Ad Nauseam

I absolutely despise junk mail.

So I got a piece of mail from my bank. It looked just like any statements, important notice or other piece of mail I get from them. I opened it and find not the trusted correspondence I expect, but a letter saying something to the effect of, "we know what you really want is some insurance, like this here partner of ours."

In other words, the direct mailers know that we just toss their junk away without opening it, so they have to have someone we trust pass it along as a Trojan Horse.

The other mail I got? A Discover Card offering - with no return address or other identifying marks. It's just like the one I got last month and the month before, so I felt confident enough to toss it without opening. If I haven't taken them up on the offer the last eight or ten times, why this one?

So here's my plan. We put up a website, something like "noiwontbuyit.com." Users sign their names to a virtual pledge to never buy from companies from whom they have received junk mail. They can build a list of companies who have sent them junk, along with a tally of sales they have avoided. In turn, the site can keep a wall of shame list of top offenders and a running total of sales lost.

Sure, it's a publicity stunt. It'll still make me feel better.

Uncomfortable Irony

I'm tired, I'm hungry and there's no food in the house. I just went to Papa John's website to order a pizza and the X-Men Origins: Wolverine promotions made me chuckle. The funny bit?

The tag line closes with, "ONLY IN THEATERS."

Guess they missed the news.

Out of Shape

Man, am I out of shape.

I'm not referring to the pushups here. I used to write all the time. Advanced Placement classes had me writing at least one (and usually more) fourty-minute writes a week, plus papers, plus other work. Debate wasn't quite writing, but it was still word-smithing. And now, when I'm working more intensely on blogging, I can't help but feel off my game.

I guess it's back to practice, practice, practice...

Sweet Sixteen

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm finally getting into the Hundred Pushups program. My count for today's initial test: sixteen. Congrats to me. Unfortunately, that puts me in the tougher third-column for the program.

I need to know when to underachieve.

Also: I'm conflicted. Hundres Pushups itself says that they're "pushups," but Blogger's spellchecker tells me that they're actually "push ups." Has anyone else ever had a spellchecker put them in such an intellectual dilemma?

Between a wrock and a hard-place, that's where I am.