Congratulations! You’ve managed to elect more Republicans! Because they have a plan for the economy. This is true! They plan to jigger around the laws and taxes to make themselves and their friends as rich as possible. Won’t that be fun!

Thanks,
The rest of us

PS. Did you really think they liked you? Sorry, but their friends (you know, the ones they’ll make rich) do not actually include the likes of you. They were just using you for your pool car hot sister beer votes

The cracks occur when the author is making explicit reference to the fact that the series is flowing in ‘real time’ — the seasons change, people get older, and time is acknowledged to pass. Now, there are many series where this isn’t the case. Example: Nancy Drew. The world may change around her, but Nancy remains her teenagery self. I have no issue with a series like that, where clearly the detective is in a bubble. But if you’re going to have time pass, then you need to make an effort to keep track of it. It’s really not that hard.

The Hannah Swensen cracks developed because there are too many Christmases in her universe. Some of them are novels (or were marketed as such, even if they turned out to be novellas with a pile of recipes to pad out the book), some of them are novellas in a book with additional stories by other authors. And their existence has messed up the timeline in Hannah’s world.

Y1
• 3rd week of October – Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
• December – Strawberry Shortcake Murder
• Christmas – “Candy for Christmas” (in CCC Murder Special Edition)

Y2
• February – Blueberry Muffin Murder
• June – Lemon Meringue Pie Murder
• Mid-October – Fudge Cupcake Murder
• Pre-Christmas – Sugar Cookie Murder
• Christmas – “Twelve Desserts of Christmas” (in Sugar and Spice)

Y3
• February – Peach Cobbler Murder
  • Herb and Lisa’s wedding
• March – Cherry Cheesecake Murder
• June – Key Lime Pie Murder
• December – “Candy Cane Murder” (in Candy Cane Murder)
  • Lisa referred to by her married name

Y4
• August – Carrot Cake Murder
• November – Cream Puff Murder
• December – Plum Pudding Murder
  • mentions Candy Cane murder ‘last
    year’
  • Lisa and Herb married ’10 months’??

Y5
• June – Apple Turnover Murder
• December – Gingerbread Cookie Murder

So you can see where the problem crept in. That extra Christmas (which must be that Christmas, since Lisa was married) bumped a bunch of stories forward. Hannah’s sister should have graduated by now, and you can see how crazy it makes Hannah’s boytoys seem (though even reducing the timeline by a year doesn’t really make them look any better…)

Now, living where we are, it’s extremely common for us to get ads for other states — the station I was listening to covers VT, ME, NH, MA. Of course, the commercial didn’t say where the douchebag they were talking about was running for Congress, but as it turns out it’s NH. The commercial also never mentioned the word “Republican”, though that was telegraphed clearly enough. Why? Because the entire commercial was him going on and on about how awesome the new anti-Mexican Arizona law is and how he’ll protect us (lily white NH) from the invading hordes of Mexicans planning to race up from “the border” and, I dunno, rape and pillage or something.

I love how he called it “the border” and it was clear he meant the one down south, never once commenting on the fact that NH does actually have an international border of its own. But, you know, Canadians. No one cares about them.

It was one of the more offensive political ads I’ve heard recently. I’m sad that he’s not running in my district so I can vote against him! Jackass. Instead I probably get to vote against Charles Bass, a pro-choice Republican more liberal than half of the Democrats in Congress. Gah.

GIANT INFLATABLE BEAVERS.

WILLIAM SHATNER.

And… you cut away for some random Jerry Seinfeld ‘reality’ show?

NBC, this is why your ratings suck.

When you have a HIGH KICK LINE OF MOUNTIES you leave them ON.

Not the concept, exactly, but the implementation leaves much to be desired.

