A couple days ago, I wrote an article for NCS trying to set out the facts about why the government went after Megaupload so aggressively and what laws the government has charged Doctom with violating — they didn’t need SOPA or PIPA to do it. I also offered some opinions, the main one being that the Megaupload shutdown really doesn’t have anything to do with freedom of speech or censorship and instead has a lot more to do with temporarily impairing our ability to get something for nothing. I also made this prediction:

“If this case is successful, we will likely see a severe short-term restriction on our ability to download albums for free — because other file-hosting companies will be taking more aggressive steps to prevent the uploading and downloading of copyrighted content. In fact, they’re probably taking steps to do that right now.”

Well, sho’ nuff. Today, the FileSonic on-line file storage site has terminated the ability of users to share files among themselves. The site now sports a banner on its home page stating: “All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled.  Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.”

To repeat what I said in that previous article, the government went after Megaupload hammer and tongs not because they weren’t vigilant enough in stopping users from occasionally providing download links to copyrighted content, but because the company actively (and brazenly) encouraged and rewarded piracy and profited handsomely from massive theft of copyright owners’ intellectual property — not just music, but also movies, TV programs, and commercial software.

To repeat what I wrote before, the Megaupload shutdown won’t stop file-sharing and piracy. Digital content is too easy to pass around, and there will always be places where content can be uploaded and downloaded by anyone with the link. But the big, highly visible file-storage sites like Megaupload — and FileSonic and Mediafire — are at risk precisely because they’re big and highly visible. They’re big enough that the government can justify the expenditure of resources going after them if they don’t take steps under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to protect themselves from charges of copyright infringement — more bang for the buck, so to speak.

The DMCA does provide a “safe harbor” for online service providers (OSPs). According to this summary of the safe harbor parts of the law, first, the OSP must “adopt and reasonably implement a policy” of addressing and terminating accounts of users who are found to be “repeat infringers.” Second, the OSP must accommodate and not interfere with “standard technical measures.” For on-line sites that store potentially infringing files, the law also requires that the OSP:

1) not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity,

2) not be aware of the presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent, and

3) upon receiving notice from copyright owners or their agents, act expeditiously to remove the allegedly infringing material.

No doubt, the Megaupload shutdown caused by the long arm of the U.S. government is causing the big file-storage sites — including those based overseas — to take a harder look at these safe harbor provisions. You can see how FileSonic has chosen to react.

THE PIRATE BAY

In other news, The Pirate Bay — a site that openly promotes pirating of copyrighted content — released a self-serving, puffed-up press release on January 18 on the subject of SOPA, which you can see here. I’m not going to take the time to wade through all the self-congratulatory bullshit in that statement — in which they compare themselves to the innovators of the modern motion picture industry and claim that they’re a force for competition against big media conglomerates, despite the fact that they create absolutely nothing.

But let’s look at just one of the claims in that press release. The Pirate Bay claims that Thomas Edison patented motion pictures, and then they say this:

“Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

“So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. . . .

“The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own.”

According to this article at The Font of All Human Knowledge, Edison and other patent owners did establish a trust in 1908 that owned most of the American patents on motion picture cameras and film, and did enforce those patents in a way that severely restricted the development of the American motion picture industry. Many independent filmmakers did move to Hollywood in part because it was farther away from Edison’s home base in New Jersey — but of course the patent laws are national in scope, and applied just as much in California as anywhere else.

But the Edison Trust’s control over motion picture production technology came to an end in 1915 when a federal court decision held that the Trust’s enforcement of its patents violated the U.S. antitrust laws and was an illegal restraint of trade. The Trust was terminated in 1918, 10 years after it came into existence.

According to this other article at The Font of All Human Knowledge, the development of Fantasia began in 1937 — almost 20 years after the Edison Trust dissolved. I haven’t found anything in that article, or anywhere else, suggesting that Disney “stole” anyone’s creations in making that movie. Many of the classical music pieces used in the film weren’t copyrighted, and in the case of “The Rite of Spring”, Disney acquired the rights to use the music from its composer, Igor Stravinsky, who actually visited the studios to view the sketches, storyboards, and models for the “Rite of Spring” segment.

