The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Rant

Vitriolic Diatribes

  • Harriet Klausner

    You learn new things every day. Not necessarily useful things, but things. Possibly, these various items may pop up in a bar quiz someday. I can only hope.

    Today’s thing is Harriet Klausner. This was clued to me by one of SFSignal’s various tidbit posts. This post lists a comment train that has been continuing for over 3 years now and is quite educational.

    Harriet Klausner is Amazon.com’s #1 reviewer. “She” has reviewed more books than anyone else. As of today, she has written 12,939 reviews in almost the exact same format (three paragraph summation with a 4 or 5 star rating). This woman is either a front for a large set of people or someone who might possibly be lying to us.

    I base this on the following data, drawn from Amazon’s list of her reviewed books.

    • She reviewed 19 books on December 10 2006
    • 59 books on December 9 2006
    • 3 on December 8
    • 1 on December 7
    • 1 on December 6
    • 15 on Decmber 3
    • 10 on December 2

    I gave up at this point. I went to page 99 intending to find the date of the last review on that page. Then I decided to make sure I counted all the reviews done that day. I ended up on page 106! The date was August 2, 2006. Checking all of the August 2 pages, it ends up that 102(!) reviews were published that day.

    So, if I do my math right, between August 2 and December 26 we have 146 days. Over the course of that time “Harriet Klausner” has posted 7.27 reviews per day. But, let us not discount what she said in her Wired interview.

    Klausner, for one, has a day job to supplement her income. She works as a paid columnist in two national magazines, Porthole Cruise Magazine and Affaire de Coeur.

    Also

    She never deliberately criticizes an author and she doesn’t accept gifts or money when writing about a book.

    So, here’s a woman with a day job, who never deliberately criticizes authors, yet (from not-so-random-sampling by yours truly and through affirmations by others) never gives less than 4 stars on Amazon, and reviews 7.27 books per day. The first ten books in her reviewed list as of today, the 26th of December, averaged 423 pages. So she reads and reviews 3075 pages every single day, including weekends, while holding down a paying job, and presumably reading the first 50 pages of at least the occasional novel she does not like. Let’s be generous and reverse Sturgeon’s Law and call 90% of the novels she reads good and the last 10% crap. That leaves us with a grand total of 3113 pages per day every day all year long.

    She must be keeping bandage companies in business with all of her paper cuts.

    This is a bunch of crap. No one can honestly, ethically, review this many books every day and have more to say that banal generalities that we can get from the book jacket. If she is telling the truth and does read this much, I have no need to read her stuff; it will be trite and useless to me. If she is not telling the truth and has a team behind the name, then why don’t they publish better reviews? Read some if you don’t believe me…

    I have nothing deep to say about this, other than it reinforces my belief that you cannot trust book reviews or reviewers unless you actually know the person who did the reviewing.

    While paging through her listing of reviewed books, I noticed that one of them was a book of photography. I might be able to believe she can speed read her way through 3113 pages, but a book of photography is not a novel. It would require a different mindset to “speedread.” Yes, I realize it’s only one book, but it’s proof of principle. My principle.

  • AOL and its Customer Service Practices

    I know nothing about AOL.

    I know nothing about AOL’s services, customer treatment, or business practices.

    I’ve never had an AOL account and been one of “them.”

    However, this link, forwarded to me by Meandering Starre shows a depth of disprespect that is unconscionable.

    I honestly don’t know what I would have done in Vincent’s shoes, but I doubt I would have been nearly so composed. Makes me want to record all of my customer service calls from now on.

  • Media Assasiniation

    It’s official. John Karr is guilty of the JonBenet Ramsey killing in 1996.

    I know this because the media is now addressing him as John Mark Karr.

    History shows that killers have three names: John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Arthur Herman Bremer, Carlos the Jackal, Mark David Chapman, James Earl Ray, etc.

    I know, now, that the parents didn’t do it, it was John Mark Karr.

  • Intelligent Smoking?

    Doing my morning read of the NY Times headlines email, I noticed the following article, “A Warning on Hazards of Secondhand Smoke.” Inside this article is found,

    “I am here to say the debate is over: the science is clear,” Dr. Carmona said at a televised news conference…

    Whoah! Whoah! Science? Since when does science have anything to do with public policy.

