oprah will haunt me until i die

chillin' in austin a bit. had so much fun that i was exhausted every day hanging out ewith friends and family. de bebe had the lovely idea of staying an extra day with my folks and not telling anyone. sorry guys, i'm just so tired i need a day to relax and not stay out until 3am.
so anyway, i had some time in between my PITS workshop and my mother's day dinner the other day so i went to best buy. i had been at tower records earlier in the same day and saw what my friend and i call several ill advised purchases i could make. an ill-advised purchase is when we spend money that we need for food or rent on music because we can't help ourselves. i try to avoid music stores when money is tight because i will walk out with something and feel guilty for it.
yet another tangent...
sorry. so, i'm at best buy which is turning into cross-over marketing hell with "best buy" radio playing in the air offering a discount on the music their playing. music that a record company has payed them off to put on their "radio network." sickening yet clever. more crossover hit me when i went to pay for goods and they asked me if i wanted a free six month subscription to entertainment weekly. i said no and felt annoyed. but the worst of all of the cross over schemes that made me sigh and laugh to myself was in the books section. the books best buy sells are broken down into the normal sections; sci-fi, romance, comedy, etc. but the one that made my blood curdle was the "as seen on oprah" section. what a scary world we live in where oprah is determining what the country's lost and bored women are reading.
the more this culture gets guided by a smaller number of entities, the more lost we are going to be as a people. and the more vulnerable we are to eventually being led around by one guy. huge corporations that control several media outlets are the most dangerous contagens in our society. maybe even more dangerous than terrorism is the concept that we ourselves consume so much of what is common, that we eventually are left with no choices. our only option will be clear channel approved music, sony approved electronics, and oprah approved books.
can we please not let oprah choose what we're reading? or rather what oprah inc.'s executives are getting paid to tell her to endorse.

there's got to be some way to keep things diverse.

please check back soon for china stories, notes from the PITS workshop, and realizations i had during my austin homecoming show.

we hit the road tomorrow. talk to you later.

b