In case I don’t make that here’s my script on my feelings toward SOPA and PIPA. Please chime in and let me know your thoughts.

“Hi, I’m Rawrb and I’m an artist. I write, produce, and sing for a comedic metal band called Psychostick. I also draw and maintain a web comic called Alfredo Afro.

I’d like talk about the artist’s perspective (my perspective, at least) on SOPA and PIPA, which have been extremely controversial subjects across the internet, consumers, government officials, and artists alike.

My band Psychostick is a band who I would consider an “internet generation” band. Our popularity and growth didn’t start happening until around 2006 when torrents and file sharing were starting to re-emerge after Napster and other types of file sharing software were banned by the government.

The reason why SOPA and PIPA is on the verge of becoming a reality is because we’ve been a bit irresponsible about how we acquire music, movies, software, and just about anything else that’s downloadable. There’s a line that has been crossed and even blurred out, and I’d like to go back and examine that line.

The internet changed the world. It’s spawned billionaires, created unforgettable sources of entertainment, and it has even helped free countries from tyrannical governments. My band would not be here today if it wasn’t for the internet and I would probably be sitting in a cubicle, working on boring projects that would drive me to insanity.

Thank you, internet.

As Psychostick’s popularity has grown, it’s sales has continued to deteriorate. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Our first album, “We Couldn’t Think of a Title,” has sold roughly 50,000 copies since 2006. This is rather astounding due to the declining CD sales we face today.

Since then our numbers have declined, and there can be many variables to this, but I’m almost certain this is related to how available our music is without charge to anyone who knows how to acquire it.

“Sandwich,” our follow up album, is selling around 17,000 copies. And our newest album, “Space Vampires VS Zombie Dinosaurs in 3-D,” is closing in at 6,000 copies.

I am just as guilty as anyone – I’ve utilized torrent websites to snag movies, music, and some software for my own entertainment and benefit. When SOPA and PIPA started gaining momentum, I was quick to oppose those bills due to their extreme reaction to ongoing piracy.

That’s the issue at hand. Giving the government complete control over the internet and who gets to regulate what is a very EXTREME reaction. I don’t know about you, but the government is terrible at regulating just about anything.

Look at how well the war on drugs is going.

Have you seen how well they’ve handled their own finances? What’s the debt at now? It’s a number that is impossible to pay back.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want them regulating OUR internet. Rest assured, they’ll screw that up too.

The Solution

Measures have been taken by some companies to adapt to the piracy issue. Apple, for instance, has launched their App Store for OSX Lion. Here you can find and purchase just about any software you want or need with a couple clicks. Since the purchase is completely digital a tremendous amount of manufacturing cost is eliminated, therefore most of that software is reasonably priced.

Steam is another great example of adaptation. They provide to you a gigantic library of video games that you can download and play, all while keeping reasonable prices and maintaining the convenience of simply downloading a game and playing it.

As for music and movies, iTunes and Amazon.com provides access to a massive variety of artists and films all available with a few clicks or taps.

But why bother with any of those when you can find a torrent website and download them for free? Free is nice, isn’t it? You can save your money and purchase other things you can’t download for free like HDTVs, delicious food, and nice clothes.

All of a sudden we feel entitled to find whatever we want for free. Matter of fact, part of the extreme reaction to SOPA was somewhat knee-jerky. While I feel that SOPA was indeed overboard, the intentions are meant to prevent piracy. After all, stealing is bad… right?

… right?

This subject is suddenly extremely touchy. Why do we suddenly feel this entitlement to any bits of music, movies, or software without having to actually pay for it? How did it come to that?

Now we’ve stepped into the realm of morality. Is it wrong for someone to download someone else’s hard work for absolutely free?

This has suddenly become a question most people struggle with. We might want to consider stepping back and taking an introspective look at where we stand on this subject.

Imagine spending months upon months, thousands upon thousands of dollars working on an album, or a project of any kind, that you’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into. Imagine if this is your living; how you pay the bills, feed your family, etc.

