Idiot Letters: One Man’s Relentless Assault on Corporate America by Paul Rosa

When my son was a little under four years old, I found him on the phone in his room, clutching a bag of Doritos. He had read the back of the bag which says, “Questions? Comments?  Call…” So he did.  Whoever on the phone was very kind, listening to him tell her all about the merits of the “red” bags and the short-comings of the “blue” bags.  

But if you are over preschool age, does anyone have a burning need to discuss or comment on the features of say, their box of Uncle Ben’s Rice?  Sadly, yes.  The responses to the ridiculous letters Rosa sent to such venerable entities as Quaker Oats, Arm and Hammer, Pizza Hut, Immodium AD (eeww!), and Preparation H (ewww, eeew!), prove that corresponding with the unwashed masses must be a pretty regular occurrence.  No matter how outlandish Rosa’s comments or requests, the responses are polite and unblinking. 

Here’s an example:

Dear Airwick Air Freshener rank and file, 

Just a word to let you know how much I’ve appreciated your fine Airwick “Stick Ups” over the years!  They’ve kept my house smelling fresh and clean as long as I can remember.  Recently, I tried the “Country Potpourri” fragrance and was delighted with the results.  Even my girlfriend (Cindy) commented on the delightful aroma.  Your product truly does, as you claim, “Stop big odors in small places.”  Keep up the impressive work! 

However, something has always struck me as a bit peculiar.  On the back of the air freshener boxes appear the words, “Use Stick Ups in the following locations:  Hampers, Cars, Under Sinks, Litter Boxes, Lockers, Garbage Pails, Near Toilets, Diaper Pails, and Closets.”  Each suggestion also features a picture of that location.  Are there actually people who don’t have the common sense to place an Air Freshener near something that smells bad?  Might someone grow confused and place one next to an azalea in the living room, and then wonder why the bathroom still smells dreadful?  Perhaps so.  Maybe a person could buy a Stick Up because the cat’s litter box stinks to high heaven, but when they return from the store they can’t recall why they bought it.  In this case, your suggestions would prove handy, indeed!  Is this why you did it?  Please let me know what’s going on here, as it has confused me for some time.   I look forward to hearing from you! 

Fragrantly yours, 

Paul C. Rosa 

P.S.  As someone who like to bathe no more than twice a week, I was wondering if it would be safe to use a Stick up on one’s person?  (i.e. center of chest.) 
 

Dear Mr. Rosa, 

We received your letter concerning Stick Ups, our concentrated air freshener. We’re extremely pleased to hear you are satisfied with the effectiveness of this product. 

In response to your comments regarding the pictures on the product packaging, we have found that in many instances visualization helps the consumer understand the uses of this product more clearly.   

Comments from consumers are always welcome and we want you to know we appreciate the time you have taken to let us know your feelings.  We value your patronage and hope you will use the enclosed coupons on future purchases of Stick Ups. 

Your continued interest and support of our quality home care products are greatly appreciated.  Thank you for taking the time to write.  

Sincerely, 

Ginger Newton

Consumer Affairs 

My note: ”Ginger” was promptly fired for not addressing the Stick-Ups to the chest issue. Because of her lack of attention to detail there have been at least sixteen deaths attributed to this particular failure to save the consumer from himself. 

Check out Paul’s blog for more recent examples of proof that we are living in the end of days…

The Hardhat’s Bedtime Story Book by Al Capp

“Charles Manson’s Ideals Will Never Die,” excerpted from Capp’s 1970 collection:

Dear Mummy:

Will you please send my allowance checks to the Charles Manson Memorial Commune, formerly known as the University Y.W.C.A.

A commune, Mummy, is like a home, only it’s nicer.  In a commune people love and share with each other even though they are not bound by the hypocritical chains of marriage, like in yours and Daddy’s degenerate society.

The people in our commune are Sally, Susan, Ruthie, Joanie, Jeanie, Betsy, Bonnie, William K. Fowlemouth and me.  We’ll need a larger one next year because then there’ll be Sally and her baby, Ruthie and her baby, Joanie, Jeanie, Betsy, Bonnie and their babies, William K. Fowlemouth and me.

…

I’d been out to the Welfare office to collect our commune’s monthly $2375 check, which really is not enough to keep us going until we destroy yours and Daddy’s greedy, inhuman society, and when I returned no one was home except William K. Fowlemouth watching cartoons on TV.  All the girls wer gone and so was William K.’s gun collection.

