Two things of note. If you tried to access this site in the reasonably recent past and failed, good for you. There were “technical difficulties,” which were vastly compounded by human stupidity (mine). The technical difficulties have passed; the stupidity, sadly, has not. A reminder that the recently-penned story, In Reality (about a reality show […]
Update on the Sexing Up of the Book Industry
As it turns up, the Good Booking campaign I mentioned earlier has a website. The eponymous site can be found here. At, I guess not too surprisingly, www.goodbooking.com. Where you can also find the highly amusing survey results1 (amusing both for its content and, well, let’s say style). Notes: 1 …the survey itself having been […]
Posted by Ben on June 22, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/update-on-the-sexing-up-of-the-book-industry/
For the Birds
Avifauna in the News: (1) Outside of Medina, North Dakota, 27,000 white pelicans mysteriously disappear from Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge; (2) along a strip of road in western England, a buzzard (which, for AmE speakers, is a hawk) terrorizes passing motorists and cyclists; and (3) in London, researchers found, ducks are noisier than their […]
Posted by Ben on June 21, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/for-the-birds/
Just What I Always Wanted
Glorious. The PVC shower curtain that says what it’s made of, in bold blue lettering: From the curtain: “PVC isn’t too well considered. In fact, its poor reputation began after it first appeared in 1931…” And since I’m talking about shower curtains (albeit for no good reason), I might as well point you in the […]
Posted by Ben on June 20, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/just-what-i-always-wanted/
So it’s a select group
I realize that the following is going to strike an incredibly small percentage of people as in any way humorous (and is going to strike most people as, at best, worthless), but I’m going to post it anyway, in the hopes of humoring those people. My apologies in advance to everyone else. amphiboly, amphibology. In […]
Posted by Ben on June 20, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/amphiboly/
Sexing Up The Book Industry
In what’s apparently some sort of publicity scam in England, Penguin (the publisher, not the animal) has launched a campaign in which a “sexy model” will roam the streets, looking for men (> 16 years) who happen to be reading the book-of-the-month. This so-called “Good Booking Girl” (honestly) will reward the male reader with £1,000. […]
Posted by Ben on June 19, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/sexing-up-the-book-industry/
Buffalo Soldiers (***3/4)
(2001) Gregor Jordan – Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin, Elizabeth McGovern, etc. Synopsis: Joaquin Phoenix is Ray Elwood, a shifty soldier stationed in Germany towards the end of the cold war. Elwood has his fingers deep in various black-market cookie jars and is doing fairly well for himself, particularly under the not-so-watchful […]
Posted by Ben on June 19, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/buffalo-soldiers/
Much Like a Dead Horse, Yes
Somewhere, a headline-writer has earned her wings. So, the low-carb cult, yes it’s been beaten into the ground much in the same manner as a long-deceased equine. But the carbs of this diet aren’t the ones you’re thinking of, and it can’t really be called a diet. Nonetheless, a low-hydrocarbon “diet,” trimming energy use in […]
Posted by Ben on June 18, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/much-like-a-dead-horse/
The Things You Don’t Know You Don’t Know (Bombs via the Internet and the Phantom Fat Epidemic)
Blinded By The Internet. Apparently, some kiddies are frightened of the internet because they believe it “could put them at risk from bomb-making, blackmail, HIV, asylum seekers, aliens and blindness.” (Guardian: “Schools urged to smash internet myths” by David Batty [June 7, 2004]) Phantom Fat. Obesity researcher Dr. Jeffrey Friedman thinks the craze about Americans […]
Posted by Ben on June 17, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/things-you-may-not-have-known/
You were expecting, maybe, a cloud of noxious gas?
Remember that big ol’ blackout in 2003, the one that left 50-some-million people without power in North America? Where a more or less catastrophic collapse of transmission lines led to those neat shot-from-space photographs with a cancerous-seeming black growth in the northeast quadrant of the U.S. (and into parts of Canada)? You know, when the […]
Posted by Ben on June 16, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/blackout/