I've seen the best minds of my generation go into advertising.

I do not feel "Revolution" - well-el you know - when I lace up a new set of Nikes. I refuse to wear Nikes, on many grounds. I like New Balance - better running shoe, most parts made in the US and assembled in Mass at reasonably decent prevailing wages for workers of legal age. But every time I purchase something un-Nike, I put a little Thai or Indonesian child out of work, increasing the chances they and other members of their family will die of disease, malnutrition or become exploited by the sex trade. There's no winning. Just do it.

Starbucks does not create a false nostalgia for anything - Dylan on the road as a folk balladeer from before I was born least of all (cf: Dylan's "Highway 61" era sales deal with the coffee/lifestyle retailer). Starbucks' non-coffee products are a large portion of their business. Starbucks sells lifestyle for people on the go. They sell the simalcrum of lifestyle. That is even more billiant. You can have the illusion of the memory (or the anticipation) of a "jazzy night" tooting out of your car CD player on the way to your corporate McJob. Billie Holiday sings the blues in a smokey club, while you talk in hushed tones about the state of race relations and politics. In reality, you will spend your night watching Lost, snacking on Smartfood.

Dylan is a corporation whose principal asset is a back catalogue. If there was ever an argument that music is momentary and fleeting, and recording it is only sheer commodification of the uncommodifyable - then he is an exemplar, and 5,000,000 soundscan verified consumers are deluded poseurs. ipod nano file swapping should carry social diseases. Go out and see a fucking show.

And while we're at it - Think Different (ly) like everyone else is doing.

My life is a swirl of attorneys, fear and anger. And vicious humor.