Month: May 2023

And I’m afraid I told a lie

GOP’s Chuck Grassley admits his ‘criminal scheme’ allegations against Joe Biden may be false

Two days after hurling incendiary allegations at President Joe Biden, Sen. Chuck Grassley admitted his assertion may have been false.
The Iowa Republican on Wednesday issued a joint statement with Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) alleging Biden was involved in a “criminal scheme” when he served as vice president that involved a foreign national. The two Republican lawmakers called on the Justice Department to release a 2020 document them claim alleges Biden’s involvement in the scheme.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said in a statement.
“The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”
But Grassley was singing a different tune on Friday, admitting to Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren that he no evidence to back his claim, Newsweek reports.
“It is a very serious allegation. I wish I could say that I knew it was true or untrue,” the 89-year-old lawmaker told Van Susteren.
According to the report, Grassley’s comments echoed a similar statement he made Thursday to Fox News’ Chad Pergram that he couldn’t confirm “whether or not it’s really criminal activity.”

I kind of feel like that’s the sort of detail you should check BEFORE making a claim that in any normal country would get you sued into non-existence for defamation. Goddamn. American politics is full of stupidity at the best of times, but this is kind of magnificent… I mean, Chuck’s only been in politics since the late 50s, you’d think he might have learned something in that time? Maybe Sleepy Joe’s not the one who’s too old for his job…

Small mercies?

Ed Sheeran Threatens to Quit Music if Found Guilty in Copyright Infringement Case

Ed Sheeran is in the midst of trial for a lawsuit that claims his song “Thinking Out Loud” rips off the Marvin Gaye classic “Let’s Get It On.” His attorneys have spent the past few months unsuccessfully trying to get the case dismissed, but now, he’s raising the stakes by threatening to quit music entirely if he’s found guilty of copyright infringement.
Per New York Post, when Sheeran’s attorney asked what he’d do if the plaintiffs won the case, he responded: “If that happens, I’m done. I’m stopping… I find it really insulting to work my whole life as a singer-songwriter and diminish it.”
Sheeran has vehemently insisted that any similarities between his 2014 hit and Gaye’s 1973 song are purely coincidental, and that those similarities were too common to constitute copyright infringement. To drive his point home, he reportedly “belted out various mashups of Van Morrison songs for the courtroom on Monday” during his testimony, which probably did not help him as much as he thought it might.

I haven’t paid any attention to this case, which has been dragging on for some years now, largely because, you know, it’s Ed Sheeran; he seems to be a perfectly delightful person but his music holds no real interest for me… but when I saw him issuing this threat to quit, I thought I should perhaps see what the fuss is about. Consequently, I turned to Rick Beato:

And oh dear. Once Rick transposes the Gaye song down a half-step so that both songs are now the same key, you find it’s basically the same chord progression, same tempo and overall groove, and when he alternates the two songs one bar at a time… yikes. Not looking good for Ed, except that the latter goes to different places when it leaves that first part of the verse and melodically the two songs are completely different. I suppose the question then becomes can you prove it was deliberate (which I don’t think it was) and is it enough to merit this absurd $100m that the company managing Gaye’s co-writer’s assets (cos it’s not even Marvin’s estate this time) are asking for (which it surely isn’t)… I don’t know. Like I said, it doesn’t look great, but at the same time it’s also not the whole song; Ed’s potential problem is that this isn’t his first go-round with the copyright infringement thing, and though he did win the second one he settled on the first one, and that always looks like an admission of guilt (whether or not you are in fact guilty). Be interesting to see if he lives up to that threat if the case goes against him…

Parenthetically, something similar happened with my band, the Inflatable Voodoo Dolls… we had a song which I’d made, though calling it a “song” is dignifying it unnecessarily; it was called “I Believe Robert Smith is My Saviour” and it was basically a string of samples against a beat I’d come up with and the only melodic aspect of it was actually the cymbals which I’d pitched… anyway, it took years for us to solve the problem of actually putting a proper melody to it, until Joe (partner in crime, now housemate and spider wrangler) had the brilliant idea of just starting the fucking thing from scratch. The result was great but the little pattern of notes he’d come up with as the basis of the new track was almost the same as that of The Presets’ “Are You the One”… not that I expected legal issues or anything, but I suggested pitching it down and changing it slightly. Weird how I wasn’t worried about the battery of uncleared samples we had all over the album otherwise… but I don’t think there was ever much danger of us even being noticed, let alone sued over anything, anyway, given we’ve probably sold literally about a millionth of what Ed Sheeran has. There’s no money for Bob Larson to make from us…

EDIT: And he won. Looks like the Cradle of Filth collaboration will be happening after all!

Long live Mrs Ethel Shroake

The more I read about the upcoming coronation, the more I’m reminded of this old Nemesis the Warlock image:

After his disappearance and presumed death, the spirit of Torquemada reappears in Termight where “there was much rejoicing”, and at bottom left we see some of Torquemada’s Terminators making sure there’s rejoicing. It feels from this admitted distance that this is what Saturday’s festivities are going to be like, especially with this news from the Home Office:

Continue reading “Long live Mrs Ethel Shroake”

Mapping the Interior

FINALLY, book #3 for 2023, Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones… the goal of reading 50 books this year seems as far away as ever. Anyway, one of the things currently happening in BookTube circles is a thing called “Horror May-hem”, which is a month devoted primarily to shorter horror (books 250pp and under approximately), so this fit the bill brilliantly (weighs in at 112pp in print form, according to Amazon, though obviously I got it for Kindle). I discovered it via Dave at Book Blather, who has it as one of his titles for the event; it sounded intriguing in his description so I picked it up, and yeah, I think I was duly rewarded.

Basically it’s about a young boy of Native American ancestry who sees his father come home late one night, which is obviously not unusual apart from the fact that Dad has been dead for some years by this point. This will prove to be a somewhat less happy reunion than Junior initially thinks. Mapping is well-proportioned as a novella, doesn’t waste time or words unduly, and I managed to read it in only about an hour and a half. The real horror of the story, though, is perhaps less the ghost (or whatever the manifestation is) than it is the way the past doesn’t just linger on without ever really leaving us, it carries on and repeats (as the slightly obscure conclusion perhaps indicates).

And one thing I found very striking is how the Native narrator refers to himself and his people as “Indians”, which… well, Jones himself is Native, so the term is obviously less questionable than a white author doing it, but it was just kind of striking to see a Native character use the word. Cos I was under the impression that “Indians” was kind of verba non grata now in the way that “Eskimo” is, although having done a quick squiz at Wikipedia that appears to be a more vexed issue than I realised before now… Anyway, splendid little book, and I’ve now acquired a couple more of Jones’ books as recommended by Alessandro Manzetti, whose 150 Exquisite Horror Books I’ve been using as a bit of a guide to the more recent stuff…