November 12, 2007
RadioShack Corporation
Riverfront Campus World Headquarters
300 RadioShack Circle
Fort Worth, Texas 76102-1964
RE: Store 01-2498, Specifically Your Employee Named Ronald
Dear Computer or Auto-filtering Device,
I have often seen academics pen abstruse papers about the effects of late-capitalism on both goods and services. After hours of study I am now accustomed to reviews that have the benefit of being both accurate and unflattering. It is to those self-proclaimed scholars, however, that I commend your store, undivided from Ronald.
That I, in this day and age, can spend less than ten minutes of my fleeting time on earth walking into your place of business and purchasing a replacement for an importunate laptop cord is more than just exemplary--it is utterly breathtaking. In a world filled with clamant halfwits and self-satisfied sots, Ronald was, by contrast, both forthright and alert; both mindful of my time and unapologetically kind; both astonishingly well-informed and confoundingly humble.
It is not my place to comment on the disquieting and detestable lack of proficiency seen in the adolescents routinely hired by large corporations to act as their inapt ambassadors to the public. It is not my place to comment on the growing trend to automate all services so that those in search of help are forced to reckon with the cold, unthinking binary errors of a deficient programmer's refuse. It is my place to comment when I see those typical moulds broken instead of reinforced. In Ronald you have found your salvation--you will be receiving another letter if I find that he is being paid an incomplete amount for his especial efforts.
Skeptically yours,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
November 23, 2007
November 13, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to The Wish Tank
Mr. Vincent St. Simon
**2 2nd ST **
Washington, D* 2****
Mr. St. Simon,
I write today to express my grave disappointment in the failure of the staff at The Wish Tank to produce timely work in a volume that might approach respectable. The most recent posting of August 9, 2007, was a pleasant read, but at this moment is more than three months stale. As a long-time donor, I expect that my funds are now being used for securing the services of cheap hookers, or perhaps the procurement of embarrassing amounts of crack-cocaine. In either case, our foundation does not provide grants of any amount for such purposes, and at this point is formally requesting an updated grant proposal outlining your action plan for aggressively pursuing a more mature publishing schedule. This is not, after all, The Onion. Failure to reply with the requested materials will result in an audit of your outlays and possible civil action against your person.
Sincerely yours,
/s/
Gregory T. Qualtheim
Founder, President, CEO, COO, CFO
The Qualtheim Foundation
**2 2nd ST **
Washington, D* 2****
Mr. St. Simon,
I write today to express my grave disappointment in the failure of the staff at The Wish Tank to produce timely work in a volume that might approach respectable. The most recent posting of August 9, 2007, was a pleasant read, but at this moment is more than three months stale. As a long-time donor, I expect that my funds are now being used for securing the services of cheap hookers, or perhaps the procurement of embarrassing amounts of crack-cocaine. In either case, our foundation does not provide grants of any amount for such purposes, and at this point is formally requesting an updated grant proposal outlining your action plan for aggressively pursuing a more mature publishing schedule. This is not, after all, The Onion. Failure to reply with the requested materials will result in an audit of your outlays and possible civil action against your person.
Sincerely yours,
/s/
Gregory T. Qualtheim
Founder, President, CEO, COO, CFO
The Qualtheim Foundation
August 9, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to Washington Mutual
9 August 2007
Washington Mutual Headquarters
1301 Second Ave.
Seattle, WA 98101
RE: The actions of your hollow shells, more specifically your crimes against humanity.
Dear Computer, Customer Service Representative in a Foreign Country, or Demon:
It is my fervent request that as of this moment you find someone in your office who is both sober enough to read and lucid enough to feel absolutely ashamed of your despicable company, your disgraceful objectives, and the corrupted sexual joy that your laborers feel while enacting the swindle you pass off as a service. Though I doubt that you will find such a person in your building the hours you send looking for one will, perhaps, save your conscience the everlasting task of repressing the assaults upon your fellow citizens that you routinely enact. If your direct supervisor isn't already telling you to lie to me to shut me up you can now move on to the next paragraph.
