I received a request from Internet radio provider Pandora to contact my Congressman before tomorrow's Congressional hearing concerning royalty payment schedules for web based stations. I didn't recall ever giving them my street address, but they somehow knew that unfortunately Vito Fossella is my Congressperson.

I wrote back that any requests to Vito from me would go deaf ears considering I spent most of my 2006 waking hours trying to cause him to be unemployed.

Unlike terrestrial radio, which pays fairly small fees to music copyright licensing companies such as ASCAP and BMI, Internet stations are charged ridiculously high per song rates by Sound Exchange which receives royalty payments for artists and the major record labels.

The new fee schedule will essentially kill web based music radio by making the cost of playing music prohibitive.

I rarely listen to terrestrial commercial music radio anymore because the playlists are repetitive or just outright suck.

Pandora is an interesting service. You can give them an artist or a song and they will put together a compatible playlist.

I put together a station based on the 70s Genesis song, "Supper's Ready". Tonight's Supper's Ready radio station music selections included Genesis, YES, Phish, Procol Harum and Jethro Tull.

Chris Owens, whose run for Congress did quite a bit to put Daily Gotham on the political radar in NYC, has now entered the blogsphere himself with his own blog, "Power From Truth."

From his introductory diary:

Welcome, friend, to "Power From Truth" -- my personal and political blog. This is my opportunity to experiment with free thought and free speech. I am not an experienced blogger, so forgive me if I breach protocol from time to time. And what I present here will often be controversial. What moves me to speak is the need for honesty in our discussion of issues -- particularly issues of race and class and their joint impact upon the American political environment.

We cannot grow as a nation -- we cannot truly protect ourselves as Americans -- unless we do the hard work and make the sacrifices needed to build a more democratic and more egalitarian society. That is why I participate in the political process; that is why I have embarked on this journey.

At first this was going to be about some local, NY stuff. Then Armando's outing got added on. Now some of the tiffs at My Left Wing are thrown into the mix.

I am not much on Meta-tation. To me the internet is a tool like a screwdriver, and I don't spend too much time considering the workings of a screwdriver when I use it. But events are happening that remind me that the internet is NOT just like a screwdriver so much as a telephone or megaphone and that issues that one would think we had learned long ago seem suddenly to be sweeping through the blogsphere.

Lisa Stone is one of the goddesses of the web. One of the founders of Women.com, she is part of the web's first-wavers; the people who helped shape this thing we call life online. She is also at the vanguard of the web 2.0 as a founder of BlogHer.

She is one of the sharpest people I have had the pleasure to work with --I am on BlogHer's advisory board. She brings her experience as business developer, social networker and technologist to everything she does.

Which is why, not until I read this on her blog did it occur to me that I had "Instalaunched" the New York Times and given them the opportunity to truly build their blog into a must-read by its own merit and not just because it is another extension of their brand :

[via Surfette: Remember "Step 1: No more rookie maneuvers"? Here's how NYTD can avoid delivering Exhibit C.]:

Here's what the NYTD team should do next: Pick door number 1 (above), declare success and work with your blog community. Liza has done you a favor. You've been hoping to recruit Liza's feedback and her readers and you did. Now email all the speakers at the Personal Democracy Forum happening in your neck of the woods on May 15 and ask them to help you test the blog. A blog does not stand alone -- anymore than one talks with one's self, if one wishes to continue charging premium ad rates. So partner with other bloggers to work out the kinks -- if you know what I mean, and I think after covering your competition's "free form editorial experiments," that you do.

Whatever you do, don't ignore Sabater's advice -- she's probably right, given some of the sensitivities at your organization, that she shouldn't have been able to log in and post just yet. Don't fail to take advantage of the fact that she has instalaunched your new blog. Don't, whatever you do, shut the thing down. Looks like the community might be as interested in this project as you are.

Guess what people ... I am one of those speakers at Personal Democracy Forum. And guess what mama's gonna talk about ...

The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs
Monday 15 May | 10 - 11 am
Nancy Scola (moderator), Aldon Hynes, Juan Melli, Scott Sala, Liza Sabater, Gur Tsabar

I am officially bumped out of the blog. I hope this is only temporary, until they formally invite me and most of the local bloggers on their blogroll, to come in as guest bloggers.

Yes. I think they ought to bring me into their blog. Me, the one who has been their most outspoken critic here in New York City. Why? Because that would show they've at least flipped the pages of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

I would give them real street cred to hire a real blogger, and not just a journo who types into a WordPress panel. It would show they have the moxie to acknowledge non-journos as not just content providers but media influencers. I for one are in that rare category of top blogger that didn't get here because some political party or big media company backed me up. I am the real deal as high-profile grassroots media disrupters go.

So hey Grey Lady! The ball is on your court now.

