The perils of amazon prime: A cautionary tale, by cristin
10 April 2008So, as mentioned, I am home from sales conference. I approach conference like I’m going on American Gladiators in terms of preparation and then recovery time, and also the terrible platitudes that we hurl at each other over the course of the week- “Halfway there, guys! Stay strong!” The night before I left I found myself looking at my usual surroundings (couch, turtle tank) with new eyes, convinced that I had to do everything I had a vague inkling for before I was put on work lockdown. “I’m ordering barbeque for dinner! And I want ice cream!” I barked at anyone who would listen to me. Listening to us on the plane ride home after conference, you’d think we had all just come from a taping of Survivor- “What’s the first thing you’re going to eat when you get home? I’m gonna sleep all day!” So, to answer your question, yes I am a weakling and it took me two days to recover from a week in Bermuda spent talking about children’s books and dancing to “Hot in Herre” in the hospitality suite with my bosses and coworkers.
My brother has some fascinating stories about long stretches of time spent on an aircraft carrier and the things they came up with in order to amuse themselves. One of my favorites is the time they did a relay marathon in their gym where a bunch of 2 to 4 men teams rotating on and off the treadmills to see which team could hit 26.2 miles first. Remarkably, this coincided with their moustache growing contest, so in all the marathon pictures, everyone has facial hair a la the Beastie Boys in the Sabotage video. And is sweating, a lot. Brendan also said that at one point he went on an online shopping kick from the ship and just kept buying clothes and having them sent to his address so that his wife was coming home to random J Crew packages and not knowing how they had gotten there. This last coping mechanism is important, as it is clearly genetic.
So, also as mentioned, I have Amazon Prime now. I decided that this was going to be my present to myself when I got promoted (way to put the money back into the industry, Cris. I don’t see why I shouldn’t just ask our payroll dept to compensate me in picture book monopoly money {sidebar- how adorable would that be?? think of the illustrators they could get to do the bill designs!} because there’s where it all ends up anyway) but only just got around to securing it. Here’s what they tell you about Amazon prime: It’s $79/ year and you get free 2 day shipping on everything, plus you can overnight things for something like $2.99 a pop. If you’re an instant gratification book shopper like I am where you’ve picked up books in a B&N and thought “I can just call someone at my old company and have them send this to me… but I’d rather have it right now” this is pretty clutch. I’m pretty sure I pay Amazon at least $79 a year in shipping charges alone. I shudder to think of how much money I give those people. Or, I don’t, really, since they send me books that I then get to read and reading makes the world go ’round.
So now I have this new toy that gets me books very quickly. And I activated it during a week where I was spending 14 hours a day talking about books with quick layovers in my hotel room on my laptop. Recipe. For. Disaster. When I came back to my desk in New York on Monday, I had 4 boxes waiting for me from Amazon, many of which contained things I had only a vague memory of ordering, if any memory at all. I had an experience recently where I saw a set of notes from a meeting I spoke at and I was horrified by the amount of corporate-isms I managed to jam into a two minute update. (long story short, I referred to a combination of marketing and in store placement on a title as “the perfect storm.” Yeah). Looking at those notes I felt kind of how a werewolf must feel when he wakes up human the morning after a rampage and has to survey the carnage he left behind– is this the kind of person I am when I’m not not careful? The kind of person who, with no irony whatsoever, uses phrases like “the perfect storm” in meetings regarding children’s books? The kind of person who, upon purchasing Amazon Prime, immediately orders the most random collection of books ever printed?
Watch it Made in the USA. I’ve been buying so many road trip books I fear that Amazon will be recommending things like “America’s most popular truck stops!” to me for the next decade or so. But I like to be prepared, damnit. Also, when’s the next time I’m going to spend two weeks going across America in a car with my mom? (Actually, if this goes well, the answer to that question might be 2009, but let’s take this one year at a time). I would hate to miss the opportunity to see the Jelly Belly factory or watch Makers Mark get bottled just because I didn’t have the right reference materials. I plan on page flagging this and cross referencing it with our tentative route (by “tentative” I mean the most we have decided is “we’ll go south for awhile, then west, right? Sound good?”) to see how many ridiculous company tours we can get in. Who wouldn’t want to watch crayola crayons get boxed? Not this girl.
Parts. This isn’t all that random as I’ve loved this book for years and kept forgetting that I needed it for my home library. But it is still a book about a little kid who thinks the glue holding him together has stopped working when he finds belly button fuzz and boogers making a run for the outside world. (It’s fully awesome. And there’s a follow up! And another! Now you know what to get me for my birthday).
