I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone I’ve customized to the nth degree therefore everyone who utilizes Android is neither cheap nor stupid.

I’m rich, everybody I know is rich, therefore EVERYBODY must be rich!

The problem with today’s society is people can only see through their own eyes. I think this happened when the Fairness Doctrine evaporated, cable news came to dominate and Reagan legitimized greed.

THERE YOU GO AGAIN BOBBY! REAGAN WAS OUR GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER!

People are afraid to speak up or run for office because of the plethora of uninformed blowhards who can’t see beyond their own little fiefdoms.

I use vinyl, I like vinyl, the press writes about vinyl, therefore vinyl must be making a huge comeback, it’s here to stay, it’s gonna be bigger than ever.

Only statistics state otherwise, vinyl is 1% of the market… Actually less if you factor in streaming and theft and many other ways people acquire and listen to music.

But you can’t say anything negative about vinyl, because the LP lovers will rain down upon your parade. You’re screwing with their identities.

Yup, that’s America… A melting pot where we all want nothing to change. Where we all want cell access but no cell towers. Where we don’t want to sacrifice even a teeny bit for the greater good. Or we pay lip service to inanities.

Like signing at concerts.

Huh?

More power to you if you’re deaf and going to the show, but I’ve got an insight for you, even the HEARING people can’t understand the lyrics!

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have wheelchair ramps, but I am saying that America is bending so far over to avoid offending anybody that we’ve got mental gridlock.

Forget the blowhards in the media. They know what they’re doing. They’ve got talking points, they want to move the ball. Yup, Fox and MSNBC are playing football, it’s not about the news. Hell, even the WSJ, the right wing paper of record, got it right yesterday, stating that the Amazon/Hachette fracas is a direct result of an ignorant government that blew up the agency model all under the guise of benefiting the public.

In other words, if you’re not willing to see the other person’s viewpoint, you’re not gonna know much.

But you’ve also got to know that your personal experience cannot necessarily be extrapolated to the world at large. And by being so easily offended that you’ve been lumped into a group you don’t identify with, you’re now part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Statistics tell us most people are not on KitKat, hell, most people don’t even know what KitKat is, they think it’s a candy bar. But there are advantages to having everybody on the same OS. Just because you’re on KitKat, that does not mean everybody else is!

And just because Apple is rich and smug that does not make them right, nor a repository for hatred. Hell, you might have had an iRiver or some other fakokta MP3 player but the truth is almost everybody had an iPod. And if we can’t agree on facts, we can’t move forward as a society.

Sure, some people are going to lose in a move to socialized medicine, but the benefits will outweigh the losses. You won’t have to pay for the indigent who go to the emergency room.

But no one wants to sacrifice in America anymore. They just want to complain.

Everybody’s a self-styled expert, basing their opinions on little more than what they can see at the end of their nose.

So you’ve got politicians contradicting themselves, saying there’s no global warming for the ignorant, but stating there is for the residents of Miami.

Everybody’s playing a game, where they’re trying to win.

And the truth is, most people vocalizing don’t even know what the game is. These self-styled experts are being screwed by the string-pullers as they try to get ahead.

Spotify payments aren’t big enough!

Then stop stealing and get all your fans to buy albums, better yet, get everybody to subscribe to Spotify Premium. But you don’t want to take any personal responsibility, you’d just rather complain about the way things are.

And the truth is our country is being cleaved as you ignorantly pontificate about the irrelevant. The rich and connected control the government, the elite schools, the jobs and the money.

But you’re arguing about smartphones.

Apple is important because it’s building an ecosystem of tools that will make our lives better. Will the company succeed?

All their competitors are not as effective, because of a multiplicity of products that don’t seamlessly work together.

Oh, that’s right, YOU’VE got a solution!

But we don’t care about you, we care about EVERYBODY!

And the truth is most people are sheep. There’s a handful of early adopters. And if a product is good enough, and lucky enough, there will be a tipping point where the masses will follow the early adopters into a new world.

