The Despair Inc. Blog

Wow. This promotion is so good I don’t even have to dress it up with cheeky ironic marketing copy. Here’s the scoop. If you were hoping to pick up a few pieces of DespairWear for your holiday gift-giving (and you really should- they are so dadgum comfortable and well-printed, to say nothing of their brilliance…) we’re are briefly offering YOU the chance to do it ON THE CHEAP! No, we didn’t lower prices on the website. We’re just offering this deal to you guys and gals because, despite our protestations to the contrary, we actually love you folks. (Just Filio love for now, not the Eros or Agape kind*.)

If you want to pick up some great shirts on the cheap- you’ll need to use this coupon code when completing your order: notallofusdressforsuccess.

It will automatically reduce the price of any and all t-shirts in your shopping cart by 30%. Want to buy 4 different shirts? Go ahead- you’ll save $23! Even I know it’s a great deal. When I heard about it this morning, I was all like, “For real, whaaaaa?” and my boss was like, “Yeah, totally” so then I go, “That’s like, whoa!” and she was all, “Yah tell me about it” so then I’m all, “Okay, I will… It’s like crazy Eddie time, but you know, without the fraud, racketeering, and money laundering…” and I had a lot more to say but then she cut me off and goes, “I didn’t really mean for you to elaborate further. It’s a good deal. Let’s leave it at that.” Girl harshed my vibe something fierce with that barbed volley, let me tell you.

Remember, though, we print our shirts on American Apparel tees because they take the ink really well and they’re super-dooper comfortable. But they run SMALL! So order a size larger than you normally would- just to be safe.

As far as I can tell, this coupon code expires early next week. So act fast if you’re looking to score some clever, comfy, cool shirts for your holiday stocking stuffers!

(Remember, the code is notallofusdressforsuccess.)

Gotta run! I’m about to get my Scotch and Retro-gaming fix on.

* I mean, I really don’t know you THAT well. Plus, I’m just sort of playing the field right now, you know, not looking for things to get TOO serious… Not after what happened LAST time with a certain someone who I’ve promised not to mention by name- though she knows who she is, and for some blasted reason chooses to subscribe to my Wailing List even though I’ve asked her to stop reading it **, since SHE was the one who decided it was over between us, and she’s the one who accuses me of not being able to let go.

** Well, who can’t let who go, really? I’m not reading your Facebook or Twitter postings anymore- but you can’t stop reading my Wailing List emails? They aren’t even to you or about you or of concern to you… But you still gripe to certain mutual friends about some random marketing newsletter I sent weeks before? It’s not my fault things with Mr. Glamtastic went south. You should’ve known it was doomed from the moment you saw him cough violently after knocking back that shot of melon liqueur at The Light Bar. You can’t build a House of Love on a foundation made of Wuss. And if you want my permission to have that quote put on a tombstone memorializing the death of your rebound relationship with Mr. Orange Blossom Scents with Lavender Basenotes, well, you better well pay me a royalty***…

*** “Call me!”

Oh yet again I bring to you regrettable news! My tale is a tale of the triumph of customer whining over the indomitable spirit of employee indifference and executive skin-flintedness!

Every since the introduction of our radical, innovative, impossibly badassical Demotivator Build-Your-Own-Calendars several years ago, there has been a vocal contingent of long-time Despair customers who, for a variety of reasons mostly rooted in laziness or thriftiness, have demanded that we continue to offer the calendars which are, for many, the flagship of our entire product line. Those 11″ x 12″ offset-printed, saddle-stitched, aqueous-coated masterpieces of printcraft- which feature that rarest of virtues- volume-discounting!

Well, whiners, congratulations. The Pre-Printed Demotivator Calendars Have Returned!

For 2010, Despair is proud(ly annoyed) to offer something for the long-time Demotivator fan- and something for those who have just joined the highly-dysfunctional Despair family.

The NEW 2010 Collection Calendar features new designs for 2010 like Economics, Service, Creativity, and Marketing. Along with dozens of previously-unreleased Dates of Despair! Such as:

November 5, 2007 Disgraced former NY Times plagiarist & serial story fabricator Jayson Blair announces he is now a ‘life coach’ and ‘motivational speaker’ for hire.

