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firecatUpdate January 15: I received an apology from the bookstore owner for this spam. (Visible in the comments.) I am therefore putting the rest of this post under a cut tag.
I just got an email from my local independent bookstore, of which I have been a supporter for many years. I'm not reproducing the exact email here but this is the gist:
Kepler's Books & Magazines recommends:
Stop hunger by losing weight
You can transform your over-eating in 8 weeks
Imagine a world in which there is no hunger or poverty.
What began as a trickle of visionary participants became thousands of
over-consuming people donating their money -- usually spent on
over-consuming -- to programs, charities and organizations whose mission
is to end the suffering caused by poverty and hunger.
Pounds for Poverty's?~D? mission is to convert self-indulgence into
service, empty calories into deep meaning and over-consumption into
opportunity for those suffering from poverty.
Mindfulness and Altruism-Based Health Improvement and Weight-Loss
Program
Shedding weight is a common New Year's resolution, and countless diet
plans focus on watching calories. But Pounds for Poverty, a new Palo
Alto-based weight-loss program, is taking a different approach - one
based on the idea that generosity, compassion and mindfulness can lead
to weight-loss success.
Two 8-Week Workshops in Palo Alto start in January
[details omitted]
What you will learn:
· A lifelong health improvement and weight loss strategy
· Tools for training the mind so you make better choices
· A transformative method for turning over-eating into
donations to charities
For free information and registration call (650) 926-9961 or visit
www.poundsforpoverty.com
Get healthy, Give back.
Elad Levinson has been a therapist in Palo Alto and workshop leader in
the field of stress and weight reduction for over 30 years.
I have two problems here, just to begin with.
1. The workshop has nothing to do with books. It is not an event sponsored by the bookstore as far as I can tell. So what are they doing recommending it?
2. I am so fucking sick of fat people being blamed for Western overconsumption of world resources.
Does the workshop creator realize that most fat people are poor?
Do they realize that the kind of American/Western world overconsumption that contributes to poverty has very little to do with "overeating" per se?
If they really want to raise a lot of money for anti-poverty programs, why don't they do a workshop called "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on your plastic surgery to an anti-poverty program"? or "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on an expensive car to an anti-poverty program"?
Bookstore contact info:
Kepler's
http://www.keplers.com
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park CA, 94025
(650) 324-4321
E-Mail
books@keplers.com
Corporate and Community Sales
bookvalet@keplers.com
This bookstore closed a few years ago because they were losing money but they were brought back to life as a non-profit. I'm surprised they would be feeling so flush in this economic climate as to risk alienate some of
their clientele by sending out such an offensive and non-book-related advertisement.
I just got an email from my local independent bookstore, of which I have been a supporter for many years. I'm not reproducing the exact email here but this is the gist:
Kepler's Books & Magazines recommends:
Stop hunger by losing weight
You can transform your over-eating in 8 weeks
Imagine a world in which there is no hunger or poverty.
What began as a trickle of visionary participants became thousands of
over-consuming people donating their money -- usually spent on
over-consuming -- to programs, charities and organizations whose mission
is to end the suffering caused by poverty and hunger.
Pounds for Poverty's?~D? mission is to convert self-indulgence into
service, empty calories into deep meaning and over-consumption into
opportunity for those suffering from poverty.
Mindfulness and Altruism-Based Health Improvement and Weight-Loss
Program
Shedding weight is a common New Year's resolution, and countless diet
plans focus on watching calories. But Pounds for Poverty, a new Palo
Alto-based weight-loss program, is taking a different approach - one
based on the idea that generosity, compassion and mindfulness can lead
to weight-loss success.
Two 8-Week Workshops in Palo Alto start in January
[details omitted]
What you will learn:
· A lifelong health improvement and weight loss strategy
· Tools for training the mind so you make better choices
· A transformative method for turning over-eating into
donations to charities
For free information and registration call (650) 926-9961 or visit
www.poundsforpoverty.com
Get healthy, Give back.
Elad Levinson has been a therapist in Palo Alto and workshop leader in
the field of stress and weight reduction for over 30 years.
I have two problems here, just to begin with.
1. The workshop has nothing to do with books. It is not an event sponsored by the bookstore as far as I can tell. So what are they doing recommending it?
2. I am so fucking sick of fat people being blamed for Western overconsumption of world resources.
Does the workshop creator realize that most fat people are poor?
Do they realize that the kind of American/Western world overconsumption that contributes to poverty has very little to do with "overeating" per se?
If they really want to raise a lot of money for anti-poverty programs, why don't they do a workshop called "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on your plastic surgery to an anti-poverty program"? or "Stop hunger by giving the money you were going to spend on an expensive car to an anti-poverty program"?
Bookstore contact info:
Kepler's
http://www.keplers.com
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park CA, 94025
(650) 324-4321
books@keplers.com
Corporate and Community Sales
bookvalet@keplers.com
This bookstore closed a few years ago because they were losing money but they were brought back to life as a non-profit. I'm surprised they would be feeling so flush in this economic climate as to risk alienate some of
their clientele by sending out such an offensive and non-book-related advertisement.
Kepler's Email
Date: 15 Jan 2009 09:24 pm (UTC)Pounds for Poverty is a member of our local business organization – Hometown Peninsula – and all of the members attempt to support each other whenever possible. In this instance, however, the email didn’t receive the usual scrutiny prior to being sent to the Kepler’s list. I know that people don’t need anything clogging up their inboxes and that our customers rightly expect that emails from us pertain to books and author events that we sponsor. Please accept my sincere and personal apologies and know that we will not send emails of this nature in the future.
Clark Kepler