Did you know that Netflix isn’t really “as many movies as you want”:

Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.’s online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged.

That’s because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn’t penalize him for returning his movies so quickly.

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva’s home in Warren, Mich. — down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company’s automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

The same Netflix formula also shoves Villanueva to the back of the line for the most-wanted DVDs, so the service can send those popular flicks to new subscribers and infrequent renters.

The little-known practice, called “throttling” by critics, means Netflix customers who pay the same price for the same service are often treated differently, depending on their rental patterns.

Or maybe it was Dr. Ruth? Either way, attendees at a children’s fundraiser in New York last week got a real treat when they broke open their fortune cookies. The host, Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz, intended the cookies to contain messages like “Brooklyn–the 10th planet” or “Brooklyn–it’s like an everything bagel.” Instead, some 350 fortunes (out of 1,750) turned out to be “graphically lurid.” Yes, due to some mix-up, the guests were served porno-fortune cookies.

“They were not cutesy. Triple-X to say the least,” said Markowitz. Still, I’d take them over the usual mundane ones (“You are patient in times of trouble,” “You enjoy traveling,” “You are kind to strangers,” “You like Chinese food”).

And at the very least, the guests probably didn’t have to add the words “in bed.”

Duncan Currie has an excellent piece on Cuba’s participation in the World Baseball Classic.

I expect to see this worked into a movie script some day. The bad guys abduct some unsuspecting teenagers and threaten them into walking into banks and passing notes to tellers demanding money. Or else? Not quite clear from the WashPo story. But if I were writing the movie, the kids’ notes would say the kids would be killed if they didn’t come out with money. Or make them suicide-bank-robbers, kids strapped with explosives that will go off unless they exit with a lot of cash. The obvious reversal: The kids are the real robbers, pretending to be abducted and acting out orders, while one of their accomplices scoots away with the dough.

The paper does note that the kids were unarmed. So it’s possible the actual criminals in this story have outwitted my lumbering scenarios by forcing the kids to do the job armed with confidence alone, like George Clooney in Out of Sight. That’s even more elegant with the reversal: The kids turn out not only to the bad guys, but wicked smart.

But now that I’ve written this post, I wonder if all the movie-savvy people around here will tell me, oh no, that’s been done like a hundred times.

Galley friend Brendan Conway, primarily of Washington Times but also an editor for Doublethink, has a terrific story in this week’s NYPress about a military interrogator who’s going into the private sector as, what else, a consultant. He wants to bring the lessons of military intelligence to a cubicle near you.

This issue of the New York Press sadly marks the end of Harry Siegel’s tenure as editor, as Siegel and several of his colleagues—some of them good friends of ours—resigned after their publisher refused to allow them to reprint the infamous Danish Muhammed cartoons. Ruling that these cartoons were beyond the pale was an especially craven and hypocritical decision for the Press management, which takes a huge chunk of its revenues from lewd ads promising escort services, phone sex, and the like. Indeed, the Press’s own pages have known any number of examples of filth, not least of all in its prose. When I worked there for about five minutes in 1996, the most often-uttered word in the office was the F-Bomb.

Ah yes, but risking the displeasure of Islamists looking to shame their critics and enemies into silence, that’s another matter.

Stephen Schwartz has a great piece on the Brandeis jihadist.

Probably not, but the U.S. Senate isn’t taking any chances. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Stormie Janzen, a scheduler for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, was recently asked to shut down her weblog, which was on MySpace.com. It supposedly showed Stormie in a bare midriff and unzipped jeans. Her biggest turn-on? Men in button-fly jeans.

The 34-year-old staffer is “single, straight, and a Scorpio.” She also earns an annual salary of $64,139 as a scheduler.

First they came for your blogs, then…

In the tradition of Shining comes the new trailer for The Fight Club, courtesy of Galley Friend B.W.

Update: Also from B.W., this terrifying trailer for Sleepless, in Seattle. So good.