So guess what?

A few weeks ago, I went to buy some Microsoft Points for my Xbox Live account. I'd done it a few times before, but now it just comes up over and over that my credit card is invalid. After calling my bank and verifying that it's fine, I had to come to the conclusion that I wasn't allowed at the US Xbox Live store no more.

Oh well, I don't bother with XBLA much anyway.

So then last night I was cursing myself for ever selling the Violent Femmes first album. I decided I'd buy it again from the excellent Amazon MP3 store, which is DRM-free and is encoded at a reasonable bitrate (I don't buy iTunes because of the DRM, but more importantly, a 128kbit music file is worth exactly nothing in my book). I've done this a lot lately. For bands that I really love, I like a CD so I can rip it lossless, but for stuff that is just in my "collection," 256kbit is fine.

Now it comes up with a message that they only serve people in the USA. No music for you!

(sigh)