I remember a day… a bright shining day when the world was still young and warm, when puppies and kittens played happily together in well kept public parks filled with smiling multicultural passersby.
And in this day, when you didn’t feel like shelling out $50 for a new CD, you could go to a place called a Used CD Store. And in this place, a chainsmoking stoner clerk in some clothes he stole off a homeless guy would sell very cheap music, which he bought from people who no longer wanted it. He would make money by moving items at volume due to low prices, and by setting up his store in this most horrific crime-ridden strip mall in town. And when you came to the counter with a Beatles album, he would roll his eyes and point out that you should be listening to some Indie band nobody gave a crap about. And when you bought an album by some Indie band, he would roll his eyes and say you should buy an album by some import band nobody ever heard of with lyrics in some bizarre lingual hybrid spoken only by the band members themselves, and then poorly. And when you bought that album, he would look at it, rolls his eyes especially hard, and point out that the serial number clearly showed that this album was from the second printing, which meant that the minute degradation in the master would render it hideous and earwrenching.
And lo, it was good.
But that day has gone, and we are sunk into night. For today… errr, tonight, I didst venture forth to the local used CD store. And I didst notice that it was oddly located right across from the shopping mall, in a clean strip mall, between a matress shop and a smoothie stand. And I didst enter into it, and lo, there was no stoner. There was not even a mildly hippie-esque wannabe college student. No, gentle readers, there was a little fratfuck with gel in his hair, wearing khakis and a polo shirt with the store logo on it. And my heart didst tremble.
Ahem, switching back to normalspeak here… so basically, here’s the beef. The used CDs cost the same as the new ones. Well, not the same, there is a $1 reduction from catalog price. The reason being, as related by said fratfuck, that Megacorp International has bought up all the used CD stores in town (which, admittedly, was not a Standard Oil style endeavor). And since they sell music, it doesn’t make much sense for them to offer reasonable prices for used CDs, in fact they were rather interested in just stamping out the whole industry (which they, inexplicably to me, still bought and kept operating). Oh, and if I wanted new CDs in convenient $500 boxed set form (Still With Only Two Tracks That Don’t Suck!), they had plenty of them. Right over by the Britney Spears fanmags and the Rolling Stones Brand decaf display.
I would like to say fuck these people. But that doesn’t quite cover it, so I’m going to have to go a bit overboard and say fuck everyone and everything who/what has ever existed, and fuck them up the ass with a red hot pitchfork while I’m at it. Sonofabitch goddamn motherfuck. Elvis fucking Christ, have these people not figured it out? If you won’t let us buy the music legitimately at prices we can afford, we’re just going to build elaborate computer networks that would make Gene Roddenberry say “You did what now?” to steal it. And then we’re going to sit around watching Kevin Smith movies and ignore the growing threat posed by international terrorism. We’ve already tried this shit.
Fuck fuckity fuck fuck. I mean, is it really that much to want to legally buy music, but not to have to forego housing to do so? Congratulations record companies, you’ve ensured that you will not be receiving any money at all from me instead of a small amount in what I’m sure some MBA is telling you is a masterstroke of competitive economics. Good work.
