November 12th, 2004
About three and a half years ago I was spending a lunch hour looking through one of those Buy and Sell-style newspapers (you know, the ones you pay a couple of dollars to buy and they contain huge automotive sections) when I came across an obvious editing error. Sitting between two ads for recording equipment was an orphaned statement, highlighted by a heavy dark-lined box, that only said:
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Things Change.
Call for details.
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I chuckled when I found it and showed it to a QA dude that happened to be sitting next to me at the time. (He didn't find it funny, but saw the potential for launching into a long story about himself or something related to him.) But something about it got caught in my humour craw: It was like a Found Poem, even if there was something too crass to make it really poetic.
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I want to see that message emblazoned everywhere. I want it painted on the sky, drawn into the stars. I want to be able to open books and randomly come across it written into the margins or the headers and footers. I want to pull random pieces of bank-machine paper out of my pockets and find it written on them, and on the sides of coffee mugs, T-shirts, bumper stickers, bus stops, fire extinguishers and dollar bills. I want it to come up top of the list in every search engine, and be written on this inside of match books.
Just make sure there is no number to call ... because, for me, that is the whole point.