My secret mail fetish

Just a little tidbit about something I like to do in my spare time. So, you know how you get junk mail for credit cards, and home loans, etc... I love how they always have some gimmick to ensure you'll open the envelope because, hey, getting us to open it is half the battle, right? The important looking envelope that says, "DO NOT DISCARD!", "DATED MATERIAL", "IMPORTANT DOCUMENT ENCLOSED". They make me laugh so much, and the list goes on. The little sticker that you MUST stick on the special spot on the reply form to get the AmAzInG 0.0% finance charge or when it comes with a plastic card already, but the card just has their website printed on it or something. Anyway, the important thing here is that it comes with an envelope inside the envelope that has a special little phrase in the corner where the stamp should go. It says, "No postage necessary if mailed in the United States". As soon as the full realization of what this means hits, you will understand why I sit in my living room cackling with glee while opening junk mail. Cackling with glee! That's right. So I started by just taking their dumb credit card offer and stuffing it in the return envelope and sending it back to them, just because I thought it was a surefire way to get myself off their mailing lists. That worked with some of them, but the more persistent ones must have some sort of automated system that actually increases my junk mail when I do that. Capital One is so far my prime offender. You know, those envelopes hold a lot more than they look like they'll hold. So I would fold up the bigger envelope it all came in and stuff that in there too. Then I started adding other junk mail, the ones that didn't come with the magic return envelope. Yep, Capital One now has a steady source of Papa John's pizza coupons, direct from the Aaron household. You are welcome Capital One. Mind you, I am Cackling with glee! So it just gets better and better. I start getting special offers from them that have a special envelope that says, "WARNING: TAMPERING WITH THIS ENVELOPE OR ITS CONTENTS MAY RESULT IN LEGAL ACTION",Now, I do not know if they started printing this as a result of people sending them envelopes stuffed to the brim with coupons, newspaper, food wrappers and their own junk and thinking the words "LEGAL ACTION" might scare them into stopping it, but it just made me laugh again. Of course they are referring to the law about mail tampering, but it shouldn't apply to me because I am the one initially putting the stuff into it, which isn't tampering. Sorry, that was a tangent. So now I get about three offers per week from Capital One and two from Bank One plus some from random companies. That is about 7 offers per week. So I have started a little more than a distraction and more of a production of it. I walk around the office at work here and find all kinds of cool junk. Used pens, ball bearings, pennies, broken computer parts, used batteries and SO MUCH MORE! I stuff them to the brim with trash, heavy trash if I can find it and I tape a little note to the back of the envelope that says semi-clever little quips like, "Stop killing trees!" or "Can you tell I'm not interested yet?" which doesn't seem to work. What is does do is make me CACKLE WITH FRICKEN' GLEE! I mean, there are very few things in the world that make me cackle so.

The moral here is that it supports our postal service and discourages junk mail which I believe is a giant waste of natural resources. I hear you can even tape the envelope to a brick and it'll mail, but I haven't tried it yet (mostly due to a lack of bricks). I encourage everyone to do the same. Maybe you'll feel the cackle within as well.

-Aaron