Pride and TANSTAAFL
Aug. 6th, 2006 05:46 pmI went to the Pride parade yesterday. I had planned to go to the pre-parade events directly from shul, and when I mentioned this at kiddush, someone I've been getting to know in the past few weeks decided to join me. I was glad of the company and she's someone I like anyway, so I mostly wasn't too annoyed at not being able to do completely my own thing.
The parade was great fun; I will put a few photos up when I get round to it, but I have very few because my camera ran out of batteries about 10 minutes in. Anyway there was such a huge range of people, some in various states of over- and under-dress who were fun to watch, but the vast majority were just people having fun with their partners and friends. I was particularly glad to see a huge group who appeared to be about the equivalent of PFLAG; they were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming that they were proud mothers or proud aunties or proud grandfathers or proud cousins, with the implication being "of LGB young people". That group had a lot of kids with them, as did the crowd marching with a poly banner and the gay adoptive parents group. But in general it was a great mix of people of all ages just being people, with flamboyant over-the-top drag queens and other show-offs being outrageous because they could.
My friend knew her way around better than I did (which wouldn't be hard!), and found us a very cool vegetarian restaurant in Hornsgatan and was generally good fun. We didn't end up going into the Pride party, primarily because they were asking for 300 SEK on the door (about £25) and partly because by the time we got there it was after 8 pm and we were getting tired from wandering around all day in the heat. Anyway it was great fun in general!
I posted a few months back complaining that I couldn't find anywhere to buy mp3s without breaking the law and depriving the artists of revenue. I've been following up people's suggestions way after the event and I want to report that so far, I've been pretty impressed with emusic. It's selling (not hiring) actual mp3s so you don't need to be a member of the site to play what you buy and you can move the files around without hassle. The range is a lot less bad than I expected; it has a fair mix of actual popular stuff you might have heard on the radio, with artists I like but aren't absolutely vanilla Top40 commercial pop outfits. Which is not to say they have absolutely all the music I could possibly want, but I've found quite a few things that I have not been able to find elsewhere even at five times the price and with DRM (details behind the cut). It's pretty easy to navigate and use and pretty easy to browse and find new cool stuff, the way that happens by default in a bricks and mortar shop but you don't always get with online stores. Oh, and they don't absolutely force you to download their widget, which is another plus in my view.
The downsides: you have to give them your card details even for the free trial (which I am currently taking advantage of). The pricing structure is not ideal; instead of paying so much per track, you pay a monthly subscription fee of $10 for 40 tracks per 30 days. Which is pretty good value if you're actually remotely likely to buy as many as 40 tracks in a month (if you expect to buy vastly more than that you can pay a higher subscription which still works out at about 25¢ per track; unlike a lot of these sites the price they quote actually relates to reality). I may pay for a couple of months but after that I doubt I'll justify the subscription. I'm waiting to see whether they will in fact let me unsubscribe painlessly, whether at the end of my free trial period or after I've paid for a couple of months. Because that's the real test with any of these too good to be true free offers!
Anyway, worth checking out by virtue of being less evil and less useless than a lot of sites out there. If you feel like joining, we can both get goodies if I "refer" you, so send a relevant email address to me @lj if you like. I've read the small print pretty carefully and I'm moderately impressed, assuming that they don't drag their heels over unsubscribing, of course.
( why yes, my musical tastes are somewhat eclectic )
The parade was great fun; I will put a few photos up when I get round to it, but I have very few because my camera ran out of batteries about 10 minutes in. Anyway there was such a huge range of people, some in various states of over- and under-dress who were fun to watch, but the vast majority were just people having fun with their partners and friends. I was particularly glad to see a huge group who appeared to be about the equivalent of PFLAG; they were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming that they were proud mothers or proud aunties or proud grandfathers or proud cousins, with the implication being "of LGB young people". That group had a lot of kids with them, as did the crowd marching with a poly banner and the gay adoptive parents group. But in general it was a great mix of people of all ages just being people, with flamboyant over-the-top drag queens and other show-offs being outrageous because they could.
My friend knew her way around better than I did (which wouldn't be hard!), and found us a very cool vegetarian restaurant in Hornsgatan and was generally good fun. We didn't end up going into the Pride party, primarily because they were asking for 300 SEK on the door (about £25) and partly because by the time we got there it was after 8 pm and we were getting tired from wandering around all day in the heat. Anyway it was great fun in general!
I posted a few months back complaining that I couldn't find anywhere to buy mp3s without breaking the law and depriving the artists of revenue. I've been following up people's suggestions way after the event and I want to report that so far, I've been pretty impressed with emusic. It's selling (not hiring) actual mp3s so you don't need to be a member of the site to play what you buy and you can move the files around without hassle. The range is a lot less bad than I expected; it has a fair mix of actual popular stuff you might have heard on the radio, with artists I like but aren't absolutely vanilla Top40 commercial pop outfits. Which is not to say they have absolutely all the music I could possibly want, but I've found quite a few things that I have not been able to find elsewhere even at five times the price and with DRM (details behind the cut). It's pretty easy to navigate and use and pretty easy to browse and find new cool stuff, the way that happens by default in a bricks and mortar shop but you don't always get with online stores. Oh, and they don't absolutely force you to download their widget, which is another plus in my view.
The downsides: you have to give them your card details even for the free trial (which I am currently taking advantage of). The pricing structure is not ideal; instead of paying so much per track, you pay a monthly subscription fee of $10 for 40 tracks per 30 days. Which is pretty good value if you're actually remotely likely to buy as many as 40 tracks in a month (if you expect to buy vastly more than that you can pay a higher subscription which still works out at about 25¢ per track; unlike a lot of these sites the price they quote actually relates to reality). I may pay for a couple of months but after that I doubt I'll justify the subscription. I'm waiting to see whether they will in fact let me unsubscribe painlessly, whether at the end of my free trial period or after I've paid for a couple of months. Because that's the real test with any of these too good to be true free offers!
Anyway, worth checking out by virtue of being less evil and less useless than a lot of sites out there. If you feel like joining, we can both get goodies if I "refer" you, so send a relevant email address to me @lj if you like. I've read the small print pretty carefully and I'm moderately impressed, assuming that they don't drag their heels over unsubscribing, of course.
( why yes, my musical tastes are somewhat eclectic )
Addendum 6 Aug: Yeah, I've run out of things that I passionately want and I still have half of my 50 free downloads left. Looking like it's not worth paying for more beyond the first 50. Anyone have any recommendations of artists or songs I should know about?
