Word: mereness
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...issues raised by Aaliyah’s death and the release of The Queen of the Damned are, thankfully, far more intriguing than mere self-glorification (Augustus) or venality (whoever is behind the 500 posthumous Hendrix albums). For one thing, there is the infinitely dark, even brutal, irony engendered by the fact that Aaliyah plays the title role: the queen of the damned. If, a la Coleridge, we suspend our disbelief a moment (as viewers of Queen must do) and assume the existence of those quaintly dichotomous extra-somatic resting-places Heaven and Hell, then it seems that only...
...when he bids a deceased youth farewell with the heartening words, “Now you will not swell the rout / Of lads that wore their honours out / Runners whom renown outran / And the name died before the man.” By claiming Aaliyah after a mere 22 years on earth, death may have won a small victory. Ironically, though, by asserting itself overzealously and taking Aaliyah when her talent and popularity were at a zenith, it may very well have surrendered her to its archenemy and eternal competitor immortality...
...Pressplay is a little less draconian. For $24.95 a month you get 100 downloads, and the tunes don't expire as long as you remain a subscriber. You also get to burn 20 tracks onto a CD. Downloads are especially efficient: mere seconds on broadband and minutes via modem. This was refreshing after all the transfer errors I'm used to on Morpheus and its underground kin. Now all Pressplay needs is a catalog large enough that I might want 20 songs a month from...
...Japanese have finally got it: 12 years isn't a mere recession, and the rising sun doesn't inevitably follow the dark of night. "Everybody's afraid because we know we are getting poorer, day by day," says Yoshiharu Nakashima, who ought to know: he's a pawn-shop owner in Tokyo's Ueno district. When U.S. President George W. Bush visits next week, he'll undoubtedly spend some backroom time telling the Japanese to get their acts together. His host will be Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who achieved rock-star popularity by promising to do just that, but whose...
...HONG KONG We know Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa is trying to spice up his staid public image, but is that really an excuse for planting his website next to a porn palace? The territory was scandalized to discover that chtung.com?a mere three letters away from his official site chtung.org?is stuffed with links to hard-core pornography inviting intrepid web surfers to explore "Exotic Redheads" and "Asian Heat." (Or so we've, um, been told.) Tung's staff has no plans to buy out the site, but that might change if a "Foxy Regina Ip" link shows...