He said the girls (and his collection) were out preventing crime, and he was so worried about them, he could hardly concentrate on the TV cartoons.

Just then the door opened, and in came Sally and Susan and Ruthie and Joanie and Jeanie and Betsy and Bonnie.  They were giggling and carrying the gun collection and three tin boxes full of small bills and silver.  William K. said, “How come there are only three boxes our of four gas stations?”

The girls explained that some state troopers had stopped at one to gas up.

Then, Mummy, I’m afraid I asked a stupid question.  “Did you send the girls out to do something criminal at those gas stations?”  He looked so hurt.

“My dear,” he said.  “It was the owners of those gas stations who were doing something criminal.”

“You mean they were cheating?” I asked.

“Worse,” said William K., “They weren’t cheating.  They were paying their taxes!  And do you realize what those taxes pay for?  Such crimes as equipping the Army with defense material, pensions for the widows and orphans of policemen killed in the line of duty!

“By taking these tin boxes away from them, we’ve helped to prevent those crimes.”

“Even more, this money will now be devoted to changing our crooked thieving system into something clean and honest.”

“But,” I said, “you’re putting it all in your pockets.”

“Who else,” asked William K. Fowlemouth, “can be trusted with it?”  He then called a travel agency and asked them to reserve two first class tickets to Las Vegas and a suite at a first class hotel.  Then he called a stripper named LaBelle.  He’s been gone two weeks now.

Sally, Susan, Ruthie, Joanie, Jeanie, Betsy, Bonnie, and I all miss him terribly, Mummy, but those three tin boxes can’t last forever, not in Las Vegas.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

“Have you been to the basement?” (from Willard, 2003)

Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman

Yep. Government Logic. Somehow, it seems to me that this story could almost be set in the United States rather than in China. Too bad there isn’t a premium on the heads of Wall Street rats…

While living in China, author Mark Salzman worked as a teacher.  One day, a rat made a rather unscheduled appearance as a guest in his classroom.  Although he simply wanted to startle the vermin and make it run away, he clobbered it with an enormous dictionary and killed it. 

His students were thrilled.  They urged him to go collect the bounty given for any rat killed in the city.  Though reluctant, Salzman gave in to his class and took the dead rat into the official office for such dealings.  Unfortunately, he was told that he could not be paid, even though, as stipulated, the rat was quite dead.  Deceased.  No-longer-among-the-living.    A late rat.  A stiff rat.  An ex-rat.  (Cross reference Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch)

But I digress…

Here’s Salzman’s tale of rats and governance:

“By the time we reached the Rat Collection Office, we had attracted quite a crowd.  I explained to the comrade-in-charge where and how I had killed the rat and put it on the table and asked for my reward.  He and the other men in the office laughed heartily when they heard the circumstances of the rat’s demise…

“I’m sorry to say that we can’t pay you.  The regulation is that the reward be given to students who kill rats in the dormitories…”.

The other comrade “pointed out that the official statement concerning rats is that they have been stamped out.  Only internal documents, which foreigners cannot read, discuss the rat problem.  Since you killed the rat, there’s nothing to be done about that.  But if they give you the reward, then an official disburser of state funds will have to publicly confirmed that rats do exit here.”

Sound familiar?  Anyone? 

Paul Cézanne, ‘The Card Players’ (1892)

Cézanne and Modernism: The Poetics of Painting by Joyce Medina

In her study of Cézanne in particular and modernism in general, Joyce Medina promises to “help define that vast and uncharted sea that we define as modernism.”  Her choice of Paul Cézanne as ambassador for this unwieldy task is based on her belief in his “transformation of traditional pictorial images and his invention of radically new types of images.”  From this pier, we are cast off into the “uncharted sea” which she proposes to map. 

It soon becomes clear that if you intend to dive into this sea, you had better be a strong swimmer with a good sense of direction.  Medina’s contemplations of Bergson, Kierkegaard and other philosophers are quite complex, as is her discussion of artistic technique.  The analysis is clearly directed toward a readership already well-versed in the discipline’s terminology. 

