What’s Good for the Goose, or, Oh! My! Fucking! God!

Posted 7 April, 2008 in Book News, Assmonkeys | No comments

From the Times:

An online price war for books has broken out, pitching Amazon against some of Britain’s biggest publishers.

Amazon is angry that Penguin, Bloomsbury and others are discounting titles on their websites, encouraging customers to buy direct instead of using the online retailer.

Yeah, God forbid a publisher should take the practice of deep discounting online, which Amazon practically invented, and use it to compete and, maybe, to retain a little scratch for themselves. The heartless bastards.

Of course, the net result of all this deep discounting will be a further erosion of publishers’ already meagre profit margins, so there is something of a cutting-off-one’s-nose-to-spite-one’s-face feeling to all of this.

(via Quillblog)

Happy (?) New Year, 2008

Posted 1 January, 2008 in Assmonkeys | 2 comments

Okay, now that we’ve got the sentimental malarkey out of the way, I can cop to the fact that I’m sitting in a dingy Internet cafe in downtown Toronto, typing away on a keyboard that is sticky from all manner of substances (coffee, food, other unidentifiable leavings that I don’t even want to think about but that the folks on CSI would presumably have a field day with) and that can’t seem to bring itself to create an accent egu over words like “cafe.”

This is because I woke up this morning to find that my DSL connection is cacked and the people at Bell Sympatico who can look into the problem aren’t working today.

I’m told it might take up to five business days to get this thing sorted out, so despite my best intentions posts may be a bit sporadic over the next few days. I’ll try to make it back to the Internet cafe (damn! damn! damn!) to post some content in the interim, but please bear with me if I don’t.

In the meantime, I’ll be frantically perfecting my scheme to acquire two rotting beaver carcasses that I’ll label “Frank” and “Gordon” and ship to the Bell head offices with all my love. Stay tuned.

Oh, For the Love of …

Posted 13 November, 2007 in Unbelievable, Assmonkeys | 1 comment

From the New York Times:

A new strategy at Borders will reinforce the message that its stores are not just about books: the company has been installing 37-inch flat-screen televisions to show original programming, advertisements, news and weather.

Pardon me while I yak.

Is It a Boy, a Girl, or an Assmonkey?

Posted 27 July, 2007 in Assmonkeys | No comments

Okay, one more quickie, because I couldn’t resist. This comes from Nikki Stafford, who is commenting on a column by the National Post’s Jonathan Kay. Seems Mr. Kay raised some hackles by writing about the war between “daters” and “breeders,” specifically the ire of the former group at having an intimate dinner spoiled by the offspring of the latter. Responses were many and varied, but Kay quotes this one, from an e-mail he received:

Mr. Kay, I hope we never have the misfortune to have your family ruin a nice restaurant near us, because I could hardly resist the compulsion to empty ice water into the faces of both you and your broodsow of a partner. Attention, Mr. Look-My-Sperm-Works, your job as a parent does not end at ejaculation: Would you please show the rest of us the Get Out of Courtesy card that they gave you when your wife [birthed] your first replicant? Polite parents do not assault diners with their loud brood of assmonkeys.

And another voice of moderation is heard from. How much of a frisson should I feel when I realize that I more or less agree with the spirit of what this correspondent is saying?