Well, I'm not really doing something new....I've been doing it for about 7 months now and I'm just now getting around to telling you about it. I am combatting heinous evil. It comes in two forms: repeat calls from telemarketers who have been politely asked to never jingle-jangle-jingle my tellyphone again and the insane amount of junk mail I receive (both in bills I owe and independently of them).

When a telemarketer phones my home for the first time, I VERRRY nicely (and quite carefully, I might add) request that they never call again. Hell, everybody's gotta have a job. I don't begrudge 'em that. When they offer their fierce-and-firm rebuttals, as they have been trained to do, I raise my voice just a notch, harden it and ask, "Did you NOT HEAR ME?" Then my tone softens and I purr, "I said no thank you." When they rebut yet again, I begin making up utterly asinine and repulsive swear words. Some swear back, and I cackle like a lunatic while tossing out more vile, jutting poetry. They get skeered and hang up. Most just take the high road and do this in the first place. Before I have to result to creative cursing, I mean. They know a woman on the edge when they hear one, baby.

When offending company calls back a second time, I mimic every fucking word, every fucking sound that they emit. I copy the long, pregnant pauses. My short-term memory is for shit since I had a mild stroke 10 years ago, but it is remarkbly viable and reliable when it comes to this little game. Can I just take a second to thank God on this tip? It's like my consolation prize: "Hey, Jettster, sorry that you got the ischemic smackdown laid to ya, however mild it may have been. As a show of my affection for you, however, your synaptic interface will remain intact when dealing with telemarketers and assholes at the grocery store....". Most eventually get incredibly frustrated with this Machiavallian preschool-esqe dance, and fairly quickly. They hang up. Others try to proselytize ("Hey man, this is my job, okay?") requiring me to respond with the standard, "Then you should have researched better and understood before dialing that I have made the polite request in the past to never hear from you people again." Then I thank them and hang up.

One afternoon I was ensconced in something that required my full attention, and I was a bit frustrated. I was expecting a call from a someone regarding some revisions to what I was working on, so I quickly pounced on the desk phone when it rang. Telemarketer. Female. Mid-twenties. I told her no thanks and I'm waiting on a call. She proceeded. I began the repeater game, but not with the sound of glee that I usually carried in my voice when the game was afoot. My voice was tight and hard and biting and very, very s-a-r-c-a-s-t-i-c. She started in on the 'lady-i'm-just-doing-my-job' tapdance. I started swearing. Worlds swirled and collided as our back-and-forth 'i-can-be-the-biggest-c***' war escalated. I totally lost my cool, becoming enraged and screaming, "I said I'm not INTERESTED, WHORE!!!" before I slammed the receiver down. Totally unoriginal and lame. Below par, for fuck's sake.

The phone rang. Expecting it to be the call I was waiting for, I smoothed my voice and hackles before mashing the speakerphone button.

"WHOOOORRRRE!!!" the telemarketer screeched. Ooooh. Oooh-OOOOOH-oooh. Calmly, I said, "Listen, dolly...." I told her that fiery lice were gonna eat her intestines and she'd be concious throughout the whole agonizing experience. Afterward, she'd have to shit -in excruciating pain each time- through a straw for her abnormally long life. I told her that I could most assuredly arrange this should she decide to fuck around. Then I cackled like a madwoman with grease in her eyeballs and a headful of fire. Oh yeahhhhhhh.

As you can guess, THAT particular evil has yet to call back, and it's going on two months now (a record, beautiful reader).

When I receive a bill nowadays it has ten trees' worth of filler in it, hawking other crap or simply telling me useless stuff that I already know (and I quote, "There simply aren't enough hours in the DAY!"). This used to be an annoyance reserved for the demonic credit card entities, but due to bandwagon-hopping and the spread of idiocy, just about everyone's doing it. Credit card companies are still the worst, though. It's like they feel grossly compelled to send me five enclosures for every one the other companies are sending out. Y'know, just so that I'm aware that they're the masters of this perverted game, and so the other guys are aware as well.

So I've taken to carefully stuffing each of these 'premium offers' and 'important facts' into the return envelope, nestling my check far within the depths of the useless shit they send out to me. I do this with pleasure every single time. It's a joke that never seems to lose its humor or magic.

Special offers bulk-mailed to me? I return everything except the sign-up card in the postage-paid envelope. Maybe I'm doing nothing but satisfying my own little snarky urges. BUT, "for want of a nail".....my envelope could be the fifteen or so cents that makes or breaks them one day. It's fun to (rather psychotically) fantasize about it, anyway.

Hell, if several people would join me in this crusade, we could potentially cripple some jackass business that does this. If nothing else, maybe someone would finally get the subtle message.....