Veronica Brush's Blog, page 4

How to Take Supplements Less Like An Old Person, More Like a Squirrel

As a 30 year old with the face of a high-schooler and the body/physical health of an 80 year old who’s been dead for at least six months, I take a lot of supplements. I can’t even tell you what they are because I also have an attention problem.

I should probably be taking something for that.

I may actually be taking something for that.

Darned if I know.

Anyway, it’s all great until I go out to eat with friends and the time comes for me to pull out my days-of-the-week pill dispenser that is the size of a briefcase. Suddenly I become the focus of the table. What follows is me using slight-of-hand to stuff as many pills into my mouth as I can at once so I can look like I’m only taking one or two pills instead of approximately 600 per meal.

As a young person, it’s always awkward to take pills. I never used to hide it, but then I started to notice the looks I was getting when I would take pills in front of people. Their eyes get really wide and though they don’t say anything, you can read the horror on their face as they decide that you are addicted to some illegal substance. You can try to convince them that it’s not even a drug because it’s just a natural supplement. You can show them the bottle that says “100% Tree Bark” and they still don’t believe you, thinking “Tree Bark” must just be what the kids are calling marijuana these days.

And so I have learned that as a young person who needs pills to keep from having my liver migrate out of my nose (Again, I wasn’t listening what the doctor said would happen if I didn’t take my pills), I’ve found strategies to get my pills without any of my fellow diner’s being the wiser.

Fake a serious illness. If you don’t look sick on the outside, people aren’t comfortable believing you are sick.

The easiest way to fix this is to appear more sick than you are. Clutching your heart while you gasp for air is a great way to convince people that you are ill. Once you have done this for thirty seconds, people will not judge you no matter how many pills you take afterwards.

Once you’ve taken all your pills, you can follow it up with a reassuring, “That was close!”

Stuff the pills in your cheeks like a squirrel in advance. If people say you’re talking funny, just tell them you were just at the dentist and he told you to keep the cotton in your mouth until at least after lunch.

Grow a bushy beard. Big beards are also known as “food catchers” because they tend to get crumbs on them. So before you go out to eat, you prep by tying your pills into your beard. Then, after the meal, you sit and pretend to pick crumbs out of your beard and eat them, when really you’re picking out your pills. People will think you have terrible table manners, but no one ever had to sit through an intervention for that.

Being a woman, I find I have difficulty growing a thick enough beard for this, so I use a fake beard. I have also spent years carefully desensitizing my friends to my unpredictable behavior until they are no longer surprised when I do things like show up to lunch wearing a fake beard.

Stick the pills to the gum on the underside of the table and then drop your fork on the floor repeatedly, quickly swallowing pills every time you go under the table. Wow, I grossed myself out with that one.

Pretend you are doing a magic trick. I pretend to put pills various places, like in my ear or up my nose, so that when it comes to putting one in my mouth, no one thinks I’ve actually put it in my mouth. Of course I never learned how to do magic, so I have to actually stick the pills in my ears and nose. Then sometimes I can’t get them out again.

Long story short, I often end up back at the doctor having pills removed from the alternative face orifices I stuck the pills into.

Then the doctor says, “You have to stop putting pills in your face and just swallow them. And here, you should start taking this supplement, too. This supplement should help you…blah blah blah…something about my spleen illegally crossing the border or something.

I hope you found this helpful. Now if you’ll excuse me, it appears I’ve dropped my fork.

 

 

Great Expirations

I wrote a haiku:

Eating two hot dogs.

All my ketchup’s expired.

Sure hope I don’t die.

I’ve been thinking a lot about expiration dates lately. Pretty much since a few hours ago when I found a forgotten bottle of Dr. Pepper in the back of the pantry. I can’t remember when I bought it. It was covered in a layer of dust. Maybe flour. Possibly mold. And the expiration date was smudged so much you couldn’t read it. The last digit was definitely a 6. So I at least know it either expired this year or ten years ago.

