Build Date: Tue Nov 10 01:20:39 2026 UTC
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken
Making Junk Mail Work For You
2000-02-21 18:15:18
Although my e-mail inbox is regularly filled with unsolicited messages selling APL Compilers, Dutch pastry recipes, and Czech get-rich-quick schemes, my postal mailbox is full of even more nefarious spam. Here's how I deal with it.
Somehow my address and full name (spelled any number of ways) has crept its way onto many a mailing list for coupons, catalogs, and free magazine samples. I spend a good portion of my afternoons each Sunday sorting my mail into three piles: mail I want, mail I don't want, and mail with business reply envelopes.
Few appreciate the generosity put forth by those who send you business reply mail cards or envelopes. Business reply mail cards say "Postage will be paid by addressee" or "No postage necessary if mailed in the United States". This means that THEY WILL PAY THE POSTAGE COSTS no matter HOW LUDICROUS!
Just take all of the junk mail you receive, strip off your name and address, and shove it in a big envelope. Insert a note saying "enclosed is the information you requested" and krazy-glue the business reply card to the outside.
For bills that include stupid advertising sheets alongside the request for payment, include a nasty note saying something like "Throw this out for me, you mouth-breathing spam monkeys. Don't send any more or I will send my brother after you. He's a lawyer.".
For organizations that pester you to the point of extreme GAR, simply affix the reply card to an ordinary brick or cinderblock and dump it in your neighborhood mailbox. Thanks to the miracle of BUSINESS REPLY MAIL, it will go to its destination on THEIR DIME! Beaujolais to that!
A note to those of you who are hopped up from licking stamps all day and are about to rush out and try this: Do NOT put your return address on the envelope! As a matter of fact, put ANOTHER DAMN COMPANY in the return address. The post office will send this goddamn brick bouncing all over these United States trying to figure out who will pay the postage on the damn thing!
It's no wonder postal workers all go apeshit and shoot each other. They're so overworked sending bricks from bored punks all over creation. As a matter of fact, I'm amazed that there aren't more headlines like "POST OFFICE BRICKFIGHT LEAVES 12 DEAD" out there.
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