Would it bother you if you were losing a vast majority of your sales because anyone who knew how torrents work could easily snag your project for absolutely nothing?

Whatever your answer is, there are always different solutions. For example, we’ve made our albums extremely affordable in a digital format to coerce those that prefer to “borrow” our work from the internet.

Louis CK made one of his comedy specials available for five bucks. I bought it because I thought, “Hey, it’s only $5. I’d feel like a douchebag if I stole it and it’s available for so cheap.”

This won’t fix the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Conclusion

There’s a problem with the economic model of “all free, all the time.” Despite what you might think, artists do need some form of currency to survive. Aside from expression and creativity, what sort of motivation does an artist need to create art?

If people aren’t paying for music, movies, or software, how can the creators survive and continue to create the art and tools that we all love?

Let’s be accountable. SOPA and PIPA are in motion because we’ve been irresponsible with our internet.

If you like something, and want to support where it came from, buy it. Donate to it.

Support it.

Isn’t it time for us to grow up?

Thanks for reading. What do you think?

There was a former bassist from a very famous metal band that I met recently. The dude did several world tours, helped deliver the band he was in to superstardom, and then walked away from it all. Parties, travelling, tour buses, all that stuff – GONE. “How could he do that?” you ask?

I think I understand why.

Getting burnt out can happen to anyone. It almost happened to me right before we recorded “The Digital Appetizer.” I almost stepped back and walked away. I’m obviously very glad I didn’t since we’re making tremendous progress. Sometimes, though, it is tempting. Those late nights where I just want to get away and I can’t, I become tempted. When dramatic nonsense hits the fan, I become tempted. When, as a leader and owner, my decisions get constantly challenged/questioned and I want to punch faces, I become extremely tempted.

Of course, these are things that have to be dealt with. The pros FAR outweigh the cons in the long run.

So what the hell is my problem? I think I just need a break. Luckily in 3 days I’ll be home.

Playing video games. Wonder if I can just let my phone battery die and not touch it for three days? Hmm.

Here are 3 out of the 73 games that are coming out this month that I have to play:

Did all game devs get together and decide to release all their games all at once? NOT NICE.

Of course, SKYRIM is the one I want the most. I preordered it for the PC (Boot Camp in my case) and probably will ignore all other games for a good month. Heh.

I loved Oblivion, but there were several factors about that game that really limited my enjoyability. For starters, there were probably about 10 voice actors for all the different races. Encompass all those voices across hundreds of characters and there’s an issue with monotony.

Worth bitching over? Not at all. The game is a work of art, and it seems with Skyrim they’ve addressed all the little “thingies” that were goofy. So yeah, can’t wait to get my digital hands on that’n.

So we’re finally going out with Mushroomhead this fall which is a nice change of pace for us. Let me rephrase: We’ve been touring for almost six years now and there hasn’t been a real strong opportunity for us to go out. Think about it; how many huge metal bands want to take out a comedy metal band?

Can I iterate?

The problem with being “unique” is that you’re “risky” in the eyes of other bands/promoters/booking agents. Wanna know why we haven’t toured England/Austrailia/WORLD yet? We’re a “risk” in the eyes of the industry because of our comedic undertones. No matter how YOU feel about it, there’s nothing we can do if Huge Metal Band X won’t take us out because they’re not sure about us.

What’s equally as frustrating is from all the ass-busting we do other bands seemingly just waltz into some sort of famous status where they’re swimming in tour buses, fans, and huge touring ops without even trying. Of course, I’m sure there are some bands out there who look at us and go, “Those fucktards sing songs about tacos and testicles and people like it. Screw them.”

I know you’re out there. *finger points at screen*

Hopefully this tour will help show the world that Psychostick can hang with other non-comedic acts and do it well. We can, I assure you.

Okay, enough about that.

I want to play this.

NOW.

Yeah.

