Monday various

Wednesday various

Monday various

  • Maybe I’m just still bitter that my family stood on line for several hours to see this when it was new — and missed out on Journey into Imagination (at the time a personal favorite and which is what we originally thought we were standing on line for) — but come on, the return of Captain Eo? Really?
  • I’m always dubious about lists of new slang words. They inevitably seem like they’re just a joke on whoever is compiling them — “can you believe what I got that reporter from the Guardian to believe?” — or like somebody’s just gotten corrugated ankles, gone to goat heaven, and started making things up. [via]
  • Graham Greene once entered a contest to parody himself. He came in second. [via]
  • Sketchy Santas. Parents, do you really want your kids sitting on these men’s laps? [via]
  • And finally, speaking of which, Jack Bauer’s making a list and checking it twice…

Tuesday various

  • John Seavey on the “Vote With Your Wallet” Fallacy as it applies to comic books:

    And of course, the worst part is that DC and Marvel are the bread and butter of the modern comics store. For all that people encourage buying indie comics as a way to vote with their wallets, if DC and Marvel (possibly even just Marvel) got out of the publishing business and decided to focus on their movies and videogames, it would be an utter apocalypse for the comics industry. All the other companies combined do not sell enough copies to keep a comics store in business. And without comics stores, indie publishers have very few places to sell their stuff. So voting with your wallets…might actually mean buying DC and Marvel books you hate just to keep the store you like in business.

    The business model of the comics industry would drive Warren Buffett mad.

  • Is Detroit on its way to becoming a food desert?

    About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.

    Not a single produce-carrying grocery chain in the city. From the little I saw of it a couple of years ago, I’m sorry to say I can believe it. [via]

  • Is Accelerated Reader’s only criteria for assigning points the number of pages in a book? It sure seems that way, if Hamlet can be “worth fewer points than the fifth installment of the Gossip Girl series.” Shouldn’t some other factors be taking into account? [via]
  • “When Henry Hudson first looked on Manhattan in 1609, what did he see?” This, apparently. I got to see a little of the Mannahatta Project a couple of weeks ago when I accompanied my mother to an after-hours members event at the Museum of the City of New York. Interesting stuff. [via]
  • And finally, when the police shoot the Fire Chief in the courtroom over speeding tickets, you know that, just maybe, something’s wrong. [via]