I am a Dinosaur... or Why I am finally accepting the reality of a digital world?

Anyone who knows me (what a stupid opening line), knows one thing for certain; I love music (and as you will soon realize, I love semicolons, sorry Kurt). I own over 700 hundred albums (that is a combination of vinyl, and cds), but it wasn't until today that I was ready to admit this fact.  I need to set this situation up before i begin.  One, I went to a high school where culture existed in cars and radio rap.  I was seen as a hippy, a fucking hippy.  Yeah I had shaggy long hair and wore bell bottoms and I listened to the dead (which i still do, the early dead, before they started getting pretentious and just wanted to "jam", were a fucking amazing band, and I dare you to defy that fact).  I am also a vegan, and obviously left leaning, but in no real sense of the terms am I a hippy.  To be completely honest, I hate, and always have (even while I ACCEPTED the term) hated hippies.  My favorite episode of South Park, without a doubt is the episode where Cartman tries to eradicate the hippy population from south park, and against all odds after the stoned and boring hippies start a jamfest in south park, he is able to get them to leave by blaring "Raining Blood" by Slayer, of the greatest speed metal album ever "Reign in Blood".

Anyway, my point is this, I didn't exactly fit into my school that I was attending, and i found the best outlet that I could find, and that was music.   I started collecting cds, endlessly, and it has resulted in the collection that I have today.  I have always been an advocate of the independently run record store, and primarily the ones that sell vinyl (because I am a pretentious asshole, but lets be honest, things that were made for vinyl sound better, is pure, did I say that I was a pretentious asshole yet).  Anyway,  i started a massive collection, and to be honest i prefer to own the albums then have digital copies because i like the liner notes and being able to put in a cd, or throw on a record, there is something more real about that action.  But if you were to ask me what I am listening to, and if you were to look at my itunes, you would notice that i have nearly 1300 albums listed, and the majority of stuff that I listen to comes from the selection of things that I personally do not own.  So what does that mean?

For one it means that I am poor, but to be honest, it means this, the digital world has taken over.  I once thought it was stealing but then i realized, no, I support these bands in real ways, via merch and shows (thank you friend for pointing this out to me).  Record companies are ruining the art of music (and yes I know I am not saying anything new), but my point is this.  I love having a hard copy of all my music, but record companies are FUCKING over everyone, the artist and the audience.  They view us as consumers.  I am not a FUCKING CONSUMER.  I am an appreciator of an art form which I deem to be beautiful.  I wish I could buy every album that I love but at 16, lets be honest with tax 20, a pop, even at target, I cannot afford that.  And the amount of money that is going to the artists is so miniscule that it is insulting.  

So here is what I have to say, buy albums, don't buy albums, steal them who gives a filing fuck.  BUT GO TO FUCKING SHOWS, BUY MERCH, SUPPORT THE ARTIST, AND FUCK THE RECORD COMPANIES.  DO NOT GET LOST IN THE IDEA OF THE CD WORLD BECAUSE THAT HAS BEEN COMPLETELY RAPED BY THE CONSUMER SOCIETY.

I LOVE MUSIC

I love music, and I hate the fact that I was so blinded by the consumer based record company system that has ruled for so long.  I have missed out on two years of good music because i have been two poor to buy anything.  Fuck that shit.  Download that shit, burn it from a friend, but pass it onto a friend, and then go to a show and support them.  Don't be a dinosaur like me.  Just think about this:

Dinosaur decay, and over time become fossil fuel.

Fossil Fuel works for awhile and it powers beautiful vehicles like my dream car the 1963 Chevorlet Impala.

Fossil Fuels are controlled by money hungry dictatorship.

Money hungry "demockracies" go to war with money hungry dictatorships over these fossil fuels.

Yet, any intelligent person, understands that fossil fuels are in the past, and there are new things that new to be used to sustain our fuel hungry mentality.

E85 is bullshit, and hybrids are band-aids.

We need a new mode of energy.

Dinosaurs are the way of the past.

So don't be like me

I would love to have a 1963 Impala, yet I know it is a dinosaur sucking on the blood of even older dinosaurs.  The world of mass media is the same.  Cds are the dinosaur.  Yeah the idea of of cd is beautiful, but at what cost?  The loss of music, the loss of the most beautiful artform we know.  Don't be a dinosaur.