February 4, 1912 Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt performs the first and only test of his ‘overcoat parachute’ by leaping from the Eiffel Tower.

March 11, 2009 AskMen.com publishes ‘Top 10 Subtle Ways to Tell Her She’s Getting Fat’. It recommends buying your girl too-small clothing and sabotaging her chair so it breaks when she sits in it.

And dozens more- making note of memorable idiotic moments in marketing, economics, statecraft, and of course, workplace life!

—

And for those of you either new to Despair’s storied Demotivators product line or wishing to share the Despair with someone previously-untainted by the irreversibly cruel lucidity that our products induce- I have equally wonderful news*. We’ve got a calendar for YOU, as well!

The REVISED Best of Demotivators 2010 Calendar features our most popular designs from all previously collections- such as Government, Tradition, Procrastination, and Achievement. Along with dozens of the richest, funniest Dates of Despair from early calendars! Such as:

November 28, 2002 Hasbro, maker of Monopoly, is fined over $7 million by a British consumer watchdog group for fixing toy prices and breaking competition rules.

January 7, 1980 “Space Invaders” debuts on Atari 2600. Programmer Rick Mauer earns only $11,000 for the game, which grosses over $100 million.

October 15, 1905 President Cleveland opposes women voting, writing, “We all know how much further women go in their social rivalries and jealousies”.

But- as a special added bonus, we’re also including four additional prints of additional Demotivator favorites with this particular calendar- for only $1 more! That’s Teamwork, Hope, Priorities, and Wishes!

And hey bargain-hunters, I’ve never seen them do THIS before**! Those money-grubbing higher-ups at Despair have authorized volume-discounting for either one of our Pre-Printed 2010 Calendars.

Buy 3 of a particular calendar, save 10%! Buy 5, save 15%! Or Buy 10 or more and save 25%!!!

“It’s like a miracle that happened to me this Therapeutic Mineral Ice!”, said some old New Yorker lady in a commercial I remember from many years ago. THAT’s the kind of enthusiasm I know you’re all feeling right now as this exciting calendar news just keeps hitting you in waves and waves! We’ve solved your holiday shopping problems for all those miserable malcontents in your immediate family, or your workplace! All you have to do is bust out a valid credit card!

So what are you waiting for? Start your engines!

BORING, UNNECESSARY, BEHIND-THE-CURTAIN WORKPLACE BLAH-SMACK FOLLOWS HERE. SO IGNORE IT UNLESS YOU’RE ESPECIALLY BORED, AS IT CONTAINS NO ADDITIONAL USEFUL INFORMATION, JUST SUBTLE MANIPULATIONS VIA ANECDOTES WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY TRUTHFUL…

Putting aside this very scattershot and poorly constructed bit of pitchcraft, I do have to say with some degree of seriousness that I very much hope some of you take advantage of this rare opportunity and buy some of these Pre-Printed babies. There was BIG FIGHT internally- with name-calling and histrionics and the invocation of below-the-belt insults I haven’t heard spoken since playground bloodsport of the early 80s- all over whether or not to bother offering Offset Calendars again- given the hassles of production and the risks related to potential unsold inventory. Yes- that has long been the Achilles heel of Pre-Printed Calendars- that you have to buy them in huge quantities to get good per-unit pricing- but then you have to sell most of them out all before the new year begins, lest you end up with increasingly untimely product. (Not so with Print-On-Demand calendars!) So- the risk-averse wanted to avoid the dangerous of unsold inventory- while that customer-loving minority (including, ahem, a certain lower-level marketing employee) argued that there must be enough demand out there to sell 10,000 of either calendar…

We have less than two months to find out who at Despair is going to look like a HERO and who like a ZERO.

See, I told you it was boring!

* Go on, haters- I know it’s a garbled mess of a sentence. I’ve already braced myself for complaints, insults, and the occasionally helpful rewrites that inevitably follow such sloppy writing. Do your worst- I always do!

