Random Stuff and Nonsense and Whatnot

I’m feeling unbloggily motivated these days. I need to get my writing mojo back. You may see me following prompts from other blogs and such in the coming weeks while I try to get the juices flowing. In the meantime, I’m feeling guilty that I haven’t updated here, so I felt the need to write a bit to shake out the random bits and pieces rattling around in my brain. For the disorganized flotsam of ideas you’re about to read, you’re welcome.

Salty caramel ice cream. Photo courtesy of Jeni's Ice Creams (jenisicecreams.com), whose ice cream is delicious and also who wrote our ice cream recipe book.

Life since the holidays has, in large part, revolved around our new ice cream maker. We have used it every week. We made a cranberry sorbet (which was amazing both solo and in champagne on NYE), a salty caramel ice cream (BEST. THING. EVER. especially when we added ground honey cinnamon almonds on top), and most recently, a bourbon buttered pecan ice cream (booze + ice cream – need I say more?). We love it. We love trying out recipes, mentally noting our favorites, etc. I don’t really like the dishes that are left after using it, but we’re getting gourmet ice cream for a fraction of the cost of crappy ice cream at the grocery store, and we’re having fun doing it. Plus it’s healthier, I’m sure, because we know exactly what’s going into our ice cream, and I can tell you there are no artificial chemicals or preservatives. I’d call that a win.

I am still running. And walking. My knee started bugging me right at the beginning of the year, so I’ve purchased a band that helps support the tendon in your knee that holds your kneecap in place, since apparently that’s one of the most common knee problems among runners. I just got it last week, so it’s too soon to tell if it will help or not. If not, I suppose I’ll need to go to the doctor to figure it out before I damage myself badly or permanently. But I am still running – the last run I did was for 28 minutes straight. It sucked. I’m slow (no, really slow – I’ve seen other runners complain about how they “only” run 10-minute miles…ha! I wish I could run a 10-minute mile!). But I’m doing it. And I’ve been promised it will get better. I have not gotten on the strength training bandwagon yet, though. I want to…but obviously not enough to actually do it. I will…I just don’t know when yet, exactly.

This is the time of year when I’m always tired. It’s the long drudge before the next holiday. It’s the darkness when I wake up and before I leave work. It’s the cold. It’s the busyness at work (we’re pretty solid busy from January through April in any given year, and this year it will be all year long, I think). The tired and the cold and the dark do not make it easy to get up a half-hour early to go running two days a week.

Pinterest logo, courtesy of Pinterest

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole that is Pinterest. A few weeks ago, I got a cold, and since I was only scheduled to be in the office one day that week anyway, I stayed home sick so as not to share my germs with my co-workers. I felt cold-ish, but not awful – I didn’t want to be in bed all day. So I asked friends for an invite to this new sharing/bookmarking/fun with pictures site I’d seen others on, Pinterest. I played with it a bit that day. And since…well, I love it. I think it’s part of my non-bloggery problem. I’d rather peruse random people’s pins on Pinterest than write at the moment. It’s what I do while the TV is on at night. If you’d like to follow my pins for some reason, here’s my profile. If you want an invite, let me know in the comments – I don’t know how many invites I get, but I’ve only used one so far. But I’ll warn you – it’s a time-suck. A beautiful, fun, interesting time-suck.

The Liebster Award. I have no idea who designed it - I wish I did so I could give them credit, but I don't have time to do that level of research.

