Prince and Intellectual Property; Genius as Channel

I will never deny Prince’s genius. As I’ve said before, he has never stopped making genius music for the past 30 years and will stake a place in classical music studies hundreds of years from now.

I also say the following in full recognition of the fact that you can’t be an extreme genius without having alternative brain architecture which some morons can term “mental illness”.

I forgave Prince for converting to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and even for censoring his old songs. However, I will not forgive him for his latest series of actions trying to assert intellectual property rights over everything he’s ever touched. Fuck Prince! No-one owns anything that emanates from their own intellect. Certain people have access to extremely open channels of communication with different parts of the cosmos. But that’s all it is, a channel. If you’re a genius it has nothing to do with you. Someone upstairs or whatever decided you would be rewarded/burdened with a broad pipeline for downloading information from the Universe. Being a genius does not give you the right to control what you have channelled.

Also, one point to make about IP in general: if you’re not gonna make something coz it’s not gonna make you rich, your stuff is probably shit anyway. We only need the real art.

Gough Whitlam and the Balibo Five

I love Gough Whitlam and won’t hear of morons’ criticisms of his being economically irresponsible or whatever simplistic explanations they put together for themselves to escape the fact that he was probably the best Prime Minister in Australia’s history. I probably wouldn’t be alive without Medicare and my father wouldn’t have been the first person in his family’s history to go to university without Whitlam. Some of my friends wouldn’t have survived South East Asia without Whitlam’s and Malcolm Fraser’s immigration policies.

BUT! Fuck Whitlam for what he did to the Balibo Five and their families. Not excusable. What strikes me is the similarity between Whitlam’s strategy of pretending not to receive bureaucratic advice and Howard’s similar behaviour, albeit taken to an extreme of frequency and gravity. I hope this is the one fuck-up I find out about Goughy; I love him to death.

Julia Gillard Picture in Advertisements: Hilarious Sexy Assassin!

I can’t actually find a picture of Julia Gillard in the Liberal Party advertisement where they keep zooming in on her in a shot where she’s wearing sunnies saying stuff like “unionists will take over the country”. Whoever is in charge of Liberal Party internal polling and strategy has misread the country. She looks like a hot sexy assassin. That’s the kind of lawyer I want running the country. And those ads with Joe McDonald shouting “we’ll be back!” are at worst benignly funny and at best give people who believe in unions an adrenaline rush. They’ve miscalculated on the union thing bigtime. The enmity is starting to diminish and the past 2 or 3 years of union campaigning against WorkChoices has bolstered their image in the public’s eye.

Matt Damon + Tom Brady

It’s hilarious that Matt Damon nominated this NFL dude Tom Brady as the sexiest man alive or whatever instead of himself. Yes, I’ve heard the rumours. Anyway they’re both hot.

Seroquel (quetiapine) Side Effect: Excessively Relaxed Throat and Choking

Seroquel is new. Anyone on it is a guinea pig. I’ve discovered a side effect that hasn’t been reported as far as I can tell yet. It relaxes the back of your throat and tongue excessively. For me, it means difficulty swallowing. Almost every time I’ve eaten after taking quetiapine I’ve had food lodge in the back of my throat or go down my trachea rather than oesophagus. It’s fine if you’re not going to eat and are just gonna crash out, but not otherwise.

The other atypical antipsychotic I’ve had experience with is Zyprexa (olanzapine). I’ve had no side effects from that except weight gain. It’s really annoying too because Seroquel gives you a beautifully calm buzz when you take it, almost like Tramadol. Olanzapine doesn’t. Apparently prisoners crush and snort Seroquel.