It seems to me that there’s a difference between making use of creative works that aren’t copyrighted in order to create something new (which is perfectly legal) and making money yourself by distributing someone else’s copyrighted works without their permission (which isn’t). The Pirate Bay does the latter.

Now, a good case can be made that U.S. patent and copyright laws give the owners of intellectual property a monopoly on their creations that lasts too long and actually stifles innovation. I’m not arguing that point. Maybe the world would be a better place if there were no copyright laws at all — if no one, including the creators, could own intangible works like books, and movies, and software, and music — though I doubt that.

My only point here is that there’s a big difference between someone who creates art in any form and someone who just rips off someone else’s creation for their own profit. The Pirate Bay could at least be honest about what they’re doing. They create nothing, and they’re not legitimately competing with anyone who creates things we enjoy. They’re not paragons of free speech or anarchists — they just enable people to get their entertainment without paying for it. End of story.

As always, feel free to call me a douchebag in the Comments.  (Credit to TheMadIsraeli for making me aware of the FileSonic development and The Pirate Bay’s press release.)

Kim Dotcom and his pink cadillac.

Lots of people I know, including some of the people who write for NCS, are up in arms over the U.S. government’s shutdown of the Megaupload file-sharing site earlier this week. It’s being condemned by lots of metalheads as a clampdown on the freedom of the internet, a violation of free speech, a virulent form of censorship, and a sign of worse things to come. I’m sure part of the reason why the reaction has been so intense is because of simultaneous efforts by fuckheads in Congress to pass those SOPA and PIPA bills we wrote about a few days ago.

Does it suck that Megaupload has been shut down? If you’re a downloader, hell yes it sucks. If you’re an artist who uses the site as a convenient way to freely spread your art to reviewers and fans, hell yes it sucks. If you’re someone who is doing legitimate file sharing, and your uploaded files on Megaupload are now in limbo, fucken-A, it blows.

But is the shutdown really some kind of tyrannical trampling on freedom of speech? Nah, I don’t think so. But before we get to opinions, let’s start with some facts. I could be wrong, but it seems like it’s better to develop opinions after you have some facts instead of just taking someone else’s word for it. At the end of this post, I’ll give you the sources of the facts as I understand them, along with a copy of the government’s indictment of Megaupload so you can see exactly the basis of this prosecution.

What laws has Megaupload been charged with violating? The indictment charges the defendants with violating the Racketeering  Influenced Corrupt Practices Act (RICO), a law originally passed as a vehicle for going after the Mafia, through acts of criminal copyright infringement and money laundering; conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement; conspiracy to commit money-laundering; and criminal copyright infringement and aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement.

Does this have anything to do with SOPA and PIPA?  Hard to know, but unlikely. What’s clear is that the laws Megaupload has been charged with violating have been on the books a long time.  The RICO law was enacted in 1970. The criminal copyright law has been around for eons; the most relevant amendment was the No Electronic Theft Act, which was passed in 1997.  That amendment allows prosecution even when commercial profit isn’t a motive, though given what’s alleged in the indictment, it doesn’t seem like the government will be relying much on that amendment.

As for timing, this prosecution was the result of a sealed indictment by a federal grand jury of U.S. citizens on January 5, 2012. The indictment was only un-sealed this past week.  The indictment was the result of a criminal investigation that began two years ago. It was carried out with the cooperation of law enforcement authorities in New Zealand, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, Germany, and Canada.

Why did the government pick on Megaupload? The indictment alleges that for more than five years, Megaupload has unlawfully reproduced and distributed copyrighted works for profit, including not only music, but also movies, television programs, electronic books, and business and entertainment software. The indictment also alleges that the sole owner of Megaupload has earned more than $175 million in illegal profits from operation of the site.

The key to this case is the government’s charge that Megaupload did more than simply store pirated files for its users — the claim is that it knew about the piracy, profited from it, and even encouraged it.