Spoiler alert: I drank it and now I might die.

Even if it expires this year, it could have expired a month ago or six months ago.

And I don’t really get what expiration dates mean. I understand the ones that say “Best if eaten by…” because that is a clear statement:

“This cheese is going to taste awesome today, but less awesome tomorrow.”

Thank you! I appreciate knowing that the awesomeness level of my cheese is about to decline.  That is useful information.

But the term “expiration” implies finality. It’s like some sort of cheese psychic made the prediction: “This cheese will be dead on June 31st, 2016.” But then you eat it on July 1st and you think, “This cheese doesn’t taste dead at all.”

Then you feel betrayed, and wonder what other lies your groceries have told you. Your world gets turned upside-down. You may even start to question if cheese psychics are actually real.

Let me assure you, this is very real:

Cheese Psychic

(On a side note, this picture made this conversation happen in my household:

Me: Mom, can I borrow some hoop earrings?

My Mother: Your ears aren’t pieced. What do you need earrings for?

Me: For cheese.

My Mother: (Taking only a moment’s pause) Oh. Okay. They’re upstairs. Help yourself.

That is a woman who has resigned herself to her daughter being a blogger.)

(Now back to our regularly scheduled post)

On the other hand, you have people who have taken expiration-date-denial to an extreme and eat food that expired possibly before they were born. Their cheese doesn’t even look like cheese anymore, but they eat it for the sake of not giving into the “expiration date man”.

“Oh, those dates don’t mean anything,” they say as they hand you yogurt and you want to argue that the expiration dates might have meant something back when they printed it on that particular carton of yogurt from the 1800’s.

I think we need a better system.

As it turns out, I happened to have invented a better system.

You’re welcome.

It’s a 3 tiered system:

Best if eaten by: October 31st, 2016

Seriously, though, if you care about your health, stop eating it by: November 31st, 2016

You will expire if you eat it after: December 31st, 2016

It’s very clear and leaves no questions about what the expiration date really means.  Packages will have to be larger to fit so many dates, but that just means more servings per package that you can now enjoy at your leisure because you know exactly how long you can keep eating it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see if I have any other forgotten bottles of Dr. Pepper.

Love Languages

They say there are 5 love languages.  They are:

-Acts of Service

-Quality time

-Lousy time

-Pacific time

-Mountain Standard time

-Physical touch

-Sense of smell

-Hearing a clatter

-Springing from bed to see what was the matter

-Dasher

-Dancer

-Prancer

-Nixon

-Taft

-Ford

-Mitsubishi

-Sushi

-Chocolate

-Preheat oven toe 350 degrees

-Call the dentist

-Vacuum

-Rinse and repeat

-I’ve forgotten what I was listing

Out of all of those, my love language is probably touch.  Well, it’s really a variation on touch.  My love language is wading up a piece of paper and throwing it at your face.  It never failed in the 3rd grade, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t still work in my 30’s.

And yet I’m still single.

Really my way is like 4 out of the 5 love languages all at once.  Not only is it touch, it’s quality time (that paper didn’t just painstakingly wad itself up), gift giving (I always let people keep anything I chuck at their face), and acts of service (isn’t “service” what it’s called in tennis when they hit the ball at you?  So it’s like that kind of service.)  And if I just took the time to write words of affection on the paper before crumpling and throwing it, it would be all 5 love languages.

My kind of words of affection

But I also thought of a few love languages they overlooked.

Competition.  Nothing like a winner-take-all battle to bring out those 3 little words couples just don’t say often enough: “In your face!”

Laughing so hard at their jokes, you shoot milk out your nose.  You may not even be that funny, but I am committed enough to this relationship to drench my sinuses with dairy products.

And last, but certainly not least, the most universal of all love languages:

Blogging.

What I’m trying to say is I love you.  Also, tell your friends to read my blog so I can love language them, too.

