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Hey Amazon on Facebook. You haven't "hand picked" an item for me, you've just put up the item I last searched for but didn't buy. I don’t think any hands or even human beings were involved in that and no one was sitting in Amazon thinking, “I wonder what Richard Herring would like to buy. I am going to do some research on him and then hand-pick out the item ready for posting and then let him know that it’s there and ready to go.” Because if a person and done it they would have thought, “Hey, it’s a bit obvious to just choose the last thing he searched for, he’ll remember that. I could look at what he searched for at 2am, six months ago. Chances are he will have been drunk and so will have forgotten all about it, so then when the item comes up on his Facebook feed it will seem like magic, like fate and he will buy the thing. But then even that would be dishonest. I still wouldn’t have hand-picked it, I would have snooped through his account and shown him something that he’d already picked himself. No, if I am going to say I’ve hand-picked it, I must be honest and do exactly that."
But maybe, so that Amazon can’t be sued for false advertising, they have given their computers weird fake hands which can literally pick things up. I’d imagine they’d be in all kinds of trouble otherwise. But yes, last night I did search to see if I could buy all of Rick and Morty on DVD to save me having to watch the rubbish youtube versions and I did look at the Bluray too, but I wasn’t drunk and it was nine hours ago so I am not impressed with your advert or scared of your warlock powers. I just think you’re being a bit pushy and needy and that Ian Amazon is a dick. But actually thinking about it, I might as well take the plunge even though I talked myself out of it last night. Yes, I will buy the Blue Ray. I just did it. Thanks for the reminder.
Damn you Ian Amazon. You win again. If only human beings weren’t so stupid and suggestible then we might have a chance of making a go of it on this Godforsaken planet. But we are stupid and suggestible and I just got a leaflet supporting Brexit which appeals to my entrenched racism and foolish notions of the United Kingdom being somehow more special than anywhere else and I am going to vote to leave.
No wait, I wouldn’t be so stupid. I will wait til my wife is out on Wednesday and then play a frame of snooker against myself to make that decision. I think we should all do that.
Anyway I was much better today and so made up for yesterday’s squirty-anused debacle and spent some time with Phoebe. She’s hoovering up new information like a Henry that has gained sentience and ingests facts instead of dust and tonight when I asked her to do some animal sounds she came pretty close to getting some of them right. She sort of whispered “Wfff” instead of woof and said “Ma ma” instead of meow and “clack” instead of “quack’ BECAUSE SHE IS AN IDIOT. But she made the same wrong sounds each time I asked her, which shows some level of understanding.
But I wonder if toddlers sit around like kids at school being made to study algebra saying, “I don’t know why they’re so obsessed with making us learn what animals say. We’ll never have to use this information as adults. It gets drummed into us, like it’s important to know, but then no one will ever ask us about it again."