Damn straight. Why anyone would mourn the demise of Borders is beyond me. It was precisely the rise of places like that, that pretty much killed off the small indie bookstore industry.

I can name at least five utterly wonderful stores in L.A. - A Change of Hobbit, Bread and Roses, Sisterhood Books, Book City, and A Well-Lit Place - that were drowned because a fucking BORDERS moved in three doors down. The corporation has always had a policy of targeting independent bookstores that way. They claim not, but in every one of the stores that killed the indies I mentioned, you could find a section prominently displaying exactly the kinds of books each indie specialized in, including signs in the windows. So they quite deliberately torpedoed those places.

Borders can suck mud for all I care. So can B&N. LONG before Amazon was ever thought of, those jackasses were systematically doing everything they could to ruin the book buying experience. Good fucking riddance.

Wow, where to start?

Sure you can find stuff on Amazon for $9 - 12 but unless you buy 5 cds at a time the shipping cost makes up the difference.

Uh, no. A CD priced at $9 is not going to cost $10 to ship. Amazon charges $3.95. Do the math.

Also, unless you want to wait 1-2 weeks for the "free" shipping (only free if you spend 50 bucks), your $18 cd also includes the ability to listen to it mere minutes after buying it.

Again, no. It's $25 for the free shipping. But that's only for the new discs. Any used stuff comes from independent sellers working through Amazon. No free shipping deal with them. (I know because I am one of them.)

Lastly,

$18.99 is not really all that expensive - it just forces you to do your homework and be a bit pickier...

Noooo, sorry. $18.99 IS indeed expensive, especially for a product that costs less than $1.50 to produce. Not everyone wants to stuff the wallets of arrogant leeches with every purchase.

To conclude, Amazon is a great way to get music, if you already know what you want to buy. It's easy, quick and incredibly cheap. There are CD's, good ones, for as cheap as a couple of bucks. You just have to have a little patience about getting a good deal. I'm sorry, but with the way things are, expecting people to spend inflated prices for something they can get for far less is unreasonable.

Now, if what you want is to browse until you find something, then by all means, a store is the place to go.

but most other record stores are gone. The L.A. Amoeba is still vibrant, and I hope it will last; the chain has that big-indie feel that Joy talks about. They have a large DVD section upstairs which is always full of people, so no doubt that helps.

*sigh* Of all the things to have disappear in the future, I never would have thought record stores would be among them.

But I wonder, since musicians and bands are so often making and selling their own CD's now, couldn't stores buy them direct from the artist to sell, the way any other store buys its stuff? Just because the big record companies are thieves doesn't mean the idea of a music store, where you can see enormous amounts of stuff from all over the world side by side, is bankrupt. I know the main reason I love to go to Amoeba is to browse the world music section, flipping through trays to find things I've never heard of. Without an actual store, that's lost. A computer recommendation algorithm just IS NOT the same.

Still can't let go of gossip about losers, can you? You know, Joan posted about Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama today, and there was not one word about clothes or hair or arms or butt or anything else of that frivolous nature. Maybe you girls could take some lessons in discerning what is and isn't worth writing about.

But then, that would spoil the pajama party, wouldn't it?

It was nothing to write home about. Sorry, but I do not find Schaal pseudo-dumb schtick amusing. She's aping Victoria Jackson in her mannerisms, and that insane bimbo is no one to emulate.

Plus, name of the GODS but I'm sick of hearing about Michelle Obama's clothes and arms and butt and hair. Do you girls ever think about anything else related to that poor woman?

Pardon my sarcasm, but didn't we learn, just a few months ago, that women's binge drinking could be blamed on the excesses of feminism?

Well, unless that author at that university made the prior claim, your eyerolling snark is a tad misplaced, don't you think? Or are you one of those conspiracy feminists that think there's some kind of ZOG-style Patriarchal Cabal Trusted To Run It All?

See, it's this kind of sloppy faux-reporting that makes Broadsheet such a joke.

The reason the D&C (dilation and curettage - not "DNC") is no longer taught is that its use has grown rare. Most abortions these days are vacuum extractions, a procedure that is easier and carries less medical risk. In fact, I remember in the 90's reading a prediction that abortion would become more readily available because the procedure was now so much easier to learn.

Uh, no. Kids don't lie; people lie. Don't make it out to sound as if kids are the ones who are dishonest, but adults are always true. Bullshitting about sex is common to all ages; that's why sex surveys aren't all that reliable no matter who you're interviewing.