Finally, I’ve had a bloggish award conveyed on me for some reason I don’t understand, but am grateful for. The Coastal Living Mom gave me a Liebster Award. These sorts of things in the blog world are sort of like chain letters, but are intended to tell other bloggers you like them and send them a little traffic as a thank-you. I have no idea how TLCMom even found my blog, but hey, I’ll take it! The deal is supposed to be, for this particular award, that it’s given to small blogs (traffic of 200 or fewer followers). You’re supposed to thank your award-giver (thanks, TLCMom!), link back to their blog (done above), pick 5 more blogs to get the award, tell them by commenting on their blogs, and then posting links to their blogs on your blog. I have mixed feelings about that last part. On the one hand, I would love to send some traffic to my favorite small blogs if I could. On the other, I don’t want them to feel like they have to continue the chain. So I’m going to make a provision: I’ll list 5 small blogs I really enjoy, but they should feel in no way obligated to do the same. I’m just saying I like them, go check them out, but if those bloggers don’t want to continue the award themselves, that’s fine by me. No harm done. I also have no idea if any of these are fewer than 200 followers. I just have a feeling they’re smallish. Also, I’m a lurker rather than a commenter, so most of these people probably have no idea who I am or that I read their blogs. Whatevs. Five small blogs I really, really enjoy are:

• Annie Was Here, by a social media/PR professional in the St. Louis area. This is Annie’s personal blog, and she’s friggin’ hilarious. Almost every post about her adventures in the world, happenings on their new farm, wonderfully funny things her husband says, etc. has me in stitches.
• Dried Figs and Wooden Spools, by a former Charlottesvillian who left shortly after I discovered her blog. She’s crafty, I’m not. She’s got kids, I don’t. It doesn’t matter. I love reading about her life and the interesting, creative things her family does, their adventures in their year in New York, and their ponderings about where to go and what to do next. I’m just sad they’re not local anymore so I can’t meet them.
• Fatuous Observations, by a current Charlottesvillian and fellow book nerd. Under the pen name Patience Crabstick, she writes about Cville, her family, her job, books, wacky adventures, tense moments, all with great insight and a slightly cranky and dry sense of humor. My favorite kind.
• Kinda Domestic, written by my friend Marijean’s future daughter-in-law, which is how I found her blog. She cracks me the hell up, which is why I started following her blog even though we have only the most tenuous of connections.
• Nathalie Foy writes about books and book art and books about books and bookish things. I find her insight into the books she reads to be interesting and often dead-on, and I love her devotion to art made out of books (those are some of my favorite posts).

I could honestly list so many more. My favorite kinds of blogs tend to be random hodgepodge about people’s lives (I’m such a voyeur!), and for whatever reason, those tend to be the smallest ones. I hope none of my friends are offended if they’re not on the list – I could have easily listed 5 or 10 more! Anyway, that’s all I have for today.

Things from 2011 that Need to Go Away in 2012

From Mama Kat’s blog prompts: “Top Trends of 2011 I Want to Forget.” I don’t agree with most of Mama Kat’s list (yes to Google+, zombies, and life affirmations; for the rest of her list I’m either not bothered by it or didn’t realize it was a trend, so I wouldn’t pick those things), but I liked the topic.

Not all of the things on my list necessarily rose to popularity during 2011, but they were popular – or still popular – last year. And I’m SO over them. Surely I’m not the only one.

1. “Checking in” to places or media on the internet. So you’re eating at Chili’s, or shopping at Wal-Mart, or watching Arrested Development. Good for you. If you have something of substance to say about it – a really good deal to be had, a funny conversation you overheard, some critical analysis – fine, share away. But I really don’t need to know your every move. Posts on Twitter and Facebook from Foursquare, Yelp, GetGlue, etc. are about to drive me bonkers. I get that some people check in to get a discount somewhere – and being a frugal gal myself, I support that – but can you disconnect your other social media accounts from your Foursquare account? K-thanx-bye.
   

   Source: Flickr user TAKA@P.P.R.S

2. Bacon.Yes, I like bacon too. I think it tastes good. I enjoy bacon on my pizza, with my eggs, crumbled up on a salad, and in many other iterations. No, I do not think it belongs in cupcakes. No, I do not want bacon on my t-shirt or keychain.
   

   Source: Flickr user Lara604

3. The end of the world.How many times was that predicted by that one crazy guy in 2011? And I’m already so far over the 12/21/2012 Mayan apocalypse thing. I’m pretty damn sure the world isn’t ending and all the jokes have been made. Let’s move on.
   