Just don’t say it like that or they may get weirded out.

Show Going On-ing

Apparently I don’t store my funny ideas in my brain. That’s probably a good thing because the other bits of information I store in my brain, such as the location of my cell phone and other people’s names, get lost in the shuffle.

As a side note, this is why I could never be an amateur sleuth like on all those TV shows where someone who isn’t a detective starts solving crimes as a hobby around their real careers (like mystery writer, phrenologist, ballerina, President of the United States)(I would watch that last one!).

There I’d be, giving my summation of how I figured out who the murderer was:

Me: …And then I knew you had to be the murderer when you called the victim by his first name ‘Steve’. I never told you that his name was ‘Steve’, so the only way you could have known that was if you were the murderer.

Suspect: You DID tell me the victim’s name was Steve.

Me: I did?

Suspect: Yes. Several times. Which was weird because the victim was a woman.

Me: It was?

Suspect: Yes.

Me: Okay, well maybe you’re not the murderer, but I’m still not convinced you didn’t steal my cell phone.

(At that instant, my cell phone starts ringing from the bottom of my purse)

Me: My work here is done.

So it’s best that I don’t keep my funny ideas somewhere as unreliable as my brain.

Unfortunately as it turns out, where my ideas are stored is in my stomach.

Even more unfortunatenessly, I know that because I just spent the day vomiting out the contents of my stomach. And then when I sat down to write a blog post, I suddenly couldn’t think of a single funny thing.

Usually when trying to write a blog post, I start with what silly thing has recently happened to me. Today the answer was “I spent all day losing my cookies.”

You know what’s funny about that?

Neither do I.

Which is why you almost didn’t get a blog post today.

But the show must go on.

And so I wrote you a poem:

Little Bo Peep has lost her cookies

And doesn’t know how to stop losing them.

Leave her stomach alone and maybe it will calm down.

Maybe some ginger ale and gluten-free crackers might help

Or maybe just never ever even thinking about eating food ever again.

Yeah, she should probably do that.

You’re welcome.

More Technical Facts

For your edu-tainment, some more actual facts and the technical facts they naturally lead to:

-France still used the guillotine as punishment to behead prisoners until September 1977 (and it was still legal until 1981)

-Star Wars: A New Hope was released in May 1977

–Technical Fact: George Lucas made better movies when it was possible he could have been guillotined

-The only bird that can swim but not fly is the penguin

-Michael Phelps can swim, but he cannot fly

–Technical Fact: I think you see where I’m going with this one

-Everyone’s tongue has markings as unique as a finger-print

–Technical fact: You shouldn’t lick places before committing crimes there

-Attila the Hun is remembered for being a fierce conqueror, but one theory says that Attila the Hun died from a severe nosebleed

-To stop a shark from attacking, you’re supposed to punch it in the nose

–Technical Fact: Attila the Hun might have died because someone mistook him for a shark

-Jack Weinberg coined the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30” in 1964

-The average life expectancy for ancient Egyptians was just over 30 years old.

–Technical Fact: If Jack Weinberg had been an ancient Egyptian, the saying would have been “Don’t trust anyone over 15.”

-The largest snowflake ever recorded was 15 inches wide

-Witnessing a giant snowflake is easy to claim, hard to prove

–Technical Fact: I just saw a snowflake that was 15.2 inches wide. I win.

-Dance fever was a real disease that struck hundreds of people in 1518

-In 1962, people in Africa were struck by a laughter epidemic

–Technical Fact: In the old days, diseases were a lot more fun

-The average adult body produces 200,000,000,000 red blood cells per day

–Technical fact: The average adult body is probably breaking some serious labor laws

-Popeye had 4 nephews

-Popeye’s nephews were named Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye

–Technical Fact: Pipeye, Peepeye, and Pupeye are not the stupidest names you could come up with

-Not being able to pee while someone is watching is called Paruresis

-Dolphins sleep with one eye open

–Technical Fact: People with Paruresis can’t pee in front of sleeping dolphins

-Dolphins not only sleep with one eye open, but with half of their brain still awake

–Technical Fact: I need to learn how to do this because most of the time I can’t sleep because my brain will not shut up.

