, HD-DVD on the other).  Why?  I’ve seriously pondered buying those, and I don’t even own an HDTV, let alone hi-def player of any format.  But I will.  Why re-purchase the movie?  So, I pay a bit more up front, but (hopefully) save on the back end, and have the ability to play the movies I’ve already got in 1080p, rather than just 480p.

Over lunch today, somehow, our conversation wound up including the music of Bon Jersey..errr..Jovi. So, it never occurred to me, or my buddy that I was lunching with, that these guys are the masters of the cliche. Consider a sampling of song/album titles from the band:

• Have A Nice Day
• Slippery When Wet
• Last Man Standing
• Last Cigarette
• Story Of My Life
• The One That Got Away
• Lonely At The Top
• Wanted Dead or Alive
• Livin’ on a Prayer
• Bad Medicine
• It’s My Life
• Keep The Faith

Eeek, the list goes on and on and on. These guys have made a career out of putting cliches to hair-band music. We’re hypothesizing that their next smash hit album will include such tunes which will rocket up the charts like:

• One Good Turn Deserves Another
• A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned
• Don’t Take Any Wooden Indians
• Do Unto Others As You’d Have Them Do Unto You
• Needle In A Haystack

Currently playing in iTunes: Life on the Edge by Eli

For the past three weeks, the citizens of New Jersey have been largely flipping out over Gov. Corzine’s car crash. Should he get a seat belt ticket? Should the Trooper driving him get a ticket? He was speeding (91 in a 65!) to get to a stupid photo opp. The Trooper was answering a text message while driving. Any number of things people are going on about.

Here’s the genius part. Corzine could have put this stuff behind us almost immediately by calling up Col. Fuentes (Superintendent of the NJ State Police) and having a Trooper issue a seat belt violation, publicly, complete with Corzine writing a check for $46 for the ticket. Instead, he’s dragging things out, resulting in the state’s population being dragged into discussions about seat belt tickets and speeding, rather than focusing on the actual problems NJ has.

I certainly do not wish anything bad on the man personally. Politically, however, is another matter altogether. I wish the political figure would start acting like a leader and actually doing something that’s good for the state, even good for us dissenters who chose to vote for someone else. Like, say, fixing corruption in our state government, or say, getting a handle on school spending in this state.

Currently playing in iTunes: You Do It All The Time by Wagstaffe

So what’s up with Twitter? Everyone’s going ape over this thing that seems to be a huge waste of time.

Ok, so it’s like a little one-liner blog type thing. You post a sentence at a time saying what you’re doing “right now”. Doing something else? Update your Twitter status. Eek. Are people so attention starved that they really need to tell the world what they’re doing at every moment? How about some Twitters like:

• Shaving
• Washing a load of towels
• Dropping the deuce
• Cleaning up cat puke
• Changing a diaper
• Changing the oil in my car

Awful mundane, eh? Web 2.0 apps for life can be cool, even useful like del.icio.us or flickr. But this? It’s just dumb.

Ok, so everyone’s been up in arms about Don Imus this past week. In case you live in a cave and didn’t hear, early in the morning several days ago, while talking about the women’s NCAA championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee, he made a remark about the lady Knights. Specifically, referring to them as “nappy-headed ho’s”. Eh? Yeah, he said it.

First things first, Don Imus is a jerk, always has been. I remember my mom listening to Imus in the Morning 30 years ago, and Imus always played this song making fun of Christians. Something about driving at insane speeds because of the almighty power of the plastic Jesus on the dashboard. Was Imus dragged from the mic, fired, drawn, quartered, or whatever? Nope. (more…)

Today, EMI announced that their entire catalog will be made available on the iTunes store without DRM. So, you want to just know the deal, rather than read the whole release, eh? Ok, here it is.

• 128k AAC with DRM – $0.99 | € 0.99 | £ 0.79
• 256k AAC without DRM – $1.29 | € 1.29 | £ 0.99

Looks like the Euro folks are still getting a bit hosed, but not too badly.

Yes, that second one is a higher bit rate too. Why? Lots of folks have complained about low bit rates on the iTunes store. Personally speaking, I don’t care about the higher bit rates, but I’m jazzed about freedom to move my music around to devices other than my iPod. Speaking as someone who’s got a Nokia N95 in his future, this will be a big win.

Yes, the price has increase by $0.30, but I’m willing to pay a small premium for keeping all of my fair use rights intact.

Update: I updated the post to reflect the proper bit rate – 256k instead of 224k.

Currently playing in iTunes: (Nothing But) Flowers by Talking Heads

Seen on a blog discussion thread today…

He’s been trying for ages to clean up his name since he’s matured since then and is not a homophone anymore.

The context? The commenter was talking about a pal of his that used to post some pretty nasty gay-bashing stuff to Usenet way back in the day.

Unfortunately for the commenter, the b and n keys are next to each other.

The retort?

So, what, he’s spelled differently now?

Thank you,thank you. I’ll be here all week.

Ok, so it’s not the funniest thing you’ve read this week, but come on, it’s Friday, laugh. No really, laugh.

Currently playing in iTunes: Prayer for the Dying by Seal

Ever found yourself wondering, “Hey, I wonder what products people bought most from Amazon…”? Now you can have all the answers, at least for 2006.

Warning: The linked site appears to be Amazon, but it is an Investor’s Relations service that Amazon outsources PR to. While probably safe, I wouldn’t try to login to Amazon from there if I were in your shoes.