Ethics

I was listening today to The Moody Blues tape (yes, tape) The Other Side of Life and it just went all hay(ward)wire. (Get it? Ha ha. Nerd.) It barely played the whole thing. It was wobbly in pitch, mostly low and slow, and weird high-frequency warbles were happening as well. I need to get that album on a CD, but only the original, old "October 25, 1990" edition is available. (Frequent comparison shoppers at amazon know what I'm talking about.) The Moody Blues have remastered their first seven albums at least three times that I am aware of, but their later catalog gets no respect or attention - even, so it would seem, from the band themselves.

Anyway, the point being that I recently bought the marvelous new remixed/remastered CD/DVD set of Gensis' Invisible Touch album and sold my old tape of it to Half Price Books. The tape did not play very well (although it was not nearly as bad as my copy of The Other Side of Life), but I did not mention this to the buyer at HPB. It did not even occur to me at the time that this was somewhat unethical. Caveat emptor and all that, but did I do something wrong there? Well, just in case, I will make it right.

If you purchased a cassette of Genesis' Invisible Touch at Half Price Books and it does not work, I will purchase for you the wonderful 2006 CD/DVD version. (Note: receipt and fingerprint match to me required to complete offer.)

I feel better now.

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Speaking of ethics, I have been sucked in to playing in McDonald's's Monopoly game. I remember the first time I played the McDonald's's Monopoly game in 1995/96. Guess what? I won. A lot. Pretty much every day. Know why?

I worked for a newspaper. In the course of my job I handled many (which in this case means the low hundreds – that would be a great band name, btw) copies of that newspaper. In every copy of that newspaper were two tokens for McDonald's's Monopoly game. I would go through the papers until I found a winning game piece for a free order of fries. Then I would go get a free order of fries. I did this about once a week for a total of five or six free orders of fries. Was that unethical? The promotion did not specify that it was closed to employees of participating newspapers, but yes, it probably was. Unethical. So.

McDonald's's Monopoly game is going on again, and to make up for my semi-fraudulent participation over a decade ago, I will participate fully and honestly by purchasing McDonald's's "food" and promoting the contest here at my blog, which has a cumulative (six years) readership now measured in the low dozens.

Go here! It's fun! PlayAtMcD.com

It's so good to be getting these things off my conscience!