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E-mail or snail mail, oodles of it is junk mail

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By Bill Wundram | Tuesday, July 15, 2008 9:10 AM CDT | () comments

All of us like to get mail. I used to get a lot of real mail at the office, envelopes with stamps, but now it is slim pickings. Most of my office mail comes by way of e-mail.

There isn’t a day when I don’t get an offer for a bargain on a dozen roses for my wife. There are two or three e-mail messages a day from Obama headquarters. I don’t read them. McCain sends only one or two a day. I don’t read them either. About once a week I get a plea from some shyster who wants me as a co-signer to share some fortune in Liberia. All they need is my Social Security number and $20,000 as down payment to divvy up $20 million or so.

Every now and then I get a kick out of what people send me at the office, like once I got a pancake, hardened with Elmer’s Glue. It carried a written message and 85 cents postage. It made it through the mail.

Lots of the mail I get at home comes in two categories:

No. 1 – An organization wanting money.

No. 2 – Catalogs, gobs of catalogs.

Catalogs come to mind because my wife is so infatuated with catalogs that once, when she tripped over the dog and broke her shoulder, she pleaded for me to put some catalogs on the gurney when medics took her to the hospital.

The catalogs are a diversion, but I am annoyed by all the requests for money. I wonder if all the money spent on postage would just as well be given to the cause they are seeking cash for. Once you send them money, you are forever on their list. I once got big-hearted and sent $50 to a college in a distant state. They now think of me as an alumnus, regularly asking for dough and sending me slick, thick brochures. By now, they must have spent far more on postage than the $50 I sent them.

At home, we get all kinds of requests for money for good causes. My wife always feels guilty in not sending money because so many of them enclose sheets of little stickers with our names on them to use as return addresses on envelopes. You can’t pass up sending a donation to some organization that sends you stickers with an American flag. If there are flowers on the stickers, my wife is an easy touch to send them $5 or $10. We have a desk drawer with thousands of stickers.

Some realize you’re going to throw away the envelope before you open it. To make you think twice, a trick is to put big letters on the envelope, “This is your LAST CHANCE!” Never mind, what it is a last chance for. It may be for a lot in a cemetery.

Just yesterday, I received a plea for cash from a worthy organization. The plea was touching, but oh, so familiar: “Your support is essential. Without your generous assistance, we don’t have the opportunity to provide hope for ...”

Have you noticed, it’s always, “your support is essential.”

Add-cetera

ON THE MARQUEE of Hooters in Davenport:

“Honk if you like peace and quiet.”

A FRIEND, returning from Europe, sends a photo of a new toilet cleaning product on the shelves in the Slovak Republic. It’s called Colon.

First Sven and Oley joke of the weak

Sven is visiting Oley and is surprised to see that Oley has two new dogs. He asks, “Vat names did you give dem dogs?”

“Vell,” says, Oley, “Vun of dem dogs I call Rolex, and dat utter vun I call Timex.”

Sven says, “Who-effer heard of naming dogs like dat?”

“Dey are watch dogs,” says Oley.

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com