   Source: Flickr user Peta-de-Aztlan

4. 3-D everything.The vast, vast majority of movies that are put out in 3-D have no reason to be in 3-D except it’s a thing now. And most of them were not filmed/created in 3-D, so the effect actually sucks. Furthermore, I have ZERO desire to wear 3-D glasses on my couch in my house while I watch normal TV. This is something that should be rare and special and well-done when it’s done, and the trendy bit needs to die.
   

   Source: Flickr user lsgcp

5. Skinny jeans.Let’s be honest: only about 1% of the population actually looks good in skinny jeans. I’m especially over the men-in-skinny-jeans thing. What’s wrong with normal jeans?
   

   Source: Flickr user josie_marie

6. Hating on people who want to change the crappy things. Did I go down to my local Occupy protest and join in? No, I didn’t – but I understood why some people did. Do I grow all of my own food and can or freeze everything and raise chickens? No, but I totally understand why some people choose that lifestyle. Did I wear the same dress 365 different ways last year or commit to buying nothing but food and toilet paper? No, but I commend those who took a stand against rampant consumerism. So many of the systems we interact with every day are broken. They don’t work. The economy, healthcare and insurance, mega-corporations, politics, big food industry…most of these systems guarantee that the rich get richer at the expense of the pocketbook and the health of the middle class and poor. These systems need to change.So why do so many people ridicule their friends and neighbors for trying to change things?
   

   Source: Flickr user Sunset Parkerpix

7. Judging people who don’t live as virtuous a life as you.As a caveat to the above, I also hate seeing the judgment in someone’s eyes when I admit that we don’t buy 100% all natural, organic, local whole foods, or that (God forbid) we ate hot dogs for dinner last night. Because the systems are broken, it’s a lot harder and more expensive to buy all local, healthy foods – I can only do my best within my time and budget allowance. And damn it, sometimes I want to eat a hot dog – I shouldn’t have to apologize for that.
   

   Source: Flickr user thebittenword.com

    

8. The government pretending that the economy is fine! No, really! It’s recovering and everything will be just hunky-dory soon! For serious? My house is currently worth at least $50,000 less than we owe on it. Almost every person I know is working hard (and sometimes failing) to make ends meet. Our country is currently $15 trillionin debt. Don’t worry about all that, though. The economy is really just fine! Stop patronizing us, assholes. We’re adults. We have common sense. Lying about it just makes you look duplicitous…which you are, but I’m guessing that’s not the public image you really want to have.
   

   Source: Flickr user woodleywonderworks

9. Reality TV talent shows.American Idol. The X Factor. The Voice. America’s Got Talent. You know what I’m saying. I have never really enjoyed most network reality TV, but it seems like the talent show types are multiplying for some inexplicable reason. America really does not have that much talent. You are not destined to be a star. Go back to school and learn science or economics or communications or something useful.
   

   Source: Flickr user BestofWDW

10. QR codes.I can never get them to scan correctly. They usually just take me to a website that could have been printed using less space than the QR code. I find them to be dumb and a pain in the butt.
    

    Source: Flickr user Fluid Forms

How about you guys? Any trends you especially hope go away in the coming year?

2012 Giftolutions

Source: Flickr user Hicham Souilmi

Happy New Year! May 2012 find you healthy, wealthy, and wise!

