Had to finally call it a day. Up at 7:30 am. Stop work at midnight. No, not loving it, thanks for asking. So. Decided to take the advice of my astute wife, who has a rather strict list of rules when it comes to film (which as frustrating as it is at times to find a film we both can agree on is just one of the many things that I adore about her). It goes something like this: NO violence explosions killing vulgarity rude comedy horror zombies vampires rapists glamorizing of drugs or alcohol gratuitous sex or foul language etc etc, which basically leaves Victorian era British films, old Hollywood classics, French Iranian Japanese (minus lots of fighting ) or other foreign films, and the occasional actually good American film that wants to tell a good story rather than one-up the studio next store with how vile they can be.

By now I’ve relaxed into bed with a new movie she saw on the plane over to the Middle East and suggested i watch too called SALMON FISHING IN YEMEN. The thing is that as always it’s a fantastic film so far (or why would I have paused it to share with you?) Great story, small little great stories in between, good writing and a fine cast. And see that’s the thing with film today isn’t it? Hollywood unfortunately sincerely believes it must fill its works with all of the above mentioned ‘no nos’ to create a big blockbuster. Shock, rather than brilliance is the rule of their industry at the moment. There’s a reason why Woody Allen decided to leave New York and never make another picture here and instead seek his funding from European movie studios. Google it. He refused to cave in to this wretched rule of shock and schlock. And for him it’s working marvelously.

But for the rest of us, nit so much. The theatres and On Demand and pay per view and cable are filled with murders vampires horror zombies sexual predators foul language dick jokes and vulgar comedies explosions ridiculously impossible and intelligence insulting stunts long boring car chases and a truckload full of other such nonsense, leaving almost nothing to watch if one prefers to avoid such things.

But every now and then a good one gets funding and gets through the system. And here we are. So far a damn fine film. I don’t know how long this trend of garbage spewing out of Hollywood is going to last, but I dare hope it’s not forever.

– Posted using BlogPress from an iPad. All errors typos mishaps and other such distractions are the sole responsibility and property of Apple Corporation

We just finished watching the documentary A NOBLE LIE, about the Oklahoma City building bombing. As usual the event is filled with questions never answered, numerous federal and constitutional laws broken by the federal government, lies and deceptions, murdered eye-witnesses and thousands of federal government documents, photos and videos withheld from the public ever seeing still to this day.

The term “A Noble Lie” was first coined by Plato to refer to “a false myth created and perpetrated by a ruling authority to maintain peace and security in a society.” No one would be faulted to assume that we are neck deep in one mass Noble Lie at this time in our nation’s history. The only question that remains is how long have we unknowingly been living within this Matrix of Noble Lies? Some point to the fact that the founding fathers of the United States

We the people of this country are surely now at war with the ruling powers

        Still taking in about 50 to 60 calls a day from customers of the Room Store. It’s non-stop and extremely maddening, considering that we have nothing to DO with the freaking Room Store. Bastards. You should hear these poor people. Many of them are Hispanic or African American, or lower income Southern “white” people, many of them with thick accents and some who can barely speak English. Honestly. I’ve never heard anything like it before. But then again, I had never heard of The Room Store either. [I joked the other day to a colleague after getting off a call that lasted almost ten minutes where I had to speak Spanish the whole time, “The f*&king Room Store should pay me a HUGE bonus for doing all of this. (Now that’s a statement overflowing with irony to say the least) To not only be taking their calls for them, but where else do you find a customer service rep who speaks five languages?!?!” Of course we aren’t going to be remunerated from these corporate clock sucking crooks and we know it. At best we will find a way to get this ever growing list to the Better Business Bureau and hope they actually do something about it].
        The point of the racial reference is this: I’ve taken at least 200 calls myself over the last two weeks from these people. And I know nothing about The Room Store. But I know business. Having owned a multitude of them over the last 20 years, I know as much about target markets and demographics and micro-niche market casting as one needs to in order to make a few million a year from understanding and servicing your customer base. The Room Store’s target market appears to have been either lower income people or people of color or immigrants… or maybe it is just the nature of that particular class… lower income people; as in what they say about the immigrant and minority classes in America… how they are in the majority of those at the very bottom of money earners in the United States. Perhaps they are easy to deceive and manipulate, I do not know, for I have never had a business like that. But that’s exactly what we are hearing call after bloody call. Crazy deceptions and run around stories. Much like what the banks and the credit card companies do to these same people. And all it does is make us more mad as we continue to take these calls and listen to these people’s sad stories.

