"Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Peter Collery and I am charged with giving you a status report on the BLOHARDS
communications and merchandising effort, which I supervise.
The effort, Ladies and Gentlemen, is an unaccountable cesspool of incompetence, waste and malfeasance. If it were a
company it would be bankrupt. If it were a country, congress would have long ago voted to withdraw from it.
On the communications front, if it weren't for misinformation, our emails wouldn't contain any information at all.
One recent particularly unfortunate mailing misstated both Julie's home phone number and the date of the opening day
bus trip. If it hadn't been for some last-minute editing heroics, it would also have said that the BLOHARDS are an
organization devoted to the support of NASCAR racer Jeff Gordon. Another recent email went out an even dozen times to
certain lucky recipients, which was precisely twelve times too many.
The webpage, at blohards.com is a mishmash of broken links, unfunny jokes and out-of-focus snapshots. Happily, this
doesn't matter since the site is visited almost exclusively by people who erroneously typed the phrase BLOHARD into
their search engine while looking for something else altogether.
On the merchandising front, a couple of years ago we were selling a clever t-shirt, and two different hats only one
of which was ugly. Today, our offering is down to… ugly hats. I swear: it looked like Nantucket red in the picture
when I ordered it. We'd like to do another clever t-shirt, but that would require, you know, cleverness, which is in
short supply.
I will be my duty to update you on our activities at our August 28th lunch, which I understand will be held on September
2nd."