Tag: general grumbling

And what has HE been doing?

From an article in People magazine about the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Garner breakup.

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Weird.  I don’t really understand what’s the driver behind magazines/media emphasizing how happily domestic famous women are, all while building their career and taking care of the children.  There is no such emphasis or constant need to reassure people that the male half of the couple is also happily domestic while building his career and taking care of the children.  Hands-on dad?  So nice that men can have that as a goal, instead of what’s required of them.

*This is not to say that the reporting in this piece accurately reflects anything about the Affleck/Garner relationship.  For all we really know, he could be the hands-on dad and she could be the person who builds her career and ignores her children.  I think we’re all media savvy enough to realize that what we read in the magazines might not (and probably isn’t) actually what’s really going on.

Here’s the number one thing that drives me crazy about the Oregonian.

Longtime readers know that I am quite frustrated with the shell of the paper that the Oregonian has become.  But here’s my number one hatred.  They are so namby-pamby with their changes.  Don’t want to publish a paper copy of the newspaper anymore?  Fine, stop doing it. That would be better than this four-day a week hybrid we’ve got.  Don’t want to have certain features anymore? Just print an announcement that you are discontinuing them.  That would be much better than just ushering said feature/person out the door and  waiting for us to wonder what ever happened to the guy who wrote the local political cartoons for 30 years.  Don’t like the name Oregonian anymore and want to be called OregonLive, even though it’s a stupid name?  Fine!  Just change the damn name. Don’t start using this weird, wordy, dumb looking hybrid Oregonian/OregonLive.  Be the newspaper you want to be and see if we all follow.  We probably will.  We’ve got nothing else.

For the love of all that is holy, it’s a conversation, not a Mother May I game!

Stone Soup is usually pretty normal in their family relations. However, we’ve started a plot where Val, the redhead is having upheaval because of confusion about the direction her relationship with her longtime boyfriend Phil is headed.  They were both happily plunked in “not getting married” but now the waters have been muddied.
What drives me crazy is her reaction.  She doesn’t know what her feelings are about marriage, which is fine.  But she reverts to the classic “he must ask me” stance that is not in keeping with the tone of the rest of the strip.  
Val, all you have to say is something like, “Let’s have a chat about where we are now with the whole marrying thing.”  And boom!  You and your partner can come to a conclusion together. 

Oregonian, you have got to be kidding me.

Just in case you don’t want to out-click, I’ll transcribe for you:
Thank you for being an angry and reluctant subscriber to The Oregonian.  We are sending you this sneaky postcard with many words to tell you that your subscription includes the newspapers published on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  These two newspapers are piled high with advertisements and have practically no news content to them.  We know that you, along with many other subscribers, grabs the three inch pile of ads and immediately transfers it to the recycling bin so you can get to the actual content of the paper which is, of course, news–not that we’re doing much of that anymore.  And remember a few sentences ago when we said that the extra newspapers are included in your home delivery subscription. What we really mean is that we are actually going to charge you extra, three dollars (that’s two dollars above the regular newsstand price) for the Thanksgiving Edition and one dollar (which is more than you pay for your weekday paper) for the Christmas one.  So be aware that your bill may come sooner than usual because of this.  If you’ve read this far and comprehended that we are completely screwing you over, please call our Customer Service Department where you can wait on hold for long periods of time before someone attempts to assist you.
Have a joyful Holiday Season, sucker.  
(We hope you will stop subscribing so we can claim circulation declines and forgo publishing altogether because we now pay our reporters based on how many “likes” and “pins” they get, not on their actual competence as a reporter. I mean really. The “free press” is so twentieth century.)
Your “friends” at the Oregonian.

Wrinkled newspaper.

It’s weird, the way the paper arrives.  Rather than just stacking all the sections in the middle and folding once, there are various configurations of sections and often just the front page is wrapped around a stack of sections.  This leaves the front page rather wrinkled and strained. This was something that was never a problem, before the advent of the tabloid format.