-That wasn’t my original point

-The US Navy Marine Mammal Program tested dolphins to see if this half-sleeping caused effects of sleep-deprivation, such as slowed reactions, and found that dolphins function perfectly fine only half-sleeping

–Technical Fact: Someday the world is going to be taken over by well-rested dolphins

My 15 Minutes

So I’m famous now. Possibly. Until I’m told otherwise.

It all started when I was at Walmart.

Unless you’re going to yell at me for shopping at Walmart. In which case, I was at Menards.

Unless you don’t know what Menards is. In which case, I was Steve’s Great Emporium of Stuff.

Unless you know that isn’t a real place. In which case, shut up.

So I was at Walmart, just being myself. I am generally incredibly observant, but sometimes when I’m in the midst of writing a novel, I get very stuck inside my own brain and sometimes this causes me to forget the external world exists. Then I start talking out loud to myself, sometimes arguing, sometimes laughing at my own jokes. Occasionally I bump into things that are generally considered easy to avoid, like walls of the store.

I was in one of those stupors while walking around Walmart, which is why I failed to notice the film crew. I don’t know if they were filming a news report, an employee training video, or perhaps a real Hollywood movie (Not likely since I don’t live in Canada, which is where all the real Hollywood movies are made).

What I do know is that I had managed to wander back and forth through the area they were filming about six times, talking to myself the whole way, before I noticed the camera crew, stage lights, microphones, etc.

Embarrassed, I quickly finalized my purchases and left.

I regret this because I realized later that, whatever it was they were filming, I ended up with a fairly significant role in it. I probably have a good ten minutes of screen time in their film. Eleven, if they captured that minute I spent on the floor after I tripped over a particularly thick patch of air.

But now I will never know what sort of character I inadvertently played. It’s left entirely up to my imagination.

If it was an employee training video, I imagine my character would be the example of what NOT to do as an employee. The camera would focus in on me and the narrator voice would say in a stern voice:

“Susan has been assigned to sort the snow shovels, but she doesn’t know where they are. Does Susan ask a supervisor? No. Susan just wanders around uselessly, talking to herself, wasting precious time while customers are left trying to sort through rows and rows of poorly sorted snow shovels. Don’t be like Susan!”

I’m going to have to go back and see how well the snow shovels are organized. I could be having a positive impact on the world and not even know it.

They might have been filming the next James Bond film. I don’t think they’ve settled on a lead actor yet, but they might have begun pre-production filming. I hope in that case that they make my character a Bond girl. I could be Miss Daisy Dandconfused, a well-meaning but clueless lady. I was fully-clothed while wandering Walmart, but they can easily CG me into a bikini. And they can use that footage of me tripping over nothing for my death scene (because Bond girls, like tsetse flies, don’t have long life expectancies).

My point is I probably have already developed a fan base and am rumored to be dating both Matt Damon and his brother Steve Damon.  I’m trying to develop some sort of addiction so I will fit seamlessly into the celebrity crowd.  Then I can bask in the love and support of my fans as I stay a while in rehab.

Which brings me to my second point: does anybody know the best place to attend rehab for waffle addiction?

So, if you happen to see a film of any kind and in the background, you see a confused looking person wandering aimlessly, let me know how I did. It might be some of my best work!

Technology

Notice anything different about this blog post?

I hope not.

Because the difference is that I am writing it on a new laptop and if you knew that, you are obviously in my bushes.

I feel all extravagant, buying a new laptop when my old one still works perfectly fine. Of course “works perfectly fine” is a relative term. My old laptop “works perfectly fine” in the sense that it works better than if you were to try to do the same action on a seedless watermelon.  For example my old laptop has great internet speed compared to a seedless watermelon.  Just not compared to any other computer.