        There’s also a large pool of elderly people. God bless them. They don’t even realize that I do not work for The Room Store. They just keep going on and on asking me more and more questions. No matter how many times I tell them that they’ve reached the wrong number and I am just trying to help them out by taking their name and number to pass on to the Room Store if we can track them down. See, from the outside it appears that what this company did is stayed open till the very last moment they could and continued to sell furniture to people, taking their cash, checks, and credit card numbers, knowing full well that they would never be delivering any furniture to them. Then overnight they closed. As for the people who purchased those worthless “extra coverage insurance packages” that those of us in the know never buy, those people are also in a similarly screwed place. They’re owed something and they’ve got no number to call to speak to anybody about it except ours — because the Room Store gave everyone the wrong 800 number to call to “file their claim now that we are bankrupt”.

        Ah but the bastards had no idea that there just might be someone who gives a damn on the other end of that random 800 number they maliciously and erroneously passed out to their most infringed upon clientele. So here we are, knee deep in someone else’s dirty mess and frankly quite happy to be lending a hand. For they sure as hell aren’t. 
        I’ll tell you dear paged friend, we’ve received exactly ONE call so far from a person who I would say sounded “middle income” or remotely educated. A man who actually understood what was happening and appreciated the efforts we were going through as non-involved fellow citizens. The rest of them ask me questions like “So, uh, sir, what will happen next? Is someone going to call us back?” Poor fuckers. It’s always they who get the worst of it from the top of the heap. Now this doesn’t mean that people who shopped at The Room Store were all uneducated or lower income types. Not at all. But what it does imply is that the people who got ripped off are.
        Because those are the only calls that are coming in. Hundreds of them. So it leads me to believe that the bigger fish, the more educated folk who understand how things work a bit better already took care of themselves long before any of this bankruptcy business went down.  But these folks who are calling in now, from Texas and North Carolina and Maryland and South Carolina, they’re just clueless as to how this happened to them. And honestly most of them are still expecting someone to get back to them, as if any day they’re going to receive a call back from someone working at The Room Store who’s going to offer to give them all their money back. Even though they’ve filed bankruptcy. They just don’t get it. It is the poorest people who are taken the most advantage of in our society. And ironically made to work the hardest, and who pay the highest percentage of their capital in taxes. Simply because they don’t know any better, and because they do not have the money to do anything about it even if they did.
        It’s got me to thinking a lot about how business and capitalism works in the United States. If I weren’t so tired, or had another way in which to discuss other than sitting here typing I would go into it more. But leave it to this: anyone in America can open up a business and start their own corporation. That corporation can enjoy all the privileges and benefits of a regular human being, even getting their own social security number (except it’s called a Tax ID Number), but suffer none of the consequences that a regular human being would if they broke the law. If they run their business into the ground and in the process steal a few million dollars from a few thousand people, they can file bankruptcy and be done with it. If they break any number of laws, whether it’s for billions of dollars such that we saw in the banking crash of 2008, or just a few hundred thousand, they can expect at the most to be fined.
        If they cannot pay the fine, they can just file bankruptcy and again voila be done with it. No jail. No prison. No trouble. No nothing but a free ride down easy street.Try asking a judge for that if you get caught stealing money because your family is hungry. He’ll laugh as he sentences you to a few months or even years in jail. That’s the big secret that corporations know and regular people don’t. Bankruptcy is not something I personally believe in. I believe it to be a scam. A con. A scheme. I’ve had plenty of opportunities in my own personal and business life to do it, and I have never chosen that as an option. Instead I take the hit. The full hit. Even if it takes you ten years or more to pay back all your customers and creditors, you owe it to them and to yourself to do so. A deal is a deal is a deal. And your word is either good, or bad. No excuses.
        By the time this company’s big creditors are done with them, the judge in the bankruptcy court who’s handling this case, will have no option but to put away a very small fraction of what they owe their actual customers and order them to do their best to pay all those people back as best they can with a little trifle of the large sums the people are actually owed. And the sad part is that there isn’t a damn thing any of them can do about it. Some of the smart ones can sue, or better yet put together a class action law suit and try to go for it that way. But that takes time. And money. Commodities that it appears that most of these people do not possess. What strikes one most appalling of all is that corporations are allowed to consider “salary and bonuses” as part of their everyday expenses. Creating a situation whereby the head man in charge of the entire scheme may walk away with ten to twenty million for his salary for that year, and maybe even a bonus for handling the bankruptcy “efficiently”, but he will not get into any trouble for swindling all the poor customers who got left out in the cold with empty promises and worthless signed contracts that the company is now no longer obligated to abide by or make good on.
        That in a nutshell is American Capitalism. And it’s why each of us who live here owe tens of thousands of dollars each as our personal share of America’s debt (to who?) because we had to bail out all those banks and  financial institutions who went bust and yet in the same year the captains of those giant ships of ruin walked away with tens of millions of dollars in their own offshore bank accounts. Watch what happens if any of us attempt to stand up for what’s right and just and refuse to pay a cent of it on the grounds that it wasn’t our business that fucked up and went under. Any one of us would go straight to jail. It’s a vicious system. What these men and women of finance — and others who scam the system to their own benefit regardless of the harm it does — are doing is bankrupting capitalism. Making it appear to be something that it’s not. Ugly. Selfish. Greedy. Self serving. There is no rule that states that those are inherent qualities of a capitalist system though.
        And so the battle has just begun, three years ago to be exact. And I think it is just getting started. More and more of us are waking up and seeing things as they really are. And I dare say that my prediction is that in a very short time we are going to see waves of bold Americans refusing to take on this debt of these PRIVATE companies. What will happen then, one can only guess. But in the meantime, when we do have an opportunity to help, in any way we can, even if it is something as small as this Room Store fiasco we are dealing with, we should seize the opportunity. This considerable list will be documented and sent to every major newspaper in America along with the judge handling The Room Store’s bankruptcy and the Better Business Bureau.
        These people should be taken care of. When the most basic trusts of capitalism are no longer believed in, people begin to do one of either two things: go crooked themselves, or demand a more socialist system. As a business man myself I would prefer not to see either option exercised in my lifetime here. I believe in the capitalist system. Any man or woman can thrive on it freely and without much restraint from big government. But they can do so fairly and equitably. It doesn’t have to be the way it’s been over the last decade or two. It’s a myth if anyone tells you that it does. It is just a few rotten apples spoiling the whole cart for the rest of us good eggs. That’s why every chance we get, when faced with a serendipitous opportunity to bend the rules a bit in our favor at the expense of another, we must always refuse to take that opportunity and instead do the right thing. Thereby showing the world that capitalism can be a good thing for all, and that in and of itself capitalism is not inherently bad. It’s just some people who are.
       

