Sunday Stuff

Some links I've gathered of late:

:: Margarita Kareva is a Russia-based photographer who specializes in fantasy art photography. Her photographs beautifully portray women that have been transformed into fairytale princesses and witches..

These are amazing. Here is just one, but they are all captivating. These make me want to brew some tea and read something Russian.

:: Video mock-up of what will be the world's tallest roller-coaster.

The concept here is fascinating, actually; it's not just the tallest by putting the tallest climb into its initial hill, which is usually how coasters become the tallest. However, I wouldn't ride this thing unless I was offered a large amount of money to do so. It's not the height, but the nature of the thing: I don't like going upside-down, and I really don't like the feeling of never knowing where the hell I am in relation to anything else, which is what this coaster seems to have in spades.

:: I have to admit that I do still go into RadioShack a couple times a year. These days, it's almost always to buy new headphones, because I tend to like their selection of such. RadioShack is, of course, slowly circling the drain, although it's amazing how many years a big chain business can be "circling the drain" and still hang on. Sears and K-Mart are still around, obviously, despite having been on death's door for over a decade each. (There is the flip side of the coin, obviously: witness the very quick demise of Borders, which went from "struggling" to "stone dead" in just a couple of years.) RadioShack is always an odd kind of place, and I like shopping there a lot more if there are already people in there to occupy the time of the poor salespeople, who almost always end up staring at me if I'm alone.

Anyway, here's an article in which a guy who worked there years ago describes what it was like during his tenure. He describes a barren, soul-less, amoral hellscape of epic retail proportions:

But as this company has spent the last decade-plus trying to save itself, the happiness of the employees has always been the first to go overboard. Its store managers are worked so hard that they become unhappy, half-awake shadows of themselves. Labor laws have been brazenly ignored. Untold hours of labor haven't been paid for (when I quit, on good terms and with two weeks' notice, they withheld my final paychecks for months and wouldn't tell me why). Lawyers have been sent to shut down websites that have bad things to say about RadioShack. Employees who make a few dimes over minimum wage are pressured, shamed, and yelled at as though they're brokering million-dollar deals.

RadioShack is a rotten place to work, generally not a very good place to shop, and an untenable business to run. Everyone involved loses

Youch. Compared to that, working for Pizza Hut seems like an idyllic heaven.

:: Frozen, one year later. Wow. I find it hard to believe that the movie is only one year old, because it was sunk its hooks into the popular culture in a way that few Disney movies have, no matter how good they might be. Personally, I love Frozen (and I think I owe it a blog post), but it's strange: I was barely aware of its existence when it was first released, and I only started hearing about it when its DVD and Blu-ray releases were quite near, because that is when my social media starting exploding with friends of mine absolutely thrilled to finally get their copies of the movie. And since we don't have young children, we were never subjected to endless singing of "Let It Go" and "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman", so there's that.

Anyway, what I really love about Frozen is the fact that the story is about two young Princesses who are plunged into a very strange circumstance, and through it all they worry about their own agency. Now I wonder why I find a tale like that so compelling....

More next week!