Random Things Amazon Would Like You to Buy

I know, intellectually, that it's silly to keep my e-mails from "Amazon.com Associates Program" unread in my e-mail inbox, as they stack up well past the time when the offers and sales in them would be useful to anyone, and then spew them forth in a torrent. But, for whatever bizarre psychological reasons, it feels worse to get rid of them without linking, no matter how old they are.

So, here are some things that you might have been interested in buying over the past six weeks, conveniently organized chronologically by the precise moment you stopped caring:

Item the First: Amazon does a bigger and bigger business with textbooks every semester, and they had a big push in early August for their Textbook Store this time around. But, if you were going back to college this fall, you're probably there by now. Here, have a banner:



Item the Second: Amazon also had a big promotion for Summer TV, including this neat-o, kean-o banner about some ABC shows:

As you might have noticed, under most definitions, it is no longer "Summer" in North America. Oops. Well, you can still get video on demand from Amazon, if the free stuff coming over the airwaves doesn't suit you.


Item the Third: Like so many other shameless organizations, Amazon wants to create Best-of-the-Year lists even at times when a year has not actually ended. Why they thought mid-August was a great time for a list of the Best Books of 2010 so far is beside me, but they did.

And, of course, they have banners for books as well:



Item the Fourth: Amazon is intent on dominating all commerce of all kinds worldwide -- or at least that's the only plausible reason why they'd be so eager for schmoes like me to promote their store for watches. Look, there's a banner for this one, too!



Item the Fifth: For last-minute back to school stuff -- if you're in one of the three school systems nationwide that haven't yet started school, possibly due to sinkholes swallowing all of your buildings and a dearth of trailers available to be rented -- Amazon would like to suggest giving children gift cards instead of directly buying them protractors and crayons and black-and-white notebooks, because we know that children will instinctively buy the products they most need when given cash without strings.

And, inevitably, there is a banner for this as well:



Item the Sixth: Hey, I told you I'd been letting these stack up for a while! If you're still reading, you have only yourself to blame.

Amazon Wireless is their latest bit of empire-building, a website designed to drag perfectly happy consumers away from their current cell-phone plans and providers into the gravity of Amazon's massive maw. Or maybe it's a great site that allows consumers to compare phones to phones and carriers to carriers. How would I know? I've got a cheapie pay-as-you-go phone, so clearly I'm stuck in 1999 when it comes to mobile awesomeness.

And, to conclude, all I can say is: have another damn banner.