** Except for like every holiday season for seven years between 1999 and 2005, and even then only for every version of Pre-Printed Calendar we sold during those years. So almost like never, really.

Some believed his book was forever lost to history.

Others assumed it was only a legend in the first place- just another in a seemingly endless series of elaborate hoaxes perpetrated by a master of the craft.

Could it possibly be true? Did the world’s most notorious con-artist, Charles Ponzi himself, actually write an autobiography- his own personal account of his ascendency from obscurity and poverty into staggering wealth, fame, and eventual infamy?

And if he DID author such a work- what on earth became of it? Despair, Inc. has discovered the answer.

And this holiday season, we are making a fully-illustrated and carefully-documented version of the legendary lost work available to the world at large for the very first time.

Yes. We’re completely serious. No, this isn’t a fiction, or an elaborate satire. This is the real book- published by the real man who changed even our language.

—

Featuring:

• OVER 100 PHOTOGRAPHS, MANY NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED

• THE FULL, UNABRIDGED TEXT OF PONZI’S 1936 LOST MASTERPIECE

• OVER 100 ADDITIONAL PAGES OF ORIGINAL HISTORICAL COMMENTARY BY DESPAIR, INC.

• A MASSIVE 7.265” x 11.5” PAPERBACK  (Limited-edition hardcover coming in 2010)

• SEE LOOK INSIDE THIS BOOK FOR ADDITIONAL FEATURES AND SAMPLE PAGES

Owning a first-edition version of Despair’s gorgeous and historic paperback isn’t just an investment in your betterment. It may be the investment of a lifetime…

In the fullness of time, who knows? Who can even begin to speculate about what a first-edition version of Despair’s gorgeously-illustrated re-issue of this profound work might someday be worth?

Could a first-edition print of Despair’s The Rise of Mr. Ponzi- already a steal at $29.95- soon find its own value quickly inflating? Double, tripling, even quadrupling in value in only a very short period of time- as other fans of historic autobiographies learn of the incredible scarcity of such a singularly important book? A book which certain anonymous-but-nevertheless-extremely-influential luminaries within the investing community have referred to as, “The number-one must-own holiday book for the 2009 gift-giving season!”

And who dare even begin to dream what sort of interest this book might generate for that huge audience of modern Ponzi-scheme victims out there? Those fleeced by the lesser Ponzi acolytes like Madoff and Stanford? Will they not – upon learning of the dwindling supply of first-edition Ponzi autobiographies – react in an immediate impulse purchase of the work? Can they resist the temptation to seek sweet solace for their bitter wounds by hastily buying one copy- (or many)- so as to gain a deeper insight into the mind of the Con Man? Would they not be willing to pay many times the original purchase price in order to have an invaluable first-edition copy of Despair’s release of The Rise of Mr. Ponzi?!

THE MIND BOGGLES AT THE POTENTIAL WEALTH THAT MIGHT CONCEIVABLY BE RETURNED TO THOSE ENTERPRISING SLICKERS WHO HAD THE FORESIGHT TO INVEST QUICKLY- WHILE THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY WAS BRIEFLY OPEN!!! HURRY UP, DON’T BE CHUMP, SEE? BUY IT NOW- OR YOU’LL BE THE WISEGUY WHO FINDS HIS HEAD iS BEING WRAPPED UP IN A BIG BIT OF COLORED PAPER THAT SAYS,”SUCKER” ALL OVER IT! YES, I’M TALKING TO YOU, MUG!

(Can you tell my bedtime reading has been for the last three weeks? I thought so…

By the way… If you want to Twitter about this amazing new investment opportunity, here’s a helpful tweet- ready to go!

DESPAIR.COM unveils the INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY of a LIFETIME! It’s Ponzi’s autobiography! http://cli.gs/rgRuzB

As the holiday shopping season quickly approaches- we’ve received more and more emails and phone calls from folks asking (frequently with a petulant huff), “What happened to the Retirement Party page- I bookmarked it, but now it’s gone- right when I was ready to shop!” or “Where are those Clearance Sale items I saw? I was going to pick up some posters for (INSERT NAME OF PERSON THEY APPARENTLY DON’T CARE MUCH ABOUT HERE)- but now I can’t! Help!”