The indictment states that the conspirators actively promoted uploading of popular copyrighted works and discouraged the vast majority of its users from using Megaupload for long-term or personal storage by automatically deleting content that was not regularly downloaded. The government also claims that the conspirators offered a rewards program that would provide users with financial incentives to upload popular content and drive web traffic to the site, often through user-generated websites known as linking sites. The indictment alleges that the conspirators paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicized their links to users throughout the world.

The indictment also contends that although Megaupload claimed it had a policy against copyright infringement, it failed to terminate accounts of users with known copyright infringement, selectively complied with their obligations to remove copyrighted materials from their servers, and deliberately misrepresented to copyright owners that they had removed infringing content.

For example, when notified by a rights holder that a file contained infringing content, the indictment alleges that the defendants would disable only a single link to the file, deliberately and deceptively leaving the infringing content in place to make it seamlessly available to millions of users to access through any one of the many duplicate links available for that file.

The government claims that Megaupload has cost owners of copyrights more than $500 million.

Doesn’t the law protect sites like Megaupload against prosecution based on the acts of its users?  A federal law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does protect sites that host third-party content if they remove infringing content when requested by copyright holders. That law is a critical element in the operations of sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, and many others, since millions of their users may be violating copyright at any given time. The government claims that Megaupload intentionally failed to comply with the DMCA.

Who owns Megaupload? The sole owner is a man named Kim Schmitz, with dual German and Finnish citizenship, who goes by the name of “Kim Dotcom” and has residences in New Zealand and Hong Kong. According to the indictment, he personally earned $42 million in profits from the operations of Megaupload in 2010 alone.

The dude does seem to live pretty high on the hog. Yesterday, law enforcement personnel in New Zealand swooped in on Dotcom’s Auckland, NZ, mansion and seized luxury cars worth NZ $6.0 million (U.S. $4.8 million), including a 1959 pink Cadillac and a Rolls Royce Phantom. New Zealand authorities also froze Dotcom bank accounts holding $11 million in cash.

Are the government’s allegations true? Fuck if I know. Here’s what I do know ( or at least I’m pretty sure about this): First, the U.S. Department of Justice has a lot of discretion about what cases to bring and what cases not to prosecute. In general, they don’t seek indictments — especially in cases as high-profile as this one — unless they’re pretty fucking sure they’ve got the evidence they need to win. Furthermore, the fact that they persuaded a federal judge to authorize an immediate shut-down of the site pending trial means they’ve got evidence backing up what they claim. You can see some of it in the indictment, including internal e-mails among Megauploads managers.

Second, the owner of Megaupload has got the money to pay some high-priced lawyers to defend him and his company, which means that if there’s a trial, it will probably be a level playing field — and if the government can’t prove its case, the defendants will probably escape conviction. The outcome will be in the hands of a Virginia jury, not in the hands of government bureaucrats.

Okay, those are the facts, plus a few educated guesses. Now for some opinions.

1.  This case isn’t about freedom of speech or censorship.  It’s about two other things.  The first thing is the protection of intellectual property through the U.S copyright laws.  The theory behind those laws is that creators of artistic works will have a greater incentive to create if they own what they create and are protected in their ability to sell it. Those laws extend not only to music and books (the creation of which which may not require a huge outlay of money), but also to movies, television programs, and computer software.

If you think all creative works, including music, should be free of charge, then your real problem is with the copyright laws, not the shutdown of Megaupload.

Second, this criminal case isn’t based on the theory that even innocent web site operators should be held liable for failing to prevent the use of their site by other people who are infringing someone else’s copyrights. The government’s indictment alleges that Megaupload actively encouraged and facilitated copyright infringement, actually paid people for uploading infringing works, and profited from it handsomely.

That may not be true.  Ultimately, the government may not be able to prove its case. But let’s at least be clear about what the government is claiming. At no time in this country’s history has freedom of speech been interpreted to protect the ability of one person to take someone else’s copyrighted creation and give it away without the creator’s permission. The same Constitution that includes the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech also empowers Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.)

