Punk'd by mail (or: Stan's blog #2,372,781)

I just about have the template ready for a new blog that will showcase many of the prank letters I have written over the last ten years. It's not ready for a launch yet, as many of the letters need to be transcribed from photocopies, and I haven't figured out how to make every day 27 hours long.
I'd like to build up a little archive, so that people aren't bored with just one or two posts. It will be slow.

I cryptically alluded to this occasional hobby of mine (prank letter writing, not blog creation) in a very early post on this blog. Just as in the county letterhead project of a few months back, I have written many of these letters as different "characters", each with different personalities, styles of writing, and reasons for writing in the first place.

One character is full of inventions or ideas. One is a concerned consumer who just cannot believe that a company would "do such a thing"—that thing being something I made up. There's a guy who has special needs for hotel and restaurant accommodations. One person has (ridiculous) business plans, and just needs the approval of city government, leasing offices, etc. to get the ball rolling. There's a forgetful person who just keeps leaving very odd personal belongings behind at tourist locations. And then there's the character of myself, who is an amplified version of my wacky, nerdy real-life self.

Schizophrenic much? Maybe.

I wrote these letters mostly for my own entertainment. It gave me a thrill to check my mailbox and see an envelope from a corporation—even if I knew that there might just be a bland form letter inside. I had ideas of collecting a large enough volume of letters that I could submit them for book publication, but because I didn't get a high percentage of responses, I never felt that it came together. It was still a fun hobby, though, and I may pick it back up again someday.

I'll let you all know when I'm ready to kick off the new site.