Nostalgia of the Mind

A return to the one good thing I ever liked

Josh Stroud — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:49:32 +0000

So I haven’t posted as much recently mostly just because we haven’t been writing much in Creative Writing. Or anything interesting anyways.

I wrote this piece as a narrative poem. A sort of return to a piece I wrote months ago (I woke at dawn to the bleating of a possessed goat). Same character. And the same (non)story.

I call it…

the sunrise

The sunrise
Was mango sherbet painted on dirty bleeding asphalt.
Dawg bleated at me from his half of my apartment.
His presence assaulted my nose with mustard gas and machine gun fire.
Somewhere in the distance the thricefucked gulls
Cannoned swear words
into the ocean breeze.
But the sky was actually beautiful.
In the way seeing a dead body tastefully arranged was beautiful.
Dawg walked to The Fridge and swallowed my breakfast.
I didn’t remember leaving the fridge open but I didn’t remember the
empty bottle covered in brown crinkled paper either.
I jackknifed myself off the floor in an attempt to murder everybody,
But I ended up on the couch,
sprawled like limp linguini,
With my feet towards the door.

My door was
The splintered woodgrain of solitude.
It opened only for me. And Dawg.
And closed only for me. And Dawg.
The smell of oil frolicked into my nostrils like the fucking Brady Bunch.
I had spilled it all over my clean tidy sprawl of a shithead apartment.
I tidied it up until it was spotless and I threw the goat out on the spot.
But wait it was only my imagination making me its plaything.
The nameless fuckup wonders over to the stove.
“One day I will be dead.”
Dead, and a light crispy brown from the rotisseries of hell.

If you work hard, you will succeed in life.
Those fuckers pulled a fast one on me with that one.
Dawg winked sleepily at me.
And outside the pastel sorbet of the sunrise
Over the ocean’s glassy surface
Had turned into a vortex of angry red and throbbing disappointment
Like a razorblade mirror
All alone.

Rhino in Limbo

Josh Stroud — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:47:46 +0000

As we go further through the year I hope to have a more steady stream of writing on this blog, but for now since we write fitfully I post in spurts.

This piece is actually a poem.

Rhino Still Life
The rhinoceros waits in a savannah planted
On its four feet into the ground.
Smooth soprano saxophone filters down from the heavens.

The receptionist in a starched shirt seems out of place.
Here amidst the wildlife of African glory days.
Elephant gun always beats nature’s triumphs.

The sun is trying to browbeat her into leaving.
But she glares down her pince-nez,
And calls out numbers into claustrophobic expanse.

Fourteenonetwentynine she blares into the silence.
The rhinoceros after a hundred thousand thousand
Years of waiting shuffles over to the gleaming
Sugary menace that is the elevator.

To go plunging into the ground or shooting into the sky the rhinoceros wonders for the first and last time.

Excuses: Excuses; Excuses

Josh Stroud — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:45:39 +0000

Another creative writing piece, this time: write a list of ten excuses. Perhaps I went a little overboard, but don’t blame me, blame my excitable adolescence.

1) REMOVED just in case colleges look at this.

2)      Look, okay, this is all a misunderstanding. I wasn’t trying to rob the old lady, I simply wanted to give her a squirt. The gun was a fake, you see? A water gun. It just looks like a piece… its not my fault she had a heart attack! She just doesn’t have a sense of humor.

3)      My biker gang ate my homework.

4) REMOVED just in case colleges look at this.

5)      Look, Mrs. Zimmerman, I don’t know what came over me. It was like, like Jesus Christ entered me? I was full of light and compassion for mankind. I saw the world differently, I just wanted to be— be better. And so this spirit, this beautiful spirit, it told me to light that goat on fire.

6)      Officer, please, there’s a perfectly good reason for that body in the back seat. Let me just get my wallet… He jams the car into drive and races off.

7)      Mom, I got home at 4am because, uh, my car broke down?

8)      It’s not you, it’s me. I just can’t date a nine-year-old child.

9)      Sometimes, you know, sometimes, I just get lonely.

10) REMOVED just in case colleges look at this.

A note on my creative writing

Josh Stroud — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:26:48 +0000

Such dark and malignant forms come storming out of me when I write. Sometimes I’m sardonic, and witty, but most of the time I fixate on loneliness or loss or those other cursed emotions.