2.  The Justice Department brought this case for political reasons — to appease the financially powerful companies in the music, film, and software publishing industries in an election year for the Obama Administration — and I’m not talking about the likes of Metal Blade, Century Media, Nuclear Blast, or the multitude of smaller metal labels and DIY metal bands who might benefit if this case is successful. But regardless of how politically motivated this case may be, it wouldn’t have gotten to first base if we didn’t live in a country that had legislated copyright protection for about 200 years.

3.  If this case is successful, we will likely see a severe short-term restriction on our ability to download albums for free — because other file-hosting companies will be taking more aggressive steps to prevent the uploading and downloading of copyrighted content. In fact, they’re probably taking steps to do that right now. If you define right and wrong based on your own convenience, then that will be a bad thing. If you put yourself in the position of creators of music, for example, then maybe what’s right and wrong won’t seem so black and white.

4.  Focusing just on music, this is merely the latest skirmish in a war between the recording industry and consumers of music that has been going on since the first incarnation of Napster in 1999. Even if Megaupload is shut down permanently, even if other file-hosting services clamp down more severely on unauthorized downloading, you know and I know (even if the Recording Industry Association of America doesn’t) that some other vehicle for digital file-sharing will take their places. So my advice is not to shed too many tears over the fate of Megaupload.

Finally, in case you get the wrong idea about where I’m coming from, I have downloaded music without authorization and without paying for it. Usually, I do that only when I can’t find a legal way of getting the music. But not always. Sometimes I just can’t wait. Also, in the earlier days of this site, I put up links for song downloads without permission from the artists or the labels.

So, I’m not trying to be holier than thou, and I’m not trying to lecture anyone about what to do and not do. I just think this Megaupload butt-hurt furor has less to do with freedom of speech than it does with short-term impairment of our ability to get something for nothing.

Now, please feel free to tell me in the Comments what a douchebag I am.

Oh yeah, here are the sources I used in writing this thing:

Copy of the Government’s Indictment

http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/justice-department-charges-leaders-of-megaupload-with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/January/12-crm-074.html

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/looking-for-signs-of-crime-in-megauploads-memos/

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/megaupload-founders-assets-included-fleet-of-pricey-cars/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/technology/indictment-charges-megaupload-site-with-piracy.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=megaupload&st=cse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States

I was going to wait ’til after midnight here in Cascadia to post this, but what the fuck. It’s already after midnight everywhere in the world except the Americas. So, on behalf of all your embarrassing friends at NCS, I want to wish everyone out there a Happy New Year. May 2012 be better for you than the year just ended. Take care of yourself, look after your friends, and don’t let the bastards get you down.

And yeah, I know what that photo looks like. We do like our massive ejaculations here in Seattle. If you’d prefer a less ejaculatory photo, I like the one after the jump, too. It has pretty colors. There are also three  songs after the jump, including a brand new version of the New Year’s traditional featuring lead guitars by Jeff Loomis. Rock on.

First song:

Second song  (guitarist Aaron Smith of Seattle’s own 7 Horns 7 Eyes made this metal version of “Auld Lang Syne”, with Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore) playing the leads. It went up on SoundCloud a few hours ago and it’s pretty sick):

To download that song for yourself, GO HERE.

Third song  (because this is how we should be walking into the new year — with horns to the fucking sky):

Indeed, it did.  Just too amazing not to share.

Hot buttered damn! Until this morning, I had no idea this was on the way.  I may smile the whole rest of this day. I figured you could use a big fuckin’ smile on your face, too.

So many good moments from this franchise, and so many good lines. E.g.: “People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”

That is all.

Last weekend I departed from our usual focus on metal with a piece on a forthcoming movie (“John Carter”) based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic series of sci-fi books set on Barsoom (the Martian word for Mars). That seemed to generate a fair amount of interest, and although I don’t plan to post about movies or books on any kind of regular basis, I got an e-mail about something else sci-fi-related that has set me off again. So here we go.