However, I DID attempt to put together a massive tour update that was interesting and full of stories. No really, I did. I even took the time to compile a list of shows and post interesting bullet points on each show. For real. Then I realized that I had about 6,443,009 other, slightly more important higher priority things to wrastle.

Still haven’t fallen behind with Alfredo Afro. Although at the moment there’s nothing in my queue… and that’s bad. Suddenly had to work on shirt designs because we’ve got an exciting tour we’re prepping for in October. I’ve got so many freakin’ blog ideas that–

Okay, okay – enough. How about a real update.

There’s no doubt – the Unleash the Dumb Tour 2011 was pure success. I mean, just look.

Dumb, unleashed.

So much happened. Then, near the beginning of the tour, there was this little show in Orlando, FL called EARTHDAY BIRTHDAY. We’ve got some major love there from WJRR there. Our stupid presentation attracted the attention of thousands upon thousands of crazy Floridians.

Proof? Ahem.

My wide backside and... a few people.

Quite flattering, I must say. I hate tootin’ my own horn, but… we had the largest crowd on that second stage, and we were something like the 5th out of 12 bands or something. It was utterly in-fucking-holy-shitballs-insane. Before this large crowd there was about 1/3rd of what you see above. Apparently when you start singing about tacos and shitty cars, Florida listens and walks towards the noise.

Love it.

The rest of the tour went extremely well, mets oodles of stupid Psychostick fans, saw stupid costumes, ate tons of great food. Check out most of the pictures here – there’s still more I gotta put up.

Of course, there’s the bad. Our trailer, our extremely shitty trailer, can’t handle the gear we haul, so it’s time to retire it. Of course a new one, more specifically a badass professional Wells Cargo trailer, costs about $7,000. So if any of you know someone who has a slightly used 7 x 16 Wells Cargo trailer, let me know. Thx.

After we wrapped up the Unleash the Dumb Tour, I received a call from Bill Manspeaker (Green Jello) asking if we wanted to play Warped Tour. Aside from a few logistics, we said yes.

And it was EPIC.

For starters, we played this little tent thing (roughly 20 x 20 feet). But that’s not the crazy part – our Warped Tour experience made mince meat out of us. I call it “Boot camp for bands” because, well, you have to haul your gear across extremely long distances. Like, HALF-A-MILE. That’s not every day, just a few.

Nuts.

But that’s not the crazy part.

We got to play in front of some key decision makers at Warped.

Then a bunch of awesome shit happened that I can’t tell you about.

How about a Starcraft 2 review?

Heh.

Starcraft 2 – PC

This is what a SEQUEL is supposed to be. I never actually finished the first Starcraft but I did play a chunk of it. FUN.

Sequel is FUNNER.

There are few near-perfect games out there. Starcraft 2 is so close to perfection that it’s extremely difficult to find faults, the only one being some glitches with a cutscene or two. I found that my lack of skill is what kept me from getting ALL the bonus stuff and achievements, not the game. The game never once got in the way, which is rare for games. The story is interesting, there’s tons to do, and battle.net performs so extremely well for multiplayer.

Now I can’t freakin’ wait for Diablo III. Hurry up Blizzard. But… take your time. Meh, whatever.

Buy and play Starcraft 2.

9.9/10 Uncomfortable Terran Armor Erections

Trying to wrap up Torchlight and a few other games. Struggling through Duke Nukem Forever. It’s just… kind of boring. Poor Duke.

‘Til next time, stupid!

Plus I’ve been drawing craptons of comics. Haven’t fallen behind… yet.

AND I got some new hardware. Gaming is fun.

Speaking of New Year, there really needs to be an alternative to Dick Clarks New Year’s Poppin’ Eve. If you like pop music, that’s great, but guys like myself do not and would like to do something else other than watch the uber-family safe and cool-when-we-were-younger-but-now-it-is-boring-but-there’s-nothing-else-on-so-I-guess-we’ll-watch-the-gender-confused-Keshia.

Would someone, like Comedy Central, grow some balls and have a New Year’s Metal-as-Fuck Celebration? The mere fact that you’re offering competition will have other folks look for alternative.