Because really I’m a pretty funny guy. I think. Certainly I have a sense of humor, and can occasionally be witty if you leave me an opening the size of Mystery Alaska. I don’t know whether I’m creating a new person when I write or it’s just my cynicism sprung full-formed from the depths of my subconscious out to play with words. Either way, it’s rather strange. That my writing reflects my personality like warped melted twisted glass or that my writing style is as much a creation as the verbiage spewing out of my head like a leak. like that star trek episode where Kirk gets an evil twin (“The Enemy Within”) and just goes apeshit, or when my toilet started spewing like it had a leak, because it had a leak.

This is the sound of a poet muttering to an empty audience as he embraces his podium.

Josh Stroud — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:13:41 +0000

Here’s another piece I wrote just now for creative writing. The assignment was, quote, “I want us to choose an event, preferably something from real life, a birth, a death, a victory or disappointment and write about it. But here’s the catch, you can’t write about it directly. Instead, I want us to describe the hour before and the hour after.” And engage the senses I paraphrase!

This is the sound of a poet muttering to an empty audience as he embraces his podium. Books rustle like startled flights of birds. Over there, the poet listens to the silence, finally struck dumb. The poet listens to the quiet which has descended upon his stark slice of eternity. Sarcophagus of the damned, he murmurs. His cold sweat resonates through the air like a thunderbolt, not seen but felt, an electrifying tingle in the air like someone will flip a switch and the storm will pour down like the tantrum of some monstrous child.

But the room is tranquil. Tranquil, he thinks. The sound of laughter from the room on the other side; intruder to his train of thought. It wrecks like an act of god. The flames burn higher and higher, women and children struggle to escape but the doors are searing hot and welded shut and the boxcar keeps sliding towards the precipice closer closer closer until with a snap of his fingers it rolls down the godforsaken slope towards—

The poet laughs. He laughs a deep belly laugh. It rolls over you like the bottom of a lake and the light shines faintly from the top; it grabs you and strangles you and you see a little madness in his innocent humor. Tranquil; yes, the room is tranquil. Tranquil like a grave. His clothes crinkle, his joints crack like grapeshot. And only an hour to go.

––

Ghosts and wisps shake his hand in a whirlwind. The whole library shakes with noise and vibrants and exuberance, a great beast living and breathing and tearing itself into a hundred banging bellowing blaring booms and buzz goes the crowd. Buzz buzz buzz. A smashing success, the poet hears. Snatches of conversation bat back and forth in a wicked display of badminton. Hot breath greets the poet’s nostrils, smelling of too much champagne and rousing victory. It slurs out congratulations before toddling back to the free booze. The poet shrugs complacency back off and careers towards his podium. He finds his notes, his words, his doggerel and vitriolic life, lying in a stain of bitter coffee.

He knows he should feel happy, but a demon snatches his soul like the vice grip of a baby, and the baby stares him in the face and coughs. Twice. He can hear the cough of the baby clearer than the phantom fizz of percolating conversations about him. The baby, yes, he is in a staring match with the baby, luminous bulbs staring into his soul. He is naked before the baby. The baby knows his emptiness. Baby, he gasps, baby, save me from myself. Save me from the throngs and the commotion and the fame and the fortune which will surely crash on me worse than any tidal wave or black curtain. He longs for quiet insanity but is punished with loud endearing success.

And all because he was a good storyteller.

I woke at dawn to the bleating of a possessed goat

Josh Stroud — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:38:51 +0000

Another piece from my creative writing class. The assignment was to use certain types of words in a narrative (ie color, animal, geographical feature).

I woke at dawn to the bleating of a possessed goat. The sky was sherbet; reds and yellows and oranges swirled among the swoosh of seagulls and the faintest smell of salt. It was the kind of morning that poets waxed poetic about, the kind of sunrise which made it glorious to be alive, to experience the world in its beauty and wonder. I scratched my crotch and pulled the curtain closed. “Shut the fuck up,” I muttered to my roommate the goat. The phrase carried no enthusiasm. After almost a month, I had given up any hope that I was getting rid of the fucker. He had become a fixture in the corner of my bedroom, glaring at me with eyes the most vibrant shade of shit. Whatever the fuck had possessed me that one drunken night to buy—of all things—a fucking goat had left me angry and bitter.

