Wednesday, July 27, 2011

What Is Electric Sugar?




Redmond resident and Borders regular Jon Brown said all these factors — the rise of eReaders and fall of the economy — seemed to have happened at the same time and it is disappointing to see Borders go. He added that he hates to see bookstores close because there aren't enough around and e-books are not the same.

"There's still a place in your heart for books," he said.

Brown's daughter Sarah Brown agrees.

"I'd rather read out of a concrete book than a Kindle," she said.







Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc., the operator of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee shops ... with 6,800 U.S. locations, enticed investors with plans to more than double its U.S. store count in 20 years after outpacing McDonald’s Corp. (MCD)’s revenue growth last year. Recently, the Canton, Massachusetts-based chain has sought to draw customers in the afternoon with snack foods including pepperoni-stuffed breadsticks.

“We have room to move across the whole country,” Chief Executive Officer Nigel Travis said in a telephone interview today. “We have, in the West, a number of customers who try our brand -- they like the taste of our coffee, they like our speed.”

The stock was priced higher than the top end of the marketed range, with 22.3 million shares selling at $19 each yesterday after being offered for $16 to $18, Dunkin’ said in a statement.

“Investors are just excited about a new, hot IPO that they think has room to grow its unit count,” Peter Saleh, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group in New York, said today in an interview. “There are probably a lot of people who are investing in this name for the long-term growth and the free cash it generates.”








Concrete is the stuff sidewalks are made from.

And it means real instead of virtual.

So children these days speak of concrete books.

This is the world children are playing in,
electric books, electric libraries
you can stick in a backpack and carry
with you—more virtual electric books
than a concrete library has on shelf.

Now everybody knows they’re not the same—
kids say they would rather read concrete books—
but the jackhammers and the sledgehammers
are demolishing all the concrete books,
reducing them to rubble and book dust.

The librarians are throwing them out.

(A writer once thought that job would fall to
the “firemen” but he should have realized
librarians were already on call.)

Bookstores are yesterday’s news. Donut shops
right now are a hot ticket on Wall Street.

Electric donuts will never replace
concrete ones. What is electric sugar?

Sugar is the stuff donuts are made from.







. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .



The Borders stores around here are closing and they’re currently having a going-out-of-business sale. I visited one recently.

I bought a movie. Ha.

I bought a copy of the special edition DVD of one of my favorite films of all time, Joe Dante’s great, low-budget werewolf movie, “The Howling.”

There are many great scenes in this film. One of my favorites is toward the middle.


A woman’s husband gets attacked by a werewolf. He survives, however soon he starts turning himself, changing into a monster. But instead of being terrified, he embraces the change, enjoys the animal thrills.

When his wife realizes what’s happening, she tries to leave him.

He grabs her.



He says, “You don’t know what it’s like.”


She shrugs free from his grasp.



She says, “I don’t want to know.”


Then she does walk away from him. She’s the hero of the movie.




Concrete is the stuff sidewalks are made from.
























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