EGR: Who is Cladinoro?

[Christopher Locke]

Valued Readers: 

My life is quite strange these days. Even stranger than usual. I am not working, I am not blogging or reading blogs, I am not doing much of anything except listening to books I download from Audible.com (gratis, thanks to the largesse of its CEO), and fast running out of money and hope. Hope I long ago learned to do without. Money is another story. 

But that's not my story for today. No. Though maybe later.

Today's story involves a chain of events that has delighted me in the strangest of ways. I was not expecting it, but suddenly there it was. Of course, this needs a little setup. 

I was emailing back and forth with a very good friend today and I happened to mention a post I wrote some years ago for Chief Blogging Officer. I think I even recycled this one out to y'all within fairly recent memory (not that mine's working all that well anymore). Anyway, it was this:

http://www.chiefbloggingofficer.com/2005/06/lashing-them-together.html

...which I think is one of my best -- if somewhat scattered -- rants. And in that screed I make mention of a book (what else?) called  The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children, not necessarily in a laudatory way. So after the email discussion with my friend, I went back and read my rant again, and from there I linked out to the Amazon page for The Epidemic and started perusing the reader-reviews. I was somewhat aghast to find this one by someone who identifies himself simply as Cladinoro. The review is titled "What's the Problem?" (9 of 127 people found the following review helpful). 

This author would seem to be onto something in their analysis of some of the ways in which our children are being raised to be joyless and selfish. My concern is, that after all the progress that civilisation has made over such a long period to get things where they are now, should we be poking holes in the standards and norms of our society, just when we've got it how we want it, and it's working most smoothly? It's all very well to be saying that we shouldn't be raising joyless, selfish children, but if we don't raise them like this, how are our they going to function in our society? If we raise joyFUL, selfLESS children, who will be the willing lawyers, accountants, factory workers, computer scientists etc. of the future? We all know that joyful, selfless children are unemployable, and fall by the wayside, as the more evolutionarily adapted members of society push them out of the picture. If joyfulness and selflessness were the norm, our society as we know it would crumble. Perhaps we should think about that before we go finding fault with the way things are, because they're like that for a reason.

OMG! What an amazingly backward view! Could anyone seriously be this stupid? Needing to know more, I immediately linked to  Cladinoro's  Amazon profile, where I found more evidence of an extremely low IQ. In a review of Night (Oprah's Book Club) by Elie Wiesel (the review is titled "Slim volume"), he writes...

This is a nice quick read for anyone under the mistaken impression that Oprah's journey to the top was an easy one. Some discussion has arisen as to the ratio of fiction to autobiography in the book, but if, like me, you've grown a bit complacent about Oprah's comfortable position in society, this slim volume will put things into perspective. I knew she had had some tough times early on, but this was really quite a shock...

 

OMG! OMG! Cladorino thinks Oprah was a victim of the Nazi concentration camps. As far as I know, this is not so. Understandably, "0 of 12 people found the ... review helpful." Well, I should say so. What a dolt! 

But then, I read on...

In response to  Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive by John Eldredge, Cladinoro writes a review titled "Try it at your own risk" (0 of 30 people found the following review helpful). 

I certainly wouldn't be the first to question the wisdom of meddling with nature to the extent outlined in this book. Down the ages, commentators from Mary Shelley to George A. Romero have illustrated the potential negative consequences of achieving what this book shows you how to achieve; the "glory" can soon turn sour indeed. 

Credit is certainly due to the author for his revolutionary method of integrating the four "streams" to achieve a state of total animation. Now that this knowledge has been made so publicly available, though, we await with foreboding the terrible consequences for humanity...

Now wait. I didn't even bother going to the page for Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive, but I very seriously doubt it has anything remotely to do with Re-Animation. Perhaps it's not Cladinoro who's doltish, but the unwashed and disapproving mass of Amazon browsers. I read on to see if I could find further proof of this. And I did. In his review of  Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl, Cladinoro writes (18 of 41 people found the following review helpful):

It's all very well telling uncultured, non-French women that they, too, can be glamorous, mythic and mysterious, but I don't know that incorporating French style and culture into your life is really all it's cracked up to be. After perusing this publication, my wife has begun dining on sliced pig's trotters, substituting perfume for basic cleanliness, and pouting rudely at anyone who smiles at her in the street. She's become passionate about fondue and unwatchable experimental black & white films. She has also professed a previously absent desire to collaborate with Nazis...

And then there's this, in review of Unforgettable Things to Do Before You Die (6 of 153 people found the following review helpful):

As the first person to review this book, I feel the responsibility weighing heavily upon me to address the fatal paradox lying at its core - and I don't mean fatal metaphorically. The book covers a lot of ground in its suggestions for things to do (and places to go) before you die, and on the whole these things do generally indeed fulfil an undeniably high level of unforgettableness. Surely, however, in the given circumstances, unforgettableness is largely an irrelevant concept? With death just around the corner, quite unmemorable, quickly forgotten activities serve just as well to fill in the time. If proximity to death offers anything positive at all, it's the fact that you no longer have to remember anything for very long...

And now I'm seeing that there's a certain theme running through Cladinoro's reviews. A certain fatalism, you might say. This one is for How to Make Someone Love You Forever! In 90 Minutes or Less (4 of 26 people found the following review helpful): 

 

Surely this book has taken niche marketing too far. I know that in the modern age companies have realised that limited sales to smaller markets can still be a cost-effective way of selling; a book (or any other product) doesn't always have to be a mega-seller to make it worthwhile from the seller's point of view. With the publication of this book, though, I think the publishers must realise they've hit the wall. Making a great first impression is all very well, but how many people with 90 minutes or less to live are going to care about building a lasting relationship? 

By this point, I was holding my sides, fearing I might expire from laughing so hard.  Also not to be missed are Cladinoro's three Listmania lists: 

1. Hamburger-related books
2. Non-hamburger-related books; and
3. More non-hambuger-related books

It's rare that I accidentally encounter a like-minded person online, there being very damn few out there (fortunately for mankind). But this was definitely one of those times. 

And now I think I go read the rest of Cladinoro's 59 book reviews. 

RB