FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Media Relations
Email: media@despair.com
Web: www.despair.com
Fax: 214.826.1952
DESPAIR,INC. WINS 1ST PLACE IN NATIONAL CALENDAR COMPETITION, MASSIVE CUSTOMER PROTESTS ENSUE
DALLAS, TX - March 1, 1999 - In what is being described as an utter public relations catastrophe, Despair, Inc. found its headquarters beseiged last week by hundreds of protesting customers, after its 1999 calendar received 1st Place honors at the annual National Calendar Awards competition. The Demotivators(tm) 1999 Calendar was declared the "Most Humorous" calendar of the year, besting heavily-favored perennial winners "The Far Side" and "Dilbert" to claim top honors in the category.
The annual competition, sponsored by the Calendar Marketing Association, allows calendar publishers, distributors, printers and designers a chance to recognize the year's best in calendar design.
Although most independent publishers would consider such a victory both a cause for celebration and a welcome opportunity for publicity, the award immediately embroiled Despair, Inc. in controversy, sparking massive customer protests outside of the company's Dallas headquarters.
A sad-looking assortment of self-described "chronic losers", numbering in the several hundreds, mobilized outside the imposing downtown offices of Despair, Inc. Most claimed to be "outraged" by the hypocrisy of seeing their supposed spokesman Dr. E.L. Kersten accept any award, particularly for a product claiming to offer "monthly inspirations for pessimists, underachievers and the chronically unsuccessful".
The crowd expressed their outrage by repeatedly chanting, "TWO! FOUR! SIX! EIGHT! - Kersten is a total FRAUD!".
Kersten, appraising the scene from the 35th floor terrace of Despair, Inc., said of the chanting crowd, "As a testament to the totality of their loserdom, they were unable to find the obvious rhyme 'fake'. These are serious losers. And they must be stopped."
KERSTEN FIGHTS BACK, WITH THE HELP OF EMPLOYEES
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| E.L. Kersten, Ph.D. bombards dissatisfied customers with demoralized employees. |
Kersten then made a brief attempt to address the protesting masses from the 35th floor terrace of the Despair, Inc. headquarters.
"Disperse, chronic losers, your protests are doomed to fail, as are all your efforts!", yelled Kersten at the pathetic mob, "You are only succeeding at lowering the property value!"
A few in the crowd responded with hisses and boos. Many more burst into tears, realizing his indictments were probably true. But the protests continued.
When Kersten was unable to disperse the crowd with threats and insults, he finally decided to strike back by hurling nameless employees of Despair, Inc., or 'little people', off of the terrace and down at the masses. His ten-year personal secretary and longtime confidante, "Hey You", said of the bombardments, "It has always been his secret dream to crush his dissatisfied customers with his demoralized employees."
Kersten later commented, "It's EVERY executive's secret dream."
After over an hour of continued bombardment, the protestors were all but crushed. Those few who endured the bombardment itself begrudgingly added insult to injury by purchasing various lithographs from the Demotivators(tm) "FAILURE TO SUCCEED(tm)" collection. Meanwhile, having successfully defeated the uprising, E.L. Kersten celebrated by continuing to the throw employees out of the window for the rest of the afternoon.
ANONYMOUS JUDGE CLAIMS, "WE VOTED FOR IT AS A JOKE"-
LIKENS KERSTEN'S VICTORY TO JESSE VENTURA'S, CARRIE WHITE'S
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| Other 'accidental winners' include Governor Jesse 'The Body' Venture and Prom Queen Carrie White, both pictured above. |
The calendar industry itself observered the tragic events of the day in stunned disbelief. The Demotivators calendar was widely considered to be a dark horse contender with no chance whatsoever of winning. That it not only won, but lead to enormous loss of life, left many ridden with guilt.
One panel judge, asking to remain nameless, allowed, "I voted for that calendar as a joke- like voting for Jesse Ventura or Carrie White. I didn't think anyone else was going to."
Jesse Ventura, a 70's-era pro-wrestler and 80's era bad-actor, was recently elected Governor of Minnesota in a surprise landslide, running on a platform to "lower taxes, shrink government, and personally piledrive anyone who does not vote for me".
An exit poll later revealed that 94% of Minnesotans who voted for Ventura did so only because they thought "no one else would". The other 6% cited "fear of being piledriven" by Ventura as their primary motivator.
Carrie White, a 70's-era high-school loser with telekinetic powers, was voted Prom Queen by evil ballot-stuffing classmates who later humiliated her by dumping a bucket of pigs blood on her at her coronation. She responded to the grotesque indignity by telekinetically obliterating dozens of her classmates, including Vinnie Babarino, The Greatest American Hero and that chick from RoboCop.
The events were depicted in the critically acclaimed 1975 documentary "Carrie".
Articles and items appearing in our "Recent Spin" are satirical and are not intended to be an accurate portrayal of the persons, companies or events depicted within them.
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