God damn you all to hell, Dalkey! Quit this whole 100 books for $500 bidness! Why, for that price I could probably summon an outcall and maybe get the escort to read me some Flann O’Brien just before performing fellatio on me! Hell, maybe she could do both! (Yesterday, I felt my futon showing signs of collapse after two years of solid sleep and other activities. I turned on my side and, when I felt that nobody was there beside me, I weeped into a pile of hardcovers and rearranged these sturdy squares into the form of a woman under the blanket. Sadly, my penis collided into one of the spines, causing a large and painful bruise, and I have been applying ice to my crotch ever since. I understand if other people choose to stave off loneliness in other ways.) All this is a roundabout way of saying that you should give your money to Dalkey because what they do is fantastic and that nachos are nothing to be ashamed of.

With all the recent talk about movie box office slumps, could it be that the declining grosses have something to do with the rising ticket price? In the past year, we’ve seen movie ticket prices rise from $8 to $10. Those two dollars may be small potatoes for most of us, but let’s say that you’re a family of four operating on an extremely tight budget. Suddenly, you’re now paying eight extra dollars per week (or what was once the price of one movie ticket).

Factor in the loud movie ads that thunder during those hideous “20 Minute Countdown” presentations before the movie, working against parents who are trying to get the kids settled down, and the fact that movies have seriously declined in quality, and the problem from a family perspective becomes apparent. Moreover, considering the rise in talkers, I wonder if this has less to do with home theatre environments and more to do with walking into a theatre and hearing not some soft music playing over the speakers so that people can settle down, but getting a projected movie with advertisements and hollow trivia.

And lest any sleazy Michael Medved types come around here preaching about “indecent” films that families don’t really want to see, I don’t think it’s the content or type of movie that matters. But families do go to movies. All types of movies. Everything from the latest Dreamworks animated epic to a serious drama.

If the movie business truly wanted to halt the gradual taper, then they might consider (1) reducing the ticket price from $10 to $8 by promising movie theatres a greater percentage of the gross, (2) reduce second-week dropoff by reducing supply (i.e., number of screens) and increasing deamnd, (3) demand a theatrical environment that is less intrusive and ad-centric and that actually relaxes people as they sit down, and (4) stop treating audiences as morons and make smart, entertaining, and story-centric movies.

Gawker has been mining this MySpace blog about a 26 year old working in the publishing industry who was fired for blogging. The only thing we have to say is that we’re extremely distrubed that anyone in their mid-twenties would use “totally” on a regular basis in their writing (and to be clear on this, using this modifier before the verb rather than after), let alone hired in the publishing industry or (since things have LIKE TOTALLY turned up for bluegirl24ny), a copy editor.

We wouldn’t mind being copy editors ourselves, but we haven’t been hired because we TOTALLY read the Chicago Manual of Style for pleasure (preferring to revere language instead of butchering it), we live in San Francisco (about as far removed from the center of publishing as one could get), and we don’t really have the sexy curves of a nubile twentysomething young lady who plops nothing but Nutrabars on a supermarket checkout scanner. So we’re SOL. TOTALLY!

Michiko Kakutani: “Jack’s ‘melancholic logorrhea’ might yield some useful therapeutic results, but in terms of storytelling, it makes for a tedious, self-indulgent and cruelly eye-glazing read.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Perhaps in an attempt to depict that innocence, Irving has created a personality-free main character who spends much of the story in a curiously passive state. Do such people exist? Everywhere. They are as frustrating in real life as they are in books.”

Boston Globe: “Irving takes no more notice of an amputated limb than a stray pimple. A shattered life impels no more wobble in his plot’s dense tread than a crumbled cookie strewn across a graying plate, so the reader is deprived of a useful collision with a sensibility truly at odds with one’s own.”

New York Daily News: “[T]he book is emotionally barren, antsy in its execution, and too precious by half.”

[ALSO RELATED: Jimmy Beck’s “Hip Hoputani”]

Magazines have long pulled the ignoble trick of getting their subscribers to sign on for multiple years, suggesting with repeated correspondence and feverish pitches that subscriptions are in jeopardy when there’s still plenty of time to renew. And if you’re a person (like me), who subscribes to about six billion periodicals, then you send in your check on impulse, only to find that you’ve unexpectedly signed on for another two and a half years.

(I won’t name names, but I’ll just say that certain magazine empires are even more egregious than this. When the magazine folds after a handful of issues, they don’t even bother to refund a partial amount to their subscribers unless the subscriber calls them. But most of them forget and, of course, take their sweet time in sending out the checks.)

But Wired‘s treatment of its subscribers takes the cake. Apparently, Wired assumes that if a subscriber doesn’t renew his subscription, then the magazine automatically assumes that the subcriber wants to renew. If there is no written notice provided by the subscriber, they sic the North Shore Agency, a major debt-collection firm, upon the reluctant renewer.

One San Francisco resident, Bob McMillan, received a variety of letters reading “Request for Payment” and “Account Status: Delinquent.” (A sample letter can be found here.)

There is no doubt in my mind that Boing Boing will not mention any of this. After all, all of its authors contribute regularly to Wired. This seems hypocritical to me, considering how EFF-friendly and pro-individual they present themselves to be.

Further, Wired isn’t the only one doing this. One subscriber reports that PC Magazine has been nebulous about the number of times the magazine is published and automatically renewed his subscription without his permission. Another blogger experienced a Kafkaesque moment when he was hassled on the phone by Time. (See the May 28, 2005 entry.) (And interestingly enough, the Time Inc. Magazine Group was the subject of a multi-state investigation into their subscription practices two years ago.)

Apparently, Wired is able to do this through direct-mail solicitations that contain a clause in fine print — what is sometimes referred to as advanced consent marketing. But are these clauses clear and conspicuous enough to the magazine subscriber. Even the MPA notes that magazine subsciptions have guidelines, subject to Federal Trade Commission regulations:

The customer must take an action to demonstrate affirmative consent, such as checking a box, affixing a stamp, pushing a number on a telephone keypad, pushing a key on a computer keyboard, clicking a mouse, giving an oral response, or returning an order form. The customer should have all the material terms of the sale, disclosed in a clear and conspicuous manner, prior to taking the action demonstrating affirmative consent.

The FTC suggests that anyone who has been misled into automatic renewal to contact their state Attorney General or local consumer protection office.

But if automatic renewal has become such a major problem, then perhaps government legislation that upholds the clear and conspicuous consent of a consumer and that enacts substantial fines and punitive damages upon the magazines who mislead their readers is a better answer.