I decided not to go into work again today. I mustered up a weak cough and phoned Rosens, croaking something about the flu and explosive diarrhea. Explosive diarrhea, that’s the last resort. Like that comedian said, no-one wants an employee with explosive-fucking-diarrhea. I shuffled into the kitchen, looking for something to beat the living shit out of the goat with. I found the remains of a pop tart instead. Strawberry.

Breakfast done, I shuffled over to the couch. I lived in a one-room apartment on the west side. The ocean eight blocks away and I get a window facing the fucking sunrise. When I say I shuffled over to my kitchen, I literally slopped from my bed to the fridge a yard away. And a yard away from that was the couch. I flopped onto it. I collapsed. It was like a deck of card hit by a baseball. First my knees sagged, and then my head fell over, and my body reluctantly tumbling after. I scrounged for the remote and found a shoe instead. I threw it pleadingly at the goat. Shoes don’t work well against the devil. The goat bleated and took a huge steaming pile on my carpet. Fucker.

I woke to the strains of debt collectors. Calling about that debt I had. I fell into a ravine about a month ago and needed stitches. And a shower. And now since I don’t have medical insurance they expect me to pay for it. I could hear the patter of rain on the window. Which was strange, since it was a perfectly clear day when I woke up. I could see the smog of LA billowing for miles around. And now only laconic storm clouds. They could take the effort to try a little bit. But no, they drizzle and pitter-patter and leave me dry and cynical. I blow gently into my saxophone. I don’t remember picking it up, but here it is in my hands. I serenade the goat with the most blaring and abrasive sounds I can muster. The goat rolls over. I lay my saxophone carefully aside and sprawl myself on the floor.

And contemplate the boredom and uselessness of life. My life specifically. Back in high school, the world was open before me. I was ready, prepared, enthusiastic. Out in the world, I would make a name for myself. I would be successful. But life spits on your plans. It laughs at them. A couple mistakes, a couple short straw pulls, and I’m stuck leading a useless life with a useless job and a useless-fucking-goat in my bedroom-kitchen-couch combination. What a waste of such potential. Who would have guessed I was a mother-fucking cynic huh?

Creative Writing & “diamonds glint off shattered glass”

Josh Stroud — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:37:04 +0000

So I’ve undertaken a “CREATIVE WRITING” course since the beginning of December. And one of the people in my head asked whether they could read some of the (rather strange) pieces I have and will write for the class. Unfortunately I took my meds before I could get out one to show them. Now, next time I can point them to my blog as a portfolio. Although at some point it will probably be used as evidence in a criminal investigation. I include the first of a [flood?torrent?deluge? Ah, deluge... it rolls off the tongue] below.

I begin with a poem. Take it at face value.

Diamonds glint off shattered glass. Jewels drift, aimless, capricious. Hollow and empty; the void, enveloper. The faceplate is smashed. Earth, muted, flickers like a dying candle. The glove clenched, the eyes transfixed, bulging. And a socket wrench looming.

An unlit cigarette dangles out of a gaping maw. A ghastly, clenched, wry smile. The cigarette trapped between molars of ebony. The heavens wheel. And hair waving in the slightest breeze.

The suit is cold and unfeeling. Lights continue to blink. Outputs continue to reel. Oblivion, old friend, temptress, and lover. The shadows shift. The suit turns. And liquid eyes, imprisoned and immortal, embracing the dark.

A single aquamarine, spinning gently. Light of a million dead stars reflected in a pinprick. A million moments condensed in a final teardrop. A single solitaire a million miles away from God.

an Essay on my experience at a Place I worked for

Josh Stroud — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:52:07 +0000

Wrote this for a 200-250 word MIT essay prompt. It actually comes to more like 901 words. Go figure.

——————————————————————————————————————

I walked into the converted warehouse, skittish and sweaty. I paused, my mere 15 years marking me like florescence. I walked among the cubicles, filled with professional people doing professional things with professional-looking computers. And here I was in a light yellow t-shirt and some faded jeans. I shoved my heart back down into my rib cage, and found someone less busy to ask “where Brent was.” They pointed back, and I walked to my new boss’ desk.

I found Brent listening to music while regarding a black screen with green text on it. This black screen with green text, which I now find so familiar, was iconic of my whole experience as unpaid intern at uWink, Inc. I moved from amateur hour into the pro leagues.

uWink, Inc was started by Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s, in 2000, and by the time I began working there it had already opened two restaurants. The company operated as a split between software development and restaurants: touchscreens in the restaurant would be used to order food, pay, and play games, and the software team, I now included, would build the custom software and games.

