Y.P.R.: Smuggled Goods

Friday, March 28, 2003 | Media Gadflies

Smuggled Goods

Amazon Customer Reviews

Really Small Talk’s Dan Kennedy challenged readers to review his book Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation using any of the following lead-ins:

“I am usually/almost always captivated by sharks attacking swimmers at small seaside resort beaches, so imagine my surprise when …”
“I am drunk and not signed in with my own Amazon account, but have a few things to say about this book nonetheless …”
“A few years ago my mother shared a skin care secret with me …”
“How many times has a humor book’s publisher promised plenty of sex scenes in hopes of jump-starting sales only to never deliver on the steamy promises? The answer is a resounding ‘all to often’ …”
“Many of you know I’m an avid reader and Amazon reviewer, but what you may not have known is that I’m also a diabetic …”

“Loser Goes First Keeps Me Young” by Josh Abraham, over at Amazon

Craigslist Missed Connections

Craigslist is a popular online bulletin board for classified ads of all sorts. Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” is a forum where one may reconnect with, say, a member of the opposite sex with whom one might have engaged in casual flirtation on the subway without having the cajones to act any further until it was too late.

Some of Y.P.R.’s very short stories were reviewed, unwittingly, by the wonderful folks at that fine online magazine, The Black Table, in their weekly rundown of the week in “Craig,” titled, quite charmingly, “The Week in Craig,” a column that functions as “your guide to the most fascinating accidental literary magazine on the Web,” an observation that rings true. This has been an awful run-on sentence.

The Black Table are good people. Y.P.R. feels bad for misleading them. But not that bad.

[ Note: Craig’s Lists are, alas, fleeting; they expire much too quickly. Y.P.R. has mirrored its posts for permanence. And by “mirrored” we mean “stole.” ]