The Despair Inc. Blog

Oh yet again I bring to you regrettable news! My tale is a tale of the triumph of customer whining over the indomitable spirit of employee indifference and executive skin-flintedness!

Every since the introduction of our radical, innovative, impossibly badassical Demotivator Build-Your-Own-Calendars several years ago, there has been a vocal contingent of long-time Despair customers who, for a variety of reasons mostly rooted in laziness or thriftiness, have demanded that we continue to offer the calendars which are, for many, the flagship of our entire product line. Those 11″ x 12″ offset-printed, saddle-stitched, aqueous-coated masterpieces of printcraft- which feature that rarest of virtues- volume-discounting!

Well, whiners, congratulations. The Pre-Printed Demotivator Calendars Have Returned!

For 2010, Despair is proud(ly annoyed) to offer something for the long-time Demotivator fan- and something for those who have just joined the highly-dysfunctional Despair family.

The NEW 2010 Collection Calendar features new designs for 2010 like Economics, Service, Creativity, and Marketing. Along with dozens of previously-unreleased Dates of Despair! Such as:

November 5, 2007 Disgraced former NY Times plagiarist & serial story fabricator Jayson Blair announces he is now a ‘life coach’ and ‘motivational speaker’ for hire.

February 4, 1912 Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt performs the first and only test of his ‘overcoat parachute’ by leaping from the Eiffel Tower.

March 11, 2009 AskMen.com publishes ‘Top 10 Subtle Ways to Tell Her She’s Getting Fat’. It recommends buying your girl too-small clothing and sabotaging her chair so it breaks when she sits in it.

And dozens more- making note of memorable idiotic moments in marketing, economics, statecraft, and of course, workplace life!

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And for those of you either new to Despair’s storied Demotivators product line or wishing to share the Despair with someone previously-untainted by the irreversibly cruel lucidity that our products induce- I have equally wonderful news*. We’ve got a calendar for YOU, as well!

The REVISED Best of Demotivators 2010 Calendar features our most popular designs from all previously collections- such as Government, Tradition, Procrastination, and Achievement. Along with dozens of the richest, funniest Dates of Despair from early calendars! Such as:

November 28, 2002 Hasbro, maker of Monopoly, is fined over $7 million by a British consumer watchdog group for fixing toy prices and breaking competition rules.

January 7, 1980 “Space Invaders” debuts on Atari 2600. Programmer Rick Mauer earns only $11,000 for the game, which grosses over $100 million.

October 15, 1905 President Cleveland opposes women voting, writing, “We all know how much further women go in their social rivalries and jealousies”.

But- as a special added bonus, we’re also including four additional prints of additional Demotivator favorites with this particular calendar- for only $1 more! That’s Teamwork, Hope, Priorities, and Wishes!

And hey bargain-hunters, I’ve never seen them do THIS before**! Those money-grubbing higher-ups at Despair have authorized volume-discounting for either one of our Pre-Printed 2010 Calendars.

Buy 3 of a particular calendar, save 10%! Buy 5, save 15%! Or Buy 10 or more and save 25%!!!

“It’s like a miracle that happened to me this Therapeutic Mineral Ice!”, said some old New Yorker lady in a commercial I remember from many years ago. THAT’s the kind of enthusiasm I know you’re all feeling right now as this exciting calendar news just keeps hitting you in waves and waves! We’ve solved your holiday shopping problems for all those miserable malcontents in your immediate family, or your workplace! All you have to do is bust out a valid credit card!

So what are you waiting for? Start your engines!

BORING, UNNECESSARY, BEHIND-THE-CURTAIN WORKPLACE BLAH-SMACK FOLLOWS HERE. SO IGNORE IT UNLESS YOU’RE ESPECIALLY BORED, AS IT CONTAINS NO ADDITIONAL USEFUL INFORMATION, JUST SUBTLE MANIPULATIONS VIA ANECDOTES WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY TRUTHFUL…

Putting aside this very scattershot and poorly constructed bit of pitchcraft, I do have to say with some degree of seriousness that I very much hope some of you take advantage of this rare opportunity and buy some of these Pre-Printed babies. There was BIG FIGHT internally- with name-calling and histrionics and the invocation of below-the-belt insults I haven’t heard spoken since playground bloodsport of the early 80s- all over whether or not to bother offering Offset Calendars again- given the hassles of production and the risks related to potential unsold inventory. Yes- that has long been the Achilles heel of Pre-Printed Calendars- that you have to buy them in huge quantities to get good per-unit pricing- but then you have to sell most of them out all before the new year begins, lest you end up with increasingly untimely product. (Not so with Print-On-Demand calendars!) So- the risk-averse wanted to avoid the dangerous of unsold inventory- while that customer-loving minority (including, ahem, a certain lower-level marketing employee) argued that there must be enough demand out there to sell 10,000 of either calendar…

We have less than two months to find out who at Despair is going to look like a HERO and who like a ZERO.

See, I told you it was boring!

* Go on, haters- I know it’s a garbled mess of a sentence. I’ve already braced myself for complaints, insults, and the occasionally helpful rewrites that inevitably follow such sloppy writing. Do your worst- I always do!

** Except for like every holiday season for seven years between 1999 and 2005, and even then only for every version of Pre-Printed Calendar we sold during those years. So almost like never, really.