Someone Already Wrote the Letter I Was Going To Write

Reblogged from Pittsburgh Thoughts

Gain and "Gooder"

I had to watch this advertisement in advance of viewing the video I had chosen to watch. It wasn't on Youtube therefore there wasn't an embed code to post it directly. In it, over the inspiratinal music about heaven, and the video of some old guy that looks kind of like me putting on a shirt as if it's an orgasmic experience, the announcer says, "Bill's morning have never been "Gooder."

I thought to myself, "Did he just say "gooder?" I replayed it and sure enough, he said "gooder." I was appalled and wrote this to Gain:

I am witting to express my disgust with your use of the made up term, "gooder."
You should be ashamed of yourselves. Who do you think you're appealing to, 8 year olds? This perversion of the English language is unacceptable and you should immediately cease and desist and issue an apology. Why not communicate in grunts and groans next? I'm sure your patrons would think it was a blast. You may  turn your back on your social responsibility but I will do everything within my power to denounce you and your tactics to others by asking them if they really need to patronize a product advertised by people that have no respect for them or the English lanquage.

 

They wrote back:

 

Thanks for writing.

Thanks for your comments and concern.  We chose to use the word Good’er for a dramatic effect. This was an attempt to play off of the expression “Have a Good Morning”.  We believe that families and companies should be doing all they can to promote education.  The process of doing laundry can often be a boring, monotonous process. The Gain team is hoping to make this process just a little bit more fun, and this is often demonstrated in the advertising.

 

Mary
Gain Team 

 

 

Finally I wrote:

                   

Perverting the English language is fun? Please recognize your place in the world, you sell soap. Soap is in itself a marvelous thing, there is no need to embellish its properties or effects. Don't try to make it hip by obfuscating our already decreasing ability to communicate with one another, in short we don't need dumbed down by a soap company. You need to appeal to the better segments of your target audience not the worst.

I don't know if I'm crazy, if they're crazy or why I give a fuck. But somewhere deep down it offends me that they can foist this kind of garbage on the public in the name of making their product "funner." 

Blogger's note: Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh Thoughts guy misspelled "language". 

For another fun activity, scroll through the YouTube comments on the commercial.

My favorites: "This commercial makes me want to beat that shirt sniffing illiterate old fart with a rather large dictionary."

"Gooder is an actual word. It's just annoying as hell. Thumbs up, bitches, if you hate the word, gooder!" (It isn't).

"It was outsourced to a country where english is a second language."

Artists Who Hate Me

(A response to I Annoy Artists)


i stopped reading as soon as i saw you were writing to correct my spelling.








Blogger's Note: The day after I wrote this, Natalie Dee posted this as the day's cartoon. 

Coincidence? I think not.

I Annoy Artists

For reference: Natalie Dee is the artist behind a self-titled comic (found here) which often features adorably sarcastic vegetables.

Natalie Dee-

Sorry to bother you, girl. But we need to talk about your cartoon from

Tuesday (http://www.nataliedee.com/052510/the-spider-and-mans-inhumanity-to-man.jpg).

It's a decent analysis, I'll admit, though I will have to disagree about

your interpretation of the role of the sun. In such an outwardly optimistic

song, which nonetheless forebodes of future disaster, I'd have to hazard the

sun as a manifestation of Maximilien Robespierre or a Robespierre-esque

figure, which promises warmth in the beginning but, when channeled through

the magnifying glass of political power, will cause the scorching death of

the itsy bitsy spider. But that's not the point.

What we need to talk about is your improper spelling of the impersonal

possessive. I quote, "The spider continues to doggedly scale it's heights".

"It's" is appropriate in just two situations: as a contraction meaning "it

is" and as a possessive of Stephen King's novel "It" or the movie based on

it ("It"). I did consider that you might have been using one of these but if

that were that case the problems with your grammatical choices would be far

more severe. I'm going to have to ignore that for the time being. Let's just

assume that what you meant was "its".