TrueColors #1: Dark Blue: Color Me Lonely. As I’ve said, there are fewer more effective ways to set the monkeys in my head off than to start talking about christian fiction for teens. I feel like this is okay, ethically, since I was uber-Catholic as a teenager myself and did things like attend the National Catholic Youth Convention where people wore tshirts with crosses on them and text that read “Jesus beat the devil with a big wooden stick” or images of a hand with a spike through the palm that are captioned “paid in full.” So, oddly or not, I find this genre un-ignorable. In return, they will, I’m sure, mess up my “Cristin’s Store” picks for decades to come.
Just The Way You Are. I have no idea why I bought this. I think every once in awhile I might plug in the phrase “bargain price” to the children’s section and see what gets kicked out. Must have been blacked out for this one. Stupid werewolf.
Everything I Needed To Know About Being A Girl I Learned From Judy Blume. Further proof that I will read literally anything Meg Cabot writes. I will read her grocery list if she allows me to. And I’ve heard many stories about Judy Blume being out at book events and women my age dragging their significant others up to her to say “this woman taught me everything I know about sex.” As a husband, how do you respond to that, I wonder?
Cheer! Three Teams On A Quest For College Cheerleading’s Ultimate Prize. Fine, I’ll pretend that this one was an accidental purchase, but I’ll be lying. In fact, there’s still a post-it on my computer reminding me to buy it. (Note to self: do a better job at destroying the evidence. Also: you still need to pick up a copy of Not Quite What I Was Planning). Competitive cheerleading fascinates me. I DVR Cheerleader U on the WE network and get freakishly excited when ESPN shows the Nationals throw down. And now I have something new backing me up when I go with my frequent “I’m getting into nonfiction” lie. Even the cover has me intrigued– how did they get Joyce Carol Oates to blurb this? And I’m guessing it was a conscious and heavily debated decision to not picture cheerleaders in uniform or doing anything cheer-ey–why? I can’t wait. This is probably going to bump my next book about the Lincoln assassination further down in the rotation. Nice priorities.
11 Responses to “The perils of amazon prime: A cautionary tale, by cristin”
April 10th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I too have a book instant gratification obsession. Its why I really want a Kindle. Imagine what you could do to your bank account if you could order a book, cheaper than its store price, and have it instantly. Oh the horrors!
April 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
We totally had that Watch It Made book when I was a kid. I went home a few years ago, paged through it and discovered there was a Jelly Belly factory (well, more like a packaging/shipping plant) within driving distance. So I guess the real factory factory is in California, but the one in Wisconsin has a nifty train ride?
April 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Don’t get into non-fiction. If non-fiction were as good as fiction, we wouldn’t need fiction.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Kyle, I want to print that on a t-shirt.
I don’t have Amazon Prime — I just make sure to always buy at least $25 worth of book. Even if I just want one paperback book. Sadly, I know this is not saving me any money.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Urg. Replace first “book” with “books” and delete the second time I said “book.”
Book book book book book.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
i’ve been to the crayola factory. oh yes. also, the hersey factory of hersey, PA.
these are things my family and i did on our road trip to smith. also, the rock and roll museum.
all with a desk chair tied to the top of my dad’s minivan. a chair that never recovered.
it was rad.
April 10th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
hershey. duh.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I kind of wish Katie had been to the heresy factory, because that would be amazing. And I kind of want to make you a t-shirt that says “stupid werewolf,” because that is a hilarious characterization of late-night buying (or cooking, or thesis-writing) binges. My grocery store is open 24 hours so I will occasionally go buy, like, cake ingredients and make cake late at night. And then next morning the kitchen is covered in pans and flour and icing sugar and I’m all, “stupid werewolf.” Maybe I need that shirt, too.
When are you and your mom doing your trip? I might be doing a cross-country trip in June and I would totally want ot see your list of must-sees.
I’m watching True Life: I’m a Southern Belle and it’s horrifying. This girl wants to get married when she’s 30 and her friend is like, “You’re like, so cynical!” I don’t think the friend can spell cynical.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:27 am
My parents took me and my brother to both a cigarette factory and a beer brewery in the same week of vacation. Unsurprisingly, the beer brewery was way more fun, and way less depressing.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:41 am
“Stupid werewolf” is really how I explain most of my life at this point. I really hope we can work that phrase into the general lexicon because I think it can help a lot of people in life. And I’m with Mags– that’s the best line about nonfiction that I have ever heard.
Road trip is last week of june 22- July 5, I believe, and we have no itinerary whatsoever at this point. All that is about to change, though– I’m about the OCD the heck out of those plans! Prepare to be page flagged, road trip books!
April 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Dude, James and his Marine Corps friends had a moustache growing contest while they were in Iraq the first time. Must be something about too much testosterone in one place…
and that Amazon Prime sounds dangerous. I wish you hadn’t explained what it was, because now I’m tempted.