Even with audience intent in mind, Medina’s work is sometimes uneven.  It does begin promisingly, however.  Chapter One, “Cézanne and the Unity of Modernism” addresses what Cézanne did to help define the movement.  To this end, she explores the meaning behind  Cézanne’s assertion that  ”Modernism is thought itself,” tracing the artist’s shift away from “painted objects” (pre-1895) in favor of “abstract form” from 1896 until his death in 1906.  Medina contends that Cézanne’s changes were not solely in his technique, but also in his motivation. 

Motivation is key to understanding the inexorable drift away from Impressionism and the ways in which Medina separates the Impressionists from the Modernists is thorough and convincing.  She speaks of the Impressionists as recording their sensations exclusively as they experienced them, but of the Modernists as transcending the sensation of the moment while simultaneously reflecting the past and projecting the future into their work.  She also makes important connections to the psychological thought of the era by pinpointing theories such as “sign theory.”  “Sign theory,” Medina explains, “pointed directly to  intuited objects and essential connections and also to expressive realizations, as signs of a free and spontaneous consciousness.”  Unfortunately, as hard as Medina tries to unravel the confused mass, modernism repeatedly defies her ambitious attempts. 

This is not to say that she doesn’t give a valiant effort.  Medina’s examination incorporating psychological theories with the “new aesthetics” receives interesting treatment, especially her discussion of Cézanne’s ground-breaking work, Maison de Pendu (ca. 1873).  Her careful analysis of brush-strokes and the color palette is thought-provoking.  One wishes that the illustrations had been reproduced in color. 

Ostensibly to help clarify the tangle of Modernism, Medina calls upon everyone form Delacroix, Rubens, Baudelaire, Rilke, Pound, Barthes, Stevens, and even Mozart (to name only some of the influences and interpretations cited) to help illuminate the mind and hand of Cézanne.  Such diverse sources prove the Medina is an outstanding scholar, but lost in the sheer volume of citations are important distinctions about Cézanne himself, especially concerning the intriguing but unsatisfying analysis of the artist’s “mask imagery.” 

Medina is aware of the vast nature of her undertaking but is unapologetic for the inclusion of so many voices.  She argues, “it was necessary to bracket all possible conceptions about death.”  This “bracketing” of all possibilities may indeed be required for a full understanding, but it takes a dedicated person to remain committed to following Medina through her difficult voyage of discovery. 

Lamaze Schmaze…Bring Me a Whiskey Epidural

A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Ulrich’s study examines the life on an “ordinary” woman, Martha Ballard, a midwife living in Maine who began keeping a diary at the age of 50 in 1785 until her death at 77 in 1812.   The pages recount her experiences delivering nearly 1000 babies as well as nine of her own children.

Martha’s diary exhaustively covers what most male scholars have traditionally considered mundane:  household economy, gardening, and, of course, childbirth.  “Martha’s diary,” Ulrich argues, “fills in the missing work — and trade — of women (29).  Filling in those gaps creates a more realistic picture of life for all of society in the eighteenth century.

The way in which Ulrich bridges that gap is to demonstrate the interconnectivity of the sexes.  Ulrich does not put it this way, but I see Martha as a benevolent spider at the center of a web, a creature long dismissed by scholars as either inconsequential or dangerous, but in reality indispensable to the smooth governance of life.

Ulrich takes the barest bits of information offered from Martha and then pulls that thread into other existing documents to show the mesh of women’s and men’s lives.  For example, Martha’s entry of September 12, 1788 reads, “At home.  Clear.  Dolly warpt and drawd a piece for Check.  Laid 45 yards.  I have been home kitting” is studied for its implications on the larger world (73).  How did the thread arrive in the women’s hands?  What became of that cloth after its production?  Spinning and weaving is ostensibly woman’s work in a female sphere, the home.  But here the work is shown to be a vital part of the community as a whole, with everyone involved in the process.  Ulrich explains that “(s)pinning, like nursing, was a universal female occupation (but) (m)en broke flax, sheared sheep and performed other supportive services… women had the primary responsibility for the production of cloth (78-79).

Perhaps the most intriguing aspects of this diary are the early rumblings that foretold the seismic shift away from female-based obstetrics.  Until 1801, no man is ever mentioned or called upon to assist in births in Martha’s accounts (280).  But slowly, men are elbowing their way into the delivery room and pushing women out.  It did not happen often in Martha’s lifetime but it was coming.  The holistic approach was losing favor while the “body as machine” theory was gaining a following among male physicians.

