E. Michael Harrington

________________________________________________________________________________________

IT'S MARCH 29 AND I'VE FINISHED MY TAXES! I am never this early or - dare I say - efficient at completing this task. Yesterday at 4:58 PM, they were filed electronically. Now life is better and easier. I slept longer this morning - for the first time in many months, I woke up because the television turned on at 5 AM as it woke up before I did. I drove slower on I-65 - mostly under 80 mph - and am smiling more than ever. I spoke longer to one of my two crushes at one of the two Starbucks I frequent this morning - we were happpy to see each other. I'm just in a tax-finished daze so much so that I forgot to tell her. Maybe she thinks it's just her usual effect on me....

________________________________________________________________________________________

Too much has been going on in my life and I've not been able to do any of my favorite things for very long, but that is all differennt now that the FEAR OF TAX completion is over. As if to make things even better, there was a lunar eclipse this morning. I did not get to see it in the sky from my neighborhood but the pictures on CNN were the first things I saw this morning. Damn stunning stuff! Even my neighborhood is a beautiful place today. Yesterday I met one of my neighbors (a rare event) - a really cool and beautiful woman even if she is a University of Tennessee graduate.

________________________________________________________________________________________

TONIGHT IS COPYNIGHT, a meeting of great minds that are part of a movement of enlightened minds who long for a balance in copyright. For example, wouldn't it be nice if one could listen to one's music on an Apple computer and Apple iPod without having to worry about DE-AUTHORIZING the damn Cheneying computers one owns for as long as one lives? (I use the word, "Cheney," rather than DICK CHENEY's preferred expletive - the "F word" - to express anger.) I do not have to de-authorize books depending on when I change light bulbs. Cheney Apple and the other DRM (digital rights management) mongers. Bastards.

And speaking of Cheney, I think this is nice wardrobe - "I Shoot People" along with Dick's sly grin on a t-shirt:

http://www.cafepress.com/buy/cheney+shooting/-/pv_design_details/pg_1/id_11124448/opt_/fpt_/c_/hlv_t

________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is a link to CopyNight:

http://www.copynight.org/

And here is a link to information about our monthly meetings in Nashville:

http://www.copynight.org/locations.html#nas

Notice that we are one of the few chapters that meet on Wednesday rather than Tuesday.

It is great to see this movement spreading.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Next week I will be speaking to Pre-Law students (Monday) and at the Belmont University Copyright Society's Parody Night (Tuesday). BUCS is a very impressive group of students. Their website and some of their work can be seen here:

http://www.belmontcopyright.org/

________________________________________________________________________________________

IS NEW YORK YANKEES' PITCHER, RANDY JOHNSON, THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD? Yes, he might be. He makes $16 million a year, fathered a female, and does not love or even care for her. He is suing the girl's mom.

Here's the story:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/story/403936p-342083c.html

Even if he was not a TRAGICALLY UGLY GUY whose hideous interior and exterior match, and a member of the Evil New York Yankees, his callous disregard for the life he created places him at the vanguard of lower life forms.

________________________________________________________________________________________

And I can't forget U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, another in the indecent impolite line of conservatives emanating from Dick Cheney. Scalia, who will never have the opportunity many think he deserved to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, gave an obscene hand gesture outside a Catholic church. It gets even funnier as a Republican newspaper - the Boston Herald - printed the story even after Scalia told them, "don't publish that."

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060327-100356-7854r

________________________________________________________________________________________

SPINAL TAP quiz - Part 74

Q. What is Nigel's serious problem immediately prior to the North Carolina concert?

________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted by EMH at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

________________________________________________________________________________________

DEBRA LAFAVE IS THE THING TONIGHT. She frequently slept with a legally-too-young (but grateful) male student and because she is so good looking and/or the boy's mom does not want the boy traumatized anymore, will not have to go to a real jail. It's great to sit back and watch and listen to all of the moral outrage from every political slant. Debra is bad from the right, the left and the center but oh so hot (from even more angles) to many young boys from all sides.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are some memrializations of the future journalist who God has put on Earth for a reason. Yes, she stated how she is taking a course online (the best kind of education - LOL) and wants to be a journalist, and of course SHE IS A GOOD CHRISTIAN WOMAN who loves Jesus and wants God to use her (have her?) in the way that He planned. Amazing. As always, how can there be comedy clubs when there's news and moral indignation and nine (9) commandments?

________________________________________________________________________________________

The lovely memorializations can be found here:

http://www.homestead.com/prosites-prs/teacherpics.html

________________________________________________________________________________________

And Barry Manilow is on American Idol. Everything is here for me tonight. There is no sadness and no seriousness. Barry and Debra and bored session string players sawing away behind Barry Manilow's coached lounge lizard. I love seeing bored musicians - they have nothing to be bored or unhappy about. They need to get over themselves. Ooooooppppps. That was awully direct.

________________________________________________________________________________________

I'm back blogging. I've written and put together a lot of stuff recently. I wish I could blog it. Perhaps I will later.

________________________________________________________________________________________

American Idol

"THE MODULATIONS IN IT. OH MY GOD," said Randy.

I"VE GOT GOOSE BUMPS. ELLIOT YOU MOVED ME...... " said Paula.

