Pirating Music

Uhh, sorry . . . I thought for a second I was in 2002.

Did I pirate music? Hell yeah! I pirated everything that ever reached my iPod. When I had an iPod. Well, maybe not everything. I ripped as many CDs from my collection as I could stand before I became so nauseated at having to put Elton John's Greatest Hits (published in 1981) back in my music collection yet again. I mean, I love Elton John, but just how many times can you listen to Rocket Man until it just becomes a persistent earworm?

Hey, let me tell you something you might not be able to grasp: You can get bored of a music library of 50,000 songs. Yes, 50,000 songs can quickly become boring. Think about a library of 50,000 movies. Then think about every time you went to what used to be video rental stores (for the younger among you, these were places where you would actually go and RENT a physical representation of a movie, either on something called VHS or something called a DVD). You'd be confronted with rows upon rows upon racks upon racks upon shelves upon shelves of MOVIES YOU DIDN'T WANT TO WATCH.

Why anyone actually went to these places is still a mystery, but now, in the age of the 500 channels You Never Watch Because They're All Playing Dog The Bounty Housewives Of Long Island Whispering Hoarder Interventions CSI, I can kind of see where they might have come in useful: to steal money from you that you otherwise would have spent buying things called CDs.

So fuck, yeah, I was an ENTHUSIASTIC pirater of music back in 2002 or so. The funny thing was, though, all the Metallicas and Madonnas who got mad at us pirates . . . well, I NEVER EVER pirated their music. I only actually pirated music worth listening to. And I don't think Beethoven's Estate is going to get its knickers in a twist over the 400 millionth pirated downloading of the Jupiter Symphony.

My point today, though, is please, RIAA or Sony, PLEASE GO AHEAD and put up ALL YOUR CREATIONS FOR FREE on some website somewhere so that I can pirate it legally.

Because you know what? I don't want to any more. I don't want to pirate your new movies and I don't want to pirate your new music. In fact, if you dressed it in a pink ribbon and had it all, the WHOLE FUCKING CATALOG, delivered to me this afternoon in 14 floor-to-ceiling 18-wheelers filled with CDs, DVDs, Ray-Bans (sorry, BluRays), 3d, Director's Cut, Special Feature Extended Edition with Commentary from Our Lord Jesus Christ Saviour, well, I'd just have to tell you to TURN RIGHT ROUND AND HAUL IT ALL AWAY.

All of it, every single plastic atom of it, directly to the nearest landfill. Because out of the 786,098-odd movies and the 43,976,766, 812 music albums that you have produced since roughly November, 1993 are all completely unwatchable and unlistenable except to perhaps, dogs, who can hear beautiful tonalities we humans could never hope to hear, and bees who can see in wavelengths that reveal actual plots, dramas and gripping entertainment that to human eyes are completely absent from any movie you have made since then.

See, I don't WANT to pirate your garbage, I don't even want it for a paltry $1.99 from iTunes, you couldn't PAY ME ANY SUM IMAGINABLE to listen to the endless fountain of dreck that you produce, faithfully, day in, day out, or watch the mindless, puerile, inane drivel that emanates from your industrial backsides like Lucifer's flatus after having been scraped from the bottom of the Abyssal Plain at which depth not a single photon of light ever reaches.

You see, YOU HAVE RID THE WORLD of pirates such as me; through no actions of your own except doing what you do worst, we are a dying, lost species who will NEVER RISE AGAIN.

You have made the Pirate, that upstanding lover of all things that were good and listenable and watchable, EXTINCT. Now, may I rest in peace?