Eccentric Flower talk:200906/Return of Son of Linkage

Peebles:

Consciously rebuking the trappings of hipsterdom, even while recognizing that they might be good products, is somehow better than being a hipster? Hooray for smug, self-righteous, self-centered cultural superiority. Rock on.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that there's a special compartment in my canvas manbag for the iPhone I just pre-ordered.)

-- 16:10, 10 June 2009 (BST)

Iain:

you know how, once bodybuilders are no longer actively training or doing the upkeep, they kind of deflate, but you can still tell they were bodybuilders? Porn stars are like that too.

I point out, purely to be contrarian, that that's only really true of the women. Straight male pornsters, on the whole, don't look anything particularly out of the ordinary. And a really rather startling number of gay male pornsters do the upkeep. (A really rather startling number of them are personal trainers, so they have other reasons to maintain, apart from anything else.)

In recent weeks, Goldman Sachs representatives have told interested parties that the Times Co. would begin accepting bids for the Globe after June 8, no matter which way the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's largest union, voted on $10 million in pay and benefit cuts demanded by the company.

Bids from whom, one wonders. According to what I've read out there from places other than the Globe and the Times, if it weren't for the Globe, Times Company would have about broken even, or perhaps even made a small profit this past fiscal year. It seems to need a major sort of reconstruction that's going to be very difficult to do.

-- 16:22, 10 June 2009 (BST)

Jette:

"Do you still get lauded for fixing a crashed machine quickly and efficiently if you crashed the machine in the first place?" This is an issue that comes up a lot in the IT division where I work. Being a hero who saves things at the last minute gets you recognition -- trying to build things so they don't break in the first place, not so much. Trying to change people's attitudes on this point is extremely difficult.

-- 17:49, 10 June 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

Peebles: Well, I'm not going to diss on anybody's tastes in manbags (especially not since it's bag-so-small-it-might-as-well-be-called-a-purse season again), and also I'm really just pulling your chain (as is Scalzi I suspect). But I do reject a tendency among some Apple buyers - not all, you understand, but some - to buy their machines for, shall we say, cosmetic and/or status reasons first, quality a distant second. Again, not saying Apple doesn't make good computers! It just strikes me that style is a poor reason to make a computer-buying decision.

If style didn't enter into your computer purchase at all - if you chose it strictly based on your computing needs - then pass, brother, and be free.

-- 19:18, 10 June 2009 (BST)

Jette:

"professional union obstructionist Daniel Totten"

I thought Daniel Totten was the inventor of the electric toaster. His name was omitted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, you know, so he established the Totten Foundation to write a new series of encyclopedias where he would receive proper credit. Little was he to know that his project would eventually be thrown off the rails by Barbara Stanwyck.

(Sorry. Film geek could not resist.)

-- 20:25, 10 June 2009 (BST)

Mel:

Straight male pornstars don't bother because nobody's supposed to be looking at them anyway. Because, y'know, the only people who are supposed to be watching are other straight males. (Sorry, pet peeve.)

Also, I never would have recognized Jenna at all - it's not the body, it's the haircolor.

-- 04:27, 11 June 2009 (BST)

Columbina:

The Phoenix thinks there's at least a possibility that the Times Co. is up to some semi-sinister machinations:

As the Phoenix points out, either you believe the Times is up to something, or you believe that they are handling this matter in an extremely dumb, tone-deaf way. You pick.

-- 19:16, 11 June 2009 (BST)