Ham Radio, Independence, and Livin’ Simple
I’m hankerin’ for some Buffalo Wings, but I’m out and too lazy to drive to the store. So I’ve decided to make my own. My first result in Google was this page. Thankfully I misspelled “homemade” and turned up what looks to be a great tutorial. Butter and Frank’s Red Hot - who knew?
From Kentucky Student May Sue After Mall Claimed Her Dress Was Too Short for Shopping
According to MyFOXBoston, the guard informed her that several female patrons had complained that she was disrupting their shopping experience because their husbands were “checking her out.”
“He made me turn all the way around while he stared me up and down,” she told the Register “The only thing he said was that other people didn’t like the way I looked, so he wanted me to leave.”
Clem’s sister Kendra told the Register that while the dress was short, it was not exposing any of her “private body parts.”
While Clem has not yet filed suit against any entity, she has hired local defense attorney Wes Browne to represent her in a possible case, the Register said.
“We’re in the beginning stages and are reviewing her legal options,” Browne said.
In the meantime however, Clem said she will be using her experience as a way to raise awareness about discrimination.
“I want to speak for everybody else who has been discriminated against but has never said anything,” she told the Register. “I want them to apologize and let them know that in this day and age, a woman has a right to wear what she wants.”
If you make a choice, and people tell you they don’t agree with it, it’s not discrimination. If you want to wear a dress that shows off your good ‘n’ plenty, then go to a strip club. I’m not entirely convinced that lil’ miss streetwalker wasn’t “exposting any of her private body parts.” When you wear a mini-skirt are your private parts even private anymore? How many of us have been on an escalator behind someone in one of these things, only to look up and discover that the wearer dyes her hair?
If you wear a dress like this, you’re asking for one thing. If you’re not in a place that encourages advertisement for such (no, I’m not saying that the modern-day shopping experience is exactly family-friendly), then don’t get torked when they ask you to leave and not come back until the tuna boat has returned to port.
I was watching City Slickers on Hallmark Movie Channel. The part where Jack Palance and Billy Crystal are out on a log singing and playing harmonica inspired me. I decided to come out here to the office and get the guitar tabs for “Home on the Range” so I could try playing that song sometime.
I encountered one of those modern-day American legal gray-areas, apparently. The first site turned up in Google had a simple note:
Due to legal threats from the MPA and the NMPA (National Music Publishers Association), we currently can not show you this tab/lyric. We are doing our best to bring you free guitar tabs and lyrics available again in the near future, so please check back regularly.
Okay. “Home on the Range” is a song much older than the NMPA, the MPA, and just about anything else from the past, oh I dunno, 145 years since it’s first incarnation in the form of a poem. Why would the lyrics and tabs be subject to copyright?
It seems country singer Michael Martin Murphy recorded the song at some point. He put it on an album and released it. Somehow, this makes the song a property of the MPA and the lyrics a property of the NMPA.
We’re talking about the flippin’ state song of Kansas. Can this clearly public-domain work be subject to copyright? It originated in 1873 as a poem, then was arranged to music in three different forms in the years of 1876, 1904, and (in it’s most recognized form) 1910. Yet a simple thing like someone recording (not writing, just recording) the song makes publishing its lyrics and notes subject to copyright infringement.
Could someone please explain how this works? Can I record “Amazing Grace” and then sue anyone who tries to sing it without compensating me? Can I publish the sheet music to “America the Beautiful” then file legal threats against sixth-grade music classes who don’t pay me before playing it?
The stupidest part of all this is that the website, which I refuse to link to, doesn’t even credit a singer, songwriter, or anyone at all! The tab simply states “Home on the Range, by UNKNOWN ARTIST”. I’m completely befuddled, bewildered, and stupified.
God Bless you, entertainment industry, for monetizing and profiting from American culture and folklore. Where there’s money to be made, you’ll be there. Send me a letter. I dare you.
Look Ma, I’m breakin’ the law by reprinting the lyrics and chords to a song that’s been around since before your great-grandma was born! (The chords aren’t spaced properly, so you’ll have to go here to see where you need to change.)
Home On The Range
Traditional Cowboy SongHome On The Range
G G7 C Cm
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
G D7
Where the deer and the antelope play
G G7 C Cm
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
G D7 G
and the skies are not cloudy all dayChorus:
D7 G
Home, home on the range
D7
Where the deer and the antelope play
G C Cm
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
G D7 G
and the skies are not cloudy all dayThe Red Man was pressed from this part of the west
It’s not likely he’ll ever return
to the banks of Red River, where seldom, if ever
his flickering campfires still burnRepeat chorus
How often at night when the heavens are bright
with the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked, as I gazed
if their glory exceeds that of oursRepeat chorus
Oh, give me a land where the bright diamond sand
flows leisurely down the stream
Where the graceful white swan goes gliding along
like a maid in a heavenly dreamRepeat chorus
It’s ironic that a song which pines about wide open spaces and optimism has a legal threat hanging over it.
I think we just solved colony collapse disorder… all the bees were in Florida.
A Miami beekeeper said he removed the second largest hive he has encountered in his 20-year career — about 3 million bees — from a home.
Beekeeper Adrian Valero said he was called to remove the hive after three people in the area were stung by the bees, which residents of the house said had been around for about a year, WSVN-TV, Miami, reported Wednesday.
Valero said it was not surprising that the bees had stung locals.
“These are Italian bees,” he said. “They are a little bit aggressive if you bother them too much.”
So many jokes. Little bee mafias… har har.