Archive for July, 2005

“The best vitamin a Christian can take is B1″

Seen outside a church, which had me snorting all over the place.

There’s only one book in town: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 1,869,505 copies on its first day. This is significantly up – by 11.3% – on the previous volume’s first-day sales, and Bloomsbury and JK Rowling will Pocket their customary millions (she will make £2 a copy, the rumour goes). Heavy discounting on the book throws up some interesting figures. With Tesco offering it at £7.97, and Kwiksave – not previously known as committed booksellers – an even more extreme £4.99, tills rang up sales of £17.6m – but a staggering £14.1m was discounted. As Tony Peachey of the Seaways Bookshop in Fishguard (who had to buy the book at trade for £10.70) wrote this week, small bookshops just can’t compete. Could Rowling, he asked, use some of her magic to persuade publishers against discount deals? Otherwise he foresees a future only for the few topselling authors supermarkets will stock – as well as another nail in the coffin of your high-street bookshop.

– Culture section of the Sunday Times

Our shop has now been buying the Half Blood Prince from Tescos and selling it on at £11.99. People are buying it too!

metal mouse, originally uploaded by m patrizio.

This is metal mouse, made by M. Patrizio who crochets the most adorable toys. She also has a blog here. I’d love to buy all the creations, they are just so cute.

Only in America is there a dating service for sexy Christians

“If you’re interested in meeting and dating quality christian singles – then we are your perfect choice. Our members are intelligent, attractive professionals in search of meaningful relationships.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flash [sic]. Genesis 2:24″

Wild panda “thief” leads chase through China city

A wild giant panda which wandered into a southwestern Chinese city on the weekend led would-be rescuers on a day-long chase before it was captured and returned to the wild, the China Daily reported on Monday.

I’m sure everybody is aware that the new Harry Potter book “The Half-Blood Prince” was released yesterday, with many fans queuing up at midnight to get a copy. I haven’t got my copy yet and won’t pick it up till Tuesday at work. Although I love the Harry Potter books alot, the whole phenomenom can get quite tiresome if you work in a bookshop. Our shop is too small to bother opening up at midnight, but the price competition is a joke.

Our bargain bookshop competes with another bookshop, a W H Smith and a Tesco, all in one town, so the competition is fierce. We were offering pre-orders of the book at £9.99 but I think Tesco were going as low as £8.99. Our shop only makes something like a 20p profit on this book. I think shops offering the book any cheaper must be making a loss on the book but do so to attract customers, who then go on to purchase other products. Supermarkets are infamous for using “loss leaders” to gain more business.

Shamelessly stolen from Holy Moly mailout

A scary ebay model what’s going on with the jewel encrusted thong and flabby handles?

Why must hot air rise? Why can’t we sleep in a nice cool bedroom instead of sweating it out what feels like a sauna?

The World gets its tallest man : HindustanTimes.com: “A Mongolian man, Xi Shun, has been officially recognised as the tallest man alive, standing at 7ft 8.95 inches or 2m 38.1cm.
The 54-year-old farmer, who belongs to the remote of Inner Mongolia, has surpassed the previous record holder by just five hundredths of an inch.
Xi, whose mother only stands at 5ft 2 inches tall, started to shoot up in his teens.
‘He’s an incredibly exciting find’, The Mirror quoted a Guinness World Record spokesman as saying”

A lighthearted piece of news in amongst today’s shocking events in London

Double happiness as panda gives birth to twins

BEIJING (Reuters) – A giant panda at a Chinese reserve has given birth to twins and mother and offspring are doing well, the China Daily said on Wednesday.

Pandas normally only rear one cub at a time and Ying Ying, who lived in the Wolong panda reserve in southwest Sichuan province, had chosen one of her new babies to care for, the paper said without specifying the twins’ sex.