********* January 2012 Update!!! ******** The satire below from 3 years ago totally changed the Kindle. I don’t know if Jeff Bezos actually read this, but is it a coincidence that everything I made fun of –from the high price to the non open platform has changed? The new Kindle works better and costs one quarter than the one lambasted below. And the high prices for the e-books are the publishers’ fault not Amazon’s. And thanks to the Kindle the parasite middlemen publishers may soon be history. I even own a Kindle now and I give it 5 stars! Not only that, but by the time you read this one of my own books will be published for the Kindle. Stay tuned to MCT for the details. Jeff Bezos and Amazon chose to do good for the world unlike the blood sucking techno geek fashion creators and monopolizers at Apple and Microsoft. Bravo to Jeff Bezos and Amazon!
Brian Friedkin
CEO, Head Writer, Publisher, Editor,
Web Designer, Guiding Light Guru & Janitor
Meltingclocktimes.com
The January 2009 satire follows below:
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Hello Folks, Instead of a normal article this week we’re doing an infomercial. We have given our web site over to Amazon.
Swindle 2: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Regurgitation)
Price: Only $359.00!!! Cheap!! & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
This item will be released on February 24, 2009.
Pre-order now!
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Order Swindle now to RESERVE YOUR PLACE IN LINE. We prioritize orders on a first come, first served basis.
Hello!! We are the Amazon folks! We created one of the world’s greatest Internet resources! We improved the world with our fantastic web site—a massive portal of information and reviews on almost any book written and millions of other products. So why would you think we are now trying to become like Microsoft, by creating a evil monopoly that will require you to buy all your reading material from us? Isn’t a benevolent, cool magnetic ink monopoly better than a boring bookstore with old school books? Magnetic ink—that almost sounds like magic ink, and it is. So why shouldn’t you pay us for it? Don’t you people fork over money to Apple for overpriced gadgets that are much more useless and overpriced than the Swindle anyway? Take a look at the Swindle.. we got the hot, sexy gadget for you!! …. …
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Say Hello to The New Swindle!
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The Features:
Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Swindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots. It is included in the price of the Swindle and the books and mags you will buy. So if you would like to save $50 to $100 off the price because for you it is no problem to hook up via USB on your computer you are out of luck! We don’t give you that cheap USB only option because we know you are a fashionable 3G wireless dude! You get no choice but to pay for this high price Amazon Swindle 3G network and you also get no choice to be a sexy Swindle connected technoid!
Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available. New York Times Best Sellers and most new releases are $9.99, and you’ll find many books for less. But we hope you don’t notice that most paperbacks we sell are even cheaper. Well … we have competition for that stuff! But reading without a Swindle is old school and out of fashion! Who cares if it costs more? You will still save about .50 cents for many books. So you can recoup your Swindle investment after you buy only 700 books! The Swindle is fantastic and it pays for itself. (Just don’t look at the prices for newspapers, Internet blogs and magazines please!) So if you are an average American and read 5 books a year then the Swindle will pay for itself in only 140 years! But here’s the great thing: If you are above average — one of the 37% of the people who read more than ten books a year–you will pay for your Swindle in only 70 years! (But be sure to choose the Swindle books that are cheaper than the paperbacks because many aren’t! Hey, and if you are say…. 30 and you live to a hundred and have recouped your investment on the Swindle–send us a note! We want to know if our satisfied Swindle customers are getting a bang for the buck!)
But we know you people don’t really care that much for books—you want a cool gadget. That is why this list of books is not available on Swindle yet:
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
All of the books by Thomas Pynchon
Howl and Other Poems, Allen Ginsberg
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D Salinger
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
On the Road, and The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerourac
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, James Howard Kunstler
Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Julia Child
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
The Origin Of Species; The Descent of Man; and On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin
Well, who cares if you cannot read some of the greatest works of literature, science and history according to the old school out of fashion egg heads? That stuff is passe’. If you’re a trendy gadget going hipster, then you will probably be more interested in gossip, diet books and celebrity junk on the New York Times bestseller list anyway. And Swindle has those!
And the Swindle does offer a wide array of leading newspapers, magazines and blogs! Just think! The New York Times in magic magnetic ink! Why burn your eyeballs out on a computer screen? (Please, just don’t pay attention to the fact that it is free on the Internet.) Just look at the subscriptions you can get with the Swindle!
Thanks to Meltingclocktimes.com for providing us with this forum to further extend our reach to provide you information about our amazing Swindle!
For years free information via the Internet was getting disseminated throughout the world and Amazon was a big part of it. Anywhere in the world a computer was hooked up became a window of the biggest library in history.
But just what did this do for me? Didn’t I, Jeff Bezos do a hell of a lot more for humanity with the great Amazon web site than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs with their useless products? But people sure idealize Bill Gates and Steve Jobs more. Plus they make a hell of a lot more money than I do. Those guys are way up there on the Fortune 500 list and Amazon is way down there at 171!
If Microsoft and Apple were blown off the planet we would have Linux–which is much better than any Apple or Windows shit anyway. We’d have fewer stupid gadgets cluttering up the world also. But without Amazon just where would you go to get info about that book/table saw/coffee machine that you wanted to buy?
Still I get no respect. So I came up with the Swindle so techno fetishists will drool over me like they drool over Steve Jobs. And don’t I deserve to get way over paid and be one of the world’s richest motherfuckers like that monopolizing geek Bill Gates?
So I hope you will buy a Swindle so I can get the respect as a billionaire god of the techno gadget fetishists I deserve.
We hope you enjoy Swindle 2.
Jeff Bezos
Founder, Amazon.com
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