People mess that up and write "it's" a lot because English possessives often

use apostrophes. The reason "its" doesn't have an apostrophe is it's a

possessive of a pronoun. Think about it, "his" and "her", "our" and "their"

don't use the apostrophe. They also don't use an s, but just pretend it's

irrelevant. I don't want to lecture you here, but you opened that door by

having and academically themed cartoon. Messing up your grammar like that

just rips away at your credibility as an analyst. I'm trying to look out for

you.

Much respect,

Email Status: Replied

I Win, But Am Sort of Disappointed By Lack of Drama

A response to BookByte: Things Get Serious

Hello and thank you for contacting us.

The ISBN you entered in at time of purchase was 9780078791420 for “Glencoe Spanish Buen Viaje!, by Schmitt, Level 3, Grades 9-12” the ISBN we received from you was ISBN 9780078619908  for “Buen Viaje! Glencoe Spanish 3, by Schmitt, 2nd Edition, Grades 9-12” which has no system value and we are not purchasing it at this time.

We do not normally return incorrect books that are sent to us for any reason, this is why we ask that you enter in ISBNs found from the front copyright page of the book, to verify the ISBN for the book is correct. All incorrect books sent to us are recycled or donated. However I will courtesy return this book to you via Expedited shipping.

Regards,

Jamie King

Bookbyte.com Customer Service Representative

(Note: I am so upset I don't get to sic the BBB on somebody's ass. And I did enter the ISBN Number.)
(But they did send me the book. It's sitting, completely useless, on my bookshelf. For now. But when the new ice age comes and I'm looking around for things to burn, I'll be glad to have it.)

BookByte Bites: Things Get Serious

To customerservice@bookbyte.com:


I sent you Buen Viaje! Glencoe Spanish 3, by Schmitt, 2nd Edition, Grades 9-12 by Schmitt, Conrad J./ Woodford, Protase E. for which you promised $24.50. I see now that you have taken my book and decided, without contacting me, to pay me nothing. I assume that you will now be using that book nonetheless, having obtained it for free, and there is no way for me to get it back. From online research I have found you do this sort of thing often and the unsuspecting sellers are powerless. Have you any plans to honor your end of our little agreement or do you really plan on stealing my book, which, even were it of minimal academic value would have worth as kindling? Some day, when "The Day After Tomorrow" happens, and I can count the hours of my life by the books on my bookshelf, that's going to be on you. In the hopefully nearer future, I'll be siccing the BBB on your ass.

May I please have my book back?

Sincerely,

Email Status: Responded
The Response

I'll Be Bach

Seriously though.

New posts to return in September. Get pumped, nobody.

April Fools!

Hah! You thought you were rid of me. Not so. Not so at all. Wise words of the day are going to continue- mainly because if I don't write them down I'll forget them and thus not have wisdom, and also because if I don't publish them in a searchable online medium I'll lose them and once again not have any wisdom.
My wisdom teeth are gone. This is all I have.

So things I write that nobody reads, besides me, that guy who was a follower of the Island for a day, and hopelessly lost Googlers, will now be broadcasted to the world via twitter, and somehow through Wilderweb enchantments will make it to this page.

The Long Goodbye

I think I'm done with this. Maybe I'll reopen the Island later. Not that it's closed per se, it's just abandoned. We still need people to push the button every 108 minutes. And somebody should give Gilligan a ride home. Other than that you can read the archives and rejoice in the reappearance of Coconut M&M's this summer.
I accept thanks in the form of glowing fan letters, cash, and food items.
I'm out.

Wise Words of the Day

Don't dress for the weather you have, dress for the weather you want. Sometimes that means frostbite or heat stroke, and we just have to deal with that.

Happy first day of Spring.

Happy Birthday to Me

My appreciation for the fact that my birthday falls on an international drinking holiday has grown exponentially over time (see graph below). Having taken Statistics, I am aware that it would be a fallacy at this time to say my enjoyment of St. Patrick's Day follows an exponential pattern, but nonetheless the  data collected thus far can be expressed in such a manner.

