I have other things I should probably write about, but I have been lazy. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tim Minchin is awesome.

It’s me, Jon. I know we haven’t talked in a while, since I haven’t had a paid subscription in a few years now. But I just thought I’d write you a note to let you know why that is.

I am a big fan of your content; it is consistently high quality and well-composed. You’re not perfect, but you’re easily among the best sources for news on a daily basis. The problem is, there’s not really a good way for me to give you money for this; at least not a way that I currently find acceptable.

Now, I really don’t need a hard copy of your paper. I’m certainly not going to start carrying it around, and it would basically go unread. I can get the same content through other methods, and am far more likely to. But ok, what about the “Saturday and Sunday” subscription plan? I still probably won’t read most of it, but I may peruse it on a lazy Sunday morning, and I can read the magazine during the week. However, my main motivation here is not to get a giant pile of newsprint regularly delivered to my apartment; it’s to support the creation of the content I’m already getting for free.

The “Saturday and Sunday” subscription costs $3.15 a week, or about $160 a year. Hmm, well, that seems a bit high. For comparison, my New Yorker subscription is $40 a year, or about $0.75/week or $0.85/issue. But fine, The New York Times certainly is delivering more content, and has a much larger staff and more topics to cover. Say I’m willing to pay $3.15 a week to be a subscriber.

But wait! That’s not the actual cost, that’s just what I’ll pay for the first 8-12 weeks, until the rate doubles to $7.30 a week. That, for the record, is practically the cover price. Now, I guess it probably costs a lot of money to pay all those contributors, print out hundreds of pages, and deliver it to people’s doorsteps. So I can sort of understand where you’re coming from. Still, there’s no way I’m paying that much.

And so here we are: I am getting most of the benefits of your content, and you’re getting none of my money. I want to help finance the writers and researchers and editors, but not so much the unnecessary tree-killing and delivery mechanisms. I guess next year you’ll start charging for reading more than some number of articles per month online. Which is maybe a step in the right direction. But shouldn’t there just be an “Online Subscriber” option? I’d even throw in some extra for you to mail me the magazine.

The Republicans. Sex all the time, but only in shameful and degrading ways. Always takes it too far, leaves you bruised and regretful. Leaves office when voters decide they’re tired of getting fucked.

The Democrats. Just want to kiss and cuddle. Leaves office when voters are ready to get fucked again.

Apparently this movie about Mark Zuckerberg being a dick is getting good reviews.

This totally makes me laugh:

I’d been waiting for Phillip Pullman’s new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, to come out since the first time I’d heard about it months ago. It’s been totally worth the wait. Pullman expertly lays bare the power of narrative over truth, in this brilliant retelling of the so-called greatest story ever told.

But any priest who wants to indulge his secret appetites, his greed, his lust, his cruelty, will find himself like a wolf in a field of lambs where the shepherd is bound and gagged and blinded. No one will even think of questioning the rightness of what this holy man does in private; and his little victims will cry to heaven for pity, and their tears will wet his hands, and he’ll wipe them on his robe and press them together piously and cast his eyes upwards and the people will say what a fine thing it is to have such a holy man as priest, how well he takes care of the children…

And where will you be? Will you look down and strike these blaspheming serpents with a thunderbolt? Will you strike the governors off their thrones and smash their palaces to rubble?

To ask the question and wait for the answer is to know that there will be no answer.

This beautifully written piece has assuaged any fears I might have had about the intentions of the people behind the “Ground Zero Mosque”:

Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood a jumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions.

The point still stands though. If free expression doesn’t mean protection for the most extreme or offensive thoughts and words and symbols, then it doesn’t mean anything.

I struggled with this one a bit. At first, it seemed like a no-brainer: religious tolerance all the way. But as I read more about it, I realized that the odious right wing might have one point in this case. There is a distinct possibility that this mosque is meant as a symbol of “victory,” to rub 9-11 in New York’s face so to speak. And that thought makes me.. uncomfortable at best.

And so, I can at least understand the impulse to want to fight against it. But, as long as that’s all we’re talking about, words and symbols, then so be it. If that really is the motivation, then fine. That just makes them dicks, and us still the freest city in the freest nation in the world. I can live with that.

Or, things I will yell at my children to make them see how easy they have it.

• The Internet (Ok, fine. The World Wide Web)
  “In my day, Google was called the library, and ran on the blood, sweat, and tears of librarians! Craigslist was published in the newspaper! YouTube was hosted by Bob Saget!”
• Cell Phones (Ok, fine. Modern (2G+) cell phones)
  “In my day, when you left the house, that was it! You were incommunicado. If you wanted to reach someone, the best you could hope for was that at some point they would come home. Also you had to dial the phone with a fucking wheel.”
• MP3s/Digital Video/eBooks
  “In my day, the only way to steal music was to outsmart the security guards at Sam Goody! Also, sometimes I had to rewind things!”
• Digital Cameras
  “In my day, you couldn’t just take pictures willy nilly! You had to buy film, and lug around your gigantic, expensive camera, and afterwards take it to some guy who would charge you for every photo, even the ones where your finger was in front of the lens. The only way to tag your friends was to bring the photo over their house and say ‘Look, that’s you!’”

So I have been terrible at blogging lately, and I won’t stop now, but here is a pittance for the month of June.

The only thing worse than people who don’t reply all when they should, is people who do reply all when they shouldn’t. Not replying all on a mail when what you’re saying is pertinent to everyone is rude. Replying to everyone when your potentially private message is just for the sender makes you look incompetent, and possibly like an asshole.

Mind your Tos and Ccs!