I'm just not that into yHOOO!

This week's card falls under a category that is truly dear to my heart; Greeting Cards Designed For Awkward Situations That Do Not Already Have Greeting Cards Associated With Them.

If you have ever been an unrequited love-ee, then you understand the challenge associated with rebuffing the amorous advances of a platonic chum while maintaining a cordial and important friendship. As with all my owls, this one serves as a messenger so cuddly that no one would dare shoot it (unless that person was an owl hunter; and if you are an owl hunter then I sincerely hope that someone breaks into your house and kills you for sport.) Situations where a friend pitches unwanted woo at you are tricky to navigate, especially if you are seriously concerned about hurting the feelings of the other party. This card aims to get the point across with zero confusion while sparing the feelings of the friend by including such features as A DRAWING OF AN OWL and A HILARIOUS OWL PUN. Never again will you have to deal with uncomfortable tension so long as your friend has the '411' on your level of attraction to him or her. He or she can't call you out for leading him or her on, he or she can't pull the Mixed Messages card, and by nipping the problem in the bud, normal people like me don't have to worry about your friend ruining the internet by forcing all of us to wade through miles and miles of the word "Friendzone." Best of all, the friendship will remain largely intact, and might even flourish after a mutual love of owls is discovered.

This card is also great for clubbin', as it is a simple, nonverbal message to whoever it is that is trying to hump your leg that you are just not that into him or her. The only problem is that women might have difficulty squeezing several large greeting cards into clutches or their cleavage. Men would have to employ club-spec briefcases or use their cleavage. (For any gender, I recommend using specially tailored and fitted Greeting Card Totes; the kind that tenuously hug the front of your thigh. Nicer models feature 'No-Chafe' deer skin lining and also have a derringer slit.) Either way, these cards are fantastic and also stupid and not recommended for clubbin'.

Back to the Basixxx

I feel that lately I've been straying too far from the warm, wet, familiar path that has been cleared for me by cardiers past. Tonight, I'd like to get back to the roots of greeting cardery with a simple thank you card.

This card is perfect for anyone you want to thank. It could be the person that rescued you from that rogue badger, it could be the person that taught you badger safety, it could be a badger that decided to leave you alone, or it could even be your neighborhood Badger Boy; the boy who rides his bike up and down the streets of suburbia every morning as he sprays badger acid on baby badgers. (It's the least you could do after not leaving him a tip for Christmas. Immature minds with acid shooting guns should not be trifled with.) This also counts as my thank you note for all the relatives who did nice things for me over the holidays. I'm welcome.

SOPAliloquy.

I'm not the biggest fan of the internet. I do enjoy it in moderation, however. I use the internet for three main things; namely, watching "The IT Crowd," self-promoting, and miscellaneous. But I can not get over how insane society would become when it was blacked out. I was away from my computer most of the day, but even if I had been at home, I doubt I would have been as up-in-arms as some people became. I suppose this is because my attention span is too short for books, but it is not yet short enough that I would rather watch images flash across a computer screen than watch images flash across cable TV. It also helps that I am a mature member of the last generation to clearly recall life before widespread web access; a member who, in fact, had dial-up until 2009. I didn't miss anything. As I said, I appreciate the internet for the three things previously mentioned. There are people different than me (!?) however, and these people made today a very, very, very important day.

Today, January 18th, the internet shut down in a valiant effort to keep the internet from shutting down. As we all know by now, this was a glorious victory. Not only was the internet able to censor itself (because it wanted to, not because you told it to,) it was able to shelve a piece of legislation that had already been shelved days prior, making all of this mean something. What does it mean though? Freedom.

As we all know, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the Facebook status updates of college students.

And now, dear friends, we celebrate. We remember the enormous sacrifices made by the heroes that couldn't get onto Reddit for twelve hours, and we revel at the knowledge that the twin devil-heads of Intellectual Property and Artistic Entitlement have been smashed underneath the rolling treads of inactivity. However, I sit ill at ease with myself. I found last night that everybody online was lamenting the fact that the internet would be down today. And when I say lamenting, I mean lamenting. How on earth could a society become so addicted to an information network that they couldn't spend twelve hours away from it without walking to the barn with a noose?

Maybe I'm simply nostalgic, but I miss the days when home internet access was limited to whenever you weren't waiting for a phone call. I'm truly unnerved by how enamored with (and ensconced within) the world wide web America is. People have become completely dependent upon the internet for their entertainment, and, as a result, devolve into withdrawal-wrought children when a handful of websites go black for a day. The porn was still there, for god's sake, and what more could you possibly ask for?