But everybody in the old world hates this. We must keep buying CDs and physical books and pay as much as we did before otherwise…

Otherwise WHAT?

Your life might be a bit different.

And the truth is, when it comes to technology, your life is probably better.

But you’re still poor and powerless so you yell and kvetch and those who truly have any power ignore you.

That’s right.

Everybody’s ignoring you because you’re myopic and disorganized.

Educate people, wake them up, build a mass, then you’ve got a chance to effect your preferred solution.

Instead, those in power love the disarray. The poor and disaffected can’t get their house in order. They’d rather stay home, watch reality television and drink. That’s how vapid their little lives are.

When the truth is those people changing the world barely sleep, and make a lot of money, and move mountains.

And everybody else HATES them for it!

So which way do you want to have it, who do you want to be? Someone who effects change or someone who carps? Someone who can see the big picture or someone who can only see their own environment?

One person can change the world. Through insight and will.

But we have an educational system that decries insight. That’s what they teach at those elite institutions, the ability to hold two contrasting opinions in your brain at the same time.

Like I love Android, but most people who use Android have cheap phones and don’t utilize most of its power.

Like I love vinyl, but it’s a niche product, like Civil War re-enactment, and it will never go mainstream, its heyday is done.

Like I have my own personal preferences and beliefs, but if I want to effect change, I’ve got to do something that affects everyone.

So we’ve got country artists bitching that the hits are all about tailgates, rims and booze.

THEY ARE!

But the truth is these hits are catchy and the Americana dreck has got great lyrics and not so catchy tunes. Write a catchy tune that says something and we’ll all be interested.

But you won’t. Because you think your music is good enough. And everybody YOU KNOW hates the hit music and loves Americana.

And there we’ve got the problem right there. Unless you’re willing to wade into the mainstream and do what they do better, you’re never gonna win.

But you don’t really want to win, you really want to BITCH!

P.S. Just because the winners work hard and make money that makes them neither right nor admirable, but you must admit they’re smart. Unfortunately, smart is oftentimes a product of education, and the rich and entitled have an ever tightening grip on that. It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you’re disadvantaged, I believe you should be given help, but at the end of the day you’ve got to take action as an individual.

P.P.S. Stop being proud to be poor. I’m not saying poor is admirable, I’ve lived on nothing, it’s heartbreaking and you never really recover. But my point is don’t keep telling everybody how you can’t afford this, or it would be nice to have that. The truth is you’ve got some money, and your choices are different, or you’re a saver. In other words, you’re lying about being disadvantaged. But the rich don’t do this. They’re proud of what they achieve. In other words, if you went to a good school and pay your bills and drive a ten year old car that does not make you BETTER than those with more money, and conversely, those with more are not better than you. I’m not impressed by you turning your pockets inside out.

P.P.P.S. If you truly are poor, you’re probably not reading this, you most likely don’t have internet access. Poverty is a stigma and a hard hole to lift yourself out of. But if you dropped out of community college and do manual labor and dream of being a singer that’s a choice, not a sentence, and you’re sacrificing for your dream just like any entrepreneur. You choose this life, you choose the long odds, you could have played it safe and you didn’t. If the end result is you live on nothing…THAT’S YOUR CHOICE!

Apple Special Event June 2, 2014

People are cheap and stupid.

Apple is expensive and smart.

And the press and the analysts are not too smart either. The former looks for the hook, the latter only looks for the money.

And what Apple featured yesterday was software.

Huh?

A baby boomer covets a car.

A teen only needs transportation.

A baby boomer needs to own.

A teen only needs access.

And there you have today’s society, a huge schism wherein the baby boomer and Gen-X controlled media says one thing, and the younger generation ignores them and does another.

In other words, are we smart enough to subjugate hardware to software?

If you read analysis of yesterday’s Worldwide Developers presentation, what you will learn is that Apple did not introduce a new device. As if the iPhone 5s wasn’t good enough, as if people were complaining their Macs and iPads were too slow. Have we reached the end of hardware breakthroughs?

