HENN: Revenge of the Book Majors

Technorati tags: Humor, Satire, Books, Price War, Hypermarkets, Media, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Book Majors to Start Selling Cheap Groceries
myAsylum reports on this new controversy, in this exclusive expose, straight from Hell, and soon-to-be Hell-on-Earth, Malaysia. Another episode in the continuing series from the Hell-on-Earth News Network (HENN)

Kuala Lumpur (sometime in the near future perfect, past tense) - In retaliation against the two hypermarkets slashing the price on the latest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, four book majors have today announced that they will start grocery sections in their book outlets, offering basic household and other items at ridiculously low prices. Lower, they say, than what the hypermarkets usually offer.

Book majors retaliate by selling groceries
(see end of post for image credits)

HENN managed to hunt down an inside source, who wishes to remain ambiguous anonymous, and who indicated that the move was targeted at drawing back the customers who were angry at the book stores for not wanting to sell the latest Harry Potter book, and have since flocked to the two hypermarkets buying anything resembling a book.

"We will start by selling laundry detergent at a price cheaper than you'll ever see at any of these hypermarkets. And the detergent, we'll throw in free of charge a laundry safety book. Let's see the hypermarkets try to top that. And if that doesn't work, we'll start to give away free 5kg bags of rice with every book purchase."

Future plans include adding seafood, meats and cooking oil counters in the Cookbook section, motorbike spare parts counters in the DIY section of the book stores, and a section for disposable diapers, to be located near the kiddie books area.

All these, the source adds, at every day lowest prices imaginable.

However, this plan to counter the price war initiated by the hypermarkets, has been met with one possible snag. Some parties, it appears, are not happy with having meats sold with books.
(protest from strange sources, and more, in the full post)

A very rabid influential faith-based consumer group has protested the move saying that it will be detrimental to the faith of the Muslims shopping a the book stores.

"We condemn this move by the book outlets to sell meat in the Cookbook section. How are we to be sure that the cookbooks have been prepared in a manner suitable for Muslim consumption?" an irate spokesperson for the consumer group told HENN. "Furthermore, the cookbook section is adjacent to the VCD/DVD section - this is blasphemous! Blasphemous!"

The ire, it seems, stems from the fact that these VCD/DVD sections continue to sell the film "Bruce Almighty", whose sequel "Evan Almighty" has been condemned by the consumer group, claiming that it would cause Muslims to be confused and start worshipping Morgan Freeman. Investigations by HENN, however, have not uncovered any secret shrines dedicated to the Academy Award-winning actor. Yet.

The book majors, meanwhile, remain unperturbed, and are determined to go ahead with their plan to sell cheap groceries, which they say will, in the end, only benefit the consumers.

Consumers, on the other hand, are demanding that the book majors expand their grocery section to include milk powder, toothpaste and lingerie. Confused over the last shopping weeked about where to go to buy what, many shoppers have been reported to have opted to stay home and stare out the window hoping for some sign.

HENN will keep a close watch on these and other related developments.
(© 2007 - Hell-on-Earth News Network)

Stolen image credits: The composite image was created using images from various sources: the disposable diapers from here, cooking oil from here (where you can find a recipe for brownies), and the bag of rice from here. Everything else you see is Walski's own mischief.