The answer- then and now- is that Despair only puts Clearance Items on the website once-in-a-blue-moon, when we’re trying to free up a few palettes in the warehouse for new overpriced swag, or for Fall Catalogs, or for beer or something.

Sadly, as I’ve pointed out more than once, some folks out there simply don’t read our Wailing List promotions very carefully. (I know it’s not the best written newsletter in the world- as I can reliably receive dozens-to-hundreds of emails of rebuke or correction after any grammatical error or spelling mistake. Thank you SOOOO much for that, by the way… Like I don’t have enough problems…)

Because folks frequently DON’T read carefully enough, they often reach incorrect conclusions. Such as those folks who operated under the false assumption that- when it came time to do some holiday shopping, they’d be able to find a bunch of bargain-basement posters or retired DespairWear tees at Despair.com… Despair doesn’t keep clearance items perpetually on the site- especially not when catalogs start being mailed!

Nevertheless, we’ve received enough sad sack sob stories from people who made an ASS out of U and ME to briefly offer a respite. But listen carefully. We’re putting them back on the website for 6 hours only. We don’t want this sale to end up on dozens of coupon code and bargain hunter websites and end up being enjoyed by those who aren’t core customers. So you’ll have to get in- do your shopping fast- and get out.

If you missed out and you want a chance at discontinued DespairWear tees for $7.95 to 9.95, or discontinued Demotivator lithographs for $6.95, or Demotivator vinyl adhesives for $7.95, or whatever- you’ll have to visit this link starting tomorrow morning at 8am Central Time. You will have until 2pm to get in and grab what you want and close the sale.

PLEASE NOTE: The username and password WILL NOT WORK until tomorrow morning at 8am. So don’t write emails saying,”I can’t get this to work!” because it will not work until the morning.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE: The discounted 12 month Demotivator calendars will be still be discounted to $15.95 until 2pm, as well. After that, they return to their standard price of $19.95.

My apologies to those of you on the other side of the globe who might be forced to shopping at some strange hour in order to get in on the deal. I know most folks would prefer to shop while they are at work- rather than have to give up valuable free time at home. But I’d still encourage you to set an alarm and take advantage of this. Y’all frequently get hosed on the international shipping rates and the various extortion rackets your Customs Offices run- but if you make the effort to order during this 6 hour window, it still might net out as a bargain for you in the end. And that’s DEFINITELY not something that happens every day!

So. Any questions? I recommend you send them to me via Twitter. It’s easier / faster for me to handle them there. Plus the 140-character limit spares you my characteristic verbosity… Which has been on full display in the course of this email.

Hasta!

REMEMBER!

The USERNAME is whiners. The PASSWORD is begone. The link is here. And the 6 hour sale window lasts from 8am Central Time to 2pm.

 

 

To celebrate the completion of our Fall Catalog, Despair’s throwing a 24-hour party!
(And incredibly, you’re invited!)

Okay folks- this is another one of those PAY ATTENTION BECAUSE YOU MIGHT MISS OUT ON SOME AWESOMENESS IF YOU DON’T sort-of emails! I’ll be as succinct as I can be, though my instinctive verbosity is no secret to you and there’s every chance my attempts at a concise summation will go horribly, horribly wrong. Here’s the scoop on “The Wrap Party”:

As of this weekend, Despair’s writers and the marketing dorks managed to complete work on the 2009 Fall Catalog. Very soon, hundreds of thousands of catalogs will be in the mail, arriving perhaps in a mailbox near you.

Like every Holiday Catalog we mail, its purpose will be to plug calendars, and DespairWear, and all the new stuff we’ve created this year- along with longstanding favorites. And- as is typically the case for us- the catalog will be printed and mailed with little in the way of product discounts or freebies. That is what The Wrap Party is all about.

