Maybe it's August (now and forever the worst month of the year), maybe it's that I'm a voracious reader of news, maybe things really are terrible, but every article I've seen this morning (and over the last few, I dunno, years) is another variation on The Internet Is Killing X Industry piece. Newspapers, obviously, music for sure, and, once again, the porn business are all dying because everyone is giving it away for free or unwilling to pay. We will continue to see these stories until things finally shake out (or those responsible for writing the pieces, who are themselves the few frightened survivors of this paradigmatic (see how easy it is?) shift, end up on the breadline with the rest of us).

But maybe I'm being too harsh. It is bad out there. Take the porn story, for instance; it contains the most devastating indicator of an industry in peril.

Kelly Labanco doesn't need industry estimates to know what's happening. The makeup artist, who has worked in porn for five years, is landing half as many jobs as she did a year ago and has seen her pay drop from a high of $250 an hour to less than $100.

"A lot of companies say they don't even need makeup artists now and the girls can do it themselves," said Labanco, who has returned to her previous job doing freelance music publicity to pay the bills.

Freelance music publicity is now more profitable than painting the faces of our nation's leading splooge-swallowers. I don't have any answers on how we fix these problems either, but I know when something is just wrong.