McFreedom

Instapundit (and a lot of other people) have noticed that Target has some odd stuff for sale, lately. I've seen links to blowjob, marijuana and prostitute.

Amazon actually seems to be where these are coming from. See Amazon's listings for "Blowjob" (a CD single by "Sober"), Marijuana (a book on subtance abuse by Sandra Lee Smith, link to main version), and Prostitute, a CD by Toyah.

Here's what I think is going on. The clue is the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) that's in all the Target URLs - you'll see the same number in the Amazon URLs. Each of these items has two main features - it has no identifying photograph, and it has a weird name. The Target site is much more minimal than the Amazon site, so it looks a lot weirder there, and a lot less obviously like a CD or book. Check out, for example, Target's entry for the standard edition of Marijuana. It's obviously a book about substance abuse.

Why does Amazon have these weird entries? In the case of Prostitution and "Blowjob," I think it's because they're so obscure. No further information has been placed about them. In the case of Marijuana, I suspect it's because a slightly corrupt entry happened. I'm guessing what's happening here is that people have discovered they can search for weird things and sometimes find them. But, it's just an artifact of the fact that Amazon backends Target's website for them, and Amazon's database of items is so huge that it both has weird items in it, and no one has seen all of those items.