Copper Heron

Up til about the last 10 years it was widely understood that if you licensed a song to be used in a film or a video game or a television show that that song would be in that film or video game or television show in perpetuity.

Then, about a decade ago, things started changing. I don't know the exact point in time it changed, but the first time i became aware of it was around 2017 or '18 when some video game, i think it was Grand Theft Auto IV, got a big patch that did exactly one thing and that was remove a bunch of songs that had been in the game because the licensing expired.

And I remember being angered by that but going "oh well, that's video games, right?"

But then a couple years later when Netflix got the rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion and not only put out a new dub but took "Fly Me to the Moon" out of the show, even on the above ultra-fancy collector's Blu-ray set, which included the old dub.

And then recently i was watching From the Earth to the Moon, a HBO miniseries about the Apollo program that I've watched many many times in my life. It was one of my favorites as a kid, and i saw that it was on HBO Max. The thing that made me wanna watch was that it was remastered in 4K. Up til a couple years ago the only version available had been on DVD and I was, you know, really excited because I'm a bit of a cinephile (as you all may have gathered from my, uh, everything) and it's something I'm very familiar with.

Now as you might expect from a docudrama about the Apollo program, there's a lot of 50s, 60s, and early 70s music in it. Episode 5, "Spider", opens with a montage of space age art set to the theme song for Fireball XL-5.

So I'm watching this episode, which mind you, is one of my absolute favorites both as a space nerd and a machine fucker. (When you are done reading this post, please take the time to watch this clip that was formative to me as a robot girl.) So I'm on my nostalgia trip and i get yanked the fuck out because the song playing is not the right one.

It's still the theme song to Fireball XL-5, but its a cover, clearly recorded much later than the original, and it's really fucking jarring. Because the original is the exact sort of kitschy, early-60s space-age stuff that is being montaged in this opening scene.

And the really nutso thing is, I can't find anything about this anywhere. It's not that I'm crazy or that it isn't happening, its that it's just...gone. They do that now.

This is not normal.

It is not normal for companies (because this is 100% corporate pissing contests) to be able to retroactively change pieces of art because they don't want to lend their "intellectual property" to it anymore.

He proceeded to ask who our existing service was for poisoning insects and mice, careful to mention that his poisons were totally natural, made from chrysanthemums or whatever.

I said, we don't do that.

Oh, you take care of it yourself?

No, I said again, we don't do that.

Well how do you deal with the bugs?

We. Don't.

No mice at your place? We have a bait that we guarantee will dissolve in a couple of months or we'll--

Nah, I've seen mice out in the garage.

...So you just let the mice run around in the garage, you've surrendered the garage to them, that's *their* place and the house is yours?

LUCKILY there are screenshots! (thank you OP for sharing them! ~<3)

Things we noted in the document:

The stated themes of the show are the ISOs sparking a change in programs that allows them to grow beyond their function and the concept of free will beyond purpose within a system was supposed to be central to the show but didn't really appear in the final product (sorta a shame because that would have been interesting)

Able does not appear to be indicated as knowing Beck is The Renegade, odd as it was one of the character beats in the show that felt planned from the start-- like it may have been intended and just not mentioned but it felt planned from the start in the final product

Part of Clu's plan to spread his fascist takeover of The Grid was to use Tron's death to make people lose faith in The User/Flynn-- I dunno how it'd have panned out but given the show was essentially deifying Clu versus deifying the memory of Tron (rather than the ideas of community and solidarity) I kinda think this aspect would have made things worse? Glad they dropped it

Zuse, prior to their "I got mine" heel-turn was going to be in the first season-- was REALLY hoping we would see him in the show so knowing he was planned kinda sucks-- he'd have been a highlight

So was Flynn? Which would have been weird as he shouldn't know Tron survived Clu's insurrection

Paige's backstory was originally meant to be a casualty of "friendly fire" rather than the ISO purge-- the idea pretty much survived so it's weird the pitch went out of its limited word count to make it clear her tragedy was splintered from the ISO purge and not caused by it and then--- just decided to double down on it being part of the ISO purge

The bible makes no mention of reoccuring lore characters such as Cutler, Dyson or Cyrus and does not list Clu as a villain. It appears Tron's illness is not part of the pitch either. Wild that Scars was not part of the pitch when it is the backbone of the show we received

Quoting from Victor Gruen's bio on Wikipedia:

Opening in 1956, Southdale was meant as the kernel of a full-fledged community. The mall was commercially successful, but the original design was never fully realized, as the intended apartment buildings, schools, medical facilities, park and lake were not built.

...and from the article on Southdale itself:

Victor Gruen, the center's architect, designed the mall to challenge the "car-centric" America that was rising in the 1950s.

Can you imagine? The enormous retail outlets surrounded by oceans of asphalt parking lots were supposed to challenge the car-centric lifestyle, not enforce it!

Look at what we did to his boy. It's no wonder he came to regret his creation.

Yap about trains

Ramble about Urban Design

Keep honest counsel

Ride

Run

Mar a curious tale in telling it

But to be clear, it takes all ten members, three of them trading off lead vocals, to do it justice.

The legislature established the Blue Alert in 2015 as a tool to help locate suspects when a local, state or federal officer is killed or seriously wounded in the line of duty. To activate a Blue Alert, the following criteria must be met: A law enforcement officer must have been killed or seriously wounded by an offender(s) or is missing while in the line of duty under circumstances evidencing concern for the law enforcement officer’s safety.

That was just one element of a memorable experience crossing the country, an experience so great that every time I have had a cross country journey since, I have looked at Amtrak EVERY TIME.

Red stops are HSR stops

Chemtrails: the 'theory' that airplanes spray chemicals in the air for population control or some other crazy reason. Do rich and powerful people breathe air? Yes... CHEMTRAILS ARE NOT A THING.

Joshua Dean had an MRSA infection. There's like a 1-in-50 chance that you, YOU READING THIS, have that bacteria in you RIGHT NOW. You don't usually get sick from it because your body is always fighting it, but every now and then, it gets somewhere it's hard for the body to fight off. This is a thing that exists in the world. This is a thing that random people die from.

Is it possible someone snuck in to his house and sprayed his toothbrush, TV remote and toenail clippers with an MRSA culture? I guess? Is that - an illness that seems from my amateur I-didn't-read-the-articles-just-the-abstracts searching to have something like a 40%(link) to 60%(link) chance of survival, and that even if it does kill him, gives the whistleblower two weeks of time to make his final statements - the way YOU would silence someone?

I mean, you can get into the whole "that's what they want you to think" rabbit hole if you want to, but it does not make sense to me that this was a deliberate attack.

This time.