I don’t get this – readers are buying my paperbacks and not claiming their beers!

This is blatantly un-American activity, as far as I’m concerned.

Major corporations have spent millions – billions even – perfecting systems to lure you, the patsy consumer, into buying some worthless item by attaching something else FREE (anything FREE, if you think about in a certain way, being worthless also) – and then to cheat you out of that worthless thing afterward.

Uh, not the worthless thing you bought…the worthless throw-in that you wanted more than the worthless thing you actually bought because it was FREE (which is to say, worthless, but in capital letters).

Maybe it would be easier to understand if I had an example…

Ah yes, the wonderful mail-in rebate. How many millons of those do I have in my receipt folder (I have a receipt folder–if I ever need a receipt, I know I have it, though it’ll be six months rutting through slips for VHS copies of ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘The Muppet Movie’ before I find the one I need).

we found your luggage...

If you’re giving me fifty bucks off on that nifty toaster/iron/fax machine, why not just give me the fifty bucks at the register? Because you know I’m not going to fill out the 72 blanks on the form, mail it in (I haven’t been to the post office since I gave up on finding an agent–another benefit of indie publishing) and then wait for you to receive it and decide to honor it (how can I prove you got it? It went through the POST OFFICE! It could easily have been routed to Katmandu, along with my luggage from that flight to Houston in 1978).

Anyway, all I’m saying is, if huge corporations who very clearly have better things to do than worry for one second about their own customers (try calling CUSTOMER SERVICE sometime if you have any doubts about that one) can go to all this trouble to cheat people out of something worthless (FREE but without capital letters), then how could I be going so wrong here?

Hef - with ? and ?

I’m offering something I sweated blood for – for years – and throwing in FREE BEER! I mean, how many words go better with FREE? Look at the symmetry–the words even look like brothers or sisters…or twins – but let’s leave Hugh Hefner out of this.  And I’m not even going to TRY to scam you out of it! You just identify yourself and beer can be yours! And you’re not taking me up on it!

For Shame, America! That’s all I can say!

smiling dick - doesn't get a beer (even if he buys a paperback)

I hope we clear this up in the next 24 hours or I will be forced to locate you and force beer upon you at an undisclosed location I’ve just leased from Dick Cheney. And, just to eliminate any and all resistance, I will admit I can be convinced to exchange the beer for a nice Malbec. So come one, come all, claim your prize while it’s worthless!

That’s all I have to say on the subject. And, as usual in my case, all I have is more than enough.