What made Apple the company it is today is hardware.

First the iMac.

Then the iPod.

Then the iPhone and iPad.

Items so cool you had to buy them, but only learned after the fact their possibilities.

Yesterday, Apple stoked the fire of said possibilities, but you don’t need new hardware to take advantage, unless you’re not part of the Apple ecosystem to begin with.

Let’s start with hand-sets, since they’re what drives revenue today, they’re what people all over the world are using to compute.

It’s an Android world, because Apple is too expensive.

So, if you’ve got an Android device everything said at WWDC was meaningless to you, other than the fact that many of you are utilizing a four year old operating system whereas 87% of iOS users are on the latest iteration.

And therefore, you don’t have functionality.

But you don’t care!

How do you make people care?

This is Tim Cook’s challenge, this is where he’s failed so far. He keeps telling us how great Apple is, but he doesn’t know how to convince the people who are not paying attention, the cheap ones, the dumb ones.

People became Apple lovers because of the seamless integration and functionality of the iPod. They had no idea of the functionality of the iPhone, they just wanted one. Who doesn’t have Apple gear who needs it now?

Hmm…

Let’s stay in America. Where the dumb believe the free hand-set is actually free, not realizing they’re paying for it every month on their bill. They won’t pay $200 for a new iPhone, never gonna do it. Makes no sense, but that’s how they live.

Kind of like the cheap PC people with the horrible screens and the slow processors. They don’t want to spend $500 more for a Mac…

IT’S TIM COOK’S JOB TO CONVINCE THEM TO DO SO!

And nothing in this exquisite presentation will accomplish that.

Cook has learned to stay in the background, it was Craig Federighi all the time, and Craig is quite good.

Steve Jobs is fading into the distance, new owners have taken over the company.

But they lack Steve’s overall vision. Steve created a breakthrough product known as the NeXT computer which stiffed, he realized he needed to be with Apple to succeed. Everybody at Apple today has only known success, they don’t know what failure looks like, they haven’t been wizened, they’re like the scions of the rich who blow their inheritance.

In other words, there’s no guiding light.

Could Jimmy Iovine be this?

Possibly. Because Jimmy knows it’s about excitement, about getting people to buy in. You’ve got to have something to sell, a record, some headphones, because software is a hard sell, especially when everybody else’s device is cheaper, no matter how inferior.

You’ll read b.s. how yesterday’s presentation was a shot at Google. That’s not true, but the point is it certainly wasn’t an enticement to the public, which keeps these companies alive. It’d be like a record company talking about better recording techniques and better distribution, WHERE’S THE MUSIC?

At some point in the future, everyone will realize it’s about software, not hardware. And at that point breakthrough software will be enough for a company to triumph, hell, what else are Facebook and Twitter but software?

But as good as Apple’s health and home software is, it’s not enough to titillate customers, not enough for them to pony up the extra $200 for an iPhone, the extra $500 for a Mac.

They need someone who can bridge that gap.

They need someone who knows that gap exists…

You can’t, because everybody believes they’re right.

I used to answer my e-mail, until I realized that it had little to do with me, other than to tear me down and make me feel inadequate. And if you don’t think I’m nervous before I hit send, that I don’t do my best to make sure I don’t commit any faux pas, write down any inaccuracies, you don’t know me in real life. In other words, the Confidence Fairy did not fill up my tank and make me invulnerable to feedback.

And I do make mistakes. And I wince when e-mail comes in denoting that.

But most of the e-mail I get is to demonstrate that the writer is superior to me. They write in telling me about stuff that is contained in the missive, if only they read that far. They tell me I made mistakes that I didn’t. They inform me I left out their favorite, and I’m an ignorant slut, just like Jane.

But god forbid you respond, because never ever do the writers admit they’re wrong.

I’m admitting I’m wrong all day long, I live in fear of it. But not these people.

What is wrong with people?

