something I've noticed

while shopping online...well, and most places really.

The expanding habit of retailers making up some ridiculous number purely so they can "slash" it and promote the "sale" price, which is just what the thing costs and not any sort of sale at all.

Amazon's housewares section is particularly egregious, regularly pretending that the list price of an item is half again the actual amount so they can brag about their markdown.

Brick and mortar stores do the same thing though- before they went bankrupt Mervyn's entire store was perpetually marked down from ludicrous made up numbers they got by someone mashing their face on the keypad.

Yeah, sure, everyone loves a sale. And yeah, sure, you can mislead people into thinking they're getting a "deal" by pretending the list price is a lot higher than it actually is. But big picture, it undermines the trust of the buying public. Which isn't a bad thing- skepticism & capitalism should go hand in hand. I just don't get why a business would think misleading their customers as a matter of course would be a good idea.

bringing the funny

New Music: Sleigh Bells

This is the definition of 'epic'.

sign o' the times

Just flipped past the TV Guide channel.

They declared their creed at the start of whatever advertainment skit was about to run in the little window above the channel crawl-

EAT. SLEEP. WATCH.

The very next graphic,

sponsored by Weight Watchers.



Gotta love capitalist symbiosis.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

and a big FU to Arizona!

on sublimity

Several years ago we embarked on a tour of the Continent for our (long delayed) honeymoon. The wife being the wife, we shlepped through nearly every notable museum in Holland and Paris (save the Musée Rodin) and even took an art excursion in Düsseldorf.

After returning home the question arose- what was the most amazing thing we saw on our trip? We both named this painting by Leonardo Da Vinci:




It's about the size of a salad plate, painted on a plank of not particularly fine grained wood. Reproductions never do paintings justice but this one is particularly ill served, a 40 watt bulb playing at being the sun. 'Luminous' is one of the most gratuitously abused descriptors of the past decade, but wholly appropriate here. Her face hangs shining in space, untethered from this mortal coil by the profound insight of artistic genius.


Apropos of the above paragraphs, I give you The Fuss in repose.

depressing

It always sucks when people who clearly need money bring in shitty books I cannot in good conscience buy, then stand there staring at me in mute confusion when I turn them down.

It also sucks when some friends of a casual FB friend brag about how well behaved their children are after a lifetime of being spanked, and how upset they are by "ill behaved" children who are encouraged to act out because their parents won't hit them.

Does it not occur to them that children won't always be defenseless and dependent and are likely at some future point to hold you to account for your actions?

It's no wonder so many families are labyrinths of resentment and hatred.