        The senseless movie theater shooting tragedy that occurred in Aurora, CO today killing 12 people and injuring 59 more is a shock to us all. These kind of events, public mass murders with no apparent intent behind them, are seeming to increase exponentially in the United States over the last ten years. There has been SIX already this year alone. The myriad reasons for this is a subject for another conversation, though one could safely assert this epidemic certainly seems to be symptomatic of our collected state of mind in modern times.
         Facebook and Twitter are abuzz with sentiments of mourning, anger, loss, sympathy, and unfortunately vengeance — some want the alleged killer to be shot dead on site. No questioning, no testimony, no learning why or how he did what he did, no habeus corpus and no trial. In other words, they want us to break the laws that govern us in handling this man because he broke the laws that govern us.
Others are already jumping to call for capital punishment against the man, without knowing anything about him or his mental state or the full details of what actually happened behind the scenes. That’s as primitive and barbaric as the alleged shooter himself. It still always surprises me when I hear people who appear relatively intelligent and sane speak of it. Killing people who kill to teach that we shouldn’t kill. No different than how this mind-bogglingly disturbed psycho in Aurora, CO acted.
        Murder is murder. We are either against murder or not. We can’t have it both ways. We’ve all heard it said that two wrongs don’t make a right. Which is why we cannot righteously defend an evolved stance against murder in a humane society while continuing to perpetuate the practice of it “under certain circumstances” (such as for vengeance or anger (terrorist groups like Hezbollah or Hamas), punishment (as in capital punishment), fear of being attacked (ala Israel or the United States), resistance to Democracy (ala Syria’s dictatorship), war profiteering or colonialism (name your country…)).
If we believe that all life is sacred and want to teach that to our children and firmly integrate that ideal into the fabric of our society then we need to walk the talk of it with no exceptions. Once and for all we need to learn that we must stop sending mixed messages out into mass consciousness and human society with this “do as I say but not as I do” mentality.

