Strange Discovery: Receipts CD

I made an odd and intriguing discovery last week. Searching eBay for piano music of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji I was alarmed to spot an item for sale titled “Receipts CD From Sorabji.com”. The CD appeared to be professionally produced.

Dumbfounded and even a bit shocked I immediately fired off a message to the seller, angrily informing them that they had no right to copy content from my web site to a CD and profit from the product.

The response came right away: She had purchased the CD at a Salvation Army in upstate New York. Certainly, she said, there is no law against selling found items.

My righteous indignation quickly turned to contrition, and then to intrigue. Who had done this? Why? And what exactly was on the CD?

I quickly wrote back to the seller, apologizing with all sincerity for coming on so strong. Mine was a kneejerk reaction. This was a red star seller with 100% positive feedback ratings and thousands of sales. Had I thought about it for a moment I would have had to realize that such a person is probably not one to brazenly scrape content from web sites and sell it in such a manner.

She offered to sell the disc to me for the $2 she paid for it, plus shipping. I wanted to prove how sorry I was for writing such a snotty e-mail, so I clicked “Buy It Now” and paid the full $12.99 asking price. She promptly responded that it isn’t right that I should pay for my own work, and refunded me $11, meaning I only paid what she paid for it, plus shipping.

I’ve been involved in some memorable and positive eBay transactions but this one definitely tops the list. All thanks in the world to eBay seller younameit.

Photos of the CD on eBay appeared to show that the CD was copyright 2002 by a company called “LOSER”. The authenticity of this “copyright” was dubious, and I thought it unlikely that a company named “LOSER” ever existed or that anyone actually sold copies and made money on this project.

The booklet also showed URLs for two web sites: My Receipts at Sorabji.com and another URL that no longer exists but which lives on at archive.org: Derek Dahlsad’s Big Website of Wal-Mart Purchase Receipts, at Prohosting.com.

The CD was delivered to my PO Box. I used the time on the subway ride home to get a closer look at the CD and its particulars.

The cover contains an image of a cash register and the word “receipts”. The typography and style of the word appears to be consistent with the “LOSER” logo that is on the back (see below).

The inside of the booklet shows a collage of images of receipts, all from Wal-Mart and all, evidently, from the latter of the abovementioned web sites.

On the back of the CD booklet is printed the LOSER logo, with an apparent copyright date of 2002. Web site URLs for my receipts site and Derek’s Wal-Mart receipts page are below.

The CD itself is printed upon with text matter lifted from receipts, along with an inexplicable (to me, at least) illustration of a man holding his hand up to another man’s head as a giant + sign hovers between them. There may be other inside jokes here that are lost on me.

What I did not notice at first was the list at the far left of the booklet’s second page. The list starts with “locust prayer” then “horse pills” then “mouthful of cavities.” This would not have been a giveaway to me had I noticed it right away but its meaning became obvious once I got home.

Given the presence of the web site URLs on the book I expected some sort of HTML or multimedia presentation showing images of receipts from Derek’s site and mine. Instead I was prompted to choose a program with which to play back an audio CD. I found myself listening to a mixed CD of music, pop and indie type songs none of which appeared to have anything to do with receipts, sorabji.com, or Derek’s site.

Using a mix of the Shazam Android app and by typing in song lyrics as I heard them I determined the names and performers of all 16 of the songs. As mysterious as it still was to me I had to admit that it was a damn good playlist:

Down: Pray For The Locust
The Dandy Warhols: Horse Pills
The Faint: Cars Pass In Cold Blood
Blind Melon: Mouthful of Cavities
Modest Mouse: Jesus Christ Was An Only Child
Pinback: Concrete Seconds
Simon & Garfunkel: Leaves That Are Green
Starlight Mints: Submarine Number 3
Neutral Milk Hotel: King Of Carrot Flowers, Parts 2-3
Fugazi: The Kill
Rage Against the Machine: Down Rodeo
David Dondero: The Lonesomeness That Kills
Bob Geldof: Six Million Dollar Loser
Damien Jurado: Tonight I Will Retire
The Police: King of Pain
Pernice Brothers: Overcome By Happiness

I briefly studied the song titles and listened to the lyrics, trying to imagine what connection any of this had to do with my receipts, or Derek’s. Was the Pernice Brothers’ “Overcome By Happiness” an allusion to my original web site: “The Place Of General Happiness“? Was Modest Mouse’s “Jesus Christ Was An Only Child” a shoutout to “The Lord“, one of the first things I ever posted to the Internet?

Neither of these options made much sense, even stretching possibilities to the nth.

Then I noticed something at the bottom of Derek’s page. His Wal-Mart receipts site was a member of the “Loser Site Web Ring,” a web ring which connected related sites via HTML links at the bottom of pages. If you wanted to be a member of the Loser Site Web Ring you would insert some HTML/CGI code at the bottom of your web pages. Your site would link to another site in the web ring, and other sites in the ring would link to yours. It was an easy and harmless way to draw traffic.

There had to be some connection between the “LOSER” logo and the Loser Site Web Ring. I can’t seem to find a logo for that Web Ring today, but maybe this was it.

My best guess is that members of Loser Site web ring shared mixed CDs, for some reason associating the discs with web sites on that ring. My site was never on this or any other web ring, but if the sharers of this CD had some fetish for receipts then I guess the URL’s inclusion makes some kind of sense. I’m going to give the playlist a few more listens, though. Maybe a theme of consumerism and anti-capitalism will emerge. Or maybe it’s just a Zen joke. Whatever the case, I will not burn much more time thinking about it.