What it all means (hint: no one’s quite sure, except that they’re pretty sure Amazon is evil).
Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus And He Told Me To Tell You To Boycott Amazon Or Else The Only Thing You’ll Get For Christmas For The Rest Of Your Natural Life Is A Big ‘Ol Box Of Sadness
If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s the deal. Amazon has a new ‘Price Check’ app and they’re running a promotion around it.
You go into a bookstore, find something you like. Then you scan it with the price check app and if you buy it , Amazon will give you up to $5 off.
What absolute bulls–t. A big damn conspiracy for Amazon to use bookstores as showrooms for products and then turnaround and shamelessly undercut them. Oh, and keep in mind that these are the things that a local bookstore does that Amazon does not:
Pays sales taxes to support your police and fire departments, your children’s schools, and roads
Pay property taxes which also help with those things
Many indie bookstores also donate to your local community
Hire locals to work in the bookstore
Provide a community gathering place focused on literacy, culture and civic engagement
So, yes. You should boycott Amazon.
Just The Right Book
Not prepared to sign up, but it’s great idea. I had a completely unfeasible idea for a bookstore where I’d ask the customer some questions and give them an appropriate book. If they liked crap romance novels, for example, I might give them something by Jane Austen.
Belated Happy Birthday To C.S. Lewis
Yesterday was C.S. Lewis’ birthday.
Like many English speaking folks (especially those, like myself, raised within Lewis’ own Anglican communion), Lewis was a big part of my reading childhood. I devoured all those Narnia books which, in the bad old days before the internet, took a while to finally collect.
My own favorite (though I gather it is not held in high esteem by critics and Lewis scholars) was The Horse and His Boy.
Later, I delved into his more adult stuff: The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Out of the Silent Planet (I never read the rest of the series, rather feeling it to be similar to, but ultimately second best to Madeleine L’Engle’s series beginning with A Wrinkle in Time).
Later, when going through a difficult time, I read a book he wrote after his wife’s death, A Grief Observed.
I should also note his scholarly book, The Allegory of Love. Though I have to admit that I have not read it, it is reckoned be a very important work in developing our understanding of medieval literature and the medieval mind and it is a reminder that C.S. Lewis was not just a children’s writer nor just a Christian polemicist, but an Oxford don and a scholar of no little repute.
His books combine to form a Christian theodicy, an explication of how evil and suffering can exist in a world created by a perfect and loving god.
A Message For Voltron
Dear Pilot of the Black Lion,
Hi, I just wanted to offer some advice. I’ve watched a lot of your battles and I’ve noticed a trend: literally, nothing but the Blazing Sword has ever worked.
In the future, instead of trying those other things for twenty-two and a half minutes, you should just go straight for the ace.
Respectfully,
the coffee philosopher
My Xbox 360 Died
This is a sad time because, yes, I do waste hours playing video games.
Not only did it die, but it’s out of warranty.
Not only that, but the first attempt at securing a replacement was a failure because the store only had the super deluxe packages, not the bare minimum package.
Also, I just received FIFA 2012 (that being a soccer game) and haven’t been able to play it yet.
And I’m very afraid of losing my saved games from Mass Effect 1 & 2.
Let me briefly justify myself. Mass Effect is a classic space opera as a video game. Straight from the golden age. The great E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith (of the Lensman series) would have been proud to have written this story.
It’s also a trilogy and my choices from the first game affects circumstances in the second game and choices from them both will affect the third game (which will be released next year). I’ve been a geeky completist, going through all the little side quests, playing the main character as both a man and a woman (the latter did, at least initially, make me feel a little uncomfortably, I’ll confess – what can I say? American men are not known for being enormously confident in their sexuality), choosing different characters to pursue romantically (which felt very awkward when playing as a woman), and playing as a ‘paragon’ (good guy) or a ‘renegade’ (kind of mean spirited, get the job done at all costs guy). This way, when Mass Effect 3 comes out, I can play it through a couple of times and see how those choices play out. Whatever. Make fun of me all you want. But you can see how I wouldn’t want to have go through all that again, right?
I’m Building My Time Machine Now
Me and the Morlocks are going to throw down. It’s on like donkey kong.
Because a second experiment found neutrinos moving faster than light.
Oh yeah. It’s on beeyach.
Did I spell that right? Biyach? Beiyatch? I’m not sure.
Blogger Liability
I don’t really see myself getting sued and I don’t real have any assets anyway (my enormous collection of more than one hundred novelizations of Doctor Who episodes have a very limited resale value – even the ones based on episodes featuring the inimitable Tom Baker), but should any of you feel like, there is, apparently, liability insurance for bloggers (scroll down a bit once you open the link) who say terrible, mean, nasty and otherwise indefensible things like ‘Romney’s Anti-Obama ad running in New Hampshire is nothing by low down, lying bulls–t.’
The Public Library Under Threat
Post Mortem
Even though it is now gone (and feels long gone, too, because the death was so drawn out and because browsing half empty bookshelves during a liquidation sale doesn’t feel like being in a real bookstore), here’s a post mortem on Borders.
If you read all the way to the end, you may be heartened by the comment that smaller bookstores (2500 sqaure feet – like many independent bookstores) should remain modestly profitable into the foreseeable future. Let’s hope that’s true.
the coffee philosopher 