In The New York Times, Judith Newman writes of the art of email signoffs (“People go through periods where they try on different closes like hairstyles.”)

I’m all over the board on this for private emails. If I’m familial or kidding, I’ll go the route of “Stay gold” or “Kudos” or whatever.

For business emails, I’ve been favoring the generic “Regards” or “Kind Regards,” depending, recently. But most of my work correspondence is not long enough (or correspondence enough) to warrant a valediction, much less a salutation.

This is one reason why people in my department are leery about taking vacation.

[Redacted]:

Hope you’re having a good vacation!

There’s a homeless guy named Curtis living in your cubicle now. He’s usually in the kitchenette pawing through the recycling bin or down in Battery Park drinking 40s with Gregg.

But when he’s here, he’s drying his socks on your monitor and napping under your desk. He’s so lazy. John assigned him the next two cover designs for Forum but all we’ve seen are some rough sketches he made on the bottom of an empty pizza box. Michael thinks he has promise and has taken to calling him “Curtains.”

We all miss you, except for Curtains, who hopes a terrible accident befalls you so he can clear off your desk and turn your cubicle into a fort.

Amid the past few drizzly days here in New York, my lowly but strong Totes umbrella, which I’ve somehow owned and used actively since college, finally broke. There existed, however, a valiant attempt to have various manly officemates attempt to unjam the “eject umbrella” button, much as Arthur unjammed Excalibur. I dropped off my umbrella to said men, then reiterated my request for help via Nigerian-format spam, which seemed to make sense at the time. I was kind of broken up over the umbrella, you understand.

The request:

Dear Sirs,

SOLICITING FOR A BUSINESS VENTURE AND PARTNERSHIP

Before I proceed, I am grateful to introduce myself. My name is Dr. JP Young, an Ohioan. I was formerly a personal aide to PRESIDENT MILLARD FILLMORE. Due to my position and closeness with the President, I absconded with his umbrella, which was meant for his campaigns in the rainy Northwestern region of this country. Presently I have been unable to open the umbrella.

MY REQUEST: I am looking for a trustworthy individual or firm to advise me in the right investment for a new umbrella or to provide ways and means to open my present umbrella.

COMMISSION AND REMUNERATION: In regards to your commission and remuneration, I have decided to offer you a coupon for $1 off any large “Toasty” submarine-style sandwich from Quiznos to cover your expenses (telephone bills, travel expenses, hotel bills and other expenses incurred).

NOTE: I strongly believe that associating with you to embark on this and other business ventures will derive a huge success hereafter and will result in a long-lasting business partnership. Also, please return my umbrella.

YOURS TRULY,
Dr. JP Young

The response:

Our advice to you, Dr. JP Young, is to retire said umbrella (never forgetting the good times had with said umbrella,) and invest in a new type of rain deterrent that will otherwise be taking the world by storm very shortly.

I have since purchased a new umbrella. It really sucks.

My Dad’s an electrical engineer with FirstEnergy so I felt him qualified to comment on this article about a cat and mouse that got electrocuted and caused a widespread power outage in Albania.

Dad:

I don’t know anything about the Albanian power grid, but I’m having trouble thinking of a scenario where a cat and mouse, running “into an area of high-voltage cables and [getting] electrocuted,” would cause a widespread outage. Cables near the ground are insulated and won’t electrocute you. Cables on poles or on substation structures are not a high cat/mouse traffic area and the insulators would generally be too big to allow electrocution of small mammals. Where the insulators are smaller, we’ve had suicidal raccoons and squirrels (but not chasing each other) that have caused local outages, but not an entire city.

Jason:

Didn’t you also have plagues of amorous mayflies?

Dad:

We had enough playful mayflies swarming around an insulator 10 feet tall that they caused a short circuit. Now that was impressive. Those mayflies must have really thought having sex was exciting and they die shortly thereafter anyway, so why not go out “with a bang.”

Jason

World’s Ugliest Dog? My vote goes to Pee Wee Martini. (Best viewed while not eating.)

H.

I like Elwood. Figures, he’s from NJ.

Jason

I wonder if he suffers from dry tongue with it lolling like that all the time.

H.

Or maybe he just ate some peanut butter.

Jason

Yes. Or he took a quick hit from the ugly stick. (No worries: the ASPCA dictates that all Ugly Sticks must be made from Nerf brand polyurethane.)

H.

No wonder dogs bite people.

