Sunday, October 24, 2004

Parental Advisory

Hey all yall in netland. I thought I'd start a blog because 1) Some of my friends have them and it looks fun. 2) It has been a long, long time since I've had a web page and I wanted that small feeling of satisfaction you get from having a tiny stake of claim out there in ether-space. And 3) I needed an outlet for some of my occasional rants.
First up: Censorship
I went to a Circuit City the other day with LJ to get a gift card for her brother-in-law. We decided to pick up a CD while we were there. While she was looking for it I went to check out the newest Rob Zombie album. As I looked through them I noticed that the covers to the CD’s that I had at home looked different compared to the ones there on the shelf. That’s when I realized that these were censored versions of the albums. When I asked one of the sales people they said that some were censored and some weren’t, which begs the question how can you tell? So I asked the Manager. He said all the albums were censored unless they didn’t need to be.
Ok, I realize most of you are probably rolling your eyes and think “Duh genius”, but let me get to my point. We ended up walking out of the store and not purchasing the totally safe Best of Queen album because we didn’t want to support a store that carried censored media. Why, might you ask? Because of two reasons; one I didn’t want to get all the way home listen to the album and find out that one word on one track of the album had been deleted. Then I would have to bring it all the way back and not be able to exchange it because I had opened it *Catch 22. And two, why should I support censorship.
Ask yourself this Circuit City; Wal-mart, and other stores that choose to carry censored music also carry movies, books, and video games. Why when I pick up an R rated movie are some of the scenes not cut out like on TV or the sexual parts of a romance novel edited for content or video games…video games…have any of you played D.O.A. ?
Why is it all right for them to sell these media types as is but censor music? Even if you think it is all right is it fair that the ones who don’t have to guess about whether or not or album may be chopped up?
Ok a while back some concerned citizens got together and forced the music industry to plaster all the albums that had questionable lyrics with a label familiar to us all “Parental Advisory”. Since these concerned citizens did this music industry has cow towed and decided that instead of having integrity they would do what they do best…sell out. So now we have bastardized music available to anyone stupid enough to love Eminem but not really like those nasty lyrics (AKA: idiots). “So, you got all sorts of complaints, but no solution Mark. C’mon”. I got your solution right here mutha fuckas. If the music industry can defile the original music with a label then maybe they should with the dissected versions as well. They could put a little pussy cat symbol at the bottom so that all the mothers out there can know that that album is safe and all of us music lovers can know who that album is really for. I hope I don’t have to spell that out for you people. Maybe now I’ll go out and buy a Rob Zombie album.

3 comments:

Debs - debslosingit.com said...

Sucks, doesn't it? Back in the days of "safe" free downloading, it was getting hard to find non-edited versions of albums even then.

Singularity said...

I love censorship you F#@$ing Arian nazi.

Singularity said...

Just kidding Mark, nice start at a site, keep up the good work.