jackassletters.com:About
This site is a site dedicated to examining corespondence with real people and companies. It is part satire, part parody, and part criticism. New letters are published M-F at 7:00 AM each morning.
So....
Is my motivation greed? Am I just clamoring after free stuff? No. Free stuff is cool, but I also intend to enjoy the process. I fully expect to enjoy the responses more than any of the swag. Daily I make the trip to my mail box only to see it stuffed with junk mail and bills. I want to look forward to getting mail again.
I've come up with a few rules that I am surely to violate.
In this day and age I decided email would be too easy. The art of the letter is nearly lost. This is a skill I have not bothered cultivating. I am trying to change this. This site is inspired by the Lazlo Letters and by sitting through English 302: Business Communication about 66 times. Back in the early 90s when 4800 baud was considered good, and the animated gif was the height of internet technology, I was a poor schlep forced to sit though this class some 5 times a week, 3 semesters a year, for at least 4 years. I was a computer lab monitor babysitting idiots and the immature. I remember just enough from that class to be dangerous.
Engl 302. Business Communication. (3-0) Cr. 3. F.S. S.S. Prereq: 250, junior classification. Theory, principles and processes of effective written communication typically encountered in business and the professions. Extensive practice in many areas of workplace communication, including letter, memo, and email correspondence...
When I first started this project I was unsure which address I would be sending the letters to. I mean do you send it to the marketing department, advertising, corporate headquarters, or etc.? This problem was quickly solved once I learned it's hard to find any address for most of these companies or individuals. They would prefer you contact them through email or a web form. Finding a physical address, in some cases, was quite the challenge. Some will probably even be incorrect, since I often had to resort to a third party website to find an address.
My handwriting is bad to say the least. My girlfriend says it's like a Kindergartner's. She's being too kind. I am incapable of writing a charactr the same way twice. And this is print (even I can't read my cursive if too much time has passed after I've written something down)!
Someone suggested that these letters will get me put on a "watch list," and again, the overly kind girlfriend said they won't bother doing that, they'll "just come for you in the night!" Another friend doesn't think anyone will bother writing back (he was wrong). Who knows what will happen? Not me.
But I aim to find out, aim to share, and aim to have some fun.
I am standing on the shoulders of giants on this one. Alexander Pope, John Locke, Don Novello (aka Lazlo Toth, aka Fr. Guido Sarducci), Jonathan Swift, Ted L. Nancy, Paul Rosa, Benjamin Franklin, and Ted Kazynski to name a few. This site is not a new idea, but little on the internet ever is.
I hope you enjoy my letters and responses.
Christopher L. Jorgensen
p.s. the CSS for this site comes from matthewjamestaylor.com used with permission.