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.