You stopped reading, but the nefarious fables that you make up so that you can avoid responsibility for the money that you were commissioned to steal from the American people, and one Ms. ahickpoet in particular, under the pretense that your company is both honest and well-intentioned (two terms in which take offense at the mere observation of your rotting souls) will come back to you in the moments of your old age when you realize that your lives have been a waste of breath, heinous in the eyes of Humanity.
Even as I write this, you are performing such perverse acts of capitalism that Adam Smith himself would slap you across your vampiric and revolting faces. I wouldn't dream of stopping him from doing so.
With All Outrage,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
Washington Mutual Headquarters
1301 Second Ave.
Seattle, WA 98101
RE: The actions of your hollow shells, more specifically your crimes against humanity.
Dear Computer, Customer Service Representative in a Foreign Country, or Demon:
It is my fervent request that as of this moment you find someone in your office who is both sober enough to read and lucid enough to feel absolutely ashamed of your despicable company, your disgraceful objectives, and the corrupted sexual joy that your laborers feel while enacting the swindle you pass off as a service. Though I doubt that you will find such a person in your building the hours you send looking for one will, perhaps, save your conscience the everlasting task of repressing the assaults upon your fellow citizens that you routinely enact. If your direct supervisor isn't already telling you to lie to me to shut me up you can now move on to the next paragraph.
You stopped reading, but the nefarious fables that you make up so that you can avoid responsibility for the money that you were commissioned to steal from the American people, and one Ms. ahickpoet in particular, under the pretense that your company is both honest and well-intentioned (two terms in which take offense at the mere observation of your rotting souls) will come back to you in the moments of your old age when you realize that your lives have been a waste of breath, heinous in the eyes of Humanity.
Even as I write this, you are performing such perverse acts of capitalism that Adam Smith himself would slap you across your vampiric and revolting faces. I wouldn't dream of stopping him from doing so.
With All Outrage,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
July 31, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to Joel L.
31 July 2007
Mr. Joel L.
c/o Candice S.
3**0 Mar***ta Dr.
Fl*****ant, MO 63**3
RE: The abhorrent state of Joel L.'s attempts at civil correspondence, and my disparaging comments thereupon.
Ms. Candice S.:
I write this to you since my mind revolts at the waste of time writing a strongly-worded letter to one Joel L. would be. In both his inadequate ability to understand the relationship between subjects and predicates, and his negligence of social sophistication, Mr. L. has proven himself on the same level as a brainless badger or unexceptional slab of tan-colored carpet. Penning a letter straight to him would be the same as asking a completely dotterel geoduck to dictate a memo or fix a crisp chicken salad sandwich. Instead, I am forced to ask you to please have the necessary consideration to read this letter to him when it comes to the attention of your person.
Mr. Joel L.: Your primitive motivations for even drawing my attention to your tedious person are so far below the capacities of my rational intellect that I absolutely refuse to consider them or you. Moreover, the unaccomplished barbs which you ceaselessly and aimlessly hurl in your attempt to goad me into a discussion with you will fall, as always, to join with the buffoonery of the other churls so easily dismissed. When, Mr. L., you blunder out of the coarse rationale you share with the other isopods into realm of passable politeness please feel free to reward yourself by finally breaching into my schedule for a worthwhile conversation. Until then, please filter all of your remarks through Ms. Candice S. so that they will have, at least, the merit of her thoughtful hand on their despicable contents.
Contemptuously Yours,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
Mr. Joel L.
c/o Candice S.
3**0 Mar***ta Dr.
Fl*****ant, MO 63**3
RE: The abhorrent state of Joel L.'s attempts at civil correspondence, and my disparaging comments thereupon.