    Better yet, where are the Intelligent Design nutjobs coming out of the woodwork to assist Big Tobacco in teaching the controversy. This seems like a perfect opportunity for them to show that cancer caused by smoking is “only a theory.”

  • Moronic Self Loathing = "Treasure Hunt"

    I just wasted 45 minutes of my life. Usually, I don’t mind pissing away the allotted time I have before death, but this time, I resent it right down to my toenails.

    We Tivo’d NBC’s Treasure Hunt (to which I refuse to hyperlink) this evening. We sat down and started up the Tivo and slowwwwly our brains melted away.

    Quick synopsis: Several teams of three persons are given clues in a competitive race to be first to find a treasure. I imagine this is NBC’s response to The Great Race, but I’ve never watched that so I can’t say for certain.

    This has got to be the most inane, moronic, stupid, insipid, and even degrading show I’ve watched in years! There’s no “hunt” about this treasure hunt. Each team is given a very specific path to follow and they can’t move on until they’ve got it right. I was hoping the helicopters waiting to take the Alaskan teams on their second trip would allow them to go to the wrong spot, but alas, that was not how the producers wanted it to be. They could not move until they’d figured the clue out correctly. Damn stupid.

    Suffice to say, I’ll not be watching any more of that tripe.

    [my apologies to all Tripe lovers in the world]

    UPDATE: After ranting above, I found this article that reviews the show. The man who writes that review talks about the product placement in the show, namely that each team is equipped with a Laptop with special access to Ask.com, a Visa Card, and a Motorola Razor. This sort of thing is normal, except, of course, for the Razor to Ring Ring Ring while they’re in the middle of freaking nowhere Alaska and Hawaii. Pardon me, but I didn’t see the cell tower mounted to the glacier nearby.

    I’m still pissed about this show. I watched all three seasons of Average Joe, but there at least I knew what I was in for, and got what I bargained for. NBC is soooo going down in my estimation.

  • Prairie Home, Hurricanes, and Levi's Call

    Messy title, for a messy post. Here goes…

    We saw A Prairie Home Companion on Friday. I confess that I had high expectations for this movie, given the character of the radio show from Minnesota Public Radio. We arrived a few minutes before show time and didn’t have any problem getting seats. Let’s just say that if I had to pick the type of people who would show up for this movie, you would have found them all sitting around us. I felt like the cast of a Woody Allen movie.

    Speaking of a Woody Allen movie, one was advertised during previews. Again, surprise, surprise. This one looks interesting, however, and it has Scarlett Johannsen and Hugh Jackman in it, which is always good for me.

    Movie Review: Clustered and Claustrophobic. There were times when all of the actors (and this was a Who’s Who of Hollywood) were talking incessantly at the same time, and it was driving me nuts. Just SHUT UP people! If that’s what really toes goes on behind curtains at the show, I don’t understand why there haven’t been murders. There was no overarching theme that I could detect, merely several interwoven plot lines that didn’t seem to have much to do with each other. Given that Garrison Keillor wrote this, I’m sure there were deep dark levels of meaning and symbology that I missed, but I don’t go to movies to sit and THINK about them. I’m not an indie foreign film kind of guy. Overall, I was disappointed, especially because it seemed like nothing ever happened. The whole movie was just…nothing ever happening. Very annoying. For reference, my favorite character throughout was Guy Noir, played by Kevin Kline.

    If you want a glowing comment, go to the imdb site and read it. I’d recommend it as a rental for anyone who’s interested. Don’t pay the $8.50 to see it in the theater.

    Next up! The Carolina Hurricanes sure got served last night. I don’t recall any Stanley Cup game 6’s where one team sucked quite that badly. They should give up and join the Atlanta Braves, who are plumbing the depths of suckedness right now.

    Lastly, and this is more of a rant than anything else, but you would figure, if a state goes through all of the effort to set up an AMBER Alert system (missing child notification, which is a Levi’s Call in Georgia), and especially in the Atlanta Metropolitan area where we use highway message boards, radio calls, cable tv alerts, etc., that I would be able to find information regarding said alert when it appears across my spanish-language World Cup channel!

    Nope! All of the relevant Georgia Bureau of Investigation websites are hosed, probably by people trying to get the info on the alert. All of the local news channels have…nothing on their webpages regarding this. Georgia-Navigator, which is the website for the Georgia DOT and it’s traffic management system has nothing.

