The Literary Guild

Because I love a full inbox and have no friends, I give myself a good lashing now and again and sign up for some service which promises to send me at least half a dozen pointless emails a day - emails which are not quite spam but which I will delete before even opening them anyway. This means I get that momentary thrill in the morning when I see that I've got 24 new messages waiting for me, but without the pesky annoyance of actually having to read them. Is Amy coming for a spontaneous weekend visit? Have my adoring legions of fans started writing me love letters and offering me money? Has Matt finally bought the new of Montreal record and wants to apologize for being such a dolt and not listening to me when I told him to buy it months ago? Is Liam Finn finally ready to proclaim his undying lust for me?

Listen, that kind of gratification is for people who like things easy. As anyone who knows me will tell you [Since most of you don't know Annie: what follows is sarcasm. --ed.], I prefer the road less traveled. And that road, strangely, is littered with sales at the Gap, dessert ideas from Nestle, and notifications of myspace messages from users who have been deleted by the time I check my myspace inbox. Delete delete delete.

Recently, Adam convinced me to try this MyPoints thing. You slowly build your number of points over time and if you want, you respond to their offers for even more points. Eventually, you turn in your points for gift cards. In a nutshell: You sign up. They send you several emails a day. You click on the red button contained in the emails and earn 5 points. Sounds like it might take forever, right? That's because it does. However, there is little or no work going into this on your part. It takes me about 5 seconds every morning to click on the little red button and earn 5 points. Anyway, I'm not going to go on and on about this service, but if you want more information, you are encouraged to leave a note in the comments, and I'll email you an invite (yes, I get points for that).

The reason I bring up my inbox whoring and specifically MyPoints is because this very morning, I received an email offer from them which may prove life changing. I clicked on the red button to earn my 5 points. I glanced at the window that had opened up for the service they were trying to sell me: The Literary Guild. As you might imagine, they are purveyors of fine literature and condescension. The intelligentsia! The sharpest minds in the world today debating the existence of god, solving the crisis in Iraq, listening to NPR!

Or that's what it should have been. "The Literary Guild" is apparently your one-stop shop for books online: Five books for $2! Tell me more! What classics, what great tomes of literature might I find here to expand my knowledge, to shake the very cores of my belief systems?

Sorry, friends, no existentialist theory here. The first books listed on the page are by Mary Higgins Clark, James Patterson, and last but not least Danielle Steel. Not looking for a novel? How about Montel's psychic pal Sylvia Browne? Oooh! Rachael Ray! Don't you just LOVE her? Don't you just want to squeeze her until her eye balls pop out and her circulatory system busts through her skin?

Hmm... 5 books for $2, and that's 5 authors up there. But one of them is going to have to go. I just found out The Literary Guild is selling... The Secret. You know The Secret, right? Oprah won't shut up about it - it's the law of attraction, the power of positive thought.

I feel like I was drawn to this book. Like, I was thinking to myself months ago, "I need to know The Secret." And The Secret made it happen. The Secret told me to whine to Adam about wanting free stuff. The Secret told Adam to invite me to join MyPoints. The Secret waited patiently. The Secret wanted to make sure I was really ready to let The Secret in.

The Secret proudly boasts on its website that it will usher in A New Era for Humankind. One person at a time, my friends. Today, The Secret has availed itself to me for the low, low price of 40¢ (plus the extra $1.60 for the other four books and the cost of shipping as well as The Literary Guild's membership requirements).

Now, for your viewing enjoyment, The Secret Riches Visualization Tool:

I don't know about everybody else, but I am totally going to start visualizing myself a genie in a bottle. How cool would that thing be at parties?