The e-mail (from a reader named Ben) pointed me to a web site about something called K3LOID. K3LOID is a sci-fi short film by a Spanish outfit called Big Lazy Robot VFX (“BLR”), based on Eliezer S. Yudkowsky’s Artificial Intelligence Box Experiment (more about that later). Coincidentally, BLR did the visual effects for an amazing short film called “The Gift” that we featured in a THAT’S METAL! post almost a year ago (and if you haven’t seen that, definitely go here and watch it).

All that’s available about K3LOID at the moment is a trailer, which you can see after the jump (and I’m actually not positive that there will ever be anything but this trailer, though I hope a film itself will come to fruition, because both the visuals in the trailer and the concept behind the film are cool).

Based on the trailer, and before I found out about BLR’s involvement, I thought this was a Russian sci-fi film (you’ll see why). That got me thinking about both Russian sci-fi movies and Russian sci-fi novels. I’m certainly no expert in either of those genres, but I remembered really liking a book called Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and the 1972 Russian movie made from that novel (directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy), which captured the sense of solitude, profound mystery, and utter strangeness of the mood and the events captured in the book. If you look, you’ll find Solaris on plenty of internet lists as one of the best sci-fi films ever made.

There was a 2002 American re-make of the Solaris movie directed by Steven Soderbergh starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone that I either missed or saw and have forgotten. I’m not sure any remake could replace the hypnotic effect of the Russian original, which is about the experiences of a small group of Russian crew on a station established on the surface of a living ocean on a planet called Solaris — an unknowable intelligence that seems to be materializing the painful memories of the crew.

In 1979 Tarkovskiy made another highly regarded Russian sci-fi movie called Stalker. I found this description of the movie on a web site that included it on a list of the Top 15 Cerebral Sci-Fi Films (which also includes Solaris, Akira, Brazil, THX1138, Blade Runner, and The Matrix):

“Andrei Tarkovsky’s brilliant sci-fi mind-bender is a film definitely worth seeking out and one that lends itself to an Inception-esque mind journey. The plot centers on an enigmatic ‘Stalker’ who brings two clients to a mysterious site known as ‘The Zone’ which purportedly allows its visitors a physical experience of their innermost thoughts and desires. While the intentional ambiguity to the nature of zone is meant to challenge the viewer, Tarkovsky’s hypnotic style is in full force wrapping your mind in a dream of a film.”

I also found Stalker ranked No. 1 on io9′s list of the Ten Best Foreign-Language Science Fiction Movies. I’ve only seen one of the movies on that last, but it’s a head-trip — Alphaville, made by French director Jean-Luc Godard.

More recently, Russian sci-fi (or more accurately Russian fantasy) has made an international splash with Night Watch and Day Watch. Both are directed by Timur Bekmambetov. Night Watch came out in 2004, the sequel Day Watch followed in 2006, and there are supposedly plans for a third film called Twilight Watch. I haven’t yet seen either of the movies, but one of the people who started NCS with me (IntoTheDarkness) has raved about them to me. One of these days, I need to see them.

About all I know is that the movies involve conflict between supernatural beings of light and darkness, and the creatures of the dark seem to be vampires. If you’ve seen either of these movies, what do you think of them?

The movies are based on a four-part series of fantasy novels written by Sergei Vasilievich Lukyanenko — Day Watch, Night Watch, Twilight Watch, and Last Watch. The movies led to English translations of the novels that appear to have sold quite well outside Russia and rocketed Lukyanenko to international recognition. I haven’t read any of them yet. I tend to be skeptical of anything involving vampires.

Well, back to K3LOID. That film project is based on a thought experiment constructed by a guy named Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, who writes a lot about Artificial Intelligence. The premise for the experiment is the idea that a time will come when human beings will create machines that will achieve intelligence — an ability to re-write their own software codes, an ability to improve and think for themselves, and perhaps eventually a realization that human beings are no longer necessary.

That idea has been the premise of lots of sci-fi for, I dunno, a century? Yudkowsky’s experiment involves a way of dealing with the supposed threat of AI to human existence: create the AI in a sealed “box”, from which the AI could escape by only one means: convincing a human guardian to let it out. Here’s the basic nutshell of the experiment, though it has evolved:

If you’re interested in this, you can learn more at this location.

