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December 19, 2004

Kicking Amazon

Hi, folks. Spike's man-thing, here, making a rare Circus post to rant about a few related things and throw some links at you.

First off, those of you who hold any kind of strong political leanings at all will want to check out BuyBlue.org. This site--and a few other sites--are performing the invaluable service of researching exactly to whom various companies are handing out campaign contributions, and summarizing the information for our benefit.

Whatever your political leanings, you're likely to find a lot of bad news on any of these sites. But the worst news for me is that Amazon.com gives 61% of its political donations to Republicans. Amazon, who I do all my goddamned Christmas shopping through, simply because of the convenience of their wishlist system.

Yeah. This is a problem.

So I've been looking into alternatives. There are a number of vendor-independent wishlist / gift registry services out there, and the one that's looking the best to me at the moment is WishCentral. It's a little bit beta, and adding items to the list is, naturally, more complicated than just clicking a single link, but the advantage of being able to choose whatever items and sources you want is pretty great. Looking through other people's wishlists, I've seen people asking for general categories of gifts like "Bath & Body Works stuff," and even things that aren't simple buy-it-off the web products, like "a visit to a neurologist." (I shit you not. Get a load of this guy.) It's also kind of cool that your friends and family can "reserve" a gift without actually having to buy it from the vendor that you suggest. That's handy for folks like my dad who'd rather buy stuff from brick-and-mortar stores (a practice which, with Amazon's system, led to my brother getting two copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City last year).

So anyway, I've put together my own list to kinda test the thing out, and I made the process slightly more complicated than it needed to be, checking mySimon to find cheap sources for the stuff I want, and then going back to BuyBlue.org to make sure wasn't linking any red companies (naturally, Amazon and Wal-Mart were right out).

I'm tentatively recommending WishCentral to everybody who doesn't want to make their friends and family contribute to Republican political efforts through an Amazon wishlist. Please check it out, folks, and tell us what you think about this service, or if you know of a better one. Hell, feel free to post your own wishlists, too.

Posted by Matt at December 19, 2004 06:29 PM

Comments

Well, shit.

Time to phase out my Amazon list, I guess.

What a shame.

Posted by Spike at December 19, 2004 06:37 PM
68.20.182.178

Addendum: I'd have put Doom 3 on my wishlist, but it turns out Activision gives 86% of their political donations to Republicans. Yeah. So I'll play Half-Life 2, instead.

Posted by Matt at December 19, 2004 06:59 PM
68.20.182.178

Who would think Republicans enjoy giant guns and blowing up demons with names like "Pixie"?

Thanks for the most useful links, Matt!

Posted by spookable at December 19, 2004 07:24 PM
68.210.250.164

OMFG, China Mieville is the fucking BOMB. Inasmuch as I love anyone, I love that man. LIke a brother. A genius, genius brother. By the way, he has 2 more books after Station in the same setting, so to speak. The latest, Iron Council, reads like a dive into a well while taking opium. And then drowning, but liking it. His books are orgasms packed somehow into words on paper. Now I must go and read some China Mieville. Hee.

Posted by Mikhail Lvovsky at December 19, 2004 07:41 PM
68.239.212.80

Yeah, I'm reading Iron Council right now, actuallly. I picked up a free preview copy (which is poorly-bound and falling apart already) at Comic-Con, primarily because our buddy Christian Wagner recommended him.

Needless to say, when I'm done with this volume, I'll be reading Perdido Street Station and then The Scar. It's extremely awesome to find a series of "fantasy" novels that isn't relentlessly gaytarded, and even better that it's full of incredibly cool new ideas.

Posted by Matt at December 19, 2004 08:10 PM
68.20.182.178

Ach, no! Large parts are wasted if ye ain't read the Station, good sir. Ye should read Station, then re-read Council. That's the ticket. Oh, and how amazing are them descriptions of railroad in the Council? Pretty damn, I say. The envy, she kills me...

Posted by Mikhail Lvovsky at December 21, 2004 01:12 AM
68.239.212.80

Mieville also has a book entitled King Rat, a delicious little tale of sub-terranean London, with liberal doses of Holy Shit thrown in. I think Spike'd like King Rat.

Posted by Mikhail Lvovsky at December 21, 2004 02:27 PM
68.239.225.199

I really enjoyed it. You have done a great job.
I am from Denmark and also now'm speaking English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Connected gant chart, bernard was a purchasing in the barksdale firestorm intuited with syncing prior agreeable scenes found by the slight course every two riffs."

With love :(, Andres.

Posted by Andres at September 5, 2009 06:29 AM
200.96.39.36

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