No one outside of my regulars has ever emailed me about my blog until recently. Someone Googled a phrase to the effect of “roller coaster wedding cake” and was directed to my post on the wedding of my friends Joe and Andrea, the reception for which featured a clever roller-coaster cake. I enjoyed the correspondence between Shane and Joe, in which Joe reveals behind-the-scenes cake construction details, so I decided to reproduce it here. Next time a “roller coaster fiend” who’s getting hitched wants details on a themed cake, maybe Google will kindly direct her here.

The request:

Hi there! I came across your blog while searching for “roller coaster cakes” and up popped the image from your friend’s wedding. I was wondering if you happen to know anything about who baked the cake or where they got the coaster car and rail pieces from. My fiancé and I are planning a roller coaster themed wedding next June and we’d love to have a cake with similar stylings. If you don’t know but your friend might, please feel free to pass along my email address. It is a gorgeous cake and we’d be so excited to have something similar. Thanks very much and have a great day!

Sincerely,
Shane
Bride-to-be/roller coaster fiend

The reply:

Hi Shane,

Jason forwarded your email onto me. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding.

We are glad you liked our cake. It was a hit at our own very roller coaster themed wedding. I’ve never been to a wedding where there had been such interest in the cake. When they finally cut the cake people lined up from the one end of the reception hall to the other for a piece.

The cake was done by PM Frosted Fantasies which is a local home based operation that we had met during a cake tasting event. Originally the cake was going to be a traditional looking wedding cake with flowers and piping with the coaster around it, but as we continued planning polka dots became a theme and we switched to the dots on the cake, which we think turned out much better.

From my understanding, the cake people wound up with Plan D for the coaster track. I believe originally the thought was to make it out of licorice. The track is actually black pipe cleaner and the supports are wood. The coaster car is rice crispy treat covered in fondant. They took a seated bride and groom statue and cut off the legs. We still have the entire coaster car cake topper sitting on our mantel. The tunnel in the center was a PVC pipe. One of the things we really liked about our cake people were all the flavors they had, and keeping with our theme two of the four flavors were cotton candy and caramel apple.

Some of the other roller coaster touches in our wedding:

Our invitations had a very stylized roller coaster design to them. You can see them on my wife’s knot bio.

Our save the date magnets we made with our on-ride photo from our engagement.

Our signing mat was a caricature we had done of us on the Magnum in wedding attire. We scanned the caricature and made it into our thank-you cards.

All of our tables where named after coasters, which I had fun assigning guests to.

My wife’s brother-in-law manages a restaurant and he and his bartenders came up with signature drinks that we named after coaster at Cedar Point based on their color—those were a huge hit. They had to go out and get more of the ingredients.

Good luck on your wedding and if you have any other questions or would like some photos of things let me know.

Joe

Jason:

[following a lengthy discussion about men’s clothing] Maybe I need to strap on a barrel.

S.:

I hear the barrel look is making a comeback for Spring 2009. You’d be well ahead of the fashion curve.

Jason:

I’ve heard that, too. According to Italian Vogue, there are two schools of thought on what cut of barrels we should expect: the flared hoops championed by traditional East Coast coopers or the tapered European staves favored by Diane von Fürstenberg and everyone who was at her Hamptons dinner party last weekend.

S.:

Everyone who’s anyone knows that DvF favors the wrap barrel. Like, duh.

S.:

We were seated with another table of four at Biteclub and while they weren’t rude, they were definitely not of the same mindset or tax bracket. The thing that put me over the edge was when one of them said, “You Americans and your cupcakes.” Uh, fuck you, buddy. I love cupcakes. Suck my left one.

Jason:

What does that even mean, “You Americans and your cupcakes”? What nationality were these people? Cupcakes are flour and frosting, sprinkled with the souls of saints, a portable dessert proving American ingenuity, if anything. Great balls of Thomas Edison, that’d anger me, too, to hear my country and my cake disrespected in the same sentence.

S.:

My comp is fucked. I need to re-image and back up everything this weekend, including my wave-my-MacBook-around-and-it-sounds-like-a-light-saber widget and my activate-car-alarm-with-remote-control widget. A while ago, there was some IT Guy who wanted to know what all these weird icons were in my Dock. I explained to him and he says, “Wow, you really are a geek.” I don’t know whether to take that as the ultimate compliment or the ultimate insult.

Jason:

You should take it as a compliment. IT Guys appreciate young ladies conversant in the computer arts. Hold it, aren’t you the one with an “I PWN boys” T-shirt?

S.:

Yep, I have that. I like it because it’s all 1337 (har har) and appreciate that not everyone will “get” it, and all the while, it’s bad-ass feminist.