        Today we grieve for the victims and their families in Colorado. Tomorrow and the next day as well. For all the victims’ families the grieving will never end… For we the blessed who are still alive, we grieve for all who have been killed by the hands of another all over the world… The Israeli tourists in Bulgaria senselessly killed just two days ago, the 17,000 Syrian civilians who’ve been killed by their own government, the Iranian and Chinese people murdered by their own government just for speaking up to defend human liberty — and at the same time ironically all the Iranian scientists who’ve been assassinated by other countries because they are working for their government’s nuclear program, the thousands in Yemen and Pakistan who are being killed everyday by American drone strikes, the unborn babies murdered in utero by the millions in China to uphold their “one child per family” law ….
        Murder unfortunately is all around us. It colors and shapes our world as much as anything else we create as human beings…. Food, art, literature, entertainment, architecture… Murder is right there, standing side by side with the rest of it, living and breathing as part of our daily lives. We use our genius of innovation to invent killing machines and weapons of war just as readily as anything else we invent. And we reward each other for such innovations just as readily. For every iPad there is a stealth bomber. And so it is no wonder that murder is so much a part of our day to day lives.
        Eventually this will not be the case. Our species is rapidly evolving. Some say not. But perhaps it is only they who are not and thus simply aren’t seeing it. But I believe in the future of an evolved humankind. Graphed over the last ten thousand years, peering at the history of humankind, it is obvious we are well on our way to an enlightened civilization of caring and compassionate citizenry capable of both survival and love of neighbor simultaneously.
        The slow eradication of the rules and laws that allow for capital punishment, country by country, and in the United States — State by State, is just one of the proactive measures already being taken that will lead to this inevitable enlightened future. We all long for justice in cases like what we have just witnessed in Aurora, Colorado. But murdering the man is no more justice than whatever justice he himself had in mind when murdering the innocent victims at that movie theater last night. For we can be sure that, like all who take up arms and fire — whether at people they know or not, he most likely felt compelled by a righteous cause of justice himself. Did he get it? Did he achieve his goal? Or will he spend the next few weeks and months of his life rotting and aching inside from the guilt and regret that haunts us all who bear the burden of a heavy soul after committing any atrocious act?
        Instead of joining him, we would be better off beginning our ascension towards this vision of our continued evolution by setting the example of the enlightened and just society that we all claim to desire so vehemently.

Many other topics come to mind easily as offshoots of this most recent tragedy…
– Was it the new Batman movie that somehow inspired the violence?
– Is it increased violence in public art and entertainment?
– Why Colorado again?
– How have we gotten to the point of six mass public murders in one year in one of the healthiest and richest societies in human history?
– Should American society man up and increase stricter gun controls? Or would that be whimping out and dumbing down?
– Was this whole thing a staged event as some suggest in order to coerce the American people into being more willing to accept stricter gun laws and decrease Second Amendment rights?
– And what about Second Amendment rights? Should they include assault rifles and automatic or semi-automatic weapons?
– Do we all now need to pack a weapon in order to ensure our safety?
– Is there any way to protect ourselves from mad men who abuse the system without limiting those of us who enjoy our Second Amendment rights who would never consider abusing them? As in the old adage “If we outlaw guns, the only people who will have guns will be outlaws.”
– Is there something inherently wrong with our American system that is promoting such atrocious acts of violence? Something in our food or water? – – Is it our socio-political system? Has it become so seemingly unfair that it is bringing people to the edge of insanity?