What I like most is those asking for information, as if Google were never invented. Ever think of searching first?

Or those who want me to answer their questions, as if I’m a free college professor and my only goal is to make them rich and famous.

And that’s an e-mail I get all the time, people who want to get together or hop on the phone to inform me of their product that’s going to change the world. And if you respond that there’s nothing in it for you, me in this case, that they’re getting paid and I’m not, they never shy away, they double down! They’re doing me a favor, hipping me to their incredible offering that’s going to change the world. Don’t I want to hear their music, don’t I want my life to be better?

No.

I mean yes, but never ever have I gotten one of these e-mails from somebody looking to waste my time has it ever panned out. Not only do I not benefit, the product never breaks through.

So I’m sitting here wondering how these people get through life. Steeped in their ignorance, with a hair trigger, needing to be right when so often they’re wrong.

Every day people e-mail me incorrect facts. Multiple times.

You’d think if I write back the album is on Spotify, or that Obama is the President, or Jimmy Page was in Led Zeppelin, they’d apologize for wasting my time, never mind admit they’re incorrect.

But when I do, no matter how soft my tone, they get defensive, tell me I know nothing and either defend their initial inaccuracy or explain why I still don’t get it.

Which is why you don’t get a response from me. Because such a wide swath of the public is crazy, even though you’re not.

And I point this out because craziness infiltrates so much of our society. Blowhards convinced they’re right when they’re wrong. Especially politicians, spewing inaccuracies and not admitting their mistakes. It’s like the whole world is full of bullies who just believe if they rant frequently and loud enough, they’ll win.

As for me, if you think this is the pot calling the kettle black, let me state once again that you opted in, and you can easily opt out, happens all the time. And if you think I’m gonna be lonesome when you go… Sure, I don’t like losing subscribers, but they make it like I depend upon them, that without them I’m lost.

There’s this inane concept in America that the customer is always right.

Yup, the customer who returns their iPod to Costco after using it for 11 months, that’s why they had to change their exchange policy.

So the small group ruins it for the big group, isn’t that how it always is?

Your move.

ALBUMS

Coldplay sells an anemic 384,000 copies and in a few weeks it’ll be over, like it never came out, even those who bought it will be done with it. Just like the Black Keys, who debuted at number one with 164,000 and then sold only 54,000 in week two. And they think they’re winning because they’re not on Spotify. No, they’re losing, because no one’s listening to their music.

The album was killed by the CD, wherein the compilation was too long, full of dreck and without a second side. The CD was unfathomable. And you could program your player to play just the tracks you wanted to hear.

The album was disrupted long ago. It’s only the jerks who make the music and those who sell it and the few consumers with loud voices who still care. The rest of the public is all about the single. And they’ll play more of your singles if you make good ones.

As for sitting at home playing the one album you bought over and over until you knew every lick… Yeah, you knew all the commercials when there were only three channels and you had no clicker, when there was no DVR.

RECORD STORES

Limited inventory and ignorant or smug clerks. As for scanning the new releases, online it’s easier. And there’s full catalog, which there never was in most stores. Tower wasn’t in Podunk, USA, but everybody writing about the demise of record stores seems to think the public resided only in NYC, Chicago or L.A.

PIRACY

If you’re stealing today, you’ve got too much time on your hands.  You’re stealing and everything’s free on Spotify and YouTube?

AOL

A moribund service with horrific e-mail. Switch your address not because of the disdain you’re receiving, but because your e-mail is coming so late, if it makes it through AOL’s spam filters at all.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

She features a site with good linkbait, but now BuzzFeed does it better. Why do we have to listen to Arianna when we don’t have to listen to Kim Kardashian? Neither of them are purveying any substance.

TV SINGING SHOWS

Check the ratings, they’re history. Furthermore, most of their winners never made it. So if you’re sitting at home bitching about TV singing shows it’s best you looked into the mirror, because you’re the problem.

