...but then again, bammas and white trash still rule

In LA, Book Soup's toast. Macawber closes in Princeton...Princeton, not Dundalk Maryland. Robin's in Philly (see photo below) gone as of today. Karibu here commits suicide over domestic issues but hey, their mission was hamstrung by piles of ghetto lit and mawkish romances, church lady novels and nonfiction by strippers. Vertigo Books in College Park (Maryland, not Georgia, you bammas!), like England in 1940, stands alone.

So what?! you sneer. I mean, you've picked up your Xbox, your 72 inch flatscreen and your latest Video Vixen-"Superhead" memoir (or novel, hey!) or T-Pain or Toby Keith CD at WalMart, right? You certainly won't find it at your indie bookstore, whether mystery/crime (the staple for folks like me, my colleagues, friends), sci fi shops, holistic stores, etc. Havens for political works and art (like Red Emmas in Baltimore). It's economics. Yeah, financial survival of the fittest, right? It's the Internet. Geriatric business models. Disconnection from what young folks find relevant, eh? WalMart's business model shut them down, or Barnes & Noble's "pack as much crap in there as possible" paradigm is more consumer friendly. Amazon is killing everyone. Yes, that's the conventional wisdom.
Bull.

You use an indie anything (store, site, person) because you're smart. You're into rationalism. You want your brain to be exercized and engaged as well as entertained. Part and parcel of that is the relationship. Passionate knowledgeable folks provide a service, feed your passion... but that's not a hallmark of our America. Stupid people don't want the relationship. They want cheap brain candy, escapist numbing, from numbskulls who can get them in and out. Hell that has nothing to do with convenience online. Look at how thoughtful people scramble for tech support, expert help, a keen eye or consultation online or on the phone for so many "convenience" purchases. We also fall prey to brands. From Beyonce to Pepsi to Triple Crown publishing (ghetto lit). Brands short circuit thought. That's their purpose. Accordingly, the problem isn't business model. It's culture. Mindset. Yeah, yeah, running an indie, small business is tough. But if your once educated, thoughtful customer base is graying, and being replaced by drooling teens...Heidi Montag wannabees...yes bammas and white trash, too--how can you not close up shop? It's never a question of money. The trillions lost this past year, or wasted in the uglier portion of this war on terror or in Iraq, or within the "motherland" of Africa or through gas pipelines traversing the horror movie that is Russia--got smack to do with money. It's about will. About culture.

When we're smarter again, when rationalism resurfaces from exile, we will have the newest iteration of indie bookstores, indie thought. I willbe alive to see and enjoy. And hopefully, to provide some nice content. Trust...

Another Victory for the Forces of Stupid

From "The Grey Lady" (the NYTimes, which is groaning under "bad times" as well), news of layoffs at Macmillian, the publisher which owns Holt and of course our friends at St. Martins and Tor/Forge.
Macmillian's owned, in turn, by a German combine, Holtzbrinck. Yep, Random House is owned by foreigners as well. Nice to see folks tasked with keeping American brains trained, creative, imagining controlled by Germans. Between that and cheap Chinese garbage folk are buying at Wal mart, I'd say it's "evening" in America. "Mourning" in America? How about that play on words? Nevermind their business model is warped--books aren't Beyonce CDs. Nevermind the real reason for this crap has more to do with, by analogy, Sam Zell loading the Tribune Company with debt from his leveraging spree, or the perfidy and non-regulation of the financial sector than with "young people not reading." The result is the same. Shrink. Dummi-fy. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
All of a sudden, that movie Idiocracy doesn't seem so amusing. Just like Office Space is hitting a bit too close to home now.

Ungawa, Bwana Shung Shi Wang! Bad Ju-Ju there!

Not that our hands are clean (and when I mean "our" I also include with U.S. government and corporate interests we African Amerians, our "revolutionary" intellectuals and artists...and that ol' Congressional Black Caucus...which will hopefully see some replacements like Kevin Powell soon), but hey, look't the Chinese backing up Robert Mugabe! I'm sure they're paying for his inuagural shin-dig where he turns all of Zimbabwe into a parade float. Let's see the scoreboard on the Chinese, shall we? Destroying the ecology of their own nation and polluting the world, floating Bush's phoney-baloney economic "policy" with cheap money, Darfur, human rights, Darfur, human rights, Wal Mart, happy plosts with greedy pseudo-patriotic outsourcing American CEOs, Darfur, buying off NBC and just about everyone else for the Olympics, draining natural resources There Will Be Blood style, and well...did I say human rights, Darfur yet? Now this. Magazines from Foreign Policy to The Economist have been chronicling this neo-colonial push in Africa, and if you think U.S. bankers, CEOs, hedge fund scumbags are willing puppets, imagine the garden variety African president-for-life or newly inaugurated guerilla movement leader now head of state? It's time we stop giving China a free ride. While we degrade ourselves in Iraq and in bellicose nonsense with mullahs eslewhere, they take over the world. You think the Mugabes out there don't see that?