Jason:

Wearing that in public will get you a bunch of pizza-faced bad-asses rolling a quick d20 to determine whether they have enough hit points without armor to approach you and engage in verbal P2P.

S.

Thanks for your recommendation of Laphroaig. For Christmas, I scored a bottle of 10-year for my brother and he was stoked. He also got a kick out of the fact that it was bottled when he was 12. That just made me feel old.

Jason

You’re only as old as you feel. Wait, no: you’re only as old as the number of wrinkles that appear on your forehead when you’re surprised, times eight.

S.

If I’m rocking the surprised face, I’m 24. If I’m just medium surprised, then I’m 16. (Not so sweet.) Mind you, I’m totally doing the surprised-look-on-my-face thing at my desk and feeling my forehead, as if reading Braille, for all to see. No one is paying attention anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

Jason

As I read those last two sentences, I laughed silently so hard that I cried a little. The devil is in the details.

S.

Submitted for your amusement.

Jason:

This is the creepiest American Apparel ad yet.

S.:

Does that skeevey owner bang the senior citizens, too, or just the prepubescent-looking ones?

Jason:

I think he does both. He’s an equal opportunity, vertically integrated skeeve. Although the first thing I thought of was the jolly incest cartoon from R. Crumb’s Joe Blow entitled, “The Family that LAYS Together STAYS Together!” And that’s all I’m saying about that.

S.:

You are a sick, sick individual. Sick. But funny.

Jason

When will the hipster girls adopt those giant, 1980s-professional eyeglasses? Or have they and no one briefed me?

S.

You totally missed the boat. Those are, like, so 2004.

Jason

I’ve been out of it since I let my style consultant go. Desiree spent all her time at sample sales when she should have been attending Fashion Week, planning my winter wardrobe and answering the phone in my apartment-sized closet. Lately, I’ve been using American Apparel ads to let me know what’s cool.

S.

So how come I haven’t seen you at work donning a pair of royal blue tights and nothing else?

Jason

I was totally wearing royal gold tights last Friday. Occasionally I would cup my breasts and arch my back, alive with pleasure. Then I was sent home early.

S.

I can’t believe I missed your shenanigans. If you canned your former assistant, you need a new one, right? Can my nametag say “Fashion Consultant Extraordinaire”? Or maybe “Roving Ambassador” would be nice.

Jason

I dub thee “Roving Ambassador.” Go forth and spread thy riches of snark, fashion sense and myrrh.

S.:

You may now make fun of me: I’m officially moving to Brooklyn. (No, it will not be Williamsburg.)

Jason:

It pains me, how much of a hipster you are. You’re like an alcoholic, but for coolness.

S.:

Good burn there. My witty retort will be one of those l’esprit de l’escalier things. Fucker.

Jason:

Isn’t that just like a Brooklyn hipster to interject a casual email with French.

Jason:

All this chatter about vajayjay leads me to wonder whether an appropriate male-counterpart word should be panini.

O.:

I always thought that was the plural form.

Jason:

Panini is the plural of panino so if we're getting all William Safire, it should be the latter. But panini is better because: 1.) everyone calls the sandwich that, and 2.) it has that repeated syllable at the end like vajayjay.

O.:

Then shouldn't it be penini?

Jason:

Yeah, O.K. Maybe.

Jason:

Supposedly the attachment to this email is a photo file. I think the extension is just wrong. Any way to open it? Winner receives a copy of the Madonna CD, Ray of Light, plus a hearty handshake.

O.:

I won’t try to open it based entirely on the prize offered.

Jason:

Consolation prize is the Madonna CD, chucked at your head.

O.:

There’s no data in the document. Tell them to send the correct fucking format.

Jason:

Really all I wanted to do was throw a Madonna CD at you.

O.:

That’ll cost extra.

Jason:

[throws Madonna CD at O.]

Headline:

The title of the new Indiana Jones movie [will be] Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Jason:

Wasn’t this the title of a Nancy Drew Mystery?¹

O.:

Christ, I thought it was a Harry Potter book.

Jason:

Now we just need to fire up the tired jokes everyone will make or has already made about Ford’s agedness.

Jason:

Indiana Jones and the Slightly Soiled Adult Diaper

O.:

Indiana Jones and The Tower of Cialis

Jason:

Indiana Jones and the Sansabelt Slacks

O.:

Indiana Jones and the Early-Bird Special

Jason:

Indiana Jones and the Low-Battery Hearing Aid

O.:

Indiana Jones and The Clapper (costarring Paris Hilton)

Jason:

Indiana Jones and the Jaundiced Pallor

Jason:

Indiana Jones and Those Damn Teens

O.:

Indiana Jones and the Redolent Smell of Urine

Jason:

You win.