Several years ago, I read a blog post where the blogger explained that a friend of hers preferred to give herself gifts for the coming year rather than making resolutions. The end result is essentially the same, but reframing your goals in this way is altogether more pleasant in my experience. I took her idea and have been doing the same thing ever since. It’s been a bit hard for me this year to think of gifts that I want and am capable of giving myself. I normally have this list down several days in advance, and yet here it is January 2 and I’m still trying to figure it out. I guess I feel like my goals aren’t really very different, that life isn’t very different, than they have been in the past few years. And then other goals that I might have, ones that cost money, are goals I’m hesitant to make for this year. Maybe that’s okay? Regardless, this is about all I have that I want and that I think I can achieve in 2012:

• The gift of a stronger, healthier body. I made progress on this in 2011, but I am by no means finished – probably ever, really. In 2012, I want to continue running – and I want to get faster. I also want to continue walking. I want to continue journaling my food most days. And I want to add a wee bit of strength training to the mix.
• The gift of an organized home and life. Because I failed miserably at this last year, I may just have to redouble my efforts. We live in a condo, and we’re not likely to be able to move out of it any time soon. We have a lot of stuff, especially books. I desperately need to purge, declutter, and organize so that we can more easily find and store the stuff we actually want to keep. This one will be hard, though – as much as I want the end result, I dread the process with every fiber of my being.
• The gift of more sleep. I don’t think I get enough sleep for me. I get enough sleep for someone else, I’m sure – at least 7 hours most nights – but my body does better with more sleep than that. I’ve been thinking about moving the bedtime routine up by about 30 minutes. I think I’m ready to try that, at least for a little while, in 2012.

So that’s about it – that’s all I’ve got right now for this year. Looking back on it, it’s kind of a lame list, but these are all things I really want, and I can’t think of anything else that is important to me in the same way. How about you? Do you make any big, year-long goals? What do you think of the “gift” list instead of the traditional resolutions?

2011′s Gifts to Myself – Revisited

Adapted from an image by Flickr user Mykl Roventine

At the beginning of 2011, I promised myself three gifts during the year:

• The gift of ever-improving health.  Hey, I did good for half the year last year.  Let’s see if I can outlast 6 straight months in 2011.  I want to regularly exercise (3 times or more per week) and eat well (track my food intake 5 days a week) in 2011.  And I want to do all this with a focus on my health, not necessarily on my weight or appearance.
• The gift of professional advancement.  I will complete my Copyediting Certificate from UCSD in 2011.  This is a little bit cheating since I’m already enrolled in the last class I need to do this, but I will finish, and it’s not a shabby accomplishment!
• The gift of beauty and organization.  I want to continue my improvement and organizational plan from last year, finishing the kitchen and guest room organization, and doing the same for both bathrooms and the master bedroom.

So how did I do? Well, two out of three isn’t bad, is it?

I did pretty well on the first one. I did exercise fairly regularly and track my meals on most work days. As I’ve stated here recently, I’ve also begun a running program and have been running 3 days a week and walking 2 days a week in addition to keeping my food journal. I haven’t lost weight, unfortunately, but my body is stronger and healthier than it was a year ago – which was, after all, the goal.

The second was a bit of a gimme, so maybe it’s not fair to claim it as a victory, but I’m taking it anyway. I did, in fact, finish my Specialized Certificate in Copyediting from UCSD earlier this year. I also attended my first American Society of Training and Development conference for my day job, which was very exciting and allowed me to put into motion a number of new ideas for the associations I work with. So I definitely got myself some professional development for both my sideline editing work and my full-time association work, making this a win.

The third, however…oh, I kind of failed miserably on this one. If anything, I think my house is more crowded, cluttered, and dirtier now than a year ago. I organized nothing, decluttered nothing. I’d love for it to be done, but I don’t really want to do it.

So that’s where I stand on this year’s giftolutions, as I’ve been calling them. Not too bad, I think – better than lots of people do! Tomorrow or Monday you can look forward to my giftolutions for 2012. In the meantime, everyone have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve!

Merry Lootmas 2011

A couple of years ago, on my former blog, I shared the details of the gifts I received for the holidays – also known as Lootmas, the part of Christmas that has nothing whatsoever to do with Christ, a phrase coined by the inimitable Joshilyn Jackson. I like to hear what other people got as presents, so I figured, hey, why not share my list during this post-Christmas time with no one is probably reading my blog anyway? I pinned this year’s Lootmas haul on Pinterest; click below to see it all.