Brent started me off with something light: quality control. I was to play the new games as they were created until my fingers were gnarled like trees out of Dracula. Then, I would write a report on every annoyance, bug, and quirk I found. The funny thing was that I didn’t start my new job during the summer. No, I had the good sense to begin it in December, 2007. Right in time for schoolwork to start getting hard. I would go to school until 3, when one of my parents would give me a 45-minute ride to the uWink offices, where I would work until 7:30 and then walk to the bus-stop. There were days when I would get home at 9 ‘o’clock, just in time to start my homework. But QC, as it was called, was fairly standard stuff. Keep playing until you think you’ve found everything wrong, and then write it up. No, the hard stuff came later, after winter break.

Brent decided that I could move up to work on some of the less-important projects, and so he emailed over a couple of attachments, and said “port this game.” And here it was as if I had jumped out of a kiddie pool onto a cliff, where I sort of tripped and did a hop-step and teetering, fell off, plummeting to my inevitable doom. Yeah, trying to learn seventy-two things at once was, in the most understated way, challenging. When I opened the attachments, it was worse than merely reading a foreign language. It was more like trying to translate instructions to build Ikea furniture from Polish into Russian. Not only did I not know Polish or Russian, but I had no idea how to build furniture in the first place. Needless to say, I was flummoxed.

He had emailed me the source code to a Truth-or-Dare Game, where the computer would read questions off a server and display them to a screen, while keeping track of statistics for each player. It was written in Adobe’s Actionscript 2 (AS2), a now obsolete scripting language; Brent wanted me to port it over Actionscript 3 (AS3). At this point, my knowledge of programming was slightly beyond “hello, world.” It was more like, “click this button to say hello”. I had signed up for this internship because I wanted to study to become a software developer, and this was free on-the-job training. Perhaps, in hindsight, expecting to learn two new languages at once was asking too much of me. But then again, I managed to do it.

I worked about twenty hours the first week learning the syntax of AS2. I went out and bought a book on it, and pored through it after finishing my homework. Gradually, I began to understand what was happening in this mere 350 lines of code. And then I hit a brick wall. I realized that I needed to learn XML and XPATH, two more languages, as well, to learn how to query the server and receive the questions. So I spent another week reading on how to do that. Finally, I decided I would buy a book on AS3 and work through line-by-line porting each line over to AS3, reading up on how to do so as I did.

Three or four weeks after I was given the project, I finally had a finished port. So I decided to try running it. And it promptly crashed, within the first 4 lines of code. This was by far the worst part of the job: I had worked extremely hard on this thing, and it had blew up in my face. The coding god had decided to spit on my hard work. So I spent another week working trying to figure out what had gone so drastically wrong. I labored feverishly over my laptop; I learned why caffeine was a programmer’s best friend. Fueled by determination, disappointment, and a little anger, I worked until my fingers bled and my eyes ran out of their sockets. But, finally, finally, after maybe 5 weeks, working through winter break, obsessing over it like I was getting paid for my work, it worked. January 2, 2008. I still have the email. It was the best day of winter break.

Belief in God

Josh Stroud — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:48:43 +0000

Reprinted here with permission of its author is an essay on belief in God. Specifically the belief of Josh Stroud, author. This essay was written for a philosophy class focused on the ideals of Dostovesky’s The Brothers Karamazov. There are several references to the characters of said book in the essay. A quick Google search should give a summary of each character, if needed.

–Josh Stroud

God

A prologue

I first must apologize for this most acrimonious and frankly godless piece of writing. Truly, without grammar, even the most basic essays fall apart, so I hope that mine falls apart in the way that I plan, and not in another way to quash (not squash, quash) some poor god-fearing unsuspecting soul. The last thing my life needs is a mob gently coalescing in the background as the dregs of my tea slowly assemble themselves into skulls and crossbones.

Superficiality

I act much of my life based upon logic and reasoning, natural laws and thinking combined to show me the path through the woods. God is like a wolf, slinking among shadows. I do not know whether he is out there, watching me, measuring my actions as I blithely continue towards my ultimate act. He could be preparing to pounce at this very moment. At this moment, as you read this, God, in his apparent omni-benevolence, could be directing a nearby storm-cloud to hover over me and strike me with lightning. God, in his omnipotence and omnipresence, could be preparing a drunk driver to barrel through me as I cross the street. God, in his omniscience, could could be driving every cell in my body to combustion in a hitherto unknown and altogether astonishing way.