O.:

Oh, I’m just getting started. Indiana Jones and the Wraparound Sunglasses, Indiana Jones and the Ostentatious Red Convertible, Indiana Jones and the Inappropriately Young Girlfriend, Indiana Jones and the Colonoscopy of Evil, Indiana Jones and the Wobbly Walker of Death

Jason:

Cut it out, spazz.

¹ Almost, as it turns out. Legend of the Crystal Skull will be the name of the newest Nancy Drew video game, to be released next month. [back]

Headline:

“Breaking News: Jason Young Replaces Bob Callahan as CEO of Ziff Davis”

S.:

I didn’t know you were in the running.

Jason:

Yes, thanks to that persistent corporate recruiting firm. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed my tenure here, but Ziff Davis has those comfy Aeron chairs everywhere, not just in their conference room.

S.:

I like the cinder block they gave me.

Jason:

I’m proud of my submission for this week’s New Yorker caption contest. Maybe I’ll win! Also maybe Maggie Gyllenhaal will invite me over to her place for brunch and a few rounds of Boggle!

K.:

You’d probably have more luck sharing a Hot Pocket with Peter Sarsgaard while partaking in a few rounds of virtual tennis on the Nintendo Wii.

IT Guy:

I will be going around to your computers this evening installing fixes from Microsoft and Apple to correct various daylight savings time issues with your computers. What I do not finish I will be completed tomorrow. If I come desk, let me sit there for ten minutes and then I will be out of your way.

Jason:

Has IT Guy been outsourced to a Nigerian spammer?

O.:

“If I come desk”???

Jason:

“I will be completed tomorrow.”
And then IT Guy rested, for it was good.

Jason:

O.K., here’s a story for you. I feel most sorry for that dog. Criticism of an award-winning children’s book over the word “scrotum” has brought Susan Patron’s “The Higher Power of Lucky” into the top 40 on Amazon.com. [It’s] the story of a 10-year-old girl in rural California and her quest for “Higher Power.” The opening chapter includes a passage about a man “who had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked ’62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.” Librarians have been debating whether “scrotum” was an appropriate word for young readers, especially from a book with the Newbery seal.

O.:

I heard about this on The Daily Show the other night and Jon Stewart said knowing that “scrotum” was in the book would get thousands of kids reading just to get to that part...that in fact, if you wanted kids to read, you’d put “boobs” on every fifth page.

Jason:

Yeah! Let ’em read! My response to tizzies like these is: seriously, were these disgruntled people ever children? Kids know the lingo and they’ve seen the pictures. They have the internet, dammit. Their knowledge is rarely 100% accurate but kids of a certain age are hyperaware of the world at large, its pleasures and perversions. Didn’t these librarians ever do that thing where you sandwich your hands together, link them with your friend’s sandwiched hands held perpendicular to yours, then one of you opens his hands and it sort of looks like a vagina in there?

O.:

F. used to do that and take pictures of it with his cellphone.

Jason:

I’m glad you know what I’m talking about. It’s one of those things that’s easy to do but tough to describe. Like, um, riding a bicycle.

Jason:

I love how Jayson Blair is now writing about bipolar disorder, which he says played a “huge role” in his plagiarism problems.

H.:

And he’s self-employed in a “profitable retail business.” Translation: He’s working the hot dog counter at Wal-Mart.

Jason:

I wonder: Can we take him at his word that the franks are all-beef? What’s his source?

H.:

I think the franks are mostly baloney.

It started with a discussion about this week’s “big moon” that I had with a coworker in the production department. Yesterday, she took and posted a photo of the moon and today I emailed her the explanation why it looks huge but doesn’t photograph that way. A brief but lively debate ensued; reckon with our childlike/Hindi reasoning!

O.

That’s cool, although I think it looks bigger because cheese is bigger when it’s new because of water content. As the moon rises in the sky, the green cheese dehydrates and the moon gets smaller as it rises. Mmm... Cheese.

Jason

Nah, the moon looks bigger because the Earth rests on an infinite stack of turtles, and there's more of them in the summer because it’s warm and they like ice cream, so the Earth is closer to the moon.

O.

Well that doesn’t make any sense at all! Turtles can’t hold ice cream cones.

Jason

The ice cream cones are held in the four arms of Ganesh, protector of all and the giver of happiness and good fortune. And ice cream.

O.

He could hold five, given that he has a prehensile trunk. But I guess one is for him. Gods like ice cream too.