mariness

The following paragraph is taken VERBATIM from Amazon Web Services legal terms of service:

"The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization."

Thanks to @DianePatterson on Twitter for the alert.

Various news agencies are reporting that the busy Barnes and Noble at Union Station in Washington DC is about to close, reportedly because Barnes and Noble and the landlord have been unable to agree on the rent. This news of course has brought out the usual gulp will we continue to have brick and mortar bookstores in the future articles, all of which, I can't help noticing, continue to ignore the existence of Books-A-Million, as if the options for brick and mortar stores are Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores with nothing in between. I get that Books-A-Million is nowhere near the size of Barnes and Noble, but it does operate 250 stores and offers coffee, so let's give it some respect.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking of the contrast between the closing Barnes and Noble store, by all accounts busy, popular, clean and filled with customers, and my local K-Mart.

For those who may be unfamiliar with K-Mart, it's a large box store on the same idea as Walmart and Target, seeking to occupy a niche slightly above Walmart and slightly below Target. It certainly achieves the goal of being below Target and rarely manages to be better than Walmart. My local K-Mart has exactly one advantage: it's about five blocks away from me, making it one of the few stores I can easily reach via trike or scooter. Yes, it's on the hideous State Road 50, the bane of my existence, but, and this is key, I don't have to cross State Road 50 to get there since it's on my side of the street and I can take a little side street, complete with a little pond that sometimes has ducks or egrets, which should, in theory, make it a very convenient place for me to do my shopping for staples.

In practice a trip more usually ends up like the one I took yesterday. I needed milk, cat litter, and toilet paper, all of which can be in theory found there. The cat litter and toilet paper were there, but the unit that usually contains the milk had been emptied of everything, including shelves. Undaunted, I picked up the rest of the stuff and headed to the register, only to find out that the registers weren't working. So I left with nothing.

This is sadly typical of a visit: various items which ought to be there (including, frequently, toilet paper and aspirin) are not there. The registers don't always work. What is there often has the wrong price on it or is in the wrong place. The clothes just look cheap, and are usually either of worse quality or in worse condition than what's available at the Goodwill in the same shopping plaza. The selection of DVDs and cell phones sucks. Customer service generally sucks, with employees just looking depressed. (The Goodwill in striking contrast has excellent customer service.) Part of the problem is store policy: if the item rings up at the wrong price, Target will usually just change the price right there, or sometimes send someone to check the price and then fix the price for you; Publix after checking the price will give you the item for free. This generally takes a couple of minutes, but otherwise not a big deal. K-Mart sends you to the Customer Service Desk, which is usually unstaffed; if it is staffed, changing the price still requires about three people to check it. The store is technically clean, but always seems to feel dingy.

It's almost always empty.

And yet it survives. Perhaps – probably -- because it's on the opposite side of State Road 50 than the Publix and the Target – making it slightly easier for disabled people and bicyclists and pedestrians to reach, and it does generally have a decent selection of snacks. Or perhaps because the rent is cheap, meaning that it can stay profitable even with few sales. Or perhaps because none of its corporate overlords have noticed.

But I couldn't help thinking: if a lousy economy and few customers and a ragged dingy appearance have not managed to close this place, shouldn't that mean that Barnes and Nobles can survive? Or are their corporate overlords just choosing more expensive rental places? The local Barnes and Noble is in a far, far nicer and better looking location than the K-mart, and I assume the rents reflect that. Or are their corporate overlords demanding a higher profit margin than whatever satisfies Sears/K-Mart?

I'll keep my fingers crossed for that local Barnes and Noble anyway, even if it does have more customers than the K-Mart.

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In completely different news, this has been passed around the internet a lot already, but if you missed it, Games Workshop is claiming that writer M.C.A. Hogarth is infringing on their trademark "space marine."

I'll just let all the gamers here savor the fun that this is coming from the same people behind that model of originality and not borrowing from anyone ever: Warhammer.

If you haven't heard, Amazon and Macmillan have gone to war, with the unfortunate result, for readers and writers caught in the middle, that you can't buy Macmillan's books on Amazon.com, and writers can't sell Macmillan's books on Amazon.com. Macmillan is the large parent company that owns the huge presses of St. Martin's Press, Henry Holt and Co., Tor (science fiction), Forge (mostly mystery but other stuff as well), my beloved Scientific American and several other publishers. They are Big Guys. Amazon.com is the world's largest online bookseller, selling multiple other items as well.

( My mixed reader/writer response )