There's a moral here somewhere...

I'm sitting here, still in jimjams at noon, about one week into a nasty chest infection, and without the energy to do much -- not even look at naughty pictures on the internet, so that shows how bad it is. Anyway, couldn't let this one pass.

This morning I got a notification from Blogger about a comment on an old post, so I went to the post and deleted the comment. But while I was there I noticed that the post mentioned a new man, recently appointed as the boss of Borders bookshops chain in the US.

At that time Borders was in poor shape, shares at a three-year low. But fear not. The boy genius, one George Jones by name, had ideas. Oh yes. But the thing that struck me was that none of the ideas involved an ambition to be a better bookseller. And there was no mention of writers. (Hey, come on now. Be reasonable.)

At which point I scratched my befuddled head and said to myself, how did that massive company (worldwide in 2006: 1200 stores, 35,000 employees) get on in the next six years? Don't I remember that it sort of... collapsed?

Well, yes, turned out I did. By 2011 the company went bankrupt (in effect), couldn't find anyone to buy it, fell over, coughed, and went to a better place. Wikipedia:

 As of October 14, 2011, the Borders.com website has been replaced by a redirection link to the Barnes & Noble website, effectively shutting down Borders.com entirely.