This is the time and this is a record of the time. The saga continues…

        Well wouldn’t you know it, if we didn’t have enough on our plates already, a company called The Room Store has filed for bankruptcy and on their only 800 number left in the world they have mistakenly — (or not) — given out OUR record company’s 800 number as their “claims department”. It started about a week ago. We started receiving an inordinately high volume of calls compared to normal, and more odd was the fact that they all seemed to be coming in from “middle American” towns and States like North Carolina or Texas, places we never receive calls from. Being in the entertainment industry, I’d say a good 99% of the calls we receive come in from either New York or LA. [Hold on. I’ve got to take another call from one of them….] One can tell from the area code if it’s a real business call or not. A lot of times if it isn’t a NY or CA area code it’s a wrong number; or it’s some poor young artist who thinks they can just call up a record label and get a record contract. (I remember being like that once… So I don’t blame them. But it just doesn’t work that way. Damned if you can get an undiscovered young artist to realize that though…)
        Talk about annoying. At first I and the rest of us here at DVG just kept “ignoring” all the calls and sending them right through to voicemail. After a few days, we were going so out of our minds with it that we started answering the calls and telling the people that we were the Room Store and that we were going to award them a $500 gift certificate for their troubles. [Hold on. I’m taking another call now…] We only did it a few times and were just having a little fun. Hey, remember now, we’re in the business of rock and roll and compared to most of the things we do, this is pretty mild. But we hadn’t yet discovered what was really going on. After speaking to one too many of the Room Store’s frustrated customer’s we discovered that the company has in fact gone out of business and filed bankruptcy.

        The problem is that they owe all these customers of theirs either money or furniture! None of the dollar figures I am hearing about is [Hold on, there’s another call] too much. But “too much” is a subjective term isn’t it? Most of the “claims” I’ve been hearing about are in the range of $500. But I swear, each of these customers I’ve spoken to is acting like that’s a lot of money to them. And you know, maybe it is. Money is a weird thing. It’s all about energy and state of mind. One man’s $500 is another man’s $5,000. And so it is. [Hold on, there’s another call]
        As a note, to show just how heinous this crazy situation is to us, since I started writing this entry dear diary, I have taken at least ten calls from sad or angry Room Store customers. It’s absolutely insane. It hit me earlier this morning that I had to do something besides send all these people’s calls to voicemail and delete them. By the time I awoke this morning our voicemail was already full. I meditated on the situation. Contemplated a way that we could perhaps block all incoming calls from Room Store customers. That wouldn’t work. [Hold on, I’m taking another call now…] Thought about trying to track them down and tell them to remove our phone number from their system. I called the 800 number they’ve been giving to their customers.
        Sure enough, it says “If you are owed money from The Room Store, we regret to inform you that we have gone out of business. Please do not leave a message. This voicemail will not be listened to. Instead dial 800… and extension … and leave a message there.” Well that 800 number they are giving out is OUR NUMBER. A number we have had since the year 2000 at least. [Shit. Hold on. I’ve got to take another call…] We also thought about trying to figure out who their phone carrier is and calling them to request that they deactivate that line so the customers could no longer call that number and hear that message. But there doesn’t appear to be a way to do that. And besides, how will that help all these disgruntled customers who’re owed money?
        My guess is that they probably just made up a phone number and never bothered to give it a ring to see if it was a valid number or not. That may be true. Or it may not be. Perhaps it was a genuine mistake. Either way, we’re stuck answering the phone all day and speaking to people from all over the east coast of these great States of America about their poor claims and listening to their problems and complaints about their furniture. Seriously. Funny right?
        So what to do? Well after thinking about it, the idea hit me. If we keep ignoring these poor people’s calls and deleting their voicemails, nothing is going to be done for them. Not a damn thing. Unless one of them [Hold on. Another call!] Unless one or two of them happens to be smart enough to understand how bankruptcy works and they find a way to contact the law firm that is handling their case and they can get themselves on the creditor’s list. But by the sound of it, most of these people just aren’t the kind of people who will ever be able to figure out how to do that. It’s bad karma if you ask me. Just bad all around. So since this morning I decided that what we would do is answer each and every call and tell the customers that they’ve been given the wrong number, but that if they give me their name and number I will make sure to find the people in charge and hand over the list to them.
        So far I have taken a good 100 phone calls today alone, and written down each and every person’s name and telephone number. Easily. I’m keeping a list in a notebook. I’ll have my assistant type them up and in the meantime we will go online and find out who is handling their bankruptcy. Then we will hand over the list. Either that, or we will give it to the Better Business Bureau. That way maybe these people will get their money back. It’s a major pain in the ass. I won’t sugar coat it. But I feel like it’s the least we can do. Truth is, I’ve had some interesting conversations. And even more learning about humankind and human nature as always. The women are mostly sad sounding lower income types and they just sound dejected and discouraged, believing that they’ve been ripped off and will never see their money again [Hold on. yet another call…]  I try to cheer them up. Poor creatures. The men are a bit different. This last guy just told me “Well thank you for what you’re doing there… I hope we find these fuckers! Excuse my language.” 
        It’s an amazing experience to be honest. Half the people say “I’ve got the wrong number I’m sorry” when we first answer. Then we explain that they do indeed have the wrong number, but not because they dialed it wrong and we further explain what is happening. Most people are just so confused by what they are hearing that they just give their name and number before even thinking about it and that’s that. Some of them start asking me technical questions about their “furniture warranty”. In which case I have to explain to them yet again that this is a record company in New York City and we don’t have anything to do with selling furniture. But it’s hard for most people to wrap their minds around.
        The thing that strikes me most about this whole thing is how symptomatic it is of the economic times we are going through right now in America. Is The Room Store guilty in some way as so many other American companies have proven to be? Is this just another story of big corporate America ripping off the small everyday-man? Or did they give it their all and just not succeed in the end and have to close up shop? Well only The Room Store themselves can answer that question. I’ve got no fucking idea. I’m just a singer. But I’d love to hear the end of the story and see how it all pans out.
        That in and of itself I believe shows just how easy it is to con people and rip them off if you’re of the mind to do so. They don’t quite get it. And it probably makes it even more confusing for them when this guy on the other end of the phone is telling them that he’ll “track these people down for you and give them this list with all your names and numbers. That’s the best we can do ma’am. I’m sorry, I hope it helps.” Yes. So yet another strange bit of weirdness has landed in our world. Can’t say it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened. But it may just be the funniest. At the least, I feel like we are turning something rather heinous and negative into a positive. And you can’t feel bad about that.

