Hey! We're entitled to health care! Closing this blog post in celebration.

Amazon.com You are NOT Entitled to Strong-Arm Publishers

So, if you go and look for a MacMillan book (or any of its imprints), say for example the brand new City of Dragons or the new paperback A Trace of Smoke, amazon.com says "we'll let you know when it's available." And if you put either of these on your gift list, go look. They're gone.
I've tested this myself right after midnight on January 31st.

Apparently MacMillan had the temerity to demand that Amazon.com only take 30% of the retail price, and wanted to determine the price that its products, including ebooks, would sell for.

Amazon.com, you are NOT entitled to just pull all the books a publisher has to offer (you can buy them still through independent resellers on amazon.com) because you...what? Want to control the price of the products you sell? Want to be able to dictate terms?

Well, I'm boycotting Amazon.com, because while you and I are entitled to health care, we are also entitled to a market place where the folks who have taken the financial risks (that's the author and the publisher) are entitled to input about how much their products sell for. And we're not falling for that "we're protecting the consumer" nonsense you are peddling.

Monopolies are never in the best interest of the consumer.

As someone who has worked in the software industry for nearly 20 years, I'm deeply ashamed of the behavior of the folks at Amazon.com. I will never spend a dime there again.

I also hope that the publishers wake up and smell the coffee, and charge a fair price for ebooks, or they'll suffer the same fate as record labels did last decade. It doesn't cost as much to produce an ebook, and people know that, and want to see a price that reflects it. But not a price nor terms dictated to it by Amazon.com.

More info here:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/

Hey San Francisco? it's Me. STOP HISSING

Oh good lord.

Just stop with the hissing.

At Noir City last night, surrounded by baby chick noirinistas who *laugh* when a woman gets hit and HISS when a man says something mean about a cat.

Stop with the hissing. We know you're politically correct. You're at the Castro. So give it a fucking break so those of us old enough to understand the context within which Whitmore rousts the truck driver can stay in the movie and hear the dialog.

Clap, laugh, cry, shout, honest responses to a film should always be honored. But when you hiss you are no better than Joe Nutcase calling Obama a liar.

And it's horribly unattractive.

But you are entitled to health care.

You are not entitle to project your insecurities onto others

Okay, it's human nature, we all do it now and then.

BUT, really, if you are, say, feeling insecure because you chose to write in a genre where it might be easier to get published and you might make a decent living, not because you loved it from the bottom of your toes since you were eight, don't turn around and then trash people writing in genres that you once aspired to. Sure, bust them when they are snooty, they need it! But don't trash the genre!!!!

Or maybe you are film director of the biggest box office movie in history. Don't turn around and trash Little Miss Sunshine just because it's got more heart per budget dollar than anything you produce ever will....(bitter much? not me!)....

You are not entitled to project your own insecurities on other people or institutions, just because you are feeling insecure. Whether you are an auto-worker looking at another 18 months of unemployment or an English professor at an Ivy League school.

Hmph.

You Are NOT Entitled to Treat the President with Disrespect

Imagine if Barbara Lee had jumped up and called Bush II a liar in a joint session of congress. Imagine!

You are not entitled to treat the president with disrespect because you have trouble letting go of old prejudices. Even if you are from the American South. 100+ years of denial is more than enough. You won't rise again, gas prices won't go down, and we'll never tolerate fascism for more than a few months after a huge disaster. No more owning people, no more judging them based on anything but the correlation between their words and their deeds. Now, Obama isn't doing things as quickly as I would like, or as much as I would like, but I'm still not sorry I voted for him, because he's *trying* to do the right thing. And if you think he's socialist, you haven't turned off Fox "News" and gotten up off your lazy ass long enough to even look up the word. Fascism is the current rising tide to be afraid of, and we cut it off at the knees in this country by electing Obama. It's still on the rise in tandem with radical fundamentalism in a lot of places around the globe (I'll bet you can name three, outside South Carolina!)....

Guess what, we all have lazy thought patterns and lingering prejudices, but we're getting over it. You are NOT entitled to drag down this country into a pit of hate.

In the more general sense, you are NOT entitled to sit around on your ass and have lazy opinions about issues that you've never bothered to investigate, especially hate-spewing opinions, because it is easier than turning off Fox "News" and doing a little research (which usually involves at least moving your ass from sofa to carseat to library chair, at a minimum).

But you ARE entitled to health care.

UR Not Entitled to Cut People Off!

You know what? It is nobody's problem but your own if you planned your morning commute so badly that you are in the wrong lane when you need to turn left.

Now, I respect you more than the poor fool who thinks he is entitled to turn left from the *right* lane of a four lane road,

but,

you are not entitled. You blew it. Suck it up. Man up. Drive to the next corner and turn around, or turn right three times to make a left and try again. You are not entitled to hide from the fact that you JUST MADE A MISTAKE by trying to kill me with your motor vehicle.

But you ARE entitled to health insurance. Hope you fight for it like you fight for a crappy piece of road on the way to a crappy job with crappy health insurance.

Hey San Francisco, you are not entitled!

What pushed me over the edge was everyone coming back from vacation at 8:15 am on Brotherhood way.

I had it real nice all summer, just a few of us day jobbers wending our way from Parkside to Daly City BART via the "shortcut" along Brotherhood Way.

But when traffic got thick again, as it does at the beginning of every term, people started driving as if they were entitled to the space I occupied. As if they were entitled to cut me off, slam into my bumper, stop driving and start texting while their car was still going 45 mph.

So, instead of following you home and pretending to be your crazy lover to your husband or wife, I'm just going to 'splain this once.

You are not entitled (and neither am I)!