Pinterest board of Lootmas 2011

More importantly, there were some good moments this Christmas that made me quite happy, all warm and fuzzy, like the following:

• Sharing a delicious Christmas dinner out with Dave’s family a week before Christmas
• Getting homemade eggs benedict after a nice sleep-in at Dave’s parents’ house
• Watching the old home movies that my mom had put onto a DVD for my cousins and sister, seeing our grandparents (and great-grandparents, and parents) in younger days
• Seeing my cousin’s daughter weep with joy over the Coach purse she’d been pining for that her Mimi (her grandmother, my aunt) got for her
• Watching my niece be delighted over all the awesome presents she got: a new bike, a tablet (Kindle Fire, her new BFF, she says), a new American Girl doll, a Lalaloopsy tree house, a gumball machine/bank, and lots lots lots more (8 is such a fun age for gift-giving)
• Working on a big pretty puzzle (which was a gift from my in-laws) with my mom and Dave, and a little help from my sister and niece
• Going to see the lights at the Elks Home and Liberty Lake Park, like we do every year
• Having my niece so attached to us that she jumped from me to Dave and back again and didn’t want to let us go so we could drive home
• Seeing all my family and just spending time with them and visiting – we don’t live far from either of our families, but it’s still wonderful when we get to spend quality time with them

I hope you all had a particularly lovely holiday. Any good loot or warm memories to share?

Holiday Homes Tour 2011…kinda

A few weeks ago, my friend Jen on the Edge invited her fellow bloggers to participate in the 4th annual Holiday Homes Tour that she hosts on the blogosphere. I immediately thought, What a great idea! Everyone posts photos of their holiday decorations and she collects the links all in one place! I’m in!

Ah, yes. Ambition. I haz it.

Too bad that my life has been so full ever since then that I have not had time to decorate. No tree. Nary a wreath or stocking. Not even a sparkly garland or a single strand of lights. And now that we’re so close to Christmas (and we’re not even going to be home on Christmas), it seems like far too much work to put it all up just to take it down again a week later. But I still wanted to participate – I thought that maybe by “decorating” on my blog, it would put me in a more festive spirit. So I asked Jen if she was okay with me posting pictures of holidays gone by, and she told me to do what I wanted. Since my house looks essentially the same every year anyway (I don’t change up the decor very much; I’m a creature of habit), this is a fair representation of what my house would look like this year if I’d had time to decorate it!

Welcome to our humble abode! I sort of cobbled this wreath together years ago out of a red berry wreath and a strand of sparkly crystal bead garland, both of which I picked up crazy-cheap at Michaels in the after-Christmas sales.

In our home, we hang the stockings by the bookshelves with care since we don't have a fireplace. Dave's mom made my stocking for me the first year he and I were dating. We bought his sophisticated, masculine stocking at Target the first year we were married. In the middle, between the two snowflake stocking holders, is a Snowbaby staring up at a crystal star.

What's Christmas without the Peanuts gang? I also love that Boris Karloff is looking down on them benevolently from the background.

Now for my nativity scene. My mom starting buying pieces of this lovely Lenox china nativity long ago, and she bought me one or two pieces every year until I had a full set. Where I display it lately, though, I can't fit all the figures, so some of the shepherds and animals have to take turns being displayed year to year. Also notice my advent candles in the background - my wreath is in a lovely Celtic pattern. Wish you could see it better! Side note: I love the angle of this photo. I'm no photographer, but sometimes I pull off the artsy-ish shot.

Here's a bigger picture of the full nativity scene, in a different location where I could put all the pieces out. The year I put it up here, I also put up a mini tree.

On to the tree! I'm going to start with a focus on some of my favorite ornaments. This one is a P. Buckley Moss painted wedding scene that my aunt gave us the first Christmas we were married. It's so thin and delicate that the lights shine straight through it, and it's hand-painted.