Related entries :
[via Exclusive Blind Item : The blauxg pas edition | The Daily Gotham]

[via Blauxg Pas Redux | The Daily Gotham]

[via Is this the official list of metropundits? | The Daily Gotham]

[via It was fun while it lasted | The Daily Gotham]

Oooooooops!

Guess which little local newspaper is creating a New York politics blog?

Now guess who got into their blog last night, just as easy as signing in through their WordPress login page?

And guess who is now an approved writer of said blog?

This is an excerpt of the message I left the development team at said "still-in-development" blog :

So I am reading You Can't Fight City Hall, but You Can See How Much Everyone There Makes - New York Times and I am getting all mad and jealous because a blog that is not this one broke the story of the NYC employees' pay scale published in the Civil List.

Then, as I read more, I am getting more incensed. The aticle reads like many New York Times articles of late : It mentions obliquely (if at all) the blog from whence the idea for the article (or the whole article) came from and then in Grey Lady fashion, it goes on NOT to link to the people that basically are making it possible for the journaleech to get a paycheck.

The blog in question is Backroom Deal Breaker. The original artcile is at Backroom Deal Breaker: Let Your Fingers Do the Talking! It is a good blog, go check it out.

Well, so I now go to the list and download it. To give it a whirl, I decide to look for all and any employees with the last name Sabater. Well what do you know? Yours truly is on the list (at the bottom):

Click on the image to enlarge.

WOW! I am almost at $100 /hr? So this means I can go back to CUNY to teach? Awesome.

For those of you who do not know, mamacita used to be an adjunct instructor of Spanish language and literature at CUNY. I taught in the system for a few years while working on a PhD in Latin American Literature at New York University. Mamacita though enjoyed exploring the web and working as a net art producer more than teaching the difference between ser y estar or writing articles about the neobaroque aesthetics in the work of contemporary Latin American writers like Reinaldo Arenas. So I packed the few belongings I still had at 19 University, took the ABD (or MPhil or whatever they call it these days) and gave up writing a thesis along with almost 10 years of teaching for having a baby and exploring the world wide web.

Yes, mamacita is a nerda who became the blogdiva she is today.

As an aside though, I miss teaching horribly. I would love to go back to it but not as a Spanish instructor. Hire me for a citizen journalism class, an online communications strategies and technologies lecturer or a real-life philosopher exploring the neobaroque aesthetics of online creative work and you've got yourself a deal ... for $87.62 an hour.

Jib-Jab takes a look at 2005 through the eyes of our beloved Dear Leader, George Bush.

Faithful Daily Gotham reader Scott Sala is up in arms. He appears not to like the fact that I mentioned a bad word - "penis" - in connection with his party, and specifically in connection with the demonstrable fact that anyone not equipped with a "penis" seems to be having a hard time, no pun intended, running for the Senate as an (R) this year.

Well, Scott and his commenters have no truck with that insidious mirth at the expense of the "penis". There must be no discussion of any "penis" in the public sphere - unless that "penis" is attached to Bill Clinton.

Our worthy opponents stoop to a level of published discourse worthy of the porn websites from which they extract their political ideas.

Nicely put. Personally, I get most of my ideas from huge-communist-tatas.com, but that's just me. You know what's coming next. Wait for it, here it comes:

They get their sexual ideas from Bill Clinton, their role model in such matters!

Actually, in a sincere effort at bipartisanship, I now model myself on Jack Ryan, (R) of Illinois. Give me a sex club over a chubby intern any day. You with me, Scott?

But there's more. With rising indignation, and in reference to my snarky suggestion that Pirro's problems are shared by another non-"penis"-wielding (R) candidate, Katherine Harris, Scott assures us there is no linkage between "penis" possession and party support. Oh, and us liberals are just big 'ol meanies.

[The Daily Gotham's] portrayal completely ignored performance of the campaigns and speeds into an ignorant attack on Republican men.

Actually, Scott, I'm aware of Pirro's performance - I derive much amusement from it. I get even more mirth from the fact that she is, indeed, the best you have in the vale of tears that 2006 is going to be for you

Taking a page from the Michale [sic] Moore School of Spin, Daily Gotham connects 2 coincidental dots, jumps to a wild conclusion and then delivers the blanket. Fortunately [,] DG [sic] has few readers [sic] to read this crap.

Fortunately, Scott has even fewer readers, aside, presumably, from those lost, forlorn and bitter souls who have no other social outlet than to peruse his blog. Life can be lonely for New York right-wingers, you know.

I'm not even going to speculate on why the word "penis" arouses you to such ire, Scott. But it is Christmas. You have a very hard year ahead. Why such anger in the season of love, "penis" or no "penis"?

[Update: Scottie, I realize that you think you're in a competition with this site - as evidenced by the penis-measuring contest you seem to want to embark on. And while I'm personally flattered to be quoted by you almost daily, honestly, from where I stand, you're more an object of affectionate amusement than of concern.]