The following is an actual email we received; after the jump, please amuse yourself hugely by reading P. Joseph Potocki’s businesslike reply.
Listing ID: 2223456108
Complete and update information to list North Bay Bohemian, as a supplier available for Department of Defense bid and sales opportunities in the 2008 Department of Defense Buyers Guide. The information on your company and products will be accessed by Department of Defense and military purchasing agents and buying facilities.
Please complete and submit before 06/20/2008 or you will not be listed.
The Department of Defense Buyers Guide is published by Federal Buyers Guide Inc., a private sector organization that has provided vendor information to the government for over 30 years. If you have any questions regarding pricing or information required to list, please don’t hesitate in contacting me.
Craig Heller
Vendor Listing CoordinatorPotocki answers:
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to feature our North Bay Bohemian defense industry services in your 2008 Defense Department Buying Guide. As you doubtless know, the North Bay Bohemian is quite proud of its long and stellar record providing Defense Department intelligence with grist for its mill. While seemingly at odds with many DOD policies, in fact we are and remain staunch and enthusiastic supporters of wars, hostile incursions, black opps and torture, as well as any and all conceivable or inconceivable but still over-funded weapons programs. Just evidence our unwavering insistence that all politicians sport American flag lapel pins.
And that’s not all. Were it not for the General Dynamics, Lockheed Martins, Halliburtons, Blackwaters and GE’s of this country which, like us, righteously ensure American freedoms and liberties for a price, we here at the North Bay Bohemian would have scant material upon which to write our stories.
I see from your email that Federal Buyers Guide, Inc. is a private firm providing a critical services to our peace-loving apparatus of war. We Bohos salute you. It is private initiative and the drive for personal wealth which has made ours the most universally beloved, compassionate and generous nation in the history of humankind. If only we could entirely privatize everything—the military, the roads, schools, people—and put the White House on the auction block along with our vast nuclear arsonal! We here at the North Bay Bohemian have oft fantasized purchasing and festooning a warhead to mimic its mammal-like physiology and put it to best use as a great, big, hot, greasy, red-tipped, turgid. . . . well, never mind that now.
What I’m trying to say is yes, we’d feel privileged to hop aboard the DOD gravy train. We’re absolutely certain we can provide a wide range of services at extraordinarily high prices to suit whatever the DOD cares to be fitted with. And we’re open to suggestions. One thing you can take to the bank about us at the North Bay Bohemian is that we’re a smiley-faced can-do operation, from tippy toes to thinning pates. In fact, we’re a lot like KBR. If we don’t know how to do something, we’re still happy to charge big bucks and say we do. And yes, we plan our own corporate move to Dubai the moment it looks like we’ll be facing taxes.
Before revealing the exact nature of our services (they are, after all, classified), we’d very much like to obtain a free copy of your most recent publication so we might fashion our monetary expectations in approximation with friendly competitor pricings.
Thanks once again. We look forward to receiving a back copy of your publication soon. May freedom ring loudly through our combined efforts and via extensive future bombing missions across this great planet.
God Bless Greenbacks,
The entire North Bay Bohemian staff and its many fine contributors
