Monday, December 24, 2012

A Lump in Your Stocking

In addition to her interest in "lower heads," relish, tsuris, the Lovin' Spoonful, readers and fans, and Diogenes of Sinope, Harriet Klausner seems to have a fascination with feces.  She's written the "s-word" in at least 41 different reviews.  A few examples (please note that in each and every case, the asterisk was in Hattie's original review on Amazon):
  • "Mr. Cooper received a life lesson from his father when he was four years old about eating sh*t." (link)
  • "He feels this is fitting as his life has been one toilet bowl of sh*t after another." (link)
  • "The characters are fully developed except for Brian, who is the stereotypical selfish sh*thead who could not give a sh*t about his wife or daughter except how it impacts on him..." (link)
  • "same sh*t just after WW I" (link)
  • "her wonderment about PR able to make a seven course gourmet dinner out of chicken sh*t" (link)
  • "Classic example of sh*t going downhill occurs; GiGi is fired." (link)
  • "Her autobiographical account of sh*t happens is southern humor at its most jocular." (link)
Variations on a theme:
  • "some sh*thead took her virginity and hurt her emotionally so she is reluctant to be with any man." (link)
  • "how killing one evil vampire ruler could cause such sh*tty chaos" (link)
A couple of times, she gets away without the asterisk:
  • "I shit you not" (link)
  • "her credo is that if you can laugh at the shittiest moments in your life, you can transcend them'" and "get the audience to 'laugh at your awful shit ...'" (link)
  • "he seem to have the Midas touch buying stocks in the state of 'KISS - Kompanies in Serious Shit' but with a long history of making money" (link)
Ask yourself: is this sort of language appropriate on Amazon?  Aren't there other ways to phrase these sentences?  Heck, in some of these cases, even "tsuris" might be appropriate.  Ah, well, the rules are different for Harriet.

At any rate, happy holidays from everyone at the HKAS.  Here's hoping you don't get a lump of coal (or a lump of anything else) in your stocking.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Malleus said...

You forgot the "third leg". Btw, you can say "shit" on this blog. :-) That's why we have a blog to begin with, so we don't get censored and don't have to self-censor. Personally, I think a blog dedicated to Our Lady of Fauxreview should overflow with the word "shit" and similar terminology as it expresses succinctly, subliminally, and sublimely the very essense of Harriet Klausner's good works.

December 26, 2012 at 12:20 PM
Malleus said...

Also, she likes to say "entreating" when she means something like "endearing", "charming". The efin idiot was pointed out six thousand times that "entreating" doesn't mean that, yet she goes on, with a schizophrenic insistence on using that word where it doesn't fit. And of course, her "??-years-old", trademark expression. I say, we can (should? must?) compile a thesaurus of Klausnerisms.

December 26, 2012 at 12:24 PM
Sneaky Burrito said...

"Btw, you can say "shit" on this blog. :-)"

Yeah, and I did at the bottom when quoting some of the "reviews" that slipped by the Amazon censors. (I know I didn't at the beginning, though.) The asterisks are all Hattie's...

Sometime I'd like to write a review on Amazon where I try to slip that one past the censors (asterisk or no).

As for Klausnerisms, can't forget the relish, the "over the top of ___X___," the "fast-paced" and "still" fans, or the "fully developed" characters.

And then there are the TITLES of her "reviews," in which I'm pretty sure she invents some new "sub-sub-sub-genres" (e.g., "regional culinary cozy").

December 26, 2012 at 1:08 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)