The frustrating thing is how often I have to go buy new laptops.  I just bought my old one July 3rd.  Of course, it was July 3rd of 2006, but that was still recently in my mind.

I’m definitely on the edge of new technology, just not the cutting edge.  I’m on the opposite side: the dull edge that only approaches new technology getting dragged there against its will, kicking and screaming.

The main problem with my old laptop is that the battery is dead, so it has to be plugged-in always. And the plug is held together in several places with electrical tape. And the screen casing is held together with some duct tape. And part of the screen is dead, so there are colorful lines down an inch of the middle of the screen, so you can’t see any words that are on that part of the screen. And the speakers don’t work. Or the wifi. Or sometimes the on/off switch. But when you are able to get it to turn on, it works great…well, it works okay…well, it works anyway. Sort of.

So this last weekend I finally decided it was time and went to the computer store. Despite being only 10 years behind the cutting edge of technology, I’m not very tech-savy, so I needed the help of an employee at the computer store to pick out the right laptop.

“I blog,” I explained. “Can I do that on this computer?”

The employee responded, “That is a slurpee machine.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

“What if you tell me what features you’re looking for and I can help you find the right laptop for you.”

“Okay.  What I really need are blogging features.”

“Oookay.  What do you mean blogging features?”

“Internet and Paint.  I need to be able to find and manipulate pictures of flamingos.  That constitutes a good 34% of what I do.”

“Okay, what else?”

“That’s it.”

He didn’t believe me.  “Do you do much gaming?”

“Yes.  I like Scrabble.”

“I meant online gaming.”

“Oh.  Well I played Candy Crush for a while.”

“Right.  How many devices are you going to want to sync to your laptop?”

“Well, my last laptop wasn’t waterproof, so I generally kept it away from the sink.  But are you talking about a bathroom or kitchen sink, because if you mean the bathroom sink, I don’t think I could fit a lot of other devices in there with the laptop.”

To which he said, “I’m starting to think you might be better off with the slurpee machine.”

So I said, “Maybe you can tell me which of your computers comes without Windows 10?”

To which he answered, “Well, that slurpee machine we were looking at doesn’t have Windows 10. Everything else we have will come with Windows 10. Why don’t you want Windows 10?”

“I’m concerned about how much people say Windows 10 spies on you, using your camera and microphone even when they’re turned off, and also recording what you type. Not that what I type makes any sense. But if Windows wants to read it, they should have to go to my blog or BUY MY BOOK ON AMAZON like everybody else.”

He laughed at me. “That’s crazy! Windows 10 doesn’t spy on you! It’s the best! Windows is improving the lives of everyone on the planet. All hail Windows!”

As he said this, he secretly showed me a piece of paper that said, “They’re watching us. It’s too late for me! Run! Save yourself!”

I left that store quickly. What I didn’t notice was that moments later, another car pulled out of the same parking lot, following me. If I’d turned around, I would have seen it was a Windows 10 laptop in a trench coat and with a fake mustache.

And so I went to a used computer store and asked a nice-looking man what he could sell me that didn’t have Windows 10. He quickly shushed me, then hurried to lock the door of the store, pulled down all the blinds, and gestured me to a secret room behind a bookcase.

There he had a plethora of gently used laptops with Windows 7.

“You’re safe here,” he said.

And so I left with a slightly-used laptop at a great price.

The moral of the story is that if I go missing, look for a laptop with a mustache and wearing a tench coat. Here is an artist rendering:

Staplers (Much More Exciting Than It Sounds)

My life has changed dramatically and I wanted you all to be the first to know.

But then I got excited and accidentally blabbed to a bunch of strangers.

Sorry.

