You know what fills me with hatred? Like, pure, boiling, completely irrational and borderline psychosis kind of hatred?

Me either. Or at least, not exactly.

I mean, I totally know what it is, or what they are, but they are so evil, they don’t even have a name that anyone knows. Like, there is literally no word for them I can give you. But I hate them. I am filled with hatred for something I can’t even name. Which of course fills me with even more hatred.  But I do know what they are, even if I don’t know their name: they are evil. They are evil vessels of evilness devoted to spreading evil, and they show up in my mailbox all the time. They show up in yours too. And they are evil.

Did I mention they are evil?

Wait, John, WTF are you talking about?

That is what you are thinking right now. I know you are. You are thinking, John, you are such a prosaic fellow, such a wordsmith, a veritable genius and probably like a sex god too … how can you possibly not know what to call this thing that so fills you with vexation?

And yes, I can totally understand how you are thinking that exact thing, word for word. So I will try to take a breath and explain what I mean so that you can fill with hatred too.

I’m talking about THESE things…

Yes, those. They come all tidy and light. Official. They look like paychecks. Or at least, like paychecks used to look before everyone went direct deposit. They look like tax documents: as in, like, actual tax documents. I literally got TWO tax documents today that use this nameless format … this goddamn … it just has to be called the: tear-off-the-ends-and-then-the-top—but-only-do-the-top-after-the-ends-and-never-the-other-way-around-or-you-will-mangle-the-message-and-rip-it—and-if–it-is-a-check-or-tax-document-you-just-screwed-yourself format.

Yeah, so that has to be the name for those … fake, puzzle envelope things. There is no actual name, so that is the official new name that we can all agree upon. It’s a little bit clunky, I know. But I just invented that because we needed a word or phrase to describe the thing we all hate. Before I just coined that convenient term, there was no term for them, for this vile evilness. But now we have my new term. Nobody cared to name it before because only checks came like that, and everyone likes getting checks, so nobody gave a crap about what the word was. I mean, if someone called a hundred dollar bill “pig barf in a shot glass” would you care? No. You wouldn’t. You’d be like, “Hey, can anyone give me ten thousand pig barfs in a shot glass?”

But, yeah, there’s no name for this evil crap. And since it is so evil, having a word for it does matter. I mean, there’s a huge difference between “Hey, there is a MURDER in your closet” and “Hey, there is a SHOE” in your closet. Words matter. We need words to convey important ideas … like evil.  We’re not as picky about good stuff like “money” being called “pig barf shots.” For good stuff, we don’t care what the words are: if it’s cool, we are happy. That whole “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” thing that Shakespeare gave us.

So yeah, call a rose a “tarantula scrotum.” Who gives a shit? Shout from the rooftops, “I love the smell of tarantula scrotums.” Nobody cares. The words don’t matter when it’s a sweet smelling flower. But for bad stuff, being able to be specific is super important.  Words DO matter. And I know this stuff because I am a writer and have degrees and crap. I got A’s and stuff getting them. So, I am completely qualified to tell you that there is no word that anyone actually knows and uses in real life to name those f-ing, rippy envelope-things I keep getting in my mail.

I also spent time trying to Google it to find what they are called. You literally can’t find anything. Like, go try. Seriously, go look around on Google and see if you can find some way to order some of those for yourself, so that you could be a douche and send them out too. I’m not kidding. Go start typing terms, descriptions, whatever you can think of to pull those things up. You totally cannot find them. Try it. You’ll see. I did.

In fact, I tried so many ways to find them that the IRS is probably going to come investigate me because I was searching terms like “how to print a fake check” and “what are those fake check forms called” etc.. I mean, how else do you find them? (Again, please prove me wrong and tell me how to search them on Google if you think like a normal, non-douche human intent on sending legitimate communication not intended to mislead and trick people). Yeah, so you won’t find anything.

Which means, in the end, I had to make up a word for us all to use.  We need one. So here you go; I’ll put it up again; memorize it:

tear-off-the-ends-and-then-the-top—but-only-do-the-top-after-the-ends-and-never-the-other-way-around-or-you-will-mangle-the-message-and-rip-it—and-if–it-is-a-check-or-tax-document-you-just-screwed-yourself

(EDIT: If that is too complicated for you, I have decided on a back up term for simpletons, which will simply be:  Evilopes.  So, use whichever you need. The perfect term or the simple one. I don’t care, we just need to be together on this as citizens of goodness.)

That is what they are now officially called. You are welcome. And you are free to use this term henceforth and forever in your own writing without giving me credit for it. I relinquish all copyright to that particular phrase (or just “evilope”). Be my guest.

And even knowing this new official term for evil, you will still get them anyway. All the time.  You’ve been getting them ever since Satan figured out he should have his greedy, a-hole minions start using them, and that doesn’t seem to ever change.

You get them in the mail and you know as soon as you see them that they are crap. They are all loan refinance offers or credit card offers or some douche real estate guy trying to force his stupid lame marketing crap on you. All of those douche people know that they have nothing you actually would ever, ever, ever give a crap about, so they have to trick you into opening that thing by making it look like something that might actually matter—even though you already know it doesn’t matter when you get it. But you open it anyway, because you have to. You are compelled to. By the evil.

Think about it: how often do you actually get legitimate documents that look like that? How many people are actually sending you checks or tax documents throughout the year? You want to say never, but you know that’s not true. The real answer is almost never. But that’s not the same as never, and that is the fecund soil in which true evil grows.

So you get them once a year, maybe. Maybe twice. Maybe your company pays you that way, sends you tax stuff. Fine. But it’s just that. And these marketing douches know it. So they trick you and send their stupid, empty garbage at you like a misty cloud of black bile blown from Satan’s hateful mouth hole.

And you have to sit there and take it. You have to take that thing and open it even though you already know it’s crap. And it’s a pain in the ass to open. You have to be careful. You have to open it in the right order, like the combination to a lock that’s guarding something valuable. Because it might—even though it’s not and you know it’s not before you start. But there you are, a big dumb dipshit, folding the top over first, your fat dipshit tongue sticking out as you concentrate on not tearing off the line of the perforation … wait, where the hell is the perforation? It says it has one, right there “fold on the perforated line” … but I can’t even see where the dotted thing is … did they forget to do it?

No, they didn’t forget. They skipped it because they know it will piss you off, and they know you are dumb enough to be fucking with this stupid thing right now. In a way, you and I deserve to suffer for getting sucked in. We should know better. Our hope, the very thing left to us after the opening of Pandora’s box, is working against us.  And the perpetrators laugh.

I hate them. The people who send them are evil.

I wish I had magic that could call down meteors. I wish I could because I would mash those bastards all into nothingness. Like literally everyone who sends me one of those deserves to be struck by a meteor and turned into meat sauce at the bottom of the crater.

And yes, I mean that. Even if they have babies or own kittens. I don’t care. Meat sauce.  All of them. Seriously. Someone will adopt the babies and Sara McLaughlin will guilt someone into taking care of the kitties. So there you go.

Bleh! Hate fills me.

<sigh>