Biz bits.

Big excitement over a potential employer of 6000 people in Redmond!

Except:

1.) the company is obviously shopping, having supposedly committed to DC last year, and then looking at four or five other places.

2.) the company currently has 10 full time employees. Not 100. Not 1000, where even then we'd be asked to believe they can increase by 85%. 10 employees.

3.) a change in state laws to allow a financing mechanism for the company to do all this.

I recognize such customers. I usually tell them they'll be happier shopping elsewhere.

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American Airlines files for bankruptcy. I remember reading once that if you take the airline industry as a whole from its beginnings, it's LOST money.

I read this in an article about "dysfunctional" industries.

I'm convinced that once a industry tips into this kind of dysfunction, it never comes back, but just flails around from then on.

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Speaking of Redmond.

A 50-year plan. 10,000 jobs by 2030.

Wait a minute, aren't you going to get 6000 jobs in one fell swoop?

Oh, and a 50 year plan?

Forgetaboutit.

I write speculative fiction, too. I don't mistake them for "plans."

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That picture in the Bulletin of a huge crowd of people applying for 50 jobs at Deschutes Brewery?

Where the hell is everyone going to park? (Employees and Customers?)

I never thought to ask this but: Is this business getting too big for downtown Bend?

"Don't throw away!!!"

There's this cardboard ....THING....that's been hanging around the store. Just kind of there, not really noticed, picked up and set aside every once in a while. Kind of looks like a couple of bookmarks, taped together. I think I've picked it up several times, and always put it back thinking I'd figure it out later.

So today, I finally picked it up and read it again.

"DON'T (underlined three times) Throw This Away!!!
Warning -- on Pain of Death and Dismemberment."

Under this, in a different handwriting, in smaller letters, is this: "Why are we saving this again? Psychology experiment?"

And under that, in different handwriting, and even smaller letters:

"It's purpose will be made clearer in the coming days. All glory to the Creator!"


I finally took this home and show it to Linda and asked, "Is this yours? What does it refer to?"

She couldn't stop laughing. "I vaguely remember this...."

"Yes, but now it's become it's own Thing -- eternal and everlasting.... who would dare destroy it? though it's purpose be long forgotten. Even now I hesitate!"


What a wonderful dirty trick. Go into a store with a nice label, and put it on a random object. Then check every few months to see if it's still there....

The wrong kind of role-model?

First I was the inspiration for the drunken, sloppy spaceship captain who saves the solar system in Jared's story. Now, Cameron tells me he's using me as a model for his main character in his screenplay for my "awkward" way of phrasing things.

(After which, I spent most of the day being self-conscious of my phrasing of things.)

Gee. Glad to be an inspiration, guys.

Wednesday WTH?

Found a fascinating new site called, Literature Map. You type in an author's name, and a cloud bubble is created with the names of similar authors. The closer the name is, the more other readers have recommended the author.

I noticed that it seems to be more about similar styles of writing or storytelling.

Not so much about the quality of the writing. Putting Terry Goodkind and George R.R. Martin together is like putting spam and steak together -- they're both technically meats.

I've put it on my computer at the store and the next time someone mentions that they "like" an author and who else would I recommend (?), I'm going to use it.

Really, though, it's pretty much what I've always done as a bookseller -- so this will just give me a gentle reminder. I'll try to tell the customer which is spam and which is steak.

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I've decided to double the space I devote to "classic" books, which seem to sell consistently.

I've all but given up on used hardcover mysteries, and I'm just going to pile those at the bottom of a couple of bookcases and sell them for a flat 5.00 each.

This frees up enough room to put all my 'non-fiction' against the east wall, and gives me two bookcases to put New books into. One, as I said, for classics. The other bookcase I'm saving is the one that I'm devoting to themes; a bookshelf for Pirates, and Retro Future, and Weird Western, and Steampunk, and Robots, and Dragons.

There's still room in this Tardis.

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I was joking that just getting the covers to the New Yorker was enough to pay for the subscription, with the inside cartoons as a bonus.

The last two covers have been great.

In one, the picture is of illegal immigrants Pilgrims crawling under the fence and racing for the border. Makes it's point.

The latest (which I haven't actually received yet, but which I've seen online, is a Dan Clowes (great to see great graphic novel artists get work with the big boys) picture of a 'future' bookstores. In a store full of t-shirts and toys and e-books, a clerk is pointing out to a dismayed customer a small, neglected row of books at the bottom of a rack.

5 years of blogging everyday.

Yesterday was my fifth anniversary of blogging. Haven't missed a day.

I don't really have much more to say about it. It's been fairly easy for me to do. I'll just keep doing it.

Onward and upward.

Weird Barnes and Noble ad campaign.

I've been making the joke that Barnes and Noble is busily making themselves obsolete. That their goal was to put their own brick and mortar stores out of business.

After seeing their Christmas ad campaign, I don't think it's a joke anymore.

They have a customer asking about a Nook, upon which everyone in the store dances around with an e-reader in their hands, singing that their "sole purpose" is to sell you a Nook.

"Sole purpose." Their words, not mine.

Incidentally, there are paper books in the background, as if anyone still cares. Certainly, none are trying to be sold. None are shown, except as spine out far background props to the Nook. You get the sense that there would be sooooo much more space to dance with your Nook if you didn't have these stupid bookshelves in the way. Which, come to think of it, may be the intended message.

I kid you not -- you have to see these ads to believe them. It seems to be an almost gratuitous insult to books. I have to believe that such a clear statement of intent will have to impact on their book sales -- if nothing else, in how motivated the workers there are going to be. How dispiriting to think you work in a bookstore, when you really work in an electronic hardware store.

I haven't been in B & N in a long time, but I wonder in the next few years if they won't be following Borders down to closing all their stores. I'd say, "Stop pretending that you care about being booksellers," except this ad pretty much says they've stopped caring.

But hey, if that is their attitude, then they'll leave the field to those of us who still WANT to run bookstores.

Hugo.

Went to see Hugo.

What a beautiful movie. Glittering. Ornate. Like a gem, with facets within facets.

Liked it a whole lot.

Go see it.