Letters from Dale.

Rather than do something useful with what little spare time I have, such as read the Bible from G to R for the first time in ten years, or come up with a solution to Zimbabwe's many problems, or finish my partially-written full-length play, I am instead going to write letters. These letters will be written to corporations or organizations or associations, and they might read something like this:

"To whom it may concern at Capital One:

"I am very confused. I have recently seen your commercial where Santa’s sleigh is hijacked by burglars who need the vehicle as they did not have the foresight to use your Miles One card. But when Santa says “What’s in your wallet?” to the camera, he is smiling and otherwise seems very happy, even though he is aware that his sled -- which, as far as I am aware, is his only means of giving presents to hundreds of millions of children around the world -- has been pilfered. I am very disappointed you did not use this opportunity to give this commercial a heartrending denouement with Santa in the fetal position on the snow, crying with the knowledge that this will be the least happy Christmas ever for children upon children. I refuse to get a Capital One card until you replace this single-minded naiveté with a set of commercials that accurately portrays the range of emotions felt by humans: fear, devotion, hatred, carnal lust, thirst.

"Also you should have a talking pig because Babe was a talking pig and Babe was cute.

"Sincerely,
"Dale Prins"

So I will then take the letter and send it, via USPS, to the most appropriate address I can find for that company, and I will await their confused reply. (Of course I will not send this one for reasons apparent to 60 percent of HPS readers, but it explains the premise.) This will be fun.

Here are the rules:

1. Every Tuesday, I will come up with a list of five possible entities to send letters to. These ideas will be ideas that readers have submitted, ideas I have come up with, and rejected ideas from previous weeks. You will vote for one of the five ideas. The entity/idea with the most votes will be written to/about. If there is a tie, I get to break the tie. (I have no vote otherwise.)
2. There will be no lying in these letters. I will not say that I need to travel from Richmond to Washington, D.C. on Amtrak wearing a giant gorilla suit and is that okay, unless I am willing to wear the giant gorilla suit on a Richmond-D.C. train.
3. There will be no attempts to get free products or money in these letters, unless the attempt is very funny.
4. There will be no attempts to rectify legitimate problems with a company, unless the attempt is very funny.
5. There will be no letters to people I know or knew; you cannot say, "Oh, okay, Dale, write a letter to your tenth-grade crush telling her that she was your tenth-grade crush," because no.
6. Unless necessary, I will not be giving out my phone number, because yeah like I want to explain these letters over the phone. (Obviously, I have to give out my address.)
7. I will be using my middle name, "Dale," as my first name because "Dale Prins" does not in a Google search lead to this website nor does he have a number in the Richmond phone book.

So that is that. Here are the choices for this Thursday:

1. Southwest Airlines; a poem for their flight attendants to read that mentions how unlikely it is that this plane will crash.
2. American Mathematical Society; asking that if since my parents live 1150 miles away, and they drive about 65MPH and I drive about 75MPH, at what mile should we meet at if we each want to drive about the same amount of time
3. Volkswagen; asking if they will give me a brand-new Passat, just because
4. Arizona Cardinals; cover letter applying for the new head coaching vacancy
5. Marquis Who's Who; asking why I am not in Who's Who of American Art, despite the popularity of "Parker and Bradley"

This should be fun. I think.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 8.

---

This or that.

I am speaking somewhat prematurely, as I have not yet opened all of Kim's presents to me, but I have a small bit of Christmas money, and with that money I have decided I am going to buy one of two items: a 128MB MP3 player, or a cheap, slightly used GPS unit. I can get either of them for around $60 (which is slightly more Christmas money than I have, but whatever), and both have the added motivation of making my walk-a-marathon training more palatable (although I'm not having a terribly hard go of it). The quandary: I have a 32MB MP3 player already, so maybe that leads me to choosing the GPS, but what I would like the GPS for (figuring out how much distance I've covered and what speed I am walking at) can be done (if less accurately and less interestingly) with a $15 pedometer. So. Help.

Tomorrow.
I will tell you the big new HPS idea. It will be fun.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 2.

---

Oh.

If I were a better man, I would have mentioned that I am on vacation and thus now would be a great time to break into our house. Also, it may also mean that this will also be my last weblog post until also next Monday. However, I have just gotten the cleverest newest idea to start out next year on the blog, and we will see if I am brave enough to implement it.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 2.

---

"I can't operate on him. He's my son."