First, some background: Out story begins over a decade ago with the birth of the very first dinosaur. It had been bred and hatched by Charles Henry Gould, who would later go on to invent the stapler. You can see he had kind of a theme going:

Tragically, shortly after, Gould was eaten by his creation.

The dinosaur was also eaten.

The stapler went on a rampage through Manhattan until it was finally brought down with some Molotov cocktails. ‘Twas butane killed the beast.

Since that time, the design of staplers has been improved by not making them sentient.

I was recently staring at my stapler for fear that it might be sentient. I realized this fear comes from the fact that my stapler has a face inside of it’s mouth, like that monster in “Alien”.

Worst of all, this face never looks amused. You don’t need to know how many hours of stand-up comedy I have performed for my stapler. All you need to know is that my stapler hardly ever laughs and never leaves me tips.

But it turns out that this disgruntled face serves a purpose. The “mouth” is what bends the ends of the staple inwards.

Flash forward to today and I stapled something only to find that the ends of the staple had gotten bent OUTWARDS!

At first I thought what any rational person would: a ninja tornado had hit my neighborhood the night before (and obviously I hadn’t woken up because ninja tornadoes are always silent), and carried my entire block to Australia where everything is backwards (ie: water drains the other way, Christmas is in summer, and penguins can fly).

I flushed my toilet a few times to test this theory. I was left with the definitive answer that I don’t know which direction my toilet normally flushes.

Eventually someone pointed out to me that the face on my stapler was upside-down. Apparently you can spin this face around and the “eyes” will bend the staples outwards. Here’s a picture:

This picture demonstrates 3 principles:

Staple ends can be bent in or out

I am an inconsistent hyphen applier

Meta is fun, hence the staple samples demonstrated on a hand written draft of this very blog post

I can’t believe I never noticed my stapler could do this before.

Seriously. I don’t believe it.

I’m a very observant person and the idea that I went over 30 years without knowing about this is absurd.

Which is how I stumbled upon the truth: I have somehow ended up in a different dimension.

So, hi, everybody! I come from a dimension where staples only bend one way. I have so many questions about what other small differences there might be between your dimension and my own.

Are Twinkies considered a health food?

Is LeVar Burton against literacy?

Are batteries always included?

Are you required to run at the pool?

Instead of ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’, do you practice ‘Cover your eyes, Veer, and Swerve’?

Does my writing actually make me money?

Most importantly: Does William Shatner have a cameo in your Star Trek Movie reboot?

And then I wonder what happened to the Veronica from this dimension? Did she get sent to my single-direction-staple-bending dimension? Or is she now in some dimension where staples are even more strange? I hope for her sake it isn’t the dimension where staples have enslaved humanity and force people to stand around holding papers together all day long.

But even that’s better than the one where pets have enslaved humanity and dictate how people live their lives.

I should know. That’s the dimension I’m from.

IT IS COMING

Once upon a time, there was a terrible horde. They plowed through the land, pillaging, marauding, and probably stopping some places to play Pokemon Go because apparently everyone is these days.  It’s like they’ve never seen that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to know that when everyone starts playing a game, that the game is all a plot by evil aliens designed to…well, actually I don’t remember what the plot of the aliens was, but I remember Wesley Crusher had to save everybody by reversing the polarity or something.

Anyway, this marauding horde was so fierce, no one could stop them. They were so invincible, they would send messages ahead to the next village they planned to attack. Panic would spread throughout the village, and some heroes tried to make defenses, but no amount of preparation could save them.

It was a dark day when my village received the message. It said simply:

“Would you like to upgrade to Windows 10?”

There was wailing and gnashing of teeth. How could this be happening?

The village elders convened to use their wisdom to find a solution. After three days locked away in the council room, they emerged with their announcement.

The eldest elder announced to the people, “We have decided that we don’t know what a Windows 10 is. But maybe if we get some curtains, we can put them over the Windows 10.”

Shortly after, the village Millennials convened to come up with a less stupid suggestion.