And Simon says.....

"Since this is a singing competition........."

________________________________________________________________________________________

GW BUSH will leave office with a BA deficit and many Americans in Iraq and a thriving civil war, or so he said and alluded to during his press conferennce today. He also showed how he could SHRUB-HANDLE that threatening small old lady/reporter, Helen Thomas, when need be. If Cheney has been there, Helen would have been sprayed for sure!

AND THE RED SOX GOT the perfectly wild ass powerful home run hitting strikeout king 24 year old wild man, WILY MO PENA, from Cincinnati for our bleached hair rock star, Bronson Arroyo. As always, this trade looks great to me.

And Johny Damon has already been injured. The Yankees are old and getting older. Bring on Summer!

________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted by EMH at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

On Thursday, March 16, 2006 at 7:00 PM, in the Multimedia Hall of Bunch Library at Belmont University in Nashville, I will deliver a presentation on copyright and recent music copyright infringement cases. I will be playing and discussing music by Dr. Dre, Mariah Carey, Tom Petty, D. J. Danger Mouse, Britney Spears, Beatallica, Metallica, the Beatles, the Beastie Boys, Jib Jab, George Clinton and others that have been part of recent music copyright matters will be discussed.

If you are near Nashville, please come visit. Sit a spell. (Is that Southern enough or is it Ozark? Even after all these years, I am still not quite Southern, am I?)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The best parts of the evening will be:

There will be friends and other good people, celebrities and celebrity-friends in the audience.

The music is worth hearing.

The issues are worth knowing.

Some words that should not be said will likely be said (that could, theoretically, pertain to audience members and not just me).

I might take requests as my playlists are much longer and more substantial than any short playlists by corporations such as the EVIL EMPIRE (no, not the New York Yankees, but Clear Channel Entertainment).

The building is structurally sound and will likely not fall down.

The audience will not encounter commercial advertising or subliminal suggestions.

The hall is amphitheatre-like.

The chairs in the hall are orange (a very bad thing if the date is March 17 - if you are Boston shanty Irish, you know what I mean).

It will not interfere with any special greening ceremonies and anyone's celebration of St. Patrick's Day as it will conclude about 210 minutes before St. Patrick's Day begins.

Some of us will celebrate life even more so afterwards.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted by EMH at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

________________________________________________________________________________________

THE EXUBERANCE AND EUPHORIA WHEN BAD PEOPLE DIE

Today's great news is that the world is minus one very evil guy, although there are so many more who are still with us. Slobodan Milosevic's death in his jail cell this morning is cause for great rejoicing and happiness. YEA!

________________________________________________________________________________________

I fly to Chicago and Nashville today. I hate leaving Boston. It's been a perfect week here and in New York. Much more to write later - about my week, the wedding dress I accidentally stained at Bethesda in Central Park, the caperberries, the tweens playing the roles of tween lesbians in the fountain at Bethesda, Amtrak, my lectures at Harvard Law School and NYU, my old friends and new friends, my drug use (all legal), the Lever House, and more.

To be continued from my damn boring neighborhood in one of my lives.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted by EMH at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

IT'S EARLY BUT I'VE ALREADY HAD A DIFFICULT - REALLY, IMPOSSIBLE - CHOICE TO MAKE. AOL (A-O-Hell), an ISP I hope to leave this year, posted on their pop-up news that Pat Robertson lost his seat on the National Religious Broadcasters' Board of Directors. Surely the National Religious Broadcasters' Board of Directors HAS DECIDED TO STICK ITS FINGER IN GOD'S EYE (to us a Robertson-ism) by doing this to God's Chosen Voice.

More on that later, but they then ("they then" as contiguous words?), as is AOL's practice, polled the reading audience to ask "What is Pat Robertson's biggest problem?" and posed the four choices/answers below. This seems to be like having four wonderful children and someone asking you who of the four do you love most. ALL FOUR ARE WONDERFUL AND APPROPRIATE ANSWERS but really must be taken as a totality and not singled out.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the four answers from which one can choose:

He's lost touch with Americans

He lets his ego get in the way

I THINK THESE COULD ALSO BE ASKED OF GEORGE WALKER BUSH - asked and answered the same way.

YES - OH YEAH!
YES - OH YEAH!
YES - OH YEAH!
YES - OH YEAH!

I'll have to go back and vote soon.

I CAN OFFER PAT HELP IF HE NEEDS IT. I would love to offer him help because he is one of the meanest, nastiest, evil, and FUNNY people I have ever read and heard. I think bad guys need a voice, even if Pat's is ubiquitous. Perhaps I should never laugh at mean-spiritedness but sometimes I do.

I once read (that phrase - "I once read" - is Fox TV-like in its blatant lack of fact checking and accuracy) that Pat had attended YALE Law School. If so, Yale's got another reason to hang its head in shame.

Well, after a Google search for Pat and Yale, it keeps coming up, so the urban legend of it has spread, and it might be true (now I'm steering away from Fox TV-like accuracy but am still not in the world of facts)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The search also revealed this fun site and material - a splendid compendium of Pat's Long Reign Of Error:

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/televangelists/pat-robertson/

__________________________________________________________________________________________

More on Pat later..... More to blog later....

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted by EMH at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)