Hunger Games - *B.A.N.A.S.

On the unofficial anti-holiday known as Tax Day, my wife and I anti-celebrated by taking in the 2012 blockbuster film "Hunger games"—along with one of my oldest friends and music associates (and his wife). At that time, HG was about to reach its fourth consecutive weekend at number one. At a time pre-dating current super widespread international and domestic piracy threats, four weeks would equal maybe ten weeks. Just a little less recently to our movie date, I was quasi reticent to even spend the money on that particular movie because of the subject matter—namely the ostensibly hackneyed premise where humans are being hunted by privileged humans for the sport enjoyed by a ruling sect. There is a popular expression: "I've seen that movie". Based on its trailer, I felt this way about the much ballyhooed "HG". The first of this story of the genre I can remember is "The Most Dangerous Game", bonus-beloved by me for (my interpreting) its use of "Game" as double entendre. Much later last century, along came Da pre-governating Tohminator, along with Hogan's Heroic Feud-meister (the late Richard Dawson); they begat "Running Man"—that incidentally begat an annoying dance move that shows up at times on Saturday Night Live when former Nicklodian'ian Keenan Thompson asks the musical question, "Whazzup with That". This rendition was great. Contrary to my misgivings and to my pleasant surprise, what I saw instead was a new work that did use an overused premise but created something new. Therein is today's object lesson brought to us by Tinseltown.

Record/Water Sales

2011 was a record-breaking year for water sold in the States. With 9.1 billion gallons of bottled water sold, bottled water sales broke the previous 2007 record of 8.8 billion gallons sold in the U.S. of A.

[Source: Blue Living Ideas]

When I was in my teens, there are two things in particular that were facts of that time in life that now are no longer so: few people bought their water in bottles and most people bought their music in packages. Today, the reverse is true. Music flows over the Internet as free and freely as once did water. A fact of commerce is that “If you want something good, you have to pay for it"…otherwise you're stealing. It's not only the product or service, but it is the non-replenishable time given to provide tools, materials, and creativity to provide the former.