What's that like, getting thrown out of your local community college for poor grades?

It takes a bit to piece together the timeline of the relationship

It takes a bit to Get a Life, too, but I recommend you begin the process as soon as possible.

I stumbled upon something interesting there

That you're a manipulated tool?

Remember the conspiracies around Trig's birth, April 18, 2008?

Uh, no. But now you're scaring us...

Who the hell is Easily, and why should he be getting all those patents?

The "Waah Waah Content Pirates aren't Pirates, they don't have ships or parrots!" whine is even more tedious than the "Hackers are computer hobbyists, and not necessarily bad!" screed.

Language evolves (c.f., the original meaning of "geek" in the subject here).

I first heard the use of the word "pirate" in this modern context to refer to the people who were stealing satellite signals from premium cable TV networks back in the '70s, pre-dating popular Internet usage by around 15 years. Get over yourselves and move on.

or: "Where did all those flames come from and why are we in this handbasket?"

Had it been a penguin, then it would have been funny...

Had it been a penguin, 98% of the people passing by the installation would have thought it was an ad for the next Pixar movie.

Yet so, so many people seem to love the work of our artists, writers, producers, directors, and musicians. Now, if they'd only agree to pay for it, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Hey, I know: How about the Spanish Government makes it legal for Spaniards to pirate Spanish-produced movies and music exclusively? Sure, there'd be considerably less worthwhile stuff to purloin, but think of the boost to Julio Iglesias' career!

Let them dig an electronic moat around themselves. Christians, Jews, Homosexuals, Brave Women, Free Thinkers -- everybody hop on the Underground Railroad and follow the setting sun to salvation, contentment, education and prosperity. Let these backwards mutherf*ckers intellectually inbreed themselves into complete drooling impotence and irrelevancy.

You're suggesting the man should switch from Newly-Borg'd to S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-from-Birth?

Know the problem with most Christians?

They're too nice, generally, to tell trolling atheist assholes like you to go fuck yourself.

Guess that'll be my job today.

Freddie Mercury did all before

To her credit, I believe she acknowledges this. In fact, that's why she calls her self "Lady GaGa." It's a hat-tip to the old Queen bic-lighter anthem, "Radio Ga Ga"

So the greatest living practitioner of the art of Hype and Personal Perpetual Re-invention releases an album that has been universally panned in pre-sale auditions on the world's most robust e-tailer huckster (one in the midst of it's own marketing push to sell cloud storage) and the headlines are all a-chuckle over how Herself's new album is so-o-o-o-o popular (along with the free-for-a-limited-time-only neato-cloud-storage-thingy!) it crashed even Amazon's servers.

Sh'yeah...

...if your target metric is trendoid self-absorbed hipsters.