    The System is not working… So much for Big Brother. I Just checked again and all of the georgia.gov websites are still hosed. Maybe georgia should invest in some more servers…

    Update 1253: Still no findable information on the AMBER Alert. The Georgia-navigator site at least is showing that the message boards around town are displaying “CHILD ABDUCTION ALERT, BLUE CHEVY S-10 P/U, TAG UNKNOWN.” GBI’s website for Levi’s call doesn’t have any current info, it’s solely about the requirements for issuing a Levi’s Call. Blah blah blah. The system isn’t working!

  • First Round Pain!

    Well, so much for me picking Iowa to win this years NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. [sigh]

    I was doing well first round right up to that moment. All of my first round picks that had not made it to second round were slated to lose there anyhow, so I still had plenty of opportunity to make it!

    Alas, so much for the Atlanta Regional for me. Go Ohio! who I have playing Iowa for the championship.

    Yes, I’m contributing to the $4B of lost productivity.

  • Gross Irregularity in Harry Potter Film

    Seven days until Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hits the theaters. I was poking around in the internet movie database and discovered a shocking irregularity.

    Spoilers follow!

    In this studio still from the filming, you will see the names on the tombstone where Harry is used to bring Volemort back to his mortal body. This tomb is for Voldemort’s Father, his father’s wife, and his father’s son (I’m not calling them step-mother and half-brother because I don’t believe that applies in this case). They are, reading from the photo, Thomas Riddle (the father), …ry Riddle (which I assume to be the wife) and Tom Marvolo Riddle, who is Voldemort himself!

    What the Hell? Voldemort killed his father and his father’s family for vengeance sake. We know this. His father never had anything to do with him. We know this too, and not from reading further forward in the series, it’s in Goblet! What the hell are they doing messing with the story like that? If they change up the relationships of people now, it will have serious repercussions in the future movies. It will almost be an alternate Harry Potter reality.

    Grrr.

    Another thing that’s got me confused are the dates on the tombstone. They are difficult to read in the still, but it looks like Voldemort (Tom Marvolo Riddle) “died” in 1946 which doesn’t even come close to matching the timeline of the book series. I’ll reserve final judgement on the last part of this rant until I’ve seen the movie and read those dates better.

    [did you know that Harry Potter was in training to be a Jedi?]

  • LOST is Crap, Tripe, Shit

    You will note from my earlier post about Lost of one week ago that I was not particularly happy with the second episode of this Lost season. J. J. Abrams has proved to me, like he did with Alias, that he can take a good thing and absolutely ruin it.

    The first season of Lost was an intricate mesh of plot lines and personalities, with just enough mystery to keep us hooked. The personal angle was what made the show great, especially how they all ended up interacting in their past lives, unknowingly.

    The first three episodes of the second season are merely shit, with no real dialogue or character inside. Mystery after conundrum after enigma has been presented without even the slightest bit of an attempt to resolve ANYTHING.

    J.J. Abrams has driven me away from the show (I have vowed never to watch it again) and thus has cost ABC a devoted Wednesday night viewer. Thank you, Mr. Abrams for freeing me from another evening of my enslavement to television. I’m sure my yard and my house will appreciate it.

    P.S. I gave up the end of a hockey game to watch that crap! The first NHL hockey game I’ve watched in 18 months! I will not forget.

  • America the Lazy

    Yesterday was a special tax election for Cobb County, Georgia. The proposed tax was a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) that is a tool to allow municipalities and counties to levy themselves for specific, earmarked purchases. This SPLOST would be a 1% increase for 6 years.

    In this case, the SPLOST was for Transportation improvements (re: my job), Jail improvements, and Parks & Recreation. The numbers I saw projected were, for the 6 year period of the SPLOST, $1.4 billion total dollars, with only $450 million or so coming from Cobb County residents. The rest would be extra-county persons, or state and federal matching dollars.

    Not getting into the pros and cons of this SPLOST, yesterday was the day to make our will known, as citizens of a free and democratic society.

    All 12% of us!

    Twelve percent turnout for this election! That is fucking awful. I tried to encourage people to vote, even if they were voting opposite of me, but apparently my efforts didn’t reach too many people.

    Oh, as of this morning, the unofficial results are 50.15% for the SPLOST and 49.85% against, with a 117 vote margin. They are holding off on official results until Friday when the provisional and military ballots are counted.