If you think ecards and greeting cards are - at best - insipid, mass-produced tokens of insincere sentiment, then I like you. And also, welcome to Wrongcards.
400 years ago Boston was a drop-off point for a religious sect who frowned upon the entire concept of pleasure. But nowadays Bostonians all swear they're from Ireland. I was pretty skeptical they had any Irish ancestry at all until presented with the irrefutable evidence of green socks on St. Patricks Day. Thank God. I thought they were all mad...
I was raised by my Nanna, a sort of road-side shaman who drank a lot alcohol-based solvents and read the entrails of demon clowns to divine the future. She believed strongly in the institution of family, which is why she kidnapped me as a baby in the first place. Otherwise I'd have been eaten by the alien lizards. Today's card is for those of you in less fortunate family situations.
The thing about wasps is that you can chant at them and, if they like you, they'll form themselves into a calm sentient pillar in the shape of a person, like a golem, and do your bidding, and carry out certain tasks, like paying the pizza guy or seeing off unwanted visitors. I don't know how people can be sad in such a marvellous world.
Whenever a person tells me they are depressed I suggest they bake some muffins. I tell them research indicates that baking increases production of the monoamine neurotransmitter 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin). It's not true, I just like muffins. If bees were an ingredient in muffins then this post would be slightly less tangential.
My Grandmother taught me everything there is to know about world religions, ie. lizards from space have infiltrated all world governments, we're part of the resistance, and all other religious beliefs are crazy. She taught me to be tolerant, and believe in all religions, except when they contradict the stuff about lizards because that's just CIA disinformation to test our faith. Hi Nanna!
I never know the right thing to say but I've never let that stop me. When it comes to babies it's like quantum principles are involved. It's all projection, probability, wave-forms and misbehaving mathematics. You can send this card to any expecting parent and know you've covered all bases. If they get weird and serious about it blame it all on hormones.
One of the things that makes apologizing so enjoyable is that people always believe me. Once I set fire to someone's couch and, even though I was doing them a huge favor (it had a floral print), things were tense until I said sorry. That's why it's childish not to say sorry. Next week I'm setting fire to their new couch because it's brown and I'll say sorry again. Maturity doesn't mean 'boring'.
'Every Wednesday I post an older card, then I watch TV so corporations can tell me which foods to eat through the next year, and where to buy their diabetes meds the year after that, and which politician they think is most cooperative. Also: did you know how much bacteria is in your bathroom? If you're not worried then the germs have already won.'
Last week there was a lot of lovey-dovey romance talk here because of Valentines Day. Did you know that romance can lead to babies? That makes me uneasy. As far as pets go, babies are expensive. My pet wasp swarm, in contrast, is very cheap to feed: like, two hobos a month or something. I like babies but if you think about it long enough you'll see that wasps are cooler.
Romance. It can't be avoided. It has all the sad inevitability of scabies. And what is romance, anyway? On the one hand, you say you don't like someone at work but when their house burns down suddenly I'm the bad guy. And some men grow up eating crayons. Love is not about taking away a man's crayons. What is Romance? Do I put my elbows on the table anymore? No I don't. So there.
On Wednesdays I post an older card then I change the world. I believe we can all change the world, we just need love in our hearts. And seven billion dollars for research and development, and a basement full of kidnapped MIT kids to assemble the first batch of self-replicating robot slave spiders. Changing the world also requires pragmatism.
Some say that Valentines Day is a commercialized confidence trick played on lovers, a cloying manufactured holiday, a manipulative marketing mechanism. But me? I only worry about two things. One, that if you don't buy someone chocolate right now, your entire relationship will crumble to pieces. And two, that raptors may not be as extinct as "the authorities" claim.