Here is the deal. We live in one of the most densely populated areas in the country. And yet it doesn’t matter: broadband here is just as much of a near monopoly as it is elsewhere. The choice is cable (Comcast), which has hidden quotas and throttles connections randomly if it doesn’t like your downloading patterns, or DSL, which is never as fast as advertised and is administered by a company of imbeciles that thought it could quadruple in size with no problem and is now on the verge of bankruptcy and is being investigated by three states. Fiber is available in other parts of town, but not ours. Satellite wi-fi is a joke.

So the lesser of two evils is the DSL (we really hate Comcast). But it’s spluttery and slow. Stream? Ha ha ha. And here’s where the problem comes in. On some sites, such as YouTube, I can start the video, pause it, and then let the buffer fill with the entire video, allowing me to watch it all without stutters and pauses every one second. On most sites, this does not happen; the amount allowed to be buffered is so miniscule that the video is thus rendered completely unwatchable.

Now, I can see the logic: they don’t want people caching the whole file and then saving it. Except, psst, video people? I don’t WANT your crappy lo-res flash files. I want to watch them and then move on. But you make that impossible for me! So I have to go and find a place where I can download it instead, often in HD archival quality.

I guess my first question is, how is this situation different from Apple’s original effort to force the music industry to cap the price of a song download at .99? I fail to see much of a difference. The music industry howled because, omg, if a song was popular enough, clearly they ought to be charging what the market could bear and no less. They wanted to find the exact balance between volume and price where they maximized profits. Apple thought .99 was a good price point and a psychological barrier, plus -they- wanted to maximize the profits from sales of the portable devices, made by them, tied to their download store.

Sounds pretty much the same to me!

The publishers are on crack if they don’t think this exact situation will happen again if Apple really tries to make an iWords store for book downloads.

I’ve heard a lot of perspectives on the amazon/macmillan showdown, from the side of authors, from the side of retailers, from the side of publishers. But what I haven’t really heard is the side of the consumer. Well, I am neither publisher nor retailer, nor am I an author at this point in my life. What I am is a consumer who has watched the price of books skyrocket over the past 20 years. The rise of the hardcover and the trade paperback have vaulted the price of books that used to be $2 and $3 to $8, $13, $25. I can hardly think of anything else besides college tuition and health insurance that has risen in price at such an astonishing rate.

What does this tell me? Like the health industry, the publishing industry has a model of service that is broken. Their situation isn’t exactly the same as the music industry, though, so I’m not sure the solution can be the same either. In the music industry, most people don’t actually want a whole album. They want the two or three songs that they like and nothing more. Portable music is also a much more flexible format than a physical cd — so in many ways, the downloading consumer is getting a much better product than someone who spends the cash and buys the entire album on cd. (Not including DRM which negates the value of the download completely).

For publishing, this doesn’t work, since no one just wants three chapters out of twenty. You need the whole book or nothing. On the other hand, a physical book is, so far, more flexible than the same book on an ereader. You can write on it. You can share it with a friend. You can resell it. You can donate it to a charity. Taken care of, a book may last for 100 years or more.

You can do none of that with any of the current ebook models. This makes them far less valuable and their price should be lowered accordingly. The accessible lifetime of any current ebook is, by my best estimate, perhaps 5-10 years. And it could be much much shorter. Add onto this that to make an ebook, the distribution cost is pretty much nil. No shipping, no printing, no extra copies that have to be pulped later on. As a consumer, I’m not willing to pay more than $5 for a book in such a limited, crippled format. Which is one reason why I haven’t bought a Kindle and why I have no intention of buying any ereaders until this has been sorted.

I think they’re wrong in tracing it back to the 60s, however. It goes further back than that. There’s always been a deep suspicion in this country of intellectuals, that they’re secretly making fun or putting themselves above others. You are supposed to become rich and successful due to your hard work or your charming personality or your innate talent rather than your intellectual gifts. What do you need all that book learnin for? There’s a large segment of American society that is deeply deeply suspicious and resentful of anyone who dares think for themselves, or questions ‘facts’ that are presented with no proof or rationality.