Women might have felt the push towards the door in the delivery room, but interestingly, they were still often a part of autopsies.  The presence of women at these proceedings was frequently recorded.  However, the specific reasons for female inclusion, by Martha or anyone else, is not addressed in the primary sources.  On this topic, Ulrich can only speculate.  Her best guess is that women “ensured proper reverence for the bodies” and “perhaps was (extended as) a professional courtesy” (251).  Whatever the reasons, Martha’s accounting of her observations lets us see that she was cognizant of all internal organs and their functions.  As Ulrich repeatedly shows, Martha’s medical bag contained more than clean towels and a hot water bottle.  She was a physician in every sense of the word. 

Medical and professional issues aside, one of the most fascinating aspects to emerge from Martha’s diary is that this account is no hagiography.   Martha often grumbles, sometimes wallows in self-pity and complains about her ungrateful children and her husband, emerging as a real, flawed person.

Son of Man (1964) Rene Magritte

Thomas Jefferson was quite distressed by all of the changes Congress wanted to make to his carefully crafted “Declaration of Independence.” He expressed his dismay to Ben Franklin:

“I was sitting by Dr. Franklin who perceived I was not insensible to these mutilations.  “I have made it a rule,” said he, “whenever in my power to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body.  I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you.  When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice Hatter, having served out his time, was about to open a shop for himself, his first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription.  He composed it in these words, John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money, with a symbol of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments.  The first he shewed it to thought the word Hatter tautologous, because it was followed by the words makes and might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats.  If good and to their mind, they would buy whomsoever made.  He struck it out.  A third said he thought the words for ready money were useless as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit.  Every one who purchased expected to pay.  They were parted with, and the inscription now stood John Thompson sells hats.  “Sells hats!” says his next friend.  “Why, nobody will expect you to give them away.  What then is the use of that word?”  It was stricken out.  His inscription was reduced ultimately to John Thompson with the figure of a hat subjoined.”

– from Jefferson on Jefferson selected and edited by Paul M. Zall

“THERE’S A CLOCK IN FRONT OF YOU,” ISABEL TOLD HER POINTEDLY.” The Secret of the Old Clock (1930)

Few heroines have withstood the test of time as has Nancy Drew. The first mystery, The Secret of the Old Clock, was published in 1930. Writing under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, the first twenty-three novels were penned by Mildred Wirt Benson and then written by various other authors. The last novel Without a Trace debuted in 2004 and a film based on the series premiered in 2007.

Why has Nancy endured?  On the surface, her attraction for young girls is easy to understand. Nancy can do anything: paint, speak French, drive a race car, navigate a motorboat, cook, swim, and sew.  Of course, she was popular and a good student. All these characteristics are revealed sporadically in fifty books of this series, but the formula never varies.

The Formula:

• An unexplained or unjust situation.
• Nancy becomes interested and begins a tentative investigation She is warned to stop but ignores the warning.
• Assorted chases and hunts
• Assorted violence against Nancy (but never murder).
• Nancy recovers to right the wrong, discover the thief, reunites lost relatives, etc.

Some thirty-five years ago, Professor James P. Jones, professor of History at Florida State University, wrote an interesting article for The Journal of Popular Culture (6:4, 1973: Spring), on the longevity of the teenage sleuth. His insights are still useful in understanding why Nancy continues to sell and also reveals some of Nancy’s not-so-nice history.  Here are some of the highlights:

The Perils:  Nancy should be a less-than-believable character: “She should have been as punchy as a boxer and permanently psychotic,” he writes. “Nancy was struck over the head and left in a lonely cabin locked in a closet. She fell down a flight of stairs into a subterranean chamber and awoke to discover she might be entombed. The sixteen year old was stuck over the head and left chained to the wall in the cellar of a bungalow. She was bound hand and foot in the cabin of a boat which was on fire and sinking. Nancy was imprisoned in an old cistern and left to starve, in a serious train wreck, a plane crash, and lost inside of a mysterious cave. The girl detective was rammed by a legion of drivers, all men, and was in a mansion that slid into the Atlantic and floated off during a northeaster.”

The Villains: Nancy’s holier-than-thou attitude ought to have repelled rather than attracted many readers. The villains, while frequently the nouveau riche and perhaps understandably looked down upon, were more often of “racial or national minorities. Negroes, Jews, Italians (and) Chinese.”