 

I'm spending it drinking, watching bad movies, and eating chocolate.
First up: Leprechaun 4: In Space "One small step for man... One giant leap of terror."

Can You Sigh Backward?

Management

Memphis Residence Inn Downtown

6141 Poplar Pike

Memphis, TN 38119-4707

To the management,

I recently enjoyed a stay at your hotel in the beautiful, though desolate, downtown Memphis. In general, I say bravo. I can hardly blame you for the fact that it snowed in Tennessee that week, or that the TV picture froze just as the soon-to-be bronze medalist began his mogul run, forcing me to hear but not see his show-stopping double-full twisting back flip.  You can hardly be blamed for miscommunications with the valets who all seemed to be off-duty or the quality of your bagels, which I imagine are never quite right more than 100 miles from New York.

As a brief aside however, I would like to call your attention to the letter you posted on my refrigerator and the style with which it was written. The letter was a hospitable gesture, to be sure. I would simply like to inform you that neither was it in German nor Elizabethan English. You used the article “the” rather than “der”, “das” or “die”, and made note of such modern items as microwave popcorn and telephones. The language thus being established as American English, I am confused as to why you thought it necessary to capitalize common nouns. To my imperfect memory, you wrote “Bathroom”, “Snack”, and “Breakfast” as though they were proper nouns, implying they were either people (which would make the letter highly inappropriate) or elevated concepts (making the letter a new foray into the field of Snack Philosophy). I doubt this was your intention. I trust you found my proofread copy of the letter in my room and I suggest you make the changes outlined therein.

In The Mail: PETA Part 2

More from the archives of the comic-book collection PETA sent me in the mail.

From "A Chicken's Life!"

Of course, the eggs we eat are unfertilized, and would have just lain there otherwise. Ignore that for the moment.

In The Mail: PETA Part 1

I won't make a stand here on the Total Animal Liberation Movement (PETA's stated goal, as opposed to animal welfare), but independent of its cause, PETA is pretty ridiculous. (I quake in fear as I write; at any moment commandos may storm in and douse me with red blood.)

Maybe it's because I still get a kick out of Sesame Street and Muzzy, but some of PETA's propoganda directed at children. No, I'm pretty sure even Chuck Norris would get the heebie-jeebies from some of the stuff they hand out to kids. The funny thing is the range of tactics they use, from peeing-in-my-pants horror to heart-melting adorableness. See some of PETA's past work, and some of the stickers they recently sent me in the mail.

From THIS to THIS

My favorite quote from this one: "In the forest, nasty men in boots catch animals in traps." In boots? Why specify footwear?               Also: "Tell [your mommy] that you know she paid men to hurt and kill the animals. Everyone knows. And the sooner she stops wearing fur the sooner the animals will be safe. Until then, keep you doggie or kitty friends away from mommy- she's an animal killer!"

The sequel: "Until your daddy learns that it's not 'fun' to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next!"

Clue Simpsons? Really?- A response

A response to (Miss Scarlet's Weak Alibi)

Consumer Affairs: Att: Jennifer DaSilva

Hasbro

1027 Newport Ave

Pawtucket, RI 02861

Dear Ms. DaSilva,

Recently, I sent your company a letter with many helpful suggestions regarding the board game Clue. Make no mistake, my letter was both a tribute to many a snowed-in winter’s night occupied by the mild intrigue of a murder mystery board game and a proposal that would revolutionize Clue and align it better with the real circumstances that a detective would face in investigating a crime.

For that reason, I was highly disappointed to receive your reply stating, “Hasbro, Inc. does not manufacture this particular product.” First, I would like to point out your poor writing form. You used the word “this” without any reference whatsoever to what “this” was. You cannot expect your readers to simply guess as to your meaning, not even I, who, luckily for you, have saved a copy of the original letter. A nice way of introducing your topic would be to quote briefly from my letter as I have done yours.

50 Words, Infinite Literary Genius

My tribute to Doctor Seuss. Happy Birthday.

Hint: (Start with "I")

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