the end is nigh

we've previously covered the slow death march of print media. personally, i haven't bought a "paper" in untold months. the ny times and bbc websites have been very serviceable, although i want to punch the designer of the boston globe's. (not that their writing was ever all that great in ink, but the web format honestly just sucks.)

slashing of staffs and departments, plummeting profits. scary times.

long ago, i could spend an entire day reading the sunday times. lolling about with tea and toast, with the fat satisfying in-depth coverage unseen in most other dailies.

when i switched to an on-line reader, the sunday edition still could consume several very satisfying hours when i could find them.

much like gaining weight or growing older, some personal shifts don't register consciously at first. however one or two sundays ago, i realized i couldn't recall the last time i gorged on a sunday times. in fact, there hadn't even been a binge. just a few snacks, more unsatisfying than a single potato chip, which sent me elsewhere for my news junkie fix. frankly i've become a more frequent consumer of sites like the awl and gawker which mock mainstream media.

msm took a flying pass on so many recent stories: the entire bush presidency and its ham-handed forcing of itself into power,the bulldozer rush to an unjustifiable war, the tyranny of the patriot act, the non-existence of the wmd's, abu ghraib only got to light when soldiers themselves posted the photos, the bush regime killing science and medical research in favor of stone-age religious principles; the national enquirer, a paper thought one greasy rung up from those that run "bat-boy returns" and "aliens lunch with limbaugh" howlers, broke and carried the john edwards baby-daddy saga, etc. etc., to a sickening etc. msm, both print and network, squandered its credibility for investigative journalism, in exchange for sound-bites and chasing its own tail, happy to be spoon-fed misinformation or gobble ratings and kill minds with maniacs like glenn beck.

this week, feeling like a straying, but conflicted, spouse, i tried to go back to the grey lady. (please note, links to nyt articles go dead in a short span, so it's pointless to paste them. sorry.) science? few papers have much of it, other than an occasional piece about nuts or bolts flying off a shuttle. an article on new studies about pig cognition. okey-dokey. i thoroughly enjoy info that knits humans even more deeply into the fabric of the animal kingdom and all creatures that roam or wriggle the earth. the article begins with a 3 little pigs analogy and then, after citing a study where the subjects passed the "mirror cognition test" (which dolphins and elephants also do well with and thought to be a high-sign of innate intelligence) had this to say:

To which I say, big squeal. Why should the pigs waste precious mirror time inspecting their teeth or straightening the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, when they could be using the mirror as a tool to find a far prettier sight, the pig heaven that comes in a bowl?


is this story-time for 3rd-graders?

a british prof, dr. byrnes, attributes pig smarts to the same evolutionary pressures that prompted cleverness in primates: social life and food. wild pigs live in long-term social groups, keeping track of one another as individuals, the better to protect against predation. they also root around for difficult food sources, requiring a dexterity of the snout not unlike the handiness of a monkey. that brain power remains, even though pigs have been domesticated for many 1000s of years.

there was, i think, 1 sentence about the evolutionary big picture, and how, although we diverged millions of years ago, we share huge chunks of genetic codes.

i wanted to punch the chick who wrote it and her editor who either allowed or forced an article so twee.

food.

not heavy news, but a long-time go-to for me. my first wednesday section to read. this week, it was some sort of thanksgiving sides death match between two female food writers. i couldn't get through it. "stuffing muffins"? is craig clairborne weeping into his claret? many years ago, amanda hesser began chronicling her relationship with a certain mr. latte through her sunday magazine food page. it was so suffocatingly protestant and upright, yet filled with skinny girl angst, i stopped reading until i heard she had at last married him and given up her regular gig. phew.

now? back to cutsie-pie. the guy who now has that page is inspired, and aided at the stove, by his pre-school son dexter. he wrote of the challenge of the THIRTY-TWO DOLLAR farmer's market chicken and $5 quarts of fresh milk his kids consumed by the gallons. are you fucking kidding me? what was your salary before the cuts, mr. wells? i gave it up.

this week, it's about making caramel popcorn. caramel popcorn. i couldn't get through it, but this line leapt out:

I am probably overselling the sophistication of Dexter, who, after all, is only 5.

spoken only like a parent who likely lives in park slope. gag.

there was a homes article about a woman whose marriage collapsed while she and her 2nd husband were renovating their $3 million dream loft. the reno went $500,000 over projection. sure, divorce is painful, but please let me wipe my tears with my unemployment check stub, ok? nice to know not just the poors get divorced and have to downsize, although the end i took away was sad middle-aged rich white lady now alone will make a tidy profit on house in shit economy while 1000s of regular people can't sell homes they can no longer afford because they cannot find work.

a culture writer this week has a LONG story about how "douche" has become an acceptable zing on tv. this is "news"? maybe a few years ago, whenever the first show got by the censors with it, but if it's on that julia louis-dreyfuss piece of drek, or "gray's anatomy", it has already jumped the shark, ok?

today may spell the end for me. meghan fox is on the cover of the magazine. she of "transformers" fame. one movie, which was all cgi and maybe her screaming? (dunno, didn't see it.) a cosmetically-enhanced high school drop-out with freak thumbs, no discernible acting chops, a giant marilyn tattoo on her forearm and a knack for saying inane shit:

"I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard." - Esquire, June 2009



"If you eat Chinese food, your farts come out like Chinese food. If you eat Mexican food, your farts come out like Mexican food. And milk, it's like-you can smell the warmth in the fart. My wardrobe on Transformers always smells like farts, and I have no idea why." -GQ, October 2008



on the cover of elle or self, maybe but, honestly?

did contemporaries moan the end of the horse and buggy as cars began roaming city streets? did housewives beg to keep the wringer washer when hubby brought home the electric drum version?

this will happen in my lifetime and i feel sooner rather than later. i don't have a crystal ball, nor am i that net savvy. i DO know very few readers will begin to pay for content that had been free which seems to be the stone-age model most paper honchos want to pursue. (by all means, full-steam ahead -- your other economic strategies have proven excellent!) sorry, sulzberger. if this is the best you have now? i'm certainly not going to pay for something so crappy. the times is now like bad chinese: it's kind of ok if you can't find anything else nearby and cheap, but you're starving not long after.