Ms. Candice S.:
I write this to you since my mind revolts at the waste of time writing a strongly-worded letter to one Joel L. would be. In both his inadequate ability to understand the relationship between subjects and predicates, and his negligence of social sophistication, Mr. L. has proven himself on the same level as a brainless badger or unexceptional slab of tan-colored carpet. Penning a letter straight to him would be the same as asking a completely dotterel geoduck to dictate a memo or fix a crisp chicken salad sandwich. Instead, I am forced to ask you to please have the necessary consideration to read this letter to him when it comes to the attention of your person.
Mr. Joel L.: Your primitive motivations for even drawing my attention to your tedious person are so far below the capacities of my rational intellect that I absolutely refuse to consider them or you. Moreover, the unaccomplished barbs which you ceaselessly and aimlessly hurl in your attempt to goad me into a discussion with you will fall, as always, to join with the buffoonery of the other churls so easily dismissed. When, Mr. L., you blunder out of the coarse rationale you share with the other isopods into realm of passable politeness please feel free to reward yourself by finally breaching into my schedule for a worthwhile conversation. Until then, please filter all of your remarks through Ms. Candice S. so that they will have, at least, the merit of her thoughtful hand on their despicable contents.
Contemptuously Yours,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
July 29, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to The Evergreen State College
29 July 2007
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, Washington 98505
RE: A Failure on Your Part to Accommodate One Ms. L to the Best of Your Ability
Dear Unfortunate and Powerless Secretary, Intern, or Student Worker:
It has come to my attention that over the course of the past year you have committed a folly so great that your very reputation as an institution of value must at once be forsaken. Refusing, furthermore, to give satisfaction for your aggregate blindness puts you in the same class and grade as the most rude and contemptible Universities of Lower Learning. The next paragraph will be completely to my purpose of berating your name and station.
I cannot justify spending much time in stooping to communications with an academy so roundly foul, so I am compelled to keep this brief. Nothing in the world will account for Ms. L's benevolent condescension to allow your clearly debased pile of bricks and farce to house her for a term of four years in return for your comical and easily dismissed Bachelor's degree. Your abominable disinclination to fully compensate her for her altruistic interest in the hollow fraud you criminally refer to as a school is both hopelessly uncivil and the subject of this missive. Your failure to adhere to basic politeness is a telling indication of your rancorous inability to appreciate talent when it falls into your beastly lap, a revolting lunacy in your scholarship selections, and a thorough witlessness in your general personnel.
You are a chuff in sheep's clothing, Evergreen, and a mortification to your peers. I really thought you were of a higher station.
Yours in Derision,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
The Evergreen State College
2700 Evergreen Parkway NW
Olympia, Washington 98505
RE: A Failure on Your Part to Accommodate One Ms. L to the Best of Your Ability
Dear Unfortunate and Powerless Secretary, Intern, or Student Worker:
It has come to my attention that over the course of the past year you have committed a folly so great that your very reputation as an institution of value must at once be forsaken. Refusing, furthermore, to give satisfaction for your aggregate blindness puts you in the same class and grade as the most rude and contemptible Universities of Lower Learning. The next paragraph will be completely to my purpose of berating your name and station.
I cannot justify spending much time in stooping to communications with an academy so roundly foul, so I am compelled to keep this brief. Nothing in the world will account for Ms. L's benevolent condescension to allow your clearly debased pile of bricks and farce to house her for a term of four years in return for your comical and easily dismissed Bachelor's degree. Your abominable disinclination to fully compensate her for her altruistic interest in the hollow fraud you criminally refer to as a school is both hopelessly uncivil and the subject of this missive. Your failure to adhere to basic politeness is a telling indication of your rancorous inability to appreciate talent when it falls into your beastly lap, a revolting lunacy in your scholarship selections, and a thorough witlessness in your general personnel.
You are a chuff in sheep's clothing, Evergreen, and a mortification to your peers. I really thought you were of a higher station.
