LISTEN:

It’s like this; sending this thing by courier is gonna be more trouble than it’s worth, since I’d have to find one that can make a weekend delivery to a residential address. Couriers hate that shit. So I would get fed ex or whomever, and they would say, well, okay, we’ll do it but overnight weekend to a fucking residence will cost $100, and then when they get there you will not answer the door because you will think it’s [name withheld], or they will come at the very moment that you’ve dashed across the street to get a fucking corn fritter, and all you will get is a green slip stuck to your door that says fed ex was here and please report to our deep in the northeast plant to pick up your package during our regular business hours monday to friday 8:00 to 3:30pm and then you’re screwed. So instead, I’ve hacked it into four bits which I am now e-mailing you. I am enclosing the first bit here and want you to drop me a line when you get it and indicate that you are okay with this plan and that I should continue with the others. They are no bigger than the pirated mp3s we often send one another. Like this:

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MAGNA CUM LAUDE

In convocations this week, we have the Killer, who, seemingly without breaking a sweat, plucked her second BA, honors, Magna Cum Laude, from the degree tree, this one out of the University of Ottawa. Also, the coolest dude we at Mango Pudding Blues have ever met, M, becomes Doctor M today in a bizarre ritualistic ceremony that will involve a circle of gravely serious men and women in colored robes and funny hats. M, PhD, we salute you. Killer, BA, BA, we salute you too. Also, C is probably getting his MA in communications this week, or sometime soon, but hasn’t really mentioned it to us; is probably not attending the thing; is too busy with preparations for his upcoming nuptials. We salute C, MA as well.

We ourselves, we’d like to remind you, do not even hold a high school diploma. We are uneducated. Bucktoothed. Hillbillies. Scratchin’ out these words on the back of a shovel with a lump of coal, Abe Lincoln style. You know?

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

Oh, unhappy accident. We had intended to write all sorts of wonderful things here in order to bury the Saturday entry for our faithful Monday morning readers, but we screwed up. Oh well. Here, apropos of nothing, here is a lovely anecdote from C from his brief stint, years ago, as a graphic designer for a major Canadian corporation.

“Did I tell you I once drove a perfectly nice print rep from (name of print brokerage withheld) to a nervous breakdown? The catalogue I was doing was so impossibly poorly done that he eventually cracked under the strain of being stuck between me and his print men. He just didn’t go into work one day, moved home to his parents and never called me or his employer again. Eventually, his boss had to finish the job. Then his boss had to deal with my boss because I refused to pay. The catalogue (mostly because I had designed it, gleefully, hackishly in Corel) was an absolute abomination which arrived four months late. We paid 50% about four months after that. I don’t know why I felt like reminiscing. That really was a sort of legion war story, wasn’t it?”

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