Go support WILL and get McChesney's new book.

You can check out the book here, but if you donate $60 at WILLPledge.org, you'll get a copy lovingly and enthusiastically signed by McChesney himself. When I donated, they were having a problem with the donation page that showed you an error when you were done, but I called and confirmed that my donation did go through. To get the book, just say in the comments of the donation page that you are pledging in support of Media Matters and that you'd like McChesney's book.

WILL needs your money more than I do, so go there instead of buying it from Amazon. You'll feel like a citizen.

I was just marketed

Starbuck's has successfully engineered some kind of evil into their coffee where I am specifically addicted to it. And it doesn't work to buy their coffee beans and then make it at home. It's something about how they brew it.

So we are all being subjected to a new-ish kind of marketing at Starbuck's where they are giving out download codes for one free song from iTunes. (Let me take a moment again to say: Oh my dear lord do I hate iTunes and hate my iPod.)

So a new free song every day. I allow myself one coffee every day, and I get a song. I've downloaded about 8 or 9 songs so far. Mostly crap. Today the song is by "A Fine Frenzy". It sort of speaks to my inner lesbian, but mostly the picture of the Hot Redhead did me in. And the album was $6 on iTunes and I get more pictures of Hot Redhead. (I believe my Irish heritage has left me with a genetic weakness for redheads.)

So done. Sold. Mission accomplished. They have my money. But the non-negotiable was that iTunes sold it to me sans-evil in the files. The aac-encoding is pretty lame, and since I'm not an audio snob those files are probably minutes away from some lossy transformation to mp3.

So my silly hormone-driven purchasing urges aside, what I like about the whole thing was that it was basically an honest transaction. Lord knows how many middle-men there were between me and Hot Redhead, but they apparently all got in line and agreed to just be up-front about the whole thing. "Here's a song. If you like it, we'd like to sell you the rest of the album."

See? No need to get all brainwashy with the whole thing. Okay, pictures of Hot Redhead and one-clickish purchasing ability are more than a little Skinner/Pavlov-inspired, but at least the marketing part of it was refreshingly un-subtle.

Looking at the cover again... Hot Redhead in plaid. I think the customer list has a lot of Mc and O' and silent "gh" in it...