I can rest at ease though; the internet has almost destroyed the evil music industry. Radio is far less relevant than ever before. YES. Television is next thanks to Google TV, Apple TV, and other mediums. Untargeted annoying commercials are almost a thing of the past; companies are going to have to get more clever with subliminal advertising rather than obnoxious rape-your-eyes-and-ears advertising. So glad things are going this direction.

Moving on…

Gonna do some quickie reviews on a couple of games I’ve tinkered with lately.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow (PS3, 360)
Outsourcing can be a good thing. The studio they sourced to (can’t recall the name right now), plus Kojima Productions, gave Castlevania a new twist. It plays  more like a God of War/Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden game with a nice Castlevania feel to it. Superb voice acting, awesome music, incredible graphics, and a compelling twisty ending make this one a win/win. Plus Patrick Stewart is in it.

If you like fun, play this game.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, 360, my rectum)
I love Gamefly. They let me try games that I might otherwise hate myself for buying. FF XIII is one of those games. What happened to Final Fantasy? Remember when those games were not only great stories, but were also highly addictive and (gasp) FUN?! The last Final Fantasy game that blew my frickin’ mind was Final Fantasy VII. That’s the one with Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth in case you don’t remember.

SEVEN SEQUELS LATER, they still haven’t recaptured me.

For starters, the character designer is trying too hard. Tetsuya Nomura did better than he did in FF X, but it’s still just too much pizzazz or whatever. The obnoxious overly giddy character is there (the Rikku equivalent) AGAIN, and the dialogue is so awkward that I cringe every time there is a cutscene.

And there are TONS upon TONS of cutscenes.

The Japanese to English translation is too direct. The conversations just don’t sound natural; they should’ve hired an experienced writer to keep the translation in the ballpark but still make the character interactions believable. Not once did I laugh, not once did I get attached to a character, not ONCE did I want to keep playing. I gave it a chance but they lost me when the Shiva Sisters suddenly emerged from Snow’s arm and you had to “prove  yourself” by attacking and defending.

Final Fantasy has died. I hope they don’t remake VII now because they’ll add awkward dialogue and completely fuck it up. However no Final Fantasy game could ever become as low and as shitty as Final Fantasy X-2.

The rerelease of Secret of Mana for the iPhone was well done. Sometimes they can get something right.

Anyway, gonna go work on comics. Hooray.

I’ve got quite a bit to cover here so I’ll make ‘er good.

The new Psychostick design is finished. It’s not active as of this writing since I’ve fixed a few more bugs (the last post ended up being irrelevant after I simplified some CSS), but I’m going to go on record and say that it’s once of the best designs I’ve ever come up with. I took a different approach this time and put everything aside (and I do mean EVERYTHING) and focused on it fully. I didn’t even play video games. After about a month and a week, it’s finished.

I’m launching it Tuesday morning and waiting for any bugs to creep up.

I’ve decided not to be afraid of PNGs anymore. Apparently Internet Explorer 6 and 7 doesn’t render PNG alpha transparency properly, thus many designers are weary of using them. The filesize is larger too.

The advantages of PNGs?

• The awesomeness that is alpha transparency
• It supports millions of colors like JPEGs.
• They just look better than GIFs and JPEGs.

Hopefully within the next year or two fear of PNGs will be completely gone and those who use old versions of IE are banned from the internet somehow.

The new Psychostick design uses PNG files where necessary, and parts of the page take longer to download with slow connections. At this point it’s so much less of an issue; most people have broadband nowadays and don’t use older IE browsers. Those that DO are usually older, less savvy folk who still churn butter by hand.

Anyway, blah blah blah internet blah blah blah graphics blah blah blah cake.

I’m also able to work on the new album again, plus I can continue my work on Alfredo Afro. I haven’t even touched my yet-to-be-released web comic since I started on Psychostick’s design, and my involvement with the new record had been reduced since then. This is no longer the case. I’m all, back and stuff. It’s time to get these projects DONE so I can get paid. I need a new Mac. :]

I also just snagged one of these. Wacom Intuos 4 Medium. This thing doesn’t just rock, it METALS.

