Thanks to the internet, strangers know more about me than friends and family know.
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Online merchants constantly recommend stuff for me to buy based on their knowledge of my likes and interests, which in turn, is based on what I previously had bought and what websites.
This can be annoying when I receive emails that alert me (tactfully, of course), “We see by your most recent purchase that you are a fat guy. We just want to alert you to our Thanksgiving sale on all our shirts for the portly person.”
And though I can’t remember ever doing so, I must have ordered liquor online sometime in the past because I received an email that said, “We know you are a person who enjoys a glass of wine with dinner …”
I guess to the online world I am a fat wino.
Certainly my public image would fare better based on my reading likes.
The other day that online bookstore behemoth (surely, you know the one I mean) recommended some reading for me.
Since I am an intelligent, sophisticated and well-read guy, I figured the recommendation would be something such as Aristotle’s “Poetics,” or perhaps Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”
But no. What the bookstore thought I would enjoy was a book titled, “I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats.”
I looked it up and it’s a book about cats. I have a cat. So, was Kate surfing the site for books about felines? I wouldn’t put anything past a cat who will only drink water that has ice cubes in it.
What all cat books have in common is their brevity. Each page consists of a cute little saying, such as, “Kittens are baby cats.” That’s page 1. “Kittens like to pounce.” That’s page 2.
Each succeeding page announces another cat attribute – “Cats are gray.” “Cats purr I love you,” – stuff that makes cat lovers squeal with delight and everyone else roll their eyes.
Kate does all that purring, pouncing and spitifying her toys. She even occasionally gacks up a fur ball. Being a cat lover, I understand and appreciate all this cat idolatry.
Not only are these cat books brief, they cost anywhere from $8 to $20.
I am a writer. And Kate is a cat. What if I did a book about her?
But I would need photos. And every time I pointed a camera at Kate she either would freeze like a deer caught in headlights, or start licking her behind.
Even cat lovers wouldn’t pay $14.95 for an itty-bitty book about a cat washing its butt – “Cats are disgusting.”
I thought I was on to something. How disappointing.
I blame my false hopes on that online bookseller.
Paul Sassone is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
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