Yet another recording artist has gone to the dark side. Bruce Springsteen’s new album will be released as a Wal-mart exclusive.

Sure, there are pros. The process of releasing directly from musician to distributor, in some cases, enables the band to both reap a greater profit from the release and price the product at a more consumer-friendly price. You can buy an album for $12.

Big deal. My time and integrity are worth something, too.

I purely detest shopping at Wal-mart for a multitude of reasons. When Walmart moves into a community, they drop prices and hurt local business – when competition is gone, they raise prices again to the prevailing market rate. The least-price-product model means limited variety of low quality – lots of trinkets and trash. The company pays below-poverty-level wages and its employees are, in Washington, the single largest consumer of state Medicaid services. And on a personal level, the store is incredibly inconvenient, crowded, cluttered and dirty, with undertrained and overworked staff – shopping there is a fairly unpleasant experience.

Janiece said it best with her “E” avatar:

One does not simply walk into Walmart. There is evil there that does not sleep.

This trend of releasing directly and exclusively to Walmart is disturbing. These artists will NOT be getting my business. The first three pages of a Google search on “wal-mart exclusive music” indicates that they include:

• Bruce Springsteen
• AC/DC (ok, I caved there, but shouldn’t have)
• Eagles
• Garth Brooks
• Josh Groban
• Carrie Underwood
• Nickelback
• Shakira
• Taylor Swift
• Keith Urban

What this means for them is that their music cannot be downloaded. (This was part of AC/DC’s objective – they feel that single-song downloads hurt the album-as-art-form.) It can’t be sold by independent music stores. It can’t be easily purchased by those with no Wal-mart in their community, although Wal-mart does have an online, e-commerce interface like any other giant retailer.

Interestingly enough, there are reports of some independent music stores buying up albums by these artists at Walmart and reselling them at minimal markup, unopened, in their own store, just so they can offer their customers a complete artist’s oeuvre.

I can’t believe that anti-competitive, exclusive deals are, in the end, good for the consumer, no matter what the current price point looks like.

Flip of the cape to Jim for the original video in the series that led me to this.

We’re having a lazy morning on the couch watching Mythbusters, which is a show I watch only irregularly but love. One of their pithier taglines is, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

Where else would you hear the terms:

“He’s gonna die… but it’s gonna look great.”
“They’ve got themselves a rocket kind of thing.”
“Well, hopefully that’s our job, to strap rockets onto everything!”
“When in doubt, lubricate.”
“See, science is fun!”
“I think that was one of the most destructive things I’ve ever done. That was cool!”
“It’s not a myth. We’re just idiots.”
“Remember, don’t try this at home. We’re what you call ‘experts’.”

This morning they were:

• Pancaking a car between two semi-trucks.
• Testing the hygiene properties of vodka.
• Launching a person into the air on compressed-air bottle rockets.
• Smashing toes inside steel-toed boots.

They’re having way too much fun. I wonder if they’re taking applications for a logistics manager?

Have you played Spore? It is a single-player online metaverse video game. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.

It is very addictive, both creepy and cute, and you’ll be showing off your new children to family and friends before you know it.

Disclaimer: I’ve only messed with it once. I liked it, a lot, and thought that it might be pretty addictive. The husband plays with the free creature creator quite a bit, and shows me his new creations quite regularly.

Paul Newman died Friday of cancer at age 83. More than just one of my favorite actors, he was a person I admired greatly for his charity work and his attitude on celebrity.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of my favorite movies, one of those I’ll stop to watch if I’m flipping channels and happen to come across it. I never get tired of it, and of course Newman’s performance is a big reason why. His stream of consciousness chatter – played off of Robert Redford’s Sundance’s squinty-eyed frustration (mostly at the messes the characters got into due to Newman’s Butch’s hyperactive scheming) – is classic stuff. I’d also point to The Verdict and The Color of Money as favorites of mine from Newman’s career.

The amazing success of the “Newman’s Own” products and the charities they supported were an even better reason to admire the man. I never saw Newman tooting his own horn over the success of that work of service to his fellow man. It was always handled as matter of fact and coolly as the man seemed to be himself.

Newman was a well known hater of celebrity and the hoopla of Hollywood. In spite of that, I can’t think of a greater giant of a movie star than Newman. Anything he did as an actor felt special. Ten Academy Award nominations, with a win and two honorary Oscars give testament to the respect of industry. The legacy of his charity work should draw the admiration of all.