Subscribe via RSS
I’d like to personally thank the infamous James Frey and Random House Inc. for making me a billionaire overnight. It was very thoughtful of them and I figured I should at least publically acknowledge how their latest wacky moves will benefit me.
A Million Little Pieces…of pure gold for me!
See, James Frey is the author of a drug addiction tale entitled A Million Little Pieces which is sold by Random House as a “memoir.” Apparently the word memoir means “every word is 100% guaranteed true and you can sue me if it isn’t.” This is a meaning I was previously unaware of.
Back on January 26, 2006 James Frey turned up on this little tv show called Oprah and admitted what had been suspected for a long time: not every single word in the book was, you know…true. From that point onward the book has been sold as “fiction” and not “a memoir.” Sort of. Maybe. Even Random House still puts the book in the Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs category.
Now James Frey and Random House have agreed to refund the full amount of the book to anyone who bought A Million Little Pieces if they just tear out a certain page, present a receipt and sign a form saying that they really, really believed the book was real.
It doesn’t matter if you read the book. It doesn’t matter if you enjoyed the book. It doesn’t matter if you found the book entertaining. You can get a full refund.
The logic follows like this: To make up for selling false information as “true” Random House is offering a full refund on the price of the information given… the information being all the words in A Million Little Pieces.
This is, of course, totally absurd.
But I’m going to use this legal precedent to buy myself a new personal Learjet each time my old one gets dirty. If this Random House things holds up in court then it means that we’ll be able to sue just about anyone for a full refund whenever we’re given “bad” or “false” information.
The first lawsuit I can think of is against the United States federal government. Everyone has pretty much admitted that there really were no more weapons of mass destruction than you’d find in a typical Wal-Mart and everyone has pretty much admitted that Saddam really had nothing more to do with terrorism than your local gardening club. So the US Federal Government has been giving me information for years and, just like James Frey and Random House, has admitted that most of that information was false.
If the information from the Federal Government was false, then I think I deserve a full refund for that information. My income taxes for the past five years will do nicely.
With that initial surge of money I’ll research the previous twenty five years. I’m pretty sure I can find plenty of instances of the Federal Government giving me false information.
Then I’ll move on to the really rich organizations: toothpaste companies. I’ve seen a lot of toothpaste commercials and bought a lot of toothpaste in my day and not once have I ever dated a supermodel or breathed out cold blasts of air which stunned everyone in the party room. I think their commercials are false and misleading. So I should get back the full refund of all the money I’ve spent on toothpaste over the years.
After that it’s pretty much a toss up. I could sue all the science textbook makers that have listed Pluto as a ninth planet for the past 100 years. Then, of course, I could sue all the textbook makers who didn’t list Pluto as a ninth planet. The jury still seems to be kind of out on that one.
A safer bet might be to sue the movie studios for all those “BEST FILM THIS SUMMER” movies I was tricked into buying tickets for and watching. As a fat person I could probably sue the beef industry for that little bit of time when we all tried the Atkins diet and got really, really sick of hamburgers and steak. Everyone in the world could sue Microsoft because they use the words “stable,” “easy” and “fun” when they sell software.
I’m pretty excited about this Random House deal and can’t wait for the courts to approve it. There is always a chance that they won’t and my retirement plans will be dashed upon the rocks. That’s okay, though.
I have a backup plan. I can easily fake sales receipts and I’m pretty sure I can get a fairly steady supply of A Million Little Pieces… cheap.
digg
del.icio.us
Furl
De.lirio.us
blogmarks