All vitriol aside, censorship is poisonous, and it is truly a relief that SOPA and PIPA have been stopped for now.

But on a side note, I'm also relieved that the problem has receded because I could not deal with this deluge of student-union-politics and empty sloganeering for another day. And for what? Foul Bachelor Frog, I guess. But I do not need to be reminded, the users of the world can not function without him and his ilk, and his endless stream of unpaid-for music and unwatched episodes of "The Guild." This notion has inspired me. The internet has (apparently) more than enough people protecting it. I feel it's time that a few of us need to start thinking about protecting ourselves from the internet. As such, here's a suite of owl related greeting cards that tie into this theme!

This one is perfect for the kind of person you probably know.

This is a great card for any mother to give to their male child born after 1990. (Be aware, I'm no fan of the outdoors myself. Apparently there are things called bees, and things called crevasses. But even I know when it's time to table the porno.)

Speaking of which...

This is another great card for your mom to hang onto. If I were thirteen again, I would much rather have this slid under my door than have the most awkward conversation ever dropped onto my plate. I guess it's mainly just a non-judgemental, non-confrontational way to tell someone to learn how to clear the browser history. It's also an adorable way to tell your significant other that you know what he/she looks at, and that (depending on the website) you will be unable to look at him/her ever again.

On the topic of uneasy relationships, I'm sure many issues came to light today in the shadow of the internet blackout. Without the pacifier of online stimulation gently numbing the minds of the paramours of the world, many, I'm sure, suddenly realized how unbearable the person they live with is. Here's a cute way to express this feeling without having to interact with anyone!

Good luck sending 'mixed messages' with this guy up your sleeve.

I'm tired now. Rest easy, my two readers. And rest easy, internet. You have been saved from the threat of legislation; a threat which will never again appear until the next time it appears.

HAPPY M "OWL" K DAY!

As we all know, today is MLK Day in America. This is the day that we reinforce hurtful stereotypes by remembering the struggles of African Americans by not working. This is also the day where Americans of all creeds and colors gather together to paraphrase, regurgitate, or manufacture the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Holiday FUN includes:

-Over-simplifying Dr. King's messages and life story!
-Taking quotes out of context to use them to support your opinions!
-Guilt!
-Big savings at Mattress Giant!

This MLK Day was special for me in that I had the day off. I (of course) took this opportunity to have lunch with my white friends at the whitest restaurant in America that also serves soul food (Black Eyed Pea.) After engorging myself on cornbread, turnip greens, and sweet potatoes, I had an epiphany.

What if nobody in America was as sensitive and empathetic and racially accepting as I was?

Clearly I, who had never witnessed the Civil Rights Movement first-hand or ever had to endure racial prejudice, was the only man wise enough to tell people about the true message that Dr. King lived and died for. (It seems like a lot of people feel and act this way. Trust me, though, I'm the one who deserves attention.)

Since I know that this holiday is the national festival of paraphrasing, I present to you, dear spambots, my hollow glossing-over of the hero of millions.

Martin HOOOther King Jr.

This is not a visual metaphor. There are actually fish in North America that have "injustice" written on their side. The fish themselves aren't evil. In fact, they are incapable of understanding intangibles such as justice. They do taste delicious, however.

Either way, here's this week's Owl Related Greeting Card.

This card is a great way to break the ice with people of different races. It's also a great card for people who want to appear racially unbiased but are not racially unbiased.

Revelations

I have had a horrible day today. I slept in until two in the afternoon because I stayed up late last night getting drunk and watching "The Angry Beavers." Here's today's (MONDAY'S) owl related greeting card.

You're welcome.

January. Disgusting January.

I regret to inform everybody that this entry is written from a dark, dark place. You see, there is nothing on earth that grips the tender spleen of the greeting-cardier as does the passing of the holiday season. Where once a cardsmith had to scramble for reasons to sell shit to people to make a thoughtless gift seem thoughtful, the holidays have never failed to bring with them inspiration and compensation unending. A card for every holiday (even the dumb ones) and a card for every gift. This is the maxim upon which many a greeting-monger has constructed an empire. However, as surely as the clock hands spin and the page-a-day George W. Bush joke calendars thin, the holiday season draws to an anti-climactic resolution. Greeting card profits stall and plummet, and the 'Cardies' are tossed from their Mac stations to the gutter. This half of winter is so terrible that many card hawkers can't even feed their children (or step-children) their daily bowls of lunch cereal between this horrid month and Mother's Day. January is truly the cruelest month.

January.

