1. One particular slice of the Return to Evergreen features Morty the Dog. Sweet.

2. Does anyone want to help out with Olynews.org? I like Olynews.org, but like a lot of small web projects around here, it suffers from people like me who fail to have a lot of energy. So, if you have energy and no particular project, why not right?

3. Accidental Naturalist reflects on the closing of Fireside Books. Or, rather, “Amazon Attacks Olympia!” MWWWAARG!!!!

From the post:

This wonderful, small, independent bookstore in downtown Olympia has been owned and operated by Jane Laclergue since 1995. Jane has many fans and friends in town, many dedicated readers, grateful authors, and fabulous staff–many sang her praises at farewell/retirement party of Jane Wednesday night. Her passion for books, her charm, her personal approach to book buying has made Fireside a favorite place of mine to buy books over the past several years. 

Though Jane is of retirement age, the closing of the Fireside Bo
okstore comes at time when fewer people seem to consider reading a priority pastime and more readers are acquiring digital books or ordering from online distributors such as Amazon.

…

Every book we buy on Amazon or other online booksellers is one less book sold at a bookstore. At the end of the month there will be one more empty store in Olympia, one less place to visit. Is Orca Books next? Our only remaining independent bookstore? What about the other used book stores tucked into our downtown? What about Barnes & Noble, our only remaining chain bookstore in the great Olympia area? Oh, and what about all the other stores that offer products that could be acquired online?

While I agree that its sad to see a local bookstore (or any type of local store) close, I don’t necessarily blame ebooks. While the newspaper column that AN links to doesn’t spell out whether Fireside has lost money (does say the recession has been hard), it does point out that Fireside lacks an even basic website.

Not to get into a long response on a link post, but I’m more inclined to believe that people who read ebooks are more likely to buy more books overall (so the one ebook for one local book think doesn’t stand up).

4. This is a very old post from a looks like dead blog, but it is so so very epic: “San Francisco Street Bakery and the Problem with the Left.” Bam!

Read on:

When I walked through the wide open door of the brightly lit establishment I was greeted by no one even though several people were scurrying about doing baker-type things. It wasn’t until I had walked across the room and taken the cream cheese from the refrigerator that a fellow with a stupid indie rock beard and wearing the tight black uniform of a Northwest leftist/anarchist/post hippie type finally took notice of me. It took him a second, seemingly, to muster up the wherewithal to tell me in his passive/aggressive way that, “Um, sir, the bakery’s not open for another half hour.” What he meant was: 

Hey weirdo, what’s wrong with you? Get the fuck out of here.

No, really what he meant was that the place wasn’t open for business yet. Eh, anyway. This post is a great example of the Olympia vs. everyone else culture shock thing. Read the entire post.

I’m not saying I’ve never been annoyed by bad customer service in Olympia, but I’m just as likely to get bad service in Yelm or Lacey or Shelton. Those aren’t homes of leftist hippy types, right? Anyway, bad service is bad service, so don’t chalk it up to people’s politics or culture.