Here’s the trailer that started this long, meandering post. Obviously, comments on any or all of this shit would be welcome.

Keloid Trailer – A Short Film by BLR from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

I have to take a break from our usual subject matter and geek-the-fuck-out for a few minutes, because JOHN CARTER, the movie, is on the way.

Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for being the creator of Tarzan, about whom he wrote 20+ books between 1912 and 1947. But Burroughs wrote other series as well, including 10 books set on Mars that featured the adventures of a hero named John Carter. This coming February will be the 100th anniversary of the novelization of the first book in the series, A Princess of Mars. (it was originally serialized  in a magazine called All-Star). In the Martian language used by Burroughs in his books, the name of Mars is Barsoom.

When I was much younger and even more geeky than I am now, I spent many happy hours on Barsoom, reading all the books in the Mars series more than once (I read all the Tarzan books, too, plus just about everything else Burroughs wrote). They told the story of a Civil War captain who inexplicably found himself transported to Mars, full of exotic civilizations, races of bizarre beings, and rampant conflict. So, I became childishly excited when I saw this morning that Disney has made a movie based on A Princess of Mars called JOHN CARTER.

It was directed by Academy-award winner Andrew Stanton (Wall-E) and starts Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) as Carter, Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, and the delectable Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) Princess Dejah Thoris. I really, really, really, really hope this movie is good. Really. Shit, I’ll be thrilled if it’s just decent.

It turns out that a teaser trailer was released in July, which I totally missed, but now there’s a new, longer one, which is finally what woke me the fuck up about this movie.  It looks pretty sweet. Check out both trailers after the jump, and I’ve also collected a shitload of stills from the movie and anothe rposter, too.

To find out more about this movie, the Disney web page about it is here and Apple has got this one also. The movie will be out on March 9.

NEW TRAILER

OLDER TEASER TRAILER

POSTER AND STILLS

This has nothing to do with music, but it’s goddamned funny and it comes awfully close to what I’ve been composing for my annual Christmas rant, and I just had to share it. So there. The author is Colin Nissan, and his article appeared on the McSweeney’s Internet Tendency web site:

“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.”

Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.

The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers.

Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.

For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.

Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!”

These days, you hear the words “terrorist attack”, and the first thing that comes to mind (at least to most Americans) is yet another wanton act of destruction by some cell of Islamic fundamentalists. I woke up this morning to a reminder that the thirst for the blood of innocents isn’t limited to whackjobs who think they’ve found a green light for slaughter in the Koran. As if we needed another reminder.

It began yesterday afternoon in Oslo, Norway, when a massive explosion detonated in a high-rise office building that housed the Norwegian prime minister’s office, killing seven people. A few hours later, a man disguised as a police officer killed 84 people on an idyllic Norwegian island called Utoya about 20 miles northwest of Oslo, shooting them one by one. At the time, the island was full of teenagers attending a Labour Party youth-wing retreat. (The Labour Party is currently in charge of Norway’s coalition government.) People fled into the lake surronding the island in an effort to escape, and police are still searching the water for bodies. Norway’s prime minister was scheduled to speak at the island youth retreat today.

Police have arrested one suspect, who appears to be tied to both of these atrocities — a 32-year old, blonde, blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik, a frequent poster on right-wing, Christian fundamentalist web sites.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, ”This is out of comprehension. It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends.” He said that he had spent many summers on Utoya, calling it “my childhood paradise that yesterday was transformed into hell.”  (more after the jump . . .)

Quoting from an AP news report: “A 15-year-old camper named Elise who was on Utoya said she heard gunshots, but then saw a police officer and thought she was safe. Then he started shooting people right before her eyes. ‘I saw many dead people,’ said Elise, whose father didn’t want her to disclose her last name. ‘He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water.’ Elise said she hid behind the same rock that the killer was standing on. ‘I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock,’ she said. She said it was impossible to say how many minutes passed while she was waiting for him to stop.