Being a house of book nerds, it's inevitable that we have book ornaments on the tree! Also, in the foreground you can see one of a set of glass icicles I got at Pier 1 years ago that I love, and in the background is a snowglobe ornament that my best friend gave me for Christmas ages ago.

My mom gave this to Dave and I one year, because we always call each other monkeys (affectionately, of course). I think the name of this one was "Bananas for You" or something awesome and cheesy like that. Above the monkeys is a silver spider, made by my mother-in-law (if you don't know the silver spider legend, go Google it). Up in the top left, you can see part of one of my favorite Eyeore ornaments (I have a few) - I wish I'd gotten him in the picture better!

There's a historic house in my hometown, Avenel. I was always in love with it, for as long as I can remember. I helped restore it when I was a Girl Scout, it has a benevolent ghost (reportedly; I've never seen her), and I always said I wanted to get married there (and I did - or at least we had our reception there). My parents gave me this ornament when I was little, which is a pewter depiction of Avenel. Also in the picture you can see the Mouse King, which was one of Dave's ornaments from childhood (there's a Queen hanging right next to him, on the other side).

Good look at my glass bead garland in this photo! But really, I was taking it to capture the two cross-stitch ornaments in the middle. One is mine from the year I was born and one is Dave's from the year he was born.

Another good shot of my garland! The ornament is one of those painted-inside-the-glass deals, and this one came from my mom. I love this type of ornament; I have at least 5 or 6.

Finally, here's a look at the whole tree. The angel on top I've had since I was a child, and my mom and my sister have angels identical to it on their trees. I wish I'd gotten a better shot of my tree skirt, and we have different curtains since this picture was taken, but overall this is the best photo I've ever gotten of our tree.

And there you have it, folks! My standard holiday decorating scheme. As you can probably tell, I have a bit of eclectic taste, and I’m totally sentimental – I most treasure my ornaments with sentimental value, not just the ones I bought for myself because I thought they were pretty (though I have some of those too). I don’t do a “theme” for my decorations, and I don’t buy ornaments or ribbons or whatever in particular colors. I tend to use things until they fall apart and keep all of my ornaments – even the childish or ugly ones, if they’re sentimental – on the tree.

How about you? Is there a method to your madness? Do you plan out your decorations and change things up every year? Or do you just do like me and put out the same stuff every year, maybe with a few extra ornaments that you were given the previous year?

Media by the Artist, for the People (or Why Louis CK and Radiohead Win the Internet)

Louis CK, doing some comedy

I’m taking a break from the holiday cheer today to talk about something that happened a couple of weeks ago that I think is just incredibly amazing. You guys know how famous comedians usually do specials on cable TV, right? I mean, most well-known comics have had a special on Comedy Central and/or HBO. Those specials are usually recorded by the cable company and distributed over the cable network so that only subscribers can see it. They usually take a long time to put it out, too. The comedian usually gets an up-front fee, but doesn’t have rights to the video after the fact. The up-side of this for the comedian is that they get their name and their jokes out there without having to pay the significant fees to record and edit such a special. The cable company then makes money by offering exclusive content to its subscribers, either keeping them as customers or recruiting new customers, and also from advertising sales (for some cable networks, anyway). And those who already subscribe to the cable channels get to see the special for “free” (not really since they’re paying for cable, but whatever, they feel like they’d be doing that anyway). For the rest of us, though, we usually have to wait ages to see such a video until it’s released on DVD, then pay about $20 or so for said DVD, or rent it (paying money for something we then don’t own and have to give back)…or else steal it off the internet, as a growing number of people seem to be doing. It works OK, but I’ve long felt that cable companies are really losing out by ignoring a growing population of people watching TV online and not willing to pay $100+ per month for it. They’re stupid, actually – people are stealing from them* rather than paying those crazy prices. Not to mention it kind of sucks for artists to lose control of the rights to their work.

