Time Inc:
RIP 600

Gannett:
RIP 3,000

Star-Ledger:
RIP 140

Christian Science Monitor:
Goes paperless
(I can just see the tombstone now.)


At least Twitter is still going strong, right? ... RIGHT? Oh, good GOD.

All this stress. I needs me a Vivanno^TM Nourishing Orange Mango Banana Blend. Bananas cure everything.

I've been through media layoffs before, from a company that started with A and ended in L and maybe had an O in the middle, but I'm not really sure. It was surreal to sit in the multipurpose auditorium where Santa would come to visit employees' children sprung briefly from the company daycare center across the street... where we created care packages for home-bound senior citizens on volunteer days... where we got discounted flu shots, donated blood, and ate brownie triangles on launch days ... and where we were, on a sunny October morn one year ago, receiving our severance packages in thick, navy blue folders that were not in any way pink, nor slip-like.

Do I miss my happy little company fambly? Yes, yes I do. Sure, I can joke about it NOW... but many, many more media cumps are following suit.

I predict an explosion in Blogspot accounts any second now. And three, two, one...

So of course on every Web site, blog and/or magazine's list of "ingenious" money-saving tips is to ditch the $4-a-day Starbucks habit. I have to ask: What kind of person spends 80 bucks a month on coffee without realizing they spend 80 bucks a month on coffee? (Let's see: Coffee, new boots or interest-bearing savings account? COFFEE, obvs.)

On Newsweek.com today:
A Venti-Sized Recession? The more Starbucks a country has, the bigger its financial problems.

Naturally, I'm suspicious that this can be tied in a neatly wrapped package with a shiny silver bow, but here we go: "The Seattle-based coffee chain followed new housing developments into the suburbs and exurbs, where its outlets became pitstops for real-estate brokers and their clients. It also carpet-bombed the business districts of large cities, especially the financial centers, with nearly 200 in Manhattan alone. Starbucks's frothy treats provided the fuel for the boom, the caffeine that enabled deal jockeys to stay up all hours putting together offering papers for CDOs, and helped mortgage brokers work overtime processing dubious loan documents."

Still awake? Yeah, me neither.

Now, there's nothing I like more than coffee. Possibly a Nintendo Wii, if I had one. But tying the Starbucks excessplosion into the housing crisis? Ehh... I rent. And I will forever, until someone can figure out a way for me to save tens of thousands of dollars for a down payment without reducing my monthly iTunes expenditures.

What we really need is some way to, oh, CAFFEINATE the economy. We're not gonna pull ourselves outta this mortgage/Starbucks/McMansion ditch with just one Vivanno^TM Nourishing Orange Mango Banana with Matcha Blend.

Mark Malkoff knows what to do, and he started it back when this economic meltdown was still solid chocolate, long before it was shaved into curls and drizzled on the foamy surface of a 200-degree beverage.

Indeed, he made a purchase at all 171 Starbucks locations in Manhattan... in one day.

• Yes!
We!
Carve!
(.com) [by way of Daily Kos] shows off Obampkins! ...Barack-o-lanterns?


• New York Times piece on Cindy McCain makes her out to be a sad, lonely lady who's been shunned as the floozy John left his first wife for. It starts off with this telling anecdote:

"Cindy McCain was new to Washington and not yet 30 when she arrived at a luncheon for Congressional spouses to discover a problem with her name tag. It read “Carol McCain.” That was the well-liked wife John McCain had left to marry Cindy, to the disapproval of many in Washington. Fearing that the slight was intentional, she slinked to a half-empty table that never filled. “No one wanted to sit at her table,“ said Barbara Ross, , a friend who was not surprised when Mrs. McCain announced a few months later that she was moving back to Arizona. “It was like high school.” And McCain is POed -- Fox News fires back.


• New endorsements for Obama - Colin Powell, Chicago Tribune (who has NEVER endorsed a Democratic candidate), Chicago Sun-Times


• Did youse guys hear about this when it happened, ‘cause I sure didn’t: Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Bros., got punched in the face at the company gym after it was announced they were goin’ down: "He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold.”


• Target: Women goes after the Disney Princesses. Finally! Someone needs to put those pretty little things in their place. I think Cindy McCain has been pursuing a career as a Disney princess, incidentally. P.S., Did you know that Al Gore helped start Current TV? I read it in his book "The Assault on Reason." Seriously, he did. This isn't like how he helped start the Internet.




• David Brooks: Sarah Palin "Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party" - Huffington Post. Wow. Harsh.


• McCain “Loves Being the Underdog" - CNN.com. Well, yeah, who DOESN'T love being the underdog? I love being an underdog almost as much as I love parking tickets, the smell of moldy bread and having to walk my dog at 2 a.m.

This moment on 'SNL' went WAY too quickly. Personally, I'd been hoping for a Jennifer-screams-and-passes-out moment like in 'Back to the Future Part II' when the teenage Jennifer encounters her 47-year-old alky self in 2015.

One of my heroes, Joan Didion, has a piece up on Salon this a.m.: "Belief" in the surge translates to "success" in the surge; does Palin have a better life story than Biden; what was up with the "lipstick on a pig" bid-nez?

Time got wasted in the familiar ways. The presence of Barack Obama in the electoral process allowed us to talk as if "the race issue" had reached a happy ending. We did not need to talk about how the question of race has been and continues to be used to exacerbate the real issue in American life, which is class, or absence of equal opportunity. Instead we could talk about what Barack Obama meant by "lipstick on a pig," and whether it was appropriate for him to go off on vacation "to some sort of foreign, exotic place." The "foreign, exotic place" in question was of course Hawaii.

Anyone who complains that Barack gets to go to Hawaii regularly is just jealous. Trust me.

I am drinking Yoo Hoo for the first time since I was about 12. My workplace always has various sodas in the fridge, but the addition of Yoo Hoo was too powerful to resist.

It is not as good as it was when I was 12.

Other things that were way better when I was a kid:

• Fun Dip


• Boy bands


• Hot Dogs


• Chewing on the rubbery feet of Barbie dolls


• The fact that members of The Baby-Sitters Club spent 10 years in 8th grade


• Dot-matrix printers

Sweet deity in a bicycle basket! It's not like I regularly turn to Dear Abby for advice on my oh-so-post-modern existence (can't even REMEMBER the last time she discussed how hard it is to hold up a 1200-page Ayn Rand on a crowded Metro) but I couldn't believe the idiocy she's spewing today.

DEAR ABBY: My boyfriend and I have been living together for a year. We split all the bills -- rent, utilities, etc. -- in half.

A few nights ago I asked him how he felt about paying for half my birth control pills, which amounts to $40 a month. Because neither of us is ready for children, I think we should share the expense.

Am I out of line to ask my boyfriend to split the cost with me? This has become a hot topic at work. The guys don't agree with me, and surprisingly, most of the women don't, either. What is your take on this? -- ALL IN LOVE IS FAIR

Abby responds that it's HER expense, not theirs: "As I see it, there are two kinds of expenses when people share a dwelling: joint expenses and those that are personal. Prescription drugs usually fall into the latter category." So is it only her "personal" expense when she starts spewing out bebehs that need dydies, milks and college educations because he's too cheap to pony up for a couple of Trojans?

Abby also suggests that if a man needs Viagra, it's his expense and not the woman's. Now, I don't necessarily agree with that either, except that it's been more than obvious for a very long time that women still make less than men for doing the very same job. But why is Viagra always the obvious counterpart for birth control pills? I would argue that Viagra is (well, somewhat) necessary, but not compared with a pill or other method that would prevent the average woman from becoming pregnant 10-15 times in her life.

Psst: