Miss Scarlet's Weak Alibi

A blatant lie in reply to Colonel Mustard and Sergeant Ketchup

Dear                         ,

Thank you for contacting us and allowing us the opportunity to respond to your inquiry.

We appreciate the fact that you thought enough of Hasbro, Inc. to contact us with your request.

Although we manufacture many quality products, Hasbro, Inc. does not manufacture this particular product.

Again, we thank you for your interest and hope that you and your family will enjoy our many products for years to come.

Sincerely,
CONSUMER AFFAIRS DEPT.
Jennifer J. DaSilva
Consumer Affairs Representative

Response: Coming Soon.

Colonel Mustard and Sergeant Ketchup

Hasbro, Inc.

Consumer Affairs

P.O. Box 200

Dept. C-847

Pawtucket, RI, 02862-0200.

Dear Hasbro,

Recently I watched the 1985 film “Clue”, based off of the classic board game. It’s the masterpiece of the genre of board game films. Certainly its competition, “Candyland: Great Lollipop Adventure”, “Death by Scrabble”, and “Guess Who?” offered little. The third had almost nothing to do with flipping faces on tiles, though Ashton Kutcher was fairly two-dimensional.

            “Clue” (the movie) reminded me of Clue (the game). For reference purposes, I will refer to “Clue” (the movie) as “Clue” and Clue (the game) as Clue for the duration of this letter. The instructions to Clue (“Clue” doesn’t have any instructions) say,

Mr. Boddy—apparently the victim of foul play—is found in one of the rooms of

his mansion. To win, you must determine the answers to these three questions: Who done it? Where? and with What Weapon?”

Even if we take the grammatical errors above to be a clever use of colloquialisms designed to pique the interest of the aspiring detective, it is easy to pick out some of the fallacies that make the mystery far easier to solve than the game’s forced trial-and-error method would imply.

It's Another Fauxetry Post!

Unfortunately I discovered the sheer awesomeness of former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins many months too late to do my recommended summer reading and still several months too late to attend his poetry reading.

But here today I make it up to Billy Collins. I know he was disappointed when he stepped into the packed lecture hall and saw my seat, the one in the front row that read "Reserved for Sincerely Yours", as empty and desolate as the top of James Carville's head. Inside he wept but on the outside, struggled on. Today his suffering can end because today he joins a select society: "Poets Whose Mailboxes I Don't Want To Put Rabid Mice Inside Of" (PWMIDWTPRMIO).

To serve as an induction ceremony,  I post two of his poems below, alongside a fauxem of my own, an oldie which pales in comparison.

Worst. Book. Ever

For reference: Sparknotes

Jostein Gaarder
c/o Berkley Publishing Group
375 Hudson Street
New York New York 10014

Dear Mr. Gaarder,
You, sir, hold a distinguished title that no other author in the world can claim. That is, you are the only author in the world, dead or alive, to have his book assigned to me to read for school and have me unable to finish it.
Now there have been many books I have started and not finished. Don Quixote was dry and dusty, much like Miguel de Cervantes’ corpse. At some point I was simply unable to stand the patronizing tone of A Series of Unfortunate Events and was forced to quit, never discovering what the V.F.D. was. And my resolution to read the dictionary cover to cover was poorly thought out in the first place.
But none of these books had the power to motivate me the way a school book can: entrusted to me by a respected teacher, told that I must read, take notes, and write a breathtaking paper if I want my life to be anything but an outright testament to failure. Sophie’s World had that divine power and yet, less than 100 pages in, I threw up my hands in dramatized exasperation and in one of those hands was your book. I would have liked for the force of my exasperated hands to toss Sophie’s World into the garbage disposal or some sort of bonfire, but I didn’t own the book so instead my hands came down and the book came with them. I stuffed it gently into the bottom of my backpack and returned it to my teacher a month later.

Now It's Official

I said it was coming.


Here, for you to reference as you begin using it in everyday speech, formal writing pieces, and txting, is the definition of wilderweb.


Wilderweb (n): A synonym for internet which employs a metaphor comparing the World Wide Web to wilderness. 
Consider how you might encounter an "avalanche" of pop-up ads, one following the other until you are buried beneath a pile of windows selling natural male enhancement. 
Consider the equal dangers of getting lost on the Appalachian trail and getting lost on a trail of links, dizzy and confused and unable to remember your final destination. Or the similar behavioral patterns of natural predators and internet predators.
Lastly, consider how, on a starry night, gazing into the sky enlightens you as to how tiny and insignificant you truly are. Do we not experience such insight into the vastness of the universe when we see the 16 billion results upon googling "A"?

"I'm going for a walk in the wilderweb." "Well, be careful. Don't forget to bring your virus protection and a flashlight."

Don't believe me? Check it at urbandictionary.com

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wilderweb

Some Personal Lamentations

I'm in general not much of a downer. It has been said that I do not actually have feelings and am in fact a malfunctioning robot sent back from the future, because in the future that is what we do with our trash. (This explains a lot of things and a lot of people, more to come on this... maybe.) Be this truthful or not, I am occasionally struck with emotions, or illusions thereof. Today was a particularly emotional day. I will share so that we all may experience catharsis.

1. In my aimless wandering through the wilderweb (I've been using this word for years, but apparently it hasn't caught on. It's a mixture of "wilderness and web", look for it on Urban Dictionary in the future.), I came upon this. People who get gifts that they don't like smile, thank the giver, and then walk into the next room to put it on eBay. There are clothes, toys, DVD and CD sets, lovely jewelry and a whole lot of baby stuff. It's the modern version of the island of misfit toys, and as I looked at it and the song started to drift into my head, I started to tear up right in the middle of the English class I wasn't paying attention to.
   Each of those items were picked out with care, with one person in mind. They'll never belong to that person now, and they just sit alone, with no bidders whatsoever. Maybe I'm overreacting. But the whole thing makes me cry when I think about it.

Yeah, It Was Thoughtful: Cottonelle Replies

Reply to (TP: Tentative Proof)

Dear                        ,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about COTTONELLE toilet paper roll poll.

It was thoughtful of you to give us your opinion. Comments such as yours are very important in helping us know how consumers feel about our products and advertising. You can be sure we will share your comments with others involved.

Thank you again for sharing your comments with us.
Sincerely,
Karen M Savell
Consumer Specialist

Note: They also sent me three 50 cent coupons redeemable for any Kimberly-Clark product. That's including Cottonelle, Kleenex, and Depends, people.

TP: Tentative Proof

Consumer Relations
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
Dept. INT
P.O. Box 2020
Neenah, WI 54957-2020

Dear Cottonelle,
When I started seeing commercials for your new Cottonelle Roll Poll, I thought little of it. After all, the choice was obvious. I’ve always rolled under. Everyone I’ve ever known has rolled under.
But then on a whim I checked the poll statistics and found that (as of January 12, 2010), 83% of Americans roll their toilet paper over the top. My home state of Connecticut is the only state in the nation where a majority of citizens roll under.
But let’s get real. Having a majority of Americans choose something hardly guarantees its superiority. The majority of Americans also like Dunkin’ Donuts’s donuts, CBS’s “Two and a Half Men”, and the New York Yankees. 300 million people can be wrong. And so I would like you to consider the facts before you conclude your study in the field toilet paper and announce one to be superior based on just popular opinion.

• Ease of Removal.
As you can see in the diagram and assume using your powers of common sense, the Earth’s gravitational forces pull the loose end of the toilet paper in a downward direction. When the toilet paper is being rolled under, this means the end of the paper hangs in the air obediently. However, if the roll has been set up such that the edge hangs over the top, gravity then draws the loose end back onto the roll. The picture at left is a microspic view of toilet paper. In it, you can see the tiny fibers that stick out from toilet paper. We don’t notice