The Police: Usually Irish and always stupid. Their incompetence allows Nancy (with her father’s blessing) to roar in his daughter’s behalf that their intervention “…wouldn’t have been necessary had we been properly protected by the authorities. We are justified in taking the law into our own hands.”

Racial Slurs and Stereotypes: “In the first eighteen books of the series, there were seventeen Negroes. All were menials – cooks, butlers, servants, porters. They speak in stereotypes, “You poh chile,” etc.  African Americans are not the only negatively stereotyped group: Italians are “dark and swarthy” and involved in crime. Chinese and Japanese are described as “squint eyed” and are also criminals. The only group portrayed favorably are “individuals belonging to a northern European nationality.

Egomaniac?: If Nancy wasn’t, she should have been. She is constantly praised and admired, especially by the lower classes.

A Peculiarity: Nancy was never in high school or college.

Not Always So “Timeless“:

The Depression, Red Gate Farm (1931): “There are a great many people out of work here now.” Nancy’s Mysterious Letter (1932): “Times are hard and his income is much reduced.”

WWI References, The Clue of the Broken Locket: “I was gassed in the World War.” The Secret of the Old Clock, “His wife had died during the influenza epidemic of the World War.” *Important to note that the reference is to “the” World War, not WWI.

Reasons to “modernize” the characters: 

• Removing master/servant disparity between Nancy and Hannah, her maid, (who in later books becomes more of a mother figure).
• Updating Nancy’s age from 16 to 18 helped make it more understandable why Nancy would be out of school and have more freedom.

Even luck and money and a MacArthur Genius Grant didn’t make life worth living for David Foster Wallace

Both Shane and Matthew have already posted on the suicide of David Foster Wallace, so I’ll keep this brief. 

Fresh Air rebroadcast a ten minute except from a 1997 interview with Wallace today.  It’s an odd thing to listen back to and I wonder how many of his close friends and family wish they could have done more.

There are also links on the page to other interviews Wallace had given to NPR.

Maurice Sendak/From “Where the Wild Things Are” (Harper Collins)

Business first: Jenkins Group has announced the call for entries for The 2009 Axiom Business Book Awards. These annual awards bring recognition to exemplary business books and their creators. Registration is open until September 15th, so go to www.axiomawards.com for more information.

Pleasure: Shane mentioned this yesterday, but just in case you didn’t see it, today Maurice Sendak turns 80. I can still recite the entire text of both Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen from memory.  Will welcome all challengers…

If you still have little ones, you might want to purchase Carole King’s terrific album of Sendak poems she put to music, Really Rosie. 

Fresh Air aired two interviews with Sendak today, recorded in 2001 and 2003.   

From the interview: 

His favorite subject? “Scaring children.”

His most treasured possessions? Mickey Mouse memorabilia.

His best buddy? A boisterous German Shepherd named for Herman Melville.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Re-organizing my bookshelves today, a sisyphean task if there ever was one, I found my tattered old copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

Bill Hicks tells a joke about reading a book in a Waffle House.  The waitress, he said, sauntered up to him with her tray full of waffles and bacon and said, “What are you reading for?”  Not “what are you reading?”  but “what are you reading  for…”. 

A very similar thing happened to me about a dozen years ago while reading this novel.  As the waitress peered over my shoulder, ready to pour my tenth refill of coffee (and none too pleased about my loitering), she asked, skeptically, what my book was about.  “Uhhh…., ” I said, “it’s about this girl named Sissy who has huge thumbs that represent freedom and another girl named Bonanza Jellybean who outgrows her Sears cowgirl outfit and goes out to seek her fortune as a real cowgirl.” 

The coffee pot hovered above my head while my inquisitor toyed with the idea of burning me alive on the spot. 

I remembered this incident as I flipped through the yellowing pages and found this underlined passage, a little gem of philosophy in a quarry of plot and character:

Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles.  The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it.  Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light.  For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irritable: the petty is mean.  Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside.  Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a nine-thousand-pound granite boulder, the surprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes.  And if the boulder is more special, if it has been painted or carved in some mysterious way, you may find that it possesses an extraordinary and supernatural presence that enchants you, and in coping with it-as it blocks your path to the bathroom-leaves you feeling extraordinary and supernatural, too.  Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality.

(There was a movie made of the novel starring Uma Thurman that was horrible.  Don’t judge the book by the movie if you endured it.  The soundtrack by kd lang, however, is fantastic.)