And yet, chances are, he will not. I invite him at this very moment to prove me wrong, to hit me over the head with a metaphysical baseball bat.

…

…

I continue to write, and it seems to me that god (God has been demoted, you see) failed to show up to disprove my point. He failed to prove my point either (the bastard). I cannot disprove god anymore than I can prove god. I can order around god, and I can order around a bottle of good olive oil, and I can bet a particularly large sum of money that neither of them will do anything except possibly exist. Nevertheless, god requires faith, and I am a cynic. I do not believe in a god, gods, God, Russell’s celebrated celestial teapots, or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster, however entertaining he might be. My cynicism demands evidence, proof, authentication, and there is none forthcoming. For how can you prove god? There is no evidence other than written words and artifacts which may be pieces of pottery and fossilized dead. There is only the complete, absolute faith of the billions as proof; a sort of populist acceptance.

Perhaps, though, this argument is not quite correct. I regard science as almost inconsequential in what my underlying beliefs about god are. For what does science have to do with the divine? We build ourselves a tower of babel up to the heavens, but we are no closer to god. Science cannot prove anything about god, when he is outside our earthly realm. Conveniently enough, physics tells us we cannot travel backwards in time, to see the birth and death of Jesus Christ, and perhaps shed light on his godliness. We have strong evidence that the Bible is incorrect, but what is to say that God didn’t just create the world a thousand years ago, and planted everything as evidence. He created every man, woman, and child “in medias res,” so to speak, and created the fossils and the geology just to screw with our heads.

A quick note: I sidestep the argument that god is too cruel to exist, because, looking at the cruelty and tortures that god has inflicted upon the world, obviously if god exists then he meant for these to happen for the greater good. Omniscient omnitemporality and all that. A child is tortured so that s/he will have the strength of will to do something extraordinary. God would know what is best for us, and so things like the holocaust happen so that something better in the future. This is difficult to swallow, but then, god knows best. On the other side, if god does not exist, then we brought the four horsemen of the apocalypse upon ourselves, and we can only blame ourselves for the enormous cruelties which we senselessly commit against each other.

Blasphemy as Convenience

Recently, brought on by nothing more then long stints in the car, alone, pensive and even brooding, I have come to the conclusion that the reasons for anything that I believe may simply be a rationalization of less noble motives. I feel hungry and eat a sandwich? No, I just do not want to start my homework. I think the American political system does not work well and thus do not want to vote in 2012 and contribute to a failing system? No, I just shy away from the crushing responsibility that comes with citizenship, the responsibility to weigh both sides and commit to one, perhaps making the wrong choice. I do not believe in God (I have decided to take god out of the penalty box)? No, I cannot face the ambiguity which comes with God, the moral baggage; faith demands too much, the strength of will and character is too great for my mortality. Perhaps, then, when I have perfected (if any man be perfect) “Mens et manus,” when my character has become resolved and amplified and I have struggled against a thousand tumultuous trials and been deposited in the future frayed but alive, perhaps then I will have the strength to believe in god. But now, like Atlas, I can do naught but hold the world on my shoulders. Mere mortals such as I cannot take on such heavy loads; our backs groan and crack and splinter and we are left with only agony and a gratuitously large amount of homework.

I fear putting my faith in something greater than myself. I fear the disappointment, the gross unadulterated failure, like fresh roadkill gently diffusing a rank stench. I fear that I will believe in god, and I will be wrong. I fear the ultimate surrender: the knowledge that there will always be something better and higher than me is terrible and awful (in both the original and current senses). Perhaps I am weak, to refuse to do the romantic thing, to ignore Tennyson’s “Better to have loved and lost…” and to decide instead to cast out a thing which truly could have made my life better. “Religion is a tool to be used to improve your life,” said Ben Lerman, and I have decided to bury the tool beneath a mound of justification. But enough about my mortal fallacies, surely no better than any man (another justification, of course). What are the implications of my atheism?

Implications, Explications, Illuminations

Let us assume, for a minute, that God doesn’t exist. He has never existed. Jesus was son of man, and not Son of Man. The Bible was written by a couple of smart people who thought they knew best for the world. The morality which the Bible dictates to us, the duty which the Bible says we have to God and his laws, these are merely some good ideas which some people now happen to regard as divine. How do we act, knowing that these laws are as sacred as a hot dog from Carnie’s? I start from the beginning.