On a more personal note, I cannot think of a name of a month (or a month itself) that I loathe more than I loathe January. January has always been significant to me, and not just to the part of me that has a greeting card lodged inside of it. I hate January, and I feel the best way to illustrate this hatred would be to describe this part of winter in a linear and narrative sense.

The pain of January's arrival begins two months before it occurs. I spend all of November looking forward to Christmas. I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. Many of the other children I grew up around would constantly affirm that they couldn't wait for Christmas to come. However, as a child, I could wait for Christmas. I felt that Christmas was more than enough reason to wait in sweet anticipation for that beautiful morning. All of the time that led up to the 25th was just as magical as the date itself. As a Christmas loving adult, that sentiment has not faded. Christmas, however, leaves. There lies the first blow of January's imminence. I dedicate two months out of every year clutching desperately to the congealed snow that is Yuletide merriment only to have the dream pounded forcibly out of my brain by none other than January. As rude awakenings go, this one is pretty nasty. Suddenly Christmas is gone. The happiest time of the year is lost to the past and cannot be dug out again until the ten other months (or, Les Dix Diarrhées,) have passed. This, however, is not the worst attack.

New Year's Eve arrives on the 31st of December (most of the time.) I celebrate the coming of the new year (or 'NYE' as illiterate jackasses call it) probably the same way you do. I work myself into a gleeful fervor by feeding my body a constant flow of moderately priced sparkling wine and spend my annual five minutes a year of viewing live network television by watching balls drop. But New Year's Eve, to me anyways, has always had a resoundingly melancholic lustre. The night, in terms of personal strife, is unlike the Christmas vacuum in that the ennui that it stirs is not so easily bedded. To me, the new year signifies one more nail in the coffin of my way of life. The house that I sleep in and the car that I drive and the memories that I lived are suddenly mustier, squeakier, and dimmer respectively. More importantly, they are all distanced from me by another unnavigable tributary in the river of linear time. I can't help but watch helplessly as the streets that I walked on only a year ago are suddenly pummeled with the cracks of age, and episodes of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' are shown on TV Land.  The past is irretrievable, and since the 31st, it is even more irretrievable. The world sidles away from the observer using New Year's Eves as mile markers, and before too long, the surface of our planet is unrecognizable (in comparison to the reference year, which is to say the best year ever, which is to say 2007.)

All of this, and we haven't even gotten to January yet.

The first two days of January pass by unnoticed (because I'm usually curled up in a ball like an anxiety ridden existentialist Sonic the Hedgehog.) On the third day of January, with my wounds still fresh and shining from the emotional tempest of the Christmas vacuum and New Year's Eve, my birthday comes. Simply put, my birthday is the day that reminds me that, as surely as I was born, I will die. I realize that's how everybody feels, but mine is in January.

January.

January has so much horrible crap inside it. The worst weather of the year is usually around January time. This is the kind of weather where it might snow, but more likely than not you'll simply be held hostage in your own home by an unmelting city-sized sheet of five inch thick ice. For kids, school starts again. I'm glad I'm not in public school anymore, because my birthday was usually the night before I had to go back to whatever god-awful hovel I was forced to learn in. January also hosts the most embarassing spectacle that normal, uncaring people are unable to escape from. I speak, of course, about the slimy, fluid-soaked circle jerk that is the Super Bowl. This is the yearly celebration where "real men" get together to talk about guns and pussy while spending money, watching advertisements, and hiding mysterious, yet firm, erections.

January.

Here's some fun things you can do at home to be depressed during January!

1. Wait for a nice, cloudy day and stare for hours at a time at a tangible relic of a wasted childhood! (Basketball hoops with no nets, rusty playground equipment, and closed-for-the-season carnivals are great for staring at!)

2. Take the concept of survivalist cannibalism into serious consideration and decide that the value of a human's life is subjective! (For extra fun, maintain this viewpoint when you observe other human beings and establish how much they and their lives are worth!)

3. Desperately and with little recommendation create greeting cards that nobody likes for a blog that nobody visits and write essays that nobody reads about things that nobody cares about and somehow expect affirmation that never arrives! (Try putting fun, inspirational decorations around your computer to inspire you to stop!)

4. Wander into a forest with the intent of being able to find your way home again while maintaining the frame of mind that you really wouldn't care if you never made it out!

5. Festively scented candles are a great way to turn any drab room into a winter wonderland! Use them to start fires on the carpet! Before they get too big, extinguish them using the bare palms of your hands and laugh heartily at the fact that doing that no longer hurts!

Oh boy. It's gonna be a long rest of the winter. Here's an owl related greeting card.