Within the past 24 hours -- but not as I am writing this -- I have worn a specific item of clothing. If I were 100 pounds larger, I would not be able to wear this piece of clothing successfully, but if I were 100 pounds lighter, assuming that I were not dead due to malnutrition, I would have no problem wearing this item just as comfortably as I did within the past day. What is it?

---
Martha, a 50-pound child, read in a book that a helium balloon three-feet in diameter has can lift about 9/10ths of a pound. So when Martha went to the carnival, she bought 60 three-foot balloons, tied half to each arm, and waited to be lifted in the air. She didn't move an inch. So she bought another 60 three-foot ballons, tied them along with the originals to her arms, and she still wasn't lifted into the air. She untied all the balloons and continued surveying the carnival. Half-an-hour later, she bought 60 more three-foot balloons, tied them to her arms, and was promptly floating in mid-air. Why?

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 11.

---

Rhymeless songs.

On my drive to the dress rehearsal for tomorrow's bell concert, sometime between thinking it would be awesome to have a bumper sticker that said "Roosevelt/Fairbanks in '04!"¹ and wondering whether if I was supposed to be at the church where we usually rehearse (which I was heading to) or the church where we are playing tomorrow (which I should have been heading to), I was considering Andrew's rhymelog (specifically this), and how much easier it it would be to write rhyming poems if they did not have to rhyme, and how it's strange how there are very few songs that don't rhyme, and only marginally more songs that only rhyme once or twice, and so now I am coming up with a list of cool songs that don't rhyme, or don't rhyme very much, and although you will never best this one, I would still like to see your suggestions.

---
1 I knew Roosevelt before looking it up; of course, I didn't know Fairbanks.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 5.

---

Back by popular demand

I believe I last left you in the foyer. Our home features a traditional "left-right entry". On the left you see our dining room, complete with chair rail and crown molding. It also has really bright red walls that I don't think I would have originally chosen. However, in seeing it in there it is one of the few rooms in this house I don't have the urge to repaint. I have no idea when we'll actually have dining room furniture, but you've got to have something to aspire to.

On the right of the foyer is the living room. After Christmas it will become the music room. With as many instruments as Matthew has and plays, they seemed to need their own room. And whenever we finally get a piano, it will be a nice formal addition to a formal room. But, it sure didn't seem like we needed a second set of sofas just for show. Maybe one loveseat for listening to Matthew play beautiful music, but for now it's the home of our rather large Chrismas tree.

     

Continuing back from the foyer, we get to the family room. It's a bit smaller than our old family room, but the old house only had one great room while this house has both a family room and a living room. It still has ample space for our sofas and entertainment center and a coffee table if we ever chose to buy one. We also have a lovely fake fireplace. Well, it's not fake in the sense that it's purely decorative. But, there is no chimney and you can't actually burn wood in it. You simply flip the lightswitch on the wall and on comes the gas flame. It is more convenient and it has a mantlepiece where we can hang our stockings.

oh so lovingly written by Kimberly |  these are comments, 3.

---

Crap.

I thought I was so clever and original with that title for an upcoming short film, but it turns out I wasn't.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  this is comment, one.

---

Strange cold-induced math trivia question of the week.

If K*L=I and B*R=P, then what is X*Z? (Answers only at this point; please do not give away your reasoning.)

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 11.

---

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  this is comment, one.

---

Um.

I am 60 percent sure I just experienced my first earthquake about 30 seconds ago. Or the building I work is about to collapse. One of the two. If it's the latter, I leave all my CDs to Beth-Annie, and all my DVDs to Ed, and, um, I guess Kim can have the house.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 16.

---

The daily trajectories of the two types of illnesses I get.

Illness one:

7:00a: Uuuggghhh. The inside of my stomach is being slowly gnawed on by flesh-eating slugs. I want to puke, but I'm not sure that the slugs are going to be able to make it all the way up without getting stuck along the way. I am not, not, not moving from this bed.

8:00a: I guess I'm a little better, and I really don't want to be docked pay at work, so I suppose I'll go in -- just for a half-day or so. But if I start feeling crappy, I'm heading home straight away.

9:00a: Eh. My stomach's not too bad, so I should probably try to get some Saltines or 7-Up down. Maybe I really can make it through all eight working hours.

10:00a: When does Burger King start serving lunch, and do they still have the Triple Whopper?

---
Illness two, which would be the type I currently have:

7:00a: Uuuggghhh. I'm so tired. Last night I'm not sure I got any sleep at all; I spent most of it in this half-comatose state where I could feel the hours passing but was still somehow unable to move my body or concentrate on anything.

