Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post. And inevitably, I end the week with most of that material unused. But there’s no reason to let this stuff go to waste: I can still share it with you, for your amusement, and start the new week with a clean slate.
Herewith this week’s leftover links, in no particular order:
Mom throws away action figures, son burns down house
Not Even Christina Hendricks Is Safe From Photoshop
Why You Must See Unretouched Images, And Why You Must See Them Repeatedly
Record-breaking movie fan Gwilym Hughes dies
BBC unready to commit to 3DTV format
Apple to rent TV shows for 99 cents each?
TV networks need to think hard about biting that Apple
Erotic Drive-In Sign Proves Vampires Are Totally Gay
Is Betty Draper Loathsome – Or Just Misunderstood?
What the Steven Slater Story Says about How News is Created and Shared
North Korea Denies Using Twitter, Facebook & YouTube
Brotherly Love in Philadelphia Does Not Extend to Bloggers
and
5 Myths About Philadelphia’s ‘Blogging Tax’
Publishers Weekly Unveils $149 Service for Self-Published Authors
and
Should Writers Pay for Book Reviews?
Americans Are Dumping Cable TV, but Execs Say Economics to Blame
Newspapers gone by 2022 says futurist
Evan Smith of Texas Tribune: ‘Journalists Deserve a Living Wage’
The Gendered World Of Vermont Teddy Bears
In Defense Of Lady-Terrorizing Horror Movies
Woody Allen Shoots in Europe Because New York is Too Expensive
Whither The Marlboro Man? Feminism Killed Him, Duh
[John] Barrowman: I’m Staying In Wales
Eat, Pray, Trash: What the Critics Don’t See
‘Eat Pray Love’ and ‘I Am Love’: Class Warfare
Steve Murray on Cathy: Ack! A woman’s work is finally done
Blockbuster tells Hollywood studios it’s preparing for mid-September bankruptcy
Blockbuster bankruptcy? Good riddance to bad rubbish. Between relentlessly running small mom-and-pop video stores out of business (the same boo-hoo to you, too, Borders and B&N), Byzantine rental policies, and the need to censor what a customer wants to watch, the only downside I see here is more empty real estate.
OTOH, a dead Hollywood video here in Tucson will soon be the new home of a Five Guys Burgers and Fries restaurant.
So an increase in unemployment stats in the midst of a questionable economy is a good thing?
Incidentally, it’s worth noting that the same market forces that are putting Borders and B&N out of business (for example, the growing popularity of Amazon.com and Kindle) are also forcing independent bookstores out of business. So much for win-win scenarios.
Perhaps in a little while we can go completely to software-generated women and stop pretending that the images on posters are of human beings. (When Burn Notice feels it has to edit the belly of Gabrielle Anwar – not, by anyone’s metric, a fat or ugly woman! – things have gone ridiculously too far.)
The BBC is horribly mired in its move to DAB for radio broadcasts – a standard that for most people gives lower quality than the existing FM system, and which was obsolete even more they committed to it – and wants to avoid another such TARFU.
I will be surprised if newspapers last that long – not because of the physical format, but because they have become nothing but recyclers of other people’s stories (either the TV news or press releases). They no longer have anything to offer. They mostly don’t bother to employ journalists now!
Expecting toy companies to be anything other than hyper-reactionary is a mug’s game. Remember the Barbie Liberation Front?
“wherein any woman who was sexually active got axed (or knifed or strangled or garroted)” … seen an episode of CSI recently? Any woman who’s sexually active outside a “normal” marriage is usually either the victim or the killer.
Can’t cry over Blockbuster, but I suspect that the demise of shopping-mall DVD rental will give even more power to Wal-Mart (as the biggest mall DVD sales outlet) to push down the acceptable ratings of films.
The Barrowman article links to a mention of the Doctor Who split season, and “An enormous game-changing cliffhanger that will change everything”. No, Steven. Too much. Just for once, let’s have a baddie who doesn’t threaten the entire friggin’ universe.
The Fall of Blockbuster is much like the fall of the old record stores: my teenage years were spent at a wonderful little mom & pop used record place (Dunedin’s Record and Tape Outlet) that specialized in British imports and bootlegged audiotapes from live concerts. It survived the advent of CDs to some extent, but when CD-Rs came about the store seemed to up and die. I’m pretty sure if they’d survived that, the MP3/iPod revolution would have wiped them out.
@RogerW:
is there a link to that article somewhere?
bronxbee, I’d misremembered it – they were making her look fatter.
http://thecathoderaychoob.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/gabrielle-anwars-freaky-naked-torso/