Though the intentions of the proposed action are noble, and the reasons for it more than valid and necessary, now more than ever — though an argument could be made that this need has existed for a long time, perhaps as far back as the drafting of the Constitution — supporting a third political party right up until the vote in November at this time in our American history will not help our troubled system in any way. In fact there is a strong likelihood that it could only make things worse. Read carefully one notices there are several notable clauses in the idea above that do not negate the importance or validity of the ideals that supporting a third political party are founded upon. It isn’t that it’s not a good idea. For it is a good idea. A damn good one. And entirely necessary. It’s just that now isn’t the right time for it. You’ve got to kill the buffalo buffalo before you eat. And before you kill it you’ve got to catch it. We’ve not yet even captured the buffalo

This is not to say

We sint vote for pres candidates we vite for state electors. By population. An outdated system perpetuated in order to allow corporate control and domination of political parties at the expense of anything remotely progressive happening. … He said. “I live in a State where my vote won’t count. Because of the electoral college voting system. The race for president at this point

Has to be a combined effort, a coalition from a grassroots movement decided upon ahead of time

Well that’s def a good blog post topic! Do they really raise tuition every year??? Is there really an ulterior motive behind it? Or is it simply increased need? Or a capitalistic desire for more profit?

I was awakened this morning by a dream in which my branding and imaging agent — she’s got no official name yet though I am aware of the need for one… — was advising me that I needed to get on this task of signing up with this kick butt marketing and distribution company called Benjamin. Though when she spelled it out she said BenjaMON, with an O not an I. Strange I thought. She was intensely serious about it. As she is about everything. I asked her “What are they? Do they replace our current label and distributor? Ate they better?” And she replied “Baby they’re not even in the same league. That how important this is. Just get on it!”