If there is no God, then the existence of divine laws, of true absolute laws of the universe, are thrown out along with the baby and the dishwater. Only an absolute being can define absolute ideas; with God out of the picture, we have no absolute and objective beings to which to turn. We are left with only ourselves, and however objective we may think we are being, we are always speaking from a certain viewpoint, from a certain perspective on life which is completely and totally unique to us. Often, when our thoughts upon a subject tend to agree, we will make these thoughts binding upon the minority who does not think so. These are called civil laws. Humanity’s collective moral compasses, however, are as related to civil law as a fisherman is to fish that he catches.

According to natural law, and the ideas of natural selection, humans are obligated to act in the best interest of themselves and their offspring. So, then, in the absence of God, humanity would be wholly selfish and egotistical. More importantly, mankind would be striving towards life and happiness. Life is rather the extension of life, and happiness really being the absence of pain and anxiety. An atheist, therefore, stranded on a desert island, would feel not only innocent but justified as he ate his rather annoying best friend for a delectable supper, even though there was plenty of food and fresh water available. It made our atheist happy, so was that not morally correct? In effect, in a purely logical world, “everything is permitted.” Should it not, therefore, be admirable to eat one’s good army buddy of several years who happens to have been named Bob? Should society not congratulate one for staying true to one’s morals? I do not think so. You, reader, would probably agree with me.

I do not think that everything is permitted. I think that killing a man for no other reason than a particularly obnoxious snoring habit is morally wrong in the highest degree. I feel that in the absence of God, we, each of us, has a duty to mankind. A duty which goes beyond ourselves, which is almost like faith in mankind but not quite. God is an abstract concept which cannot be proven, but mankind is all around us. Yes, mankind in the billions is as difficult to grasp as God, but every man and woman with which we have interacted constitutes a part of humanity. So, at the very least, we grasp a part of humanity. And our duty to humanity is to help others achieve what humanity hopes to achieve. I must help others, and in turn trust others to help me, to achieve happiness and life. However, this duty is superseded by our duty to ourselves to achieve this goal. Although I would love to say that I put my fellow man before myself, I am selfish. I would allow another man to take a bullet, and feel guilty shaking “thank god ’twas not me.” There is a line at which I will cross to help my fellow man, but I am still not so sure how to articulate it. I am not sure I have even finished mapping it out.

You present me with a man and tell me, completely truthfully, that I will achieve everything I could ever want in life without any repercussions whatsoever if I merely murder him. I reply no, it violates my sense of duty to this man, to sacrifice what could have been my charmed life for the sake of his life. I will not get into the intrinsic value of human life, but I will say that I will not cross that line. Perhaps I am selfish even in this act, as I know the guilt I would feel for this man would corrupt even the happiest of moments. I cannot even begin to explain I think I will spend the rest of my life exploring that line, an explorer and cartographer, sometimes tiptoeing it and sometimes crossing it completely. With my mistakes I shall more firmly establish my bounds, my moral compass, and with my trespasses I shall fulfill my duty not to God but to concrete living breathing humanity. The only reason that I can give for this duty is that, in working for the benefits of myself first and mankind second, I will improve the life of a single man. And that will be enough.

Why Torrenting isn’t Killing the Music Industry (Just anything popular) (which means anything the industry makes money off of, so the industry IS dying…)

Josh Stroud — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:33:42 +0000

Torrenting isn’t calling the music industry entirely. Take, for example the surprisingly-excellent independent electronic artist Kim Hiorthoy. He (hah!) has released two albums which, through a quick trawl of various well-known torrent sites (The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Mininova) have between 0 and 3 seeds. Leading to speeds which, I would guess, would be somewhere between 0.00 kb/s and 1.00 kb/s. Obviously the option to download them illegally is out of the picture.

He has, however, released her album/singles on iTunes, and the Amazon MP3 store. Which means his $9 album (here)can only be gotten from friends (rather unlikely) or through legitmate means. So, indie artists still have a chance to sell their albums, although the second they gain widespread popularity they will probably have to gain revenue from merch and concerts.

*** I do not condone pirating music or any other media illegally using any of the sites mentioned, using any method or protocol. However, the Pirate Bay going legit is seriously stupid.