Indie musicians and fans now have a new way of selling their merchandise: www.rekiosk.com. The site, described as an alternative distribution solution for independent creatives, launched last week.

Basically anyone can open a free account to sell music and books. You don't need to be a musician or writer, though. You can sell media from your favorite indie band or author.

Sale commissions are generous. Here's an explanation from the site:

We make sure that for every sale made on the site, the creator or their authorized agent always gets 70% of the sale price. But unlike other digital vendors out there, we let the user who made the sale collect the distribution commission — which is often as much as 25% of the sale price.

The site is also a social media platform where you can connect with other users with similar tastes. A "discover" tab allows you to view best sellers and search by category.

Check out how it works here.

Apparently, Pat Robertson thought he was getting too many Christmas cards from the Jolie/Pitt household when he said that he didn't necessarily think people should be adopting foreign children.

Relevant "weird" quote from Mr. Robertson for those who can't YouTube at work:

I've got a dear friend who adopted some little kid from an old fishing town in Colombia. Child had brain damage and grew up, uh, weird. You just never know what been done to a child before you get that child, what kind of sexual abuse, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

At least he showed remarkable self-awareness of the potential rabble he just roused, closing his rambling with, "OK, let's get the next question, I'm in trouble."

The voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Vin Scully, announced yesterday that he would return next year for his 64th season behind the microphone.

LA's KTLA Channel 5 had an anchor do a rundown of some of the accomplishments of the greatest sports announcer who has ever lived. And then this happened.

Since I am the editor of a newspaper, and since it's election season, my email inbox is being inundated with press releases from various campaigns and whatnot.

One of these inundaters: The National Republican Congressional Committee. Once a day or more, I two—count 'em, two—twin news releases slamming our two local sitting Democratic congressmen. These news releases are identical, except for the names: Raul Grijalva, and Ron Barber.

I got twin news releases yesterday with this alarming, but helpfully hashtagged headline:

#IWANTREPEAL: Barber Voted to Put 15 Unelected Medicare Cutters Between Seniors and their Doctors

OK then! Anyway, it goes on to demonize the two congressmen not voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act (and includes the oft-disproven "Medicare cuts" line).

“Ron Barber thinks 15 unelected bureaucrats are better suited to make healthcare decisions than nearly 50 million American seniors and their doctors,” said NRCC Communications Director Paul Lindsay. “After slashing over $700 billion to Medicare in order to pay for ObamaCare, Barber's support for a Medicare rationing board adds insult to injury for current and future Arizona seniors.”

Barber voted against repealing the board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. (H.R. 5, Roll Call #126, 3/22/12)

The email, again ever so helpful, includes a link to the list of votes on that bill. And, of course, RON BARBER'S NAME IS NOT ON IT.

Because Barber was not elected to congress until June.

Hey, NRCC press folks: Pay a little more attention to the carbon-copy news releases you're sending out. Accuracy, y'know.

For some reason, some people believe that once something is posted on the internet, it can be taken and repurposed in any manner whatsoever. Unfortunately, that mistaken premise is apparently held by KOLD, since Michael McKisson, who runs TucsonVelo.com (and contributes two blog posts a week for The Range), caught the station stealing footage from his site and running it as part of a news story. No credit, no permission, nothing.

So, Michael decided to try to get something back from KOLD for the hard work he did (unwillingly) for their benefit: he sent them an invoice for $300. No word yet from KOLD's news director if they intend to cough up the money.

UPDATE:

A few weeks ago, I wrote this in my Weekly Wide Web column (bold added for emphasis):

Arizonadailyindependent.com stretches the very idea of independence. It isn't exactly terrible, but it's close, generally either reworking the same press releases everyone gets, or mangling news stories to fit some sort of agenda (seemingly to get Republicans elected). The worst part is that some people seem to read the site like it's a trustworthy news source, despite the fact that none of the stories have bylines, and that most of the so-called facts that are used lack any sort of attribution.

Guess what? Most of the stories are still attributed to ADI News Services, which I'm pretty sure is not an actual thing that exists, but a few stories now are actually attributed to "L Hunnicutt," presumably Loretta Hunnicutt, who you might remember as a founding member of Tucsonans United for Sound Districts and who I remember as the person who called to yell at me a few weeks ago.

While we're a long way from either a readable website or actual attribution for authors and information, this is a quality start, taking some responsibility for the stories that appear on the Arizona Daily Independent. Thanks to the ADI staff for reading my column and taking my advice seriously.

There are certainly a number of actions that occur over at the Arizona Daily Star that befuddle us here at the Weekly, but yesterday we heard through the grapevine something that was even beyond our general confusion. Apparently, an email went out to about two dozen employees requesting that those reporters turn over their Twitter passwords over to management. Now, unless the Star is getting super vigilant about social media grammatical errors among their staff, it would seem Tucson's daily wants to keep an extra bit of control over their writers, perhaps to keep Josh Brodesky from emotionally hashtagging again. Still...for a paper that collects staff tweets online and has active tweeters like Tim Steller, Becky Pallack and the Finleys on the sports side, it's a weird move and one the staff can't be thrilled about.

From the Oregonian, a story that turns out far better than one might expect:

A man who was intoxicated and masturbating to pornography when he drove a stolen car through the crime scene tape surrounding the homicide of a teen-age boy last year will not have to register as a sex offender.

In case you don't feel like actually reading the story, the once-intoxicated masturbator has been participating in drug treatment and has apparently cleaned up his life, leading to the judge allowing the man to withdraw his guilty plea for public indecency. Hooray for happy endings, right?

I'm a little mystified by the idea of "print exclusives" in general, mostly because I don't think anyone is likely to run out of the house to buy a copy of the Sunday paper just because of a list online, but I guess that's the strategy the Arizona Daily Star is running with, so whatever. However, it might make a bit more sense if a simple search of their website didn't turn up most the articles you supposedly need to get the dead tree edition to read.

Here's their list this week (in italics):

1. Rio Nuevo has solved the mystery of its missing millions. Get all the details.

Here you go.

2. Find out how Democrats plan to turn Arizona blue this November.

Right here.

3. Southern Arizona's streams are losing their flow. Find out what that means to animals, plants — and people.

Found it.

4. CPS formed a SWAT team to close out cases of suspected child abuse and neglect. Columnist Josh Brodesky explains why it failed in Pima County.

Josh Brodesky's series on local CPS issues seems to miss the point of that the Republican leadership in this state needs to take some responsibility for the agency's troubles, but here's his second (?) column on the subject.

5. Meet the new head of TUSD's Mexican American Student Services, and find out what she plans for her new role.

I don't know if I'd take on that position for the pay of $89,633, but the article is here.

6. Election season has begun, and that means political signs are sprouting up everywhere.

I assume this is referring to the Political Notebook, which can be found online here.

7. If you want to go out in style, a new hearse company might be just what you're looking for.

A surprisingly long article on motorcycle hearses is right here, if that's your thing.

I stopped looking when it took more than one search attempt to find the Bonnie Henry column, but you get the idea. Think of all the print sales you're losing, Lee Enterprises! This could explain the quarterly losses, so someone should lock these precious exclusives down.

I recognize the general hypocrisy of a guy who spends his day trying to build web traffic complaining about someone else's formula (and it is a formula) to do so, but if Neetzan Zimmerman, of The Daily What and Gawker said this to a New York Times reporter with a straight face, I really have to re-evaluate my perspective on humanity in general:

“It really comes from a place of knowing what historically has done well,” he said, “and what generally tends to stir conversation.” Cats, Mr. Zimmerman said, are a surefire bet, as are stories about zombies and videos of flash mobs or public marriage proposals.