So what can be done differently? A stand-up comedian that we like a lot in this house – Louis CK – decided to do things differently, as an experiment. He paid to record his own performances in New York (which took place in November 2011), directed and edited a special together, paid someone to set up a website for him to sell it, and sold digital copies for $5 (starting in December 2011). The rules were that $5 would get you a couple of times to stream the video from the web and also a couple of times to download it so you could watch it for all time. The downloads were totally open – no DRM or restrictions or anything; you could burn it to a DVD to watch as many times as you wanted or whatever. On his website, he simply asked people not to steal from him, because he knew that the non-DRM format of the video would make it really easy to pirate but that he’d tried to price it really cheap so no one felt ripped off. He was advised that this was a bad idea. He was advised that people would steal the video and no one would pay for it. That he’d never recoup the cost of making the video with such a low selling price.

You know what? All those advisers were WRONG. Four days after he released the video – four DAYS – Louis posted this statement on his website noting the financials so far. He said how much he spent to record and produce the video ($170,000) and how much he spent to have the website and e-commerce set up ($32,000). Then he shared how much he’d made from people spending $5 per copy in 4 days. That figure was $500,000. FASCINATING. Sure, a few people probably stole it and pirated it on the internet. But by and large? Most people didn’t. Most people bought a copy. I think this was for several reasons: 1) Louis offered it at a fair and reasonable price; 2) they knew the money was going directly to the artist and not to a big corporation; 3) it became available quickly (less than a month after the original show) and easily to everyone with internet access.

This is not the first time an artist has bypassed a big distributor to sell straight to fans. In 2008, Radiohead made headlines by offering their new album (at that time), In Rainbows, for download on their website at the price of  whatever people wanted to pay – including free, if they chose not to pay anything. The internet went wild – they loved the idea. The critics and lawyers, on the other hand, warned that they wouldn’t make any money at all. If they offered the album for free, then obviously everyone would download it and no one would pay for it. Fortunately for the band, all those skeptics were wrong. Not only did people buy the album – paying for whatever they wanted, as suggested – the album made more money than all three of their previous albums.

Certainly, in both of these cases, the artists were already very well-known. They had pretty large fan bases that were prepared to support them. Even so, in both cases, the digital product sold far beyond expectations, and pretty quickly at that. In addition, a number of authors – even relative unknowns – have bypassed the traditional publishing route to self-publish to Kindle or other e-books for less than $1 a copy, and they’re making money, even without the marketing or editing of a professional publishing house. And a few well-known authors have gone this route with new books, seriously upsetting the apple cart in the traditional publishing industry. What’s the takeaway here? Well, to me, this demonstrates that people are perfectly willing to pay a fair price for a product they want. But they’re not willing to pay what’s perceived to be a significant mark-up on a creative property, especially when the majority of the price doesn’t go to the creator.

Yes, some people will always steal things. They will take whatever they can get for free, legally or illegally. But given the opportunity, a fair price, and the knowledge that the actual creator is benefiting from the sales more than a faceless mega-corporation, most people will pay. Most people who I know that pirate material do it because they feel like there’s not a better alternative: they’re not willing to pay $1200 a year – or more – for cable, but they still want to access the programming that’s being aired when everyone else gets to see it. They don’t want the show spoiled for them in this age of the internet, where many websites, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. spill the details of the previous night’s episode almost immediately and unavoidably. They’d buy just that programming if it were available at a reasonable cost, but it’s not. And so they steal, pirate, torrent, whatever. In that scenario, everyone loses. But more and more artists are trying the direct-sell method, leaving out the middle man, and they’re doing it successfully. Maybe HBO needs to learn a lesson here?

*I’m not defending those who steal music, movies, TV shows, etc. Dave and I do not do that. We believe in paying creators for their creations. So we play by the rules…but it’s hard sometimes. And we know many people who do this and feel little guilt, because they believe the megacorporations are ripping everyone off. It’s not a terribly uncommon thing, and I applaud the artists and innovative companies who are trying to think of ways to fix the situation rather than making it worse.