Yours in Derision,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
July 9, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to the Embassy of Peru, Attn: Pablo Rojas (The Prominent Peruvian Human Rights Activist)
4 July 2007,
Embassy of Peru
1700 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington D.C. 20036
USA
Attn: Pablo Rojas (the prominent Peruvian human rights activist)
What I have to say is simple and there is nothing I would like to do more than to get straight to the point but before doing so I feel it necessary to briefly touch upon the reported events in your country of June of this year.
It was reported that during a generally very well received visit to Peru, Cameron Diaz (and I’ll give it to you, here and now, that she is one of the most dismissible Hollywood actresses the United States must hesitatingly call its own) was seen and photographed wearing a green handbag with a red star and the Maoist political slogan (one of Mao’s favorite) “Serve the People” (printed in Chinese). Diaz’s worthlessness is of course not the subject of this missive. The report, put out by the AP via Yahoo(!?), went on to say:
A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of There's Something About Mary should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories. "It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage.
Indeed, your country, at the hands of the Maoist Guerilla Sendero Luminoso, and his Shining Path insurgency, was brought to the edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations, and bombings that took the lives of nearly 70,000 people, and you are right, as a “prominent human rights activist” to point out to the politico-historical negligence of Americans in general and Diaz specifically (she is quite the twit isn’t she?).
What I don’t understand, and perhaps, Mr. Rojas, you can help me, is how you can appear so surprised? And, if you were indeed surprised by Diaz’s actions, I find this very troubling given your country’s current politico-economic path. It is unfortunately true that half of Peru’s population lives in poverty and as a “prominent human rights activist” I’m sure you're actively pursuing all the things that will make it possible for your county’s people to live more like Americans, that is to say, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (happiness). Indeed your country’s constitutional republic has already taken many steps in the long and hard process toward liberalization which has already put an end to price controls, discarded protectionism, eliminated restrictions on foreign direct investment and privatized most state companies. Such reforms have given your country sustained economic growth since 1993. These things I’m sure, as “prominent human rights activist,” you’re well aware of. But, what seems to have gotten past you is that in a society that's on it’s way to being governed not by Mao’s definition of the ‘people,’ nor your constitutional republic’s definition of the ‘people,’ but by the interests of the few people who turn the switches and knobs to the global free market economy, there is no meaning to the market of symbolic exchange, “why does a stupid American actress wear the new Maoist-red-star-handbag?” “Because it’s cool, that’s why.” There is no room for petty cultural/historical scars; there’s no crying in capitalism (unless of course you can find a way to fetch a price for your tears [try eBay]). Indeed those people who want to join in the fun of a, or rather, the capitalist market—fantasizing about frolicking between the rows and rows of surplus commodities that appear to speak to each man (or woman) made consumer and to each other on the shelves—must check their memory-cards at the door in exchange for their object of desire, their very own property, that is to say, happiness.
Forgetting already why I wrote to you,
/s/
Curt Bozif
Embassy of Peru
1700 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington D.C. 20036
USA
Attn: Pablo Rojas (the prominent Peruvian human rights activist)
What I have to say is simple and there is nothing I would like to do more than to get straight to the point but before doing so I feel it necessary to briefly touch upon the reported events in your country of June of this year.
It was reported that during a generally very well received visit to Peru, Cameron Diaz (and I’ll give it to you, here and now, that she is one of the most dismissible Hollywood actresses the United States must hesitatingly call its own) was seen and photographed wearing a green handbag with a red star and the Maoist political slogan (one of Mao’s favorite) “Serve the People” (printed in Chinese). Diaz’s worthlessness is of course not the subject of this missive. The report, put out by the AP via Yahoo(!?), went on to say:
A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of There's Something About Mary should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories. "It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage.
Indeed, your country, at the hands of the Maoist Guerilla Sendero Luminoso, and his Shining Path insurgency, was brought to the edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations, and bombings that took the lives of nearly 70,000 people, and you are right, as a “prominent human rights activist” to point out to the politico-historical negligence of Americans in general and Diaz specifically (she is quite the twit isn’t she?).
