Alright! ALRIGHT!! Quitcherbitchin!!!

To both of my readers - Yes, I've been well aware of how long it's been since my last post.

But the sad fact is that, for the most part, I haven't felt enough bile backing up to inspire me to write and that, after all, is what usually inspires these mini-screeds of mine.

And I'm not sure why that is... Certainly the drivers in my neck of the woods haven't gotten any better at operating or parking their vehicles in the past months. And the Sock Puppet in the White House hasn't gotten any less venal or stupid. Heck; the Vice-President mistaking a 65-year-old, 5' 10" white male for a 6 ounce *BIRD* without having to explain that to anyone who didn't need him to sign their time-sheets every week wasn't enough to get me going. Sadly; that's pretty much so par for the course that I couldn't really get worked up about them.

Sad, really.

But, the other day, an item arrived in the mail that was so... I don't know... I honestly can't find a word that *PRECISELY* describes this letter. Let me show you, and you can decide.

Here's the item in questuin. It looks pretty serious, in that severe, Social Security Administration/IRS/ Federal Bureau of Threatening Leters kind of way.



Looking more closely at the upper left-hand corner, we see the return address block and the big black box:



Hmmm.. boy... official-sounding Section of a Departmnt of a Center... must be big...

And look at the instructions in the boxes... orders for the postmaster in case it can't be delivered, warnings about the penalties for keeping it from going to its proper addressee... Whoah...

And who IS that addressee...?



...Why, it's addressed to "Resident"...

Yes, folks... It's junk mail that WANTS you to feel threatened, so that you'll open it immediately and find out that it's (drumroll, please...!)

A FRICKIN' BOGUS CHECK IN A BADLY DESIGNED ADVERTISING CIRCULAR FOR THE LOCAL SATURN DEALERSHIP!!!

And I honestly don't know which bothers me more: that someone thought that making their target audience feel vaguely threatened by all of the official-looking verbiage on the outside of the advertising piece was a clever marketing ploy, or that the flyer is *SO* incredibly ugly!!!

Frankly, I don't know if this idea came from Saturn Corporate, or was the bright idea of the local dealership but, whichever it was, they should be thanking whatever gods they pray to (Mammon, presumably, at the very least!) that I *DO* have such a limited readership, else this bit of commercial placental ejecta would actually be SEEN by people who might be in the market for a car from a friendly, intelligent, neighborhood dealer - into which category, I hesitate to include ANYONE who thought that this was a good idea!

On he other hand, just to show that thre I have no REAL hard feelings towards Saturn...

Since I *DO* graphic design and advertising for a living, I should tell whomever hired the advertising firm that came up with this putrescence of an ad campaign that they probably have a good case for recovering the money that they spent on it since - unless the job was just given to the boss's brother-in-law or some similar arrangement - the agency presumably claimed that they actually KNEW something about advertising, customer relations, and/or graphic design -- which by all rights should open them up for charges of misrepresentation and breach of contract!!

So there!

ClosingThought for Today:
"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers” -- Jimmy Breslin