Awesome Wacom.

For a productivity tool, I’ve switched to Omnifocus from Things. In the Mac world, there’s a huge debate going on between these two programs. Often times they’ll be a large drawn-out article comparing the two in extreme detail. In contrast, I can easily deduce for you which one would be better for you.

• If you are a business owner with many, many tasks and can’t afford a secretary to keep track of everything, go with Omnifocus.
• If you are a normal Joe with a day job and are just trying to keep things in order at work and at home, Things is more up you alley.

These two programs are both modeled around the “Getting Things Done” methodology, which is (in my opinion) the most robust way to make yourself productive. So if you feel as if your life, both professional and personal, is cluttered, you should definitely check out Getting Things Done. Read the book and decide for yourself how you prefer to keep organized.

Alrighty, gonna hop back to it. Maybe I’ll try and finish a comic today to snap into the queue.

Not that “gotta-collect-everything-in-Oblivion” busy, but actual busy!

For starters, let’s talk Alfredo Afro. I had to put it on hold last week due to a little Psychostick store launch, but I picked back up on it yesterday and things are moving along. 46% as of this writing, which at 60% means I’m done with the website and it’s ready for beta testing. The remaining 40% are the actual comics themselves. That part will probably take me the longest. Some I can crank out in an hour, and some are far more complicated and take several hours.

Investing time and money into this is becoming more a reality for me. Not in a bad way, but in a “woah, this might actually work” direction. Here’s a little clutter on my desk right now:

Yep. Paper, pencil, rulers - old school. You can see my little Wacom tablet where the blue circle light is.

Of course, many of you are asking, “Can you actually draw worth a damn?” My answer is, “I can draw well enough to get away with LOOKING like I can draw worth a damn.” Does that make sense? It will hopefully before the end of the year. Heh heh.

As of right now I have to finish more of the programming and work on polishing the site. I try to hop from web development to drawing so I don’t burn myself out. So far so good, but the real test lies when I’m cranking out two comics a week consistently. The mid-term lies in actually completing the initial batch of comics. I’ve got something like 30 comic concepts sitting in the queue. More are added regularly.

I try not to get ahead of myself either; usually at this stage with a project I’ve given up. This is definitely a sign that I should see this through to the end. I’ve got a few people genuinely interested in what this is going to turn into. By the time it launches, if all the pieces are in place (and they should be), it should spread like a viral wildfire STD. Hmm… trying to picture that… ouch, eww, and uhh, *barf*

Anyway.

Tomorrow, my stupid band and I will be hashing out some new songs. There’s a ton for us to do there, plus I’ve got to redesign and optimize Psychostick.com as well as a few other things. Oh, let’s not forget the artwork for the new record too.

Busy? Naawhhh…

Oh, I sold my iPad. Crazy, huh? iRawrb selling an Apple product. What’s wrong with me?

I’ve also experienced near completion of Psychostick’s store. More… eventually.

I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.

How long did it take you to be noticed as a band?

What’s your fave Nothingface, and Brand new song?

So after listening to “Girl directions” and reading that you used to live in Pheonix, Az. I’m curious as to where about did you live. In a complete non-stalker way of course.

Keep up with the music. <3

- Kira

I like easy questions.

My favorite Nothingface song is either Breathe Out or Villians on “Audio Guide to Everyday Atrocity.” Can’t decide. I love that record.

Play Crack The Sky is my fav Brand New song. I didn’t really dig their newest record, but “Deja Entendu” is badass.

In regards to where I lived in Phoenix, I bounced around several times. First it was Scottsdale, then Tempe, then Tempe again, then Phoenix, then… Phoenix again. All in the east valley, as I did not like the west valley very much. However, if you wanted to stalk me there you just might want to give up now. I’ve relocated halfway across the country.