7:30a: Huh. Despite the lack of sleep, I feel rather refreshed. And the effects of my illness seem to have subsided overnight. I might actually be done with this mangy virus.

9:00a: La la la. Life is great.

10:30a: Hmm. I'm feeling a little funny, but I'm probably just hungry because of the lack of food I've had the past couple days. Let's go find a little something to eat.

11:00a: Uuuggghhh. Bad idea.

12:00p: Uuuuuugggggghhhhh.

2:00p: Uuuuuuuuugggggggghhhhhh.

Et al.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  these are comments, 6.

---

Fun television fact of the week.

Assuming that the show uses actual Richmond locations rather than fictionalized ones, the FBI office that the good guys in "Line of Fire" run their operations out of is less than a mile from Kim's and my previous house (and almost exactly a mile from our church).

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  this is comment, one.

---

*cough cough*.

I am sick. But I am not sick enough to stay at home. But I am sick enough that going to work today is not very much fun. In particular, I feel weak, but only in the upper half of my body -- the respiratory half, since that's the part that's having the problem. I am drinking a Coke Slurpee. That helps. And no, a Coke Slurpee is not soda because it is not carbonated, so I am not breaking my promise in the post prior.

oh so lovingly written by Matthew |  this is comment, one.

---

Sundry.

In no particular order:

* From now through the beginning of the New Years' Eve Solve-a-Mystery party that it looks like we'll be attending, I shall no more drink carbonated beverages, except for maybe All-Sport if I come across some and probably some Clearly Canadian at my parents-in-laws' house. (I believe the penultimate word is both pluralized and possessivized correctly, but I'm willing to hear arguments con.) In short: No more soda. And I'm going to stop using intravenous drugs.

* Ha ha. That last sentence is a joke. I'm just going to cut back a bit.

* Whoever anonymously sent me their Mr. Picassohead picture: You are a better artist than I.

* Speaking of artists: So I have this film, "A Week of Prayers," that I've had in the semi-works for the past three or four months. Post-Christmas, I am seriously going to work on it. And I have this idea. And I want to know from the artists among you how difficult it would be.

So for each of the seven days during the eponymous week, we will see a video of a youngish woman getting ready for bed. And then she gets into bed. And then there is a knock on the door, and she gets out of bed, and she answers, and there is a shirtless man with a tool belt on the other side, and he says, "I'm here to fix your plumbing," and then they make passionate love until morning, and then we find out that she had not even put in a call to have the plumbing repaired!

No. That does not sound very right. So she gets into bed. And then she turns off the light. And then she starts talking to God -- mentally rather than out loud, but you the viewer can still hear her thoughts. (Freaky!) And then she eventually falls asleep, and then we go to day two, and more or less the same thing happens, except this time it is a businessman at the door, and he says, "I'm here to do your taxes."

Anyway, so every night, she gets into bed, and then she turns off the light, and then she prays. This is more difficult than you might think, as my useful but sad digital video camera is not even terribly fond of medium-light situations. (If it could be pointed at the sun all day, it would be happy.) So, a couple weeks ago, I came up with this idea.

Animation.

As soon as the light goes out, the scene changes from live action to animation. 15 frames per second or so.

Question to drawers: How difficult would this be?

* Parker and Bradley are planning on returning tomorrow.

* After slacking off during week one of my 19-week marathon training, I have now successfully completed weeks two, three, and three-and-a-half without missing any of my four- or five-a-week training walks. Yay me.

The greatest website in the history of websites.

It's this one.

But this is a close second.

Guided tours now starting. Line forms to the left.

By popular demand, I shall begin giving virtual tours of the new house. And every good house tour should begin at the grand foyer. OK, so ours may not qualify as "grand" but it sure is more impressive than the previous plot of linoleum. This one has hardwood floors and a lovely two-story entrance. I especially love the view from the overlook on the second floor (and the overlook, incidentally, makes a great place for last year's birthday plant).

To the left of the foyer is the dining room, and to the right is the living room (soon to be known as the music room). And you can just catch a glimpse of the family room, the next stop on our tour.

   

A How Perfectly Swell Christmas.

So obviously I've pretty much ignored the points thing since the beginning of the year, and I never did give out prizes for the points winners from last year, so instead, all the HPS loyal fans will be receiving a special Christmas gift either in the mail or in person. (All shall be receiving the same gift, mostly.) Depending on how cool or lame you are, you will think this gift either cool or lame, but I am spending good money on these presents (if not much of it), so please either like them or don't like them and lie about it.