True Story: When the H1N1 vaccine came out, there was some debate as to whether or not people should get it. There are some legitimate reasons to decide not to (egg allergy, bad reaction to previous flu shot, compromised immune system), but there were also a lot of absolutely ludicrous statements floating around. In the course of a discussion, someone actually said in all sincerity that the vaccine caused death in 1% of people who got it. The lack of critical thinking skills evidenced by this statement is astonishing. I don’t disbelieve that propaganda of that sort was out there — I just can’t believe that people believed it! But then, people see numbers and their brains shut off. 1%, they think, that’s a pretty low number, maybe it’s true. Except, of course, 1% of even just 1,000,000 (and by that point about 20,000,000 doses had shipped) is 10,000. Even the American media could not fail to notice 10,000 randomly dead people.

It all sounded very nice, but I honestly no longer have any confidence that our completely dysfunctional government has the ability to implement anything at all. There was a brief period last year when it seemed like the Democrats might have grown some balls, when they finally realized that people were angry and they had momentum. But as usual, they squandered it all with their usual spineless jackassery. The Republicans, on the other hand, were they to come to power are perfectly capable of passing most of their agenda — except their agenda is ruinous for the average American.

So it seems we’ve gotten to the point where it’s impossible to expect improvement; the best we can hope for is that the Democrats retain power so things aren’t made worse.

And that is really depressing.

Someone said to me earlier that they agreed change needed to occur but that they didn’t think the government was the answer. Fine. Then what is?

Businesses in the US behave as if their employees should grovel and simper that they’ve deigned to employ them at all, let alone grant them a reasonable salary, civilized working hours or any kind of benefits. Change will not come from there: they have no incentive.

Individuals in the US have no power of negotiation; there are so many people equally qualified for jobs, not to mention the fact that their health care is probably tied to their job, that they cannot make any demands without risking personal disaster. Change will not come from there: they have no possibility of success.

Labor unions, which wrought much change in the middle of the last century, have been gutted and their power is low. Change will not come from there: people have been on their own for so long they no longer imagine it could be different.

So I can only assume that the people who think government isn’t the answer are operating on the underpants gnome theory of improvement. Step 1: Imagine a better situation. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Fixed!!

This kind of pie in the sky crap has even less chance of working than trusting the government.

Fail 2: Annoying Radar Cop
Staking out the Hudson side of the bridge right next to the spot where the speed limit inexplicably drops to 35mph.
Fortunately in spite of his attempts to hide, highly visible from before the speed limit changes.

Fail 3: Lady at Checkout.
Sitting on her motorized cart thingee.
I have no problem with you because of the cart but rather your inability to count. 25 < 14 = FALSE

Fail 4: The Josie Prescott mystery series, by Jane Cleland
I was so excited to discover there was a mystery series set on the seacoast of New Hampshire. I remained thrilled and excited right up until page three of the first book, where the city of Rocky Point, located approximately where Hampton is in the real world, was described as having a population of 100,000. Do you know how many cities of that size there are in the ENTIRE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE? ONE. Even Nashua is still working on breaking into six figures. I tried to continue after that, but the lack of basic research evidenced by such a stupid population figure made it impossible for me to get in to the story.

Fail 5: The Jersey Barnes mystery series, by T. Lynn Ocean
I picked this up at the library because the cover made it sound interesting. And it seemed promising through the first couple of chapters — Jersey, unlike many recent series detectives, is a security consultant and has a lot of training and knowledge, so it doesn’t stretch plausibility that she would become embroiled in mysteries. But before too long the repeated references to her ginormous boobs and shounen anime figure had forced me to abandon all hope of continuing.

Fail 6: The Lomax & Biggs mystery series, by Marshall Karp
A blogger I’ve read for years had spent quite a bit of time gushing about this author and how much she adored the series. But the victim in the first book is a child molester, and even though he did die, I was turned off after all the waxing eloquent about how much fun he was having copping feels from little kids. It was too disturbing and it felt creepy.