MISCmedia by Clark Humphrey » Blog Archive RANDOM LINKS FOR 1/30/13

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RANDOM LINKS FOR 1/30/13

January 30th, 2013 by Clark Humphrey

ap via nwcn.com

Just like at the Ballard Locks, Oregon’s Willamette Falls is plagued by salmon-hungry sea lions. Local officials’ answer? “A boat crew armed with seal bombs and shotguns loaded with firecrackers.”
AÂ Seattle Times headline labels “art” as a waste of state taxpayer money, right up there with legislators’ dry-cleaning bills. This is not the sort of objective reporting of which theÂ Times claims to be a last bastion.
You want real spending waste, in a project about, well, waste? Then look no further than Seattle Public Utilities’ new south end transfer station, still not ready months after its ribbon cutting.
Another stupid shooting in another local nightspot. How utterly gross. (Here’s news of the benefit for the bar bouncer’s recovery.)
I seem to have found out about this story in progress, but the UW’s Women’s Action Commission has created its own theater piece in the tradition of The Vagina Monologues. Only this all-new work is called The ___ Monologues. The title is apparently an attempt to make the work “more trans-friendly.”
The Yankees don’t like A-Rod anymore.
Marijuana industry trade associations are now a thing.
The Wall St. Journal says Microsoft wouldn’t have to take a majority stake in Dell in order to have Â a pivotal degree of influence in the beleagured PC maker.
The newest version of MS Office comes in a “cloud based” subscription version, which seems to essentially require you to have a never-interrupted Net connection (and, of course, to keep paying).
Boeing’s global-outsourcing craze is now, more or less officially,Â a “disaster.”
We must say goodbye to Regretsy, the site that pokes gentle fun at kooky craft products. Its operator April Winchell (yes, Dick Dastardly’s daughter) said the site’s concept had run its course (“now we’re just Bedazzling a dead horse”).
Last week, Twitter launched a new streaming-video site called Vine. The premise is people posting six-second, repeating GIF videos. Yes, it’s already been used for porn, and for people taping themselves taking bong hits.
Barnes & Noble plans to close perhaps 20 percent of its stores over the next decade. So much for the guys who were supposed to be taking over the industry and driving all the indie quirkiness out of the book biz.
Someone’s written a long, detailed critique of the cinematography in Les Miserablesâ€”in the character of the Incredible Hulk.
“Rei” at Daily Kos wants you to reconsider the Fox News story from last week about Iceland’s official baby-names list.
Speaking of which, while my masses-bashing “radical” leftist friends like to imagine Fox News as “the most popular TV channel,” its ratings among adults under 55 are the lowest they’ve been in more than a decade.
Jeb Boniakowski at The Awl would like a mega-McDonald’s in NYC’s Times Square, that would serve everything the chain serves everywhere else but not in this country.
Public radio’s idea of “humor,” at once bland and cloying, reaches a new nadir in a Chicago station’s make-believe plea for its listeners to breed more public-radio-listening babies.
Headline: “Ex-NFL player charged with beating boyfriend.” Comment: Yes, this is still what it takes to acknowledge the existence of gay athletes.
Jim Nabors had been rumored to be gay ever since his days of sitcom stardom. Now he’s finally publicly proclaimed it, by getting married in Seattle.
The NY Times has discovered something that’s been going on around here for some timeâ€”the “permanent temp” economy.
One of the last of its kind in the region, the Valley 6 Drive-In Theater in Auburn, will not reopen after its most recent seasonal shutdown. Even sadder, its longtime manager Kieth Kiehl passed on shortly after the decision to close was made. Both will be missed.

beth dorenkamp via grindhouse theater tacoma

One Response

ArtFart writes:
February 1st, 201312:22 pmat

Re: the South Park transfer station. The main feature of this thing is that it’s absurdly huge–the main structure looks like you could park three or four 747’s inside it. We rent a storage locker in that area, and for quite a while we drove past the project thinking “What the hell IS that thing?????” To learn that even though it’s so big there isn’t clearance for trucks to drive in and out is absurd–but spending $2.6 million to save $1.6 million over the structure’s lifetime is even worse.