What I don’t understand, and perhaps, Mr. Rojas, you can help me, is how you can appear so surprised? And, if you were indeed surprised by Diaz’s actions, I find this very troubling given your country’s current politico-economic path. It is unfortunately true that half of Peru’s population lives in poverty and as a “prominent human rights activist” I’m sure you're actively pursuing all the things that will make it possible for your county’s people to live more like Americans, that is to say, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property (happiness). Indeed your country’s constitutional republic has already taken many steps in the long and hard process toward liberalization which has already put an end to price controls, discarded protectionism, eliminated restrictions on foreign direct investment and privatized most state companies. Such reforms have given your country sustained economic growth since 1993. These things I’m sure, as “prominent human rights activist,” you’re well aware of. But, what seems to have gotten past you is that in a society that's on it’s way to being governed not by Mao’s definition of the ‘people,’ nor your constitutional republic’s definition of the ‘people,’ but by the interests of the few people who turn the switches and knobs to the global free market economy, there is no meaning to the market of symbolic exchange, “why does a stupid American actress wear the new Maoist-red-star-handbag?” “Because it’s cool, that’s why.” There is no room for petty cultural/historical scars; there’s no crying in capitalism (unless of course you can find a way to fetch a price for your tears [try eBay]). Indeed those people who want to join in the fun of a, or rather, the capitalist market—fantasizing about frolicking between the rows and rows of surplus commodities that appear to speak to each man (or woman) made consumer and to each other on the shelves—must check their memory-cards at the door in exchange for their object of desire, their very own property, that is to say, happiness.
Forgetting already why I wrote to you,
/s/
Curt Bozif
June 17, 2007
Strongly-Worded Letter to Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant
17 June 2007
Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant
6 feet from the north line of Gen. Sheridan's lot
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia 22211
RE: Your Odious City Plan for Washington, DC
attn: Major L'Enfant:
The mere fact that I feel compelled to pen this missive incites me almost as much as your actual offense, and believe me, sir, when I tell you that my level of indignation is both uplifted and upraised. Your reckless and wasteful treatment of this, the capital of the United States of America, is the equivalent of treason. You were given the opportunity to create a grand symbol out of your city plan, and instead your gratuitous doodle has become a mar upon your record and the archetype for action without common sense.
In, it appears, an attempt to further my fury, you then entreated the legal system, of the government that your construction so effectively scorned mind you, to give you economic acclimation for your folly to the tune of 95,500 American dollars. Your actions show you to be the most vile of villains, and if you thought for a second that you would be able to suck off our state while secretly building a city so depraved in its planning that it could have easily been drawn up by a fourth-grader with a behavior disorder then you, sir, deserve no better than the poverty that was your succulent reward. Please do not consider your reputation secure in death; I simply will not stand for the hubris.
Condescendingly Yours,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant
6 feet from the north line of Gen. Sheridan's lot
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington, Virginia 22211
RE: Your Odious City Plan for Washington, DC
attn: Major L'Enfant:
The mere fact that I feel compelled to pen this missive incites me almost as much as your actual offense, and believe me, sir, when I tell you that my level of indignation is both uplifted and upraised. Your reckless and wasteful treatment of this, the capital of the United States of America, is the equivalent of treason. You were given the opportunity to create a grand symbol out of your city plan, and instead your gratuitous doodle has become a mar upon your record and the archetype for action without common sense.
In, it appears, an attempt to further my fury, you then entreated the legal system, of the government that your construction so effectively scorned mind you, to give you economic acclimation for your folly to the tune of 95,500 American dollars. Your actions show you to be the most vile of villains, and if you thought for a second that you would be able to suck off our state while secretly building a city so depraved in its planning that it could have easily been drawn up by a fourth-grader with a behavior disorder then you, sir, deserve no better than the poverty that was your succulent reward. Please do not consider your reputation secure in death; I simply will not stand for the hubris.
Condescendingly Yours,
/s/
Vincent Saint-Simon
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