Astromono

I bought something on eBay that requested payment via this website - after I paid (of course) I got the following fraud-prevention notice from eBay:

Our records show that you were a bidder or buyer of one or more of this seller's items. We recently removed this seller's active listings and suspended the seller's trading privileges. Due to privacy concerns we cannot share further details about this seller.

If the seller asks you to complete this transaction outside of eBay, we strongly recommend that you do not proceed with the transaction. Transactions for items listed on eBay but then completed off of the eBay platform are not covered by buyer protection programs offered by eBay and can be highly indicative of fraud. For more information on Offers to Buy or Sell Outside of eBay, copy and past the following Help Page link into your browser: pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html [pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html] .

Fun little stop-motion Robot-Chicken-style video for this great song

"Industry insiders are just as confused by the good news as they are by the bad. Here are the kinds of questions they've been asking themselves: Why doesn't Eminem break out on the order of the Beatles and sell 10 million copies of every release? Why can't Britney, Whitney, Madonna and Mariah make hits like they used to? Why can't the Strokes break through to the mainstream, stymied at 500,000 units shifted? Conversely, they wonder how a one-off Sub Pop release like the Postal Service's Give Up - a mash-up of the niche genres of bedroom electronica and emo-punk - has sold well over 250,000 copies. How could Matador sell a half-million copies of the debut by an unheralded New York band like Interpol? Why are bands like Modest Mouse, the Shins, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Wilco selling hundreds of thousands of records, where a few years ago they would have - optimistically - sold 50 thousand?"

"A self-styled "suicide bomber" musician who sings in Arabic and performs in a full-length burqa is planning a "terror concert" in Britain.

The Russian teenage singer, known only as n.A.T.o, performs with her face covered by a veil in front of screens broadcasting images from al-Jazeera, the Arab television station, interspersed with flashing words such as "al-Qaeda", "Iraq" and "Nasdaq".

Her manager, Ivan Shapovalov, who last year launched the controversial lesbian pop duo t.A.T.u, plans to give a concert in Britain in November after successfully organising a similar event in Moscow on September 11."

Damn, Shapovalov rules. His russkie manu-pop is always so damn surreal, like the music groups in Cyberpunk novels come to life.

"George: "And I'm good at banging. My peg's hard isn't it Zippy?"
Zippy: "Well of course it is, Your peg wouldn't go in if it was soft."
Geoffrey: "Let's get back to Bungle's twanger."

Wow. Gotta love those counter-culture TV kids shows...

"A Swede released from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay last week said he had been tortured by exposure to freezing cold, noise and bright lights and chained during his 2 1/2-year imprisonment"

So, I'm coming to this one 2 months late, but it's a very enlightening story - not just 'cause of the torture - this guy was held for two years with no charges, then released when a little pressure was put on the Bush administration.

blog with cover tunes from the retarded to the sublime