…for discussion amongst yourselves: Why 9 Chickweed Lane has become the best comic strip in the dailies. (Hint: The cartoonist, Mr. Brooke McEldowney, took the risk a year ago of dropping the comics convention of unchanging, un-aging characters and introduced real plots, to the extent of moving everybody out of the titular address.)
…when the local TV anchordrones insist there’ll be snow this-time-for-sure, it doesn’t happen, at least not in town.
…big business and its wholly-owned politicians have so thoroughly and deliberately disassembled America’s social and economic infrastructure that we’re not a “superpower” anymore. That might actually be a positive thing. Let Time founder Henry Luce’s “American Century” pass into history, along with the “We’re Number One” chants, those expensive and bloody crusades on behalf of “democracy” (i.e., oil), the trashing of everything noble and hopeful about the human species in the name of shareholder value, and the glut of special-effects-leaden sequel movies in the world’s cinemas. Let’s go back to being one country among many.
Weaving Women’s Words: Seattle Stories isn’t about weavers.
…the “civil war” football game between Oregon and Oregon State. Eugene, this evening, is one of those places where the fog’s so thick you can’t see the end of Ringo’s nose. At times, the Fox Sports Net images are like washed-out watercolors of battling athletes. It’s a thing of beauty, uglified only by the U of O’s new Nike-designed “industrial” jerseys.
…are rearing their ugly voices again, demanding yet more draconian copy protection schemes.
…currently touring in Ireland submits its list of “bands and their corresponding authors.” Nirvana paired up with Wm. Burroughs is appropriate, since Cobain and Burroughs collaborated on a spoken-word CD single. Public Enemy/Langston Hughes and The Doors/Jack Kerouac also seem right, even though Kerouac was more of a jazz fan. Some of the other pairings, though, seem a bit odd, such as AC/DC with Julia Child and Tori Amos with Alice Walker.
…the media industry is, or perhaps ought to be, “laying the newspaper gently down to die.”
Rosen cites long-term circulation declines (especially among the younger demographic slices) and conglomerates beholden to The Almighty Stock Price at the expense of all other principles of careful management. He sees an industry heading steadily into a “death spiral” of cost-cutting and shrinkage, an industry still able but not yet willing to fully invest in transitioning itself to the Internet age.
So why am I still trying to make a go of the newsprint racket?
Perhaps because I believe there’s still value in the ol’ beast. It’s a tactile experience, a verbal/visual showbiz of information and juxtaposition. Sure, the old monopoly-daily business model, in which every household every morning gets a big package of supermarket and department-store ads interspersed with moderate-conservative editorials and celebrity gossip items, is an antiquated relic. But the newspaper itself isn’t just a business, and it isn’t just a news medium either. It’s an art form. A form capable of endless variation and renewal.
My particular current newsprint product, the Belltown Messenger, isn’t yet my ideal expression of this art form. But I hope to get closer to that with every issue.
…to find even one positive thing to say about GWB. This is that one thing: He likes strong women. Indeed, if you’re to believe the right-wing magazine Insight on the News, Bush, in his current Nixon-Last Days paranoia mode, only regularly talks to four people, all females.