“At a hotel in the village of Sundvollen, where survivors of the shooting were taken, 21-year-old Dana Berzingi wore pants stained with blood. He said the fake police officer ordered people to come closer, then pulled weapons and ammunition from a bag and started shooting. Several victims ‘had pretended as if they were dead to survive,’ Berzingi said. But after shooting the victims with one gun, the gunman shot them again in the head with a shotgun, he said.” The island attack lasted 30 minutes before a SWAT team was able to get to the island.

There is no explaining what drives people, so filled with hate, to destroy the lives of innocent men, women, and children. It can’t be justified, it can’t be excused, it achieves nothing. It produces only horror, disgust, and sorrow. Our thoughts go out to the families of those who were slaughtered in these senseless acts.

No, I didn’t forget that it’s Independence Day. I’ve been without high-speed internet service for the last 36 hours, and of course there’s no fucking way it will get fixed on the 4th of July, so I’ve had to fall back on a data card on a different carrier, which is slower than a three-legged sloth and just randomly disconnects as if it can’t be bothered — which makes uploading and downloading tedious, and streaming is impossible.

Well, enough spoiled whining from me. Happy Fourth to all you motherfuckers! Hope all you Americans are enjoying your holiday. In honor of the occasion, I thought it might be worth remembering a bit of history.

Almost five years ago, I found myself in Philadelphia with some time to kill and I sought out the Christ Church Burial Ground because I wanted to see the grave of Ben Franklin — who, among many other things, was a signer of The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution — and the grave of Commodore William Bainbridge, for whom the island where I live was named. Also, I like graveyards.

After prowling around the cemetery for an hour, I wandered into Christ Church itself, which was founded in 1695. It’s a relatively un-ostentatious building, but it’s steeped in history. It was the first parish of the Church of England in Pennsylvania, it was the birthplace of the American Episcopal Church, and the rector of the church gave the opening prayer to the first meeting of the Continental Congress in 1774. (more after the jump . . . and there will be metal . . .)

While I was in the church, I got interested in a talk that was being given to a small handful of tourists by a docent at the church. The focal point of the talk were hand-written changes in the Anglican prayer book that that had been made by the Revolutionary War-era rector of the church, Jacob Duché. Essentially, he had deleted references to the King of England where they had appeared in commonly used prayers.

At first, that didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but then the docent explained that he had done this on July 4, 1776, following the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, and that in so doing, he had committed an act of treason against England, punishable by death.

Every man who signed the Declaration had done the same thing. They had all put themselves under a sentence of death if ever captured by the British. Looking backward to July 4, 1776, from our current day and trying to imagine the enormity of that act is difficult. Those men, and many others, had just sent a big FUCK YOU message to the greatest empire on Earth at that time — an empire that had a practice of reacting to colonial acts of insubordination with overwhelming force.

Those lunatics in Philadelphia had just picked a fight with a nation that possessed the world’s most formidable military machine at a time when the rebellious American colonies had basically no military capability at all. Not only was victory not assured, viewed from the perspective of July 4, 1776, victory must have seemed virtually impossible to any objective observer.

And for those men, losing the fight would mean losing their lives, their property, the welfare of their families — losing everything. And, in fact, five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve more had their homes ransacked and burned. Others had to be constantly on the move and in hiding when the British army arrived to smash the rebellion.

Standing in Christ Church that day, I tried to put myself in the shoes of those people who took a stand against their government, against their own nation. I tried to imagine the full measure of risk they took. I doubt that I succeeded. It did occur to me that the people who signed the Declaration of Independence had grapefruit-sized cojones, and possibly some loose wiring in their heads.

So, here’s to all those brave and foolish dead people whose act of insane defiance we’re celebrating today.

We commemorated July 4 last year at NCS by featuring a bit of music from the inimitable Pig Destroyer. There’s something to be said for tradition, especially on this day, so let’s close out this history lesson with another Pig Destroyer song. What better way to celebrate large cojones, loose wiring and defiant insanity? Enjoy the rest of your fucking day.