SECONDARY MARKET

What kind of crazy world do we live in where StubHub paves the way and is now the good guy? Yup, StubHub’s fees are all in and even Ticketmaster features secondary market listings. Blame the acts, who are incredibly greedy.

BONO

Let’s see, he’s a partner in Elevation, an investment firm. And he just got on the board of Fender… But he hasn’t cut a hit record in eons.

THE POWER OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

You can reach your friends, good luck reaching anybody else.

SUMNER REDSTONE

Actually, people have already stopped talking about him. Nobody lives forever and you can’t take it with you, remember that.

BLACKBERRY

Toast. If you’re talking BlackBerry, you’re still talking Palm. RIM is history, don’t waste your breath.

STEVE JOBS

He died. And his greatest hits will not live forever, he was not a musician, but a businessman. No one will be using an iPod ten years from now, hell, almost nobody’s using one now.

BEATS

Lousy headphones and an almost meaningless streaming service. You’d think Apple had bought Google for all the ink this deal has gotten.

FOX NEWS

The audience is so old they can barely hear, never mind make a difference. If you’re worried about Fox News, you’re concerned with the audience for Bobby Vee and Johnny Mathis. Ignore them, just like the online bullies.

COMMENTS

No one reads them, they’re a way for the commenters to feel good about themselves.

PARIS HILTON

Oops, we already did!

PEREZ HILTON

Actually, we did! He’s nice, so what. That’s like asking the news to be feel good only. Unless you’re gonna take the piss out of people, we don’t care.

YAHOO

Some may be so dumb as to still go there, lemmings akin to those going to the mall in “Dawn of the Dead,” but really there’s no content that’s not done better elsewhere. Furthermore, they screwed up the one hook they had, which was mail. David Pogue and Katie Couric have been marginalized there, just like Marissa Mayer. The most talented captain can’t save a ship with a hole in it.

STUDIO HEADS

Oops, we did already too. Used to be everybody in Los Angeles knew the heads of all the major studios, even gardeners, now no one knows these faceless bean counters making lowest common denominator crap to play around the world.

THE LONG TAIL

Sure you can post it online, but that does not mean you’ll gain an audience.

SMART WATCHES

If they were so damn good and necessary, Samsung’s would have been a hit. Do I really need to get my e-mail on my wrist? Hell, I can barely see it on my smartphone!

FLIP PHONES

Some people still use cassette players…

VINYL COMEBACK

What next, crank telephones? You might want to live in the past, but the truth is many of those buying these records don’t even play them. If you’re trumpeting vinyl, which does sound good, it just illustrates you’re a Luddite who doesn’t want to enter the future. Have fun spinning your records, but most people don’t want to. Remember when the aforementioned cassette overtook vinyl in sales, that crappy-sounding, high speed duplicated item, which the mass market craved because of its portability? Played any records in your car recently? On a hike?

STREAMING/OWNERSHIP

Streaming is just like ownership, assuming you pay the monthly nut. In other words, playlists live on your hand-set, you need no signal/data connection to listen. But the loudest anti-streaming mouths keep complaining about bandwidth costs and the inability to listen in the middle of nowhere. That just demonstrates their ignorance. It’s always the same, he who speaks loudest is the dumbest.

AMAZON/HACHETTE

Notice that neither side will reveal exactly what the terms they’re arguing about are. Amazon wants to change the split on e-books, since publishers incur fewer costs. The question is where is the line of demarcation, which neither of them will even talk about. So if you’re knee-jerkingly taking Hachette’s side, I’m ignoring everything you have to say in the future, because that just illustrates you’re uninformed.

MAIN STREET BUSINESSES

Americans like deals, they’re cheap, they don’t like to pay. The evil edifice is not Wal-Mart, but the American public.

GM

If you’re buying an American car, you’re an idiot. The initial price may be less, but if you think a Chevrolet lasts longer than a Toyota, you’ve never driven a Toyota, you don’t know anybody who has one.

