Where the heck is Mac? This question is asked dozens of times a day, usually by co-workers at my real job seeking to suggest new projects for my “spare” time. Also, my wife asks this question, often on a cell phone call or an email as I am being tossed around like a cat toy by the evil and incompetent airline industry while she selflessly raises our kids. I think we have three.
Occasionally this question is asked by an angry or depressed fan who wants to know when my next article will appear. “Get cracking” one recent email told me. My editor, Jed Babbin, also suggests that I get cracking, but I’ve been busy. Capitalism doesn’t run itself, so I have to… Actually, capitalism does run itself. That’s the beauty of it. The wisdom of markets and the madness of crowds require no one individual, only a whole bunch of them all running around frenetically at the same time.
Conceptually then, we could take turns being part of the system - thus leaving time for me to write. Coherent and polished writing takes a concentration and efort, however. And I am in a Starbucks in an airport in California just now, waiting for my flight to get canceled due to excess sunshine and still, clear air. Also, I have a list of personal errands I should attend to. So I’ve decided to multi-task and give you incoherent and rough writing designed to fit the time available while satisfying my important personal needs: writing letters to corporations that I believe have wronged me. Let’s begin.
Dear Diet Dr. Pepper,
I am a big fan of your product, which I much prefer to Mr. Pibb, as I figure those of us with post-graduate degrees should stick together. (What’s the difference between Mr. Pibb and Dr. Pepper? Eight long years of graduate school. I understand your pain, Dr. Diet Pepper).
Anyway, I recently obtained a can of your product that smelled overwhelmingly like cat urine. This was such a shocking and unpleasant experience that I had to take a second sip just to convince myself that the first sip had really been so bad. Yup, cat urine. Same thing with the third time (I was eating a fiber-rich energy bar at the time and really needed to wash that thing down). Cat urine - pungent and overwhelming.
This raises several important issues for me. First off: Is cat urine a new ingredient in Diet Dr. Pepper? I know the cost of artificial sweetener is significant, but really, is cat urine an acceptable substitute?
Assuming cat urine was not intentionally introduced, my second question is: do you take any safeguards to ensure that your product is not peed upon by cats during shipping and distribution?
Open truck doors are just begging some cat to scurry inside, and should said cat be sealed up inside the truck by an unobservant driver, you can be certain that before he succumbs to the heat of being parked in the midday sun, he will urinate.
This may seem a small possibility about which to worry, but I assure you that it has happened at least once. I don’t own a cat.
Please instruct your drivers and distributors on the hazards of cat urination as a contaminating factor in the total soda enjoyment experience, forthwith.
Thank you.
And since I am multi-tasking for a political publication, now would be a good time to point out what a “unifier” Barack Obama could be as President.
A member of an afro-centric black racist congregation who wants to enter a new era of government wealth redistribution in which money will be confiscated from part of the population to bribe some other part, Obama sees the most important foreign policy issue of our time, the War in Iraq, in simple, moralistic (one might say “black and white”) terms which leave room for only the most simpleton and idiotic of solutions: run like Hell and apologize while the world implodes.
His moralizing and condescending rhetoric has all the substance and detail of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which he may believe is a policy paper, for all I know. The vitriol and emotion of the current Democratic primary is a result not of the grasping and petty nature of the duo-egomaniacal Clinton camp, which has been the predominant force in the once unified party for over a decade, but of Obama’s calculated appeal to emotion and passion in his supporters, rather than reason and intellect. Now he promises to do for America, what he’s done for his own party. Clearly, Barry Hussein Obama is the unifier this divided country so desperately needs.
Now on to more relevant business:
Dear Aussie Mega-Shampoo and Conditioner,
Your product has clearly promised me, in writing and on the bottle, “touchably soft” locks. I have used it according to the prescribed method (also written on the bottle) for over a month now and no one has felt a need to touch my locks, other than my barber, who is a compensated lock smith.
However soft and fruity-smelling my hair may be, it clearly has not risen to status foretold by the bottle. I request a refund or a more powerful formulation.
Thank you.
PS Are you guys really Australian or are you from New Jersey like the Outback Steakhouse guys?
PPS There’s nothing wrong with being from New Jersey.
And while I’m on the subject of fruity-smelling, where the heck is John Edwards? Doesn’t Obama need this man as his VP nominee to balance out Obama’s own privileged, middle-class background? A campaign based on a man’s “story” as a successful example of overcoming oppression should have at least one man on the ticket who overcame oppression.
Obama, the son of a Harvard graduate, attended private schools his whole life before himself going to Harvard and falling back-assward into the Senate. Edwards may be a privileged slimeball now, but at least he wasn’t born that way.
Well, that’s enough multitasking for one day. I’ll talk to everyone again next week.