“Have we tried saying ‘No’?” one asked.

Another answered, “There is no option for that. Look at the bottom of the message. It says only ‘Upgrade now’ or ‘Remind me later’.”

A third suggested, “Perhaps we can ask the Google gods to intercede!”

Still another asked, “Are these muffins made with free-range eggs? I only eat free-range eggs.”

Another said, “Hey, if this whole Windows 10 thing doesn’t kill us all, I’m having a Pokemon Go themed Jamberry nail party you should all come!”

No conclusions were reached that day, except that more people would attend the Pokemon Go Jamberry nail party if 10% of the proceeds went to raising awareness for free-range chickens.

And so my village tried continuing to click “Remind me later”, as many a village had surely tried before us.

Eventually the horde descended upon us, upgrading my village without our consent and leaving in their wake, a slower, less user-friendly village that would never be the same again. Many a villager went missing. And, oh, the rebooting. How can there already be an update? AND WHERE THE HECK DID YOU MOVE MY FILE? AND WHY ARE MY PRINTER SETTINGS DIFFERENT?!?

Ahem.

Perhaps I will have to leave this village. I have heard of a sanctuary where the Windows horde never reaches. Those who speak of this place extol its virtues, but warn it is a long, hard journey there and probably out of my price range. But perhaps someday I will find myself in the legendary land of Mac.

Beware my tale of woe.

Windows is coming.

And it means death to us all…

…or at least a lot of computer cursing.

I Can’t Get No Rejection

They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Looking back on my life, I realize that I have thus unknowingly become an expert in 3 areas:

Waffle making/eating
Puppy snuggling
Getting rejected

As a writer, I spend a lot of time getting rejected.

As an incredibly self-conscious and shy person, this was a well-thought-out career choice for me. I’m kind of like a sky-diver who’s afraid of heights:

“Whoa, hey! Aren’t we awfully high up? You know what, I’ve decided I’m not going to jump out here. Why don’t you go ahead and land the plane and then I’ll jump. Probably. Depending on how tall your landing gear is.”

But I figure all these rejection letters I get have to be good for something, other than drying my tears. So I thought I would use my expert knowledge to dissect the anatomy of a rejection letter so that you can learn how to write and/or read a heartbreaking rejection letter.

Your average rejection letter consists of 4 parts: the polite intro (for getting hopes up), the actual rejection, the explanation (or “twisting of the knife”), and lastly, the salutation.

I’m going to work backwards and start with the salutation.

When writing a salutation for a rejection letter, you should make it as generic as possible. You want to express through generalization that this person is not worth the six seconds of your time that it would take to type their name.

A good way to open a rejection letter is: “Dear Sir and/or Madam”.

This sort of opening says “I can’t even take the time to discern your gender, let alone your name.” This is a strong opening that knocks the recipient down, thus making them more convenient to kick later.

Next comes the polite intro. Say lots of positive things to make them start to wonder if this really is a rejection.

“Thank you for your submission. It was incredibly well received and we were all so glad that you chose to submit it to us. I mean, it was one of the best submissions we ever had! YOU ARE AMAZING!”

Then you zing them with the actual rejection. This part has to open with “unfortunately” because this makes it seem like the rejection is completely out of your hands.

“Unfortunately, our company was recently taken over by alien overlords who have forbidden us to take your submission. Also, we hate you.”

Of course, you don’t have to include the part about hating them. That is always implied.

Now you offer a half-explanation of why you have decided not to accept the submission.

“Due to things being the way they currently are, your submission is not right for us. We’re not saying it’s bad. We’re saying you’re bad. Please understand that clearly. As for your submission, we’re only saying it MIGHT be bad. Or it might be really good and we might actually be rejecting it because of our vague excuse. You’ll never know! Bua ha ha ha ha!”

How long you want the evil laugh to go on is up to you.

In salutation, let me say “Dear Sir, Madam, or Current Resident”.