Oh, what the heck.

Wellwellwell. We meet again, blogbox. You don't seem to have aged much. I have grown older, more powerful. I still don't have much to say, though. We'll see about this poem I've got going on. Might even post it soon. So yeah. That's all I have for now. Bye, blogbox.

Deluxe Blogpost Now Available for only $15.95!

The Setting: Best Buy Grafton.
The Time: 10:00 AM, September 12, 2008.
The Reason I'm Typing About This: Release of Metallica's Death Magnetic.

Right. So being the metal- (and every other music ever invented) head that I am, I show up at opening time for the release of Death Magnetic, Metallica's public apology for St. Anger.
I walk in, I see the one I'm getting. Shiny jewel case, 3D cover (that actually has a coffin-shaped hole in it. I KNOW!), Metallicamusichen inside. We're all set.  But soft! What metal in yonder window breaks?  It... no, it can't be. It is! The deluxe edition of the very album I'm holding!
Now. St. Anger came, in its only edition, with a DVD of the Metallicats live in studio recording all the St. Anger songs. So, with an album from post-reinvention Metallica, with songs harkening back to the days of No Life 'Til Leather thru Master of Puppets, this edition de lujo must have, like, a full length movie, live in studio recordings, and a fake stage pass. All for the low, low price of ten more dollars. Right?


...
WRONG!!

Nope, none of that.

Yes, really.

I suppose you want to know what wonders really lay inside the deluxe edition that you will not encounter in the regular one.
Nothing.

The deluxe edition is clearly operating on a different definition of deluxe than we are.

Actually, you do get something. The trick is to remain blissfully unaware of the not-deluxe edition.  This way, you can clearly see that with the deluxe edition you get the following:

A cardboard case.  It has the album cover printed on it (big spending there) which is flat. No coffin hole. Sad.  So what you have here is a case that is not the shiny jewel case of the regular edition and much more easily damaged.

No lyric book.  Yes, you can pay ten dollars for the sheer unadulterated PRIVILEGE of not knowing what James is singing.  You heard that right, you can now feel superior that you're going to have to live off your own ears and crappy lyric websites rather than read the booklet that came with the serf edition.

That's it.  Actually, I think the price tag was bigger.  And there may have been a sticker letting you know how deluxe it was.

These are not the first "deluxe" shenanigans I have come across, and they will not be the last. I can understand if it was some sort of status symbol, but how often do people see the physical representation of the music you're listening to?  Music is anything but tangible thanks to the internet, mp3s and the whole digital *cough* "revolution" *cough*
...
Yesterday I thought of writing this with some sort of point. I have lost it now. Maybe you'll get it anyway.  But basically, what I illustrate is this: I don't know whose ingenious idea it was to slap the word "deluxe" on an inferior product and weasel ten extra dollars out of consumers for it, but it is by far one of the most offensive displays of moneymongering I have seen in a dog's age.  So what I'm really saying is: go to metallica.com and download the free intro to My Apocalypse. Listen to that for a while and muse on the fact that you have paid NOTHING for the privilege of hearing James Hetfield's intro to the song My Apocalypse, that nobody, now matter how deluxe or regular their purchase was, got to hear.  Well, muse on, my minions.

Tomorrow: a legit review of Slayer's brutal new masterpiece World Painted Blood.
Expectations high, my children. Sean has grown some focus.

Tootles,
Sean ;^)

Don't be frightened.

Yes, yes, I know. It's a post. The only problem is I've got a clever name for the next legit post. This is a mere prelude.  Actual thinking to come! Read on.

COMIX

Okay, so as promised I will now blather about comics for a while.  First of all, so I can get my inter-wanderings back in chronological order, xkcd is just lovely.  There is all sorts of things that go on in my head there, acted out by stick figures, which also appeals to my maximum drawing potential.  Yes, I enjoy reading things that can be classified as attainable goals.  But I didn't stop at one addictive webcomic, oh gracious no.  Besides, it only took me about three days to read through the entire backlog of strips and since I exhibit some addict behavioral tendencies I'd be liable to combust between weeks.  So on I moved, ... (read more)

Up And Running

Okay kidlings, even though I'm quite sure nobody will ever read this one (durr it's the first post and no one knows I exist yet durr) welcome to Sean's blog.  I'm actually pretty excited about this.  My original plot regarding blogs, the starting of was mainly because I want to escape Facebook's evile domain.  (Details on why Facebook is actually the devil later. Unless I decide to not alienate my [hopeful] readers with all my crazy politic-esque shenanigans.)  But now, I get to pretend that people, in places, are reading this and are interested in the awful minutiae of my life, instead of just commenting on whatever happens to be the most ... (read more)