THE OLD COUNTRY MUSIC

The truth is today’s country music is the sound of America, it’s rock. Rap has a stronghold, but rock, which is what modern country music is, still rules. Just check out the jukebox, or the public address system. But those in charge of the mainstream media don’t want to admit this, they’d rather champion edgy stuff.

RECORD REVIEWS

No one reads them and no one trusts them. We’re all about trusted filters, which are usually friends, only occasionally writers. We don’t have time to waste, and we want to go where everybody else is. Decry the mainstream all you want, but when everybody’s in their silo, when everybody’s alienated, they feel connected and part of life when they listen to the same music as everybody else. So, if you champion something no one else is listening to, your efforts will fall on deaf ears.

CURATION

Tell us what to listen to. Briefly and succinctly. Not via algorithm, but via human recommendation. So far, no one’s doing this.

PANDORA

The service sucks. And the economics are so bad, it will be purchased by a much larger company. If this is the future, I don’t want any part of it. If you like Pandora, you’re not really a music fan, and you’re probably still watching the commercials without a clicker.

SONY

Just call it the PlayStation company, the rest is crap.

ZYNGA

A one or two hit wonder. No different from PSY. We now know in the modern world you can be gigantic for a minute and forgotten the next. Played Words With Friends recently?

TEA PARTY

White people stuck in a past they want to preserve.

TICKET PRICES

People are willing to pay, that’s why they’re so expensive.

E-BOOKS

It’s just a matter of time until physical books, other than picture books/coffee table books, die. Sure, there will always be collectors, but they’re an insignificant niche. Portability, price… And don’t tell me about the smell, because if you do, buy some shellac records. Too many old people speak too loudly. The written word will survive, it’s bigger than it’s been in years, because people read on screens. What next, having web pages printed out?

WE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT…

Latinos. They’re a growing part of a population that will soon no longer be predominantly white. Tackle immigration.

Good new music. Stuff that many will flock to. If you’re into the niches, good luck to you, most people are not.

Television. We already are, it’s where story lives, and life is all about story, never forget it.

Income inequality. The rich don’t need a hundred cars and the economy is driven by consumer spending. In other words, if you’re broke and a Republican, you’re an idiot.

Pre-sales. That’s why you can’t get a good ticket, not Ticketmaster.

Health care. One day you’re gonna be old and your body will break down. It happens to everybody. And you can get cancer much younger, or get into an accident. If you don’t have health insurance, you’re one step away from bankruptcy.

Mobile hand-sets. Because that’s already how they communicate in the third world. The future is the smartphone. To not only connect, but to buy. If you’re still on a flip phone I hope you’re planning to continue to read physical books and listen to vinyl records.

Privacy. Because once we give it up, we can never get it back.

Music in schools. We get the music we deserve, we’re not willing to invest in the arts, what makes us believe we’re going to end up with ground-breaking music?

Ideas. Once it was what someone stood for, now it’s just about how people look. We tried electing someone based on fame in California… There’s not a soul alive who doesn’t believe the state is run better by Jerry Brown than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Climate change. Because our world is based on science. God did not invent the iPhone.

Infrastructure. We could have put people to work rebuilding our roads and bridges when money was cheap, instead we’re gonna wait until a few more accidents/disasters happen before we reinvest.

Public transportation/traffic. Gridlock is not only in Los Angeles. What’s end game here, backing up on the freeway as Jerry Seinfeld joked?

Drug abuse. Drugs are not cool, how come they’re portrayed as such?

Incarceration. It’s become a business as opposed to a place where people pay penance and get rehabilitated.

The Supreme Court. Which whipsaws this land more than Donald Sterling ever can.

The Government. Where it takes money to run and elected officials are beholden to those who give it to them. This is a system?

The Constitution/The Bible. There is no God and the founding fathers were not deities. Everybody who believes in the infallibility of both must turn off their smartphones and adopt babies. Ain’t that America, where you tell other people how to live their lives as opposed to being compassionate. Start with compassion, it opens many more doors.