In the brief time before the catalog arrives, Despair is having a final big giveaway promotion- the sort we only have a few times a year (and almost never have once the catalogs start mailing).

So- what’s the Wrap-Party got to offer YOU?

1) FREE LITHOGRAPHS – This is the best lithograph deal we’ve ever done- so of course it will only be running for 24 hours. Here’s the scoop… If you buy ANY 24×30 LITHOGRAPH, Despair will automatically include our brand-new lithographs for CHALLENGES and PERSEVERANCE- for FREE! Yes, that really means BUY ONE GET TWO FREE. But because this deal is so generous, we’re only offering it for a day. So if you want to pick up 3 gorgeous posters for the price of 1, you have to order a poster TODAY. (NOTE: You will not see the two freebie posters appear in your shopping cart… This is like a trust-fall where you’ll just have to take our word that we’re really giving you two-free-with-any-one-purchased. Are you ready to take the fall?)

2) DISCOUNTED BRAND-NEW DESKTOPPERS – As of today, Despair is releasing THREE brand-new Demotivators! They are CREATIVITY (written by ME!), ECONOMICS, and SERVICE. And- for 24 hours only- these three desktoppers are available for $11.95 instead of $15.95. The prices will be raised tomorrow- so we can charge catalog recipients full-price for these awesome new additions to the Demotivator family- so HURRY!

A Celebration of Human Misery, Incompetence and Hubris

3) DISCOUNTED 12-MONTH CALENDARS - We are now adding FUNNY DATES to our 12-MONTH Calendars- just as we previously did to our 16-Month. And for FREE. And- for 24-hours only- we’re making that normally $19.95 calendar available for $15.95. That’s 25% off- or something close to that, anyway. It’s the cheapest price you’ll get this year for a fully-customizable Demotivators calendar crammed-full of funny, weird, depressing historical dates. This too lasts only 24-hours! Are you seeing the pattern yet, Brewster?

4) FREE SHIPPING ON DOMESTIC ORDERS OVER $40 – Typically, our threshold for free U.S. shipping is $50 worth of products. Once this promotion is over, the $50 minimum for free shipping will return. (You get one guess when this promotion is over… Just one.)

5) GLASSWARE IS BACK! - Many of you have found, to your annoyance, that Despair was backordered on many of our beautiful glassware items- such as the Points-Of-View Glass, variations of our Pessimist’s Glasses, and many of our Demotivators Mugs. Well guess what- we’ve taken them off backorder- so if you’re looking to score one or more, now is the time!)

Are you excited? So are we! If you feel prompted, you are more than welcome to RETWEET the following little blurblette, plugging our three hilarious and incisive new Demotivators:

Despair.com Adds New Demotivators! CREATIVITY- http://cli.gs/n6rNRg ECONOMICS- http://cli.gs/Nstn1M SERVICE- http://cli.gs/ThnTMb

So- that’s the scoop on the Wrap Party. It’s a great deal that- like so many other great deals- can’t last long, because it’s TOO great. So stop sitting there with your jaw hanging open and start buying stuff- before you miss your chance!

Did I mention three awesome new Demotivators? Well, so I did… But I didn’t embed images of them above- because I figured hyperlinks would be enough. Yet some of you are STILL READING- long after you should have stopped and started buying stuff slavishly upon my prior suggestion. So I assume you need just a little bit more encouragement in order to act. Well- here it is- some embedded pics of those three new designs…

(Now- for the last time- GO! Go and at least pick up a CREATIVITY Desktopper- so you’ll make me look brilliant in front of my peers!)(

For some, it prompted nightmares. For others, a rush of pure adrenaline. And for a generation of young Atari owners- it posed a mystery as profound as it was bizarre, “Is that a DUCK chasing me all over the place?”

But it was no duck. It was Rhindle- the red dragon. One of the fiercest and most terrifying foes in the history of gaming. And now- the dreaded foe is no longer just storming around the dungeons, looking for block-shaped adventures to devour- he’s stomping across this awesome new t-shirt!

(Or waddling, maybe.)