I don’t even know what to say, other than I hope that the particular quipster in the Product Development department who came up with this t-shirt has a really good life insurance policy. I foresee an unexpected brake failure in his future. I wonder if I’m making myself a target just by even talking about this? I really should probably just shut up now. After stating my unequivocal disapproval of a shirt which mocks one of the largest and most powerful oil interests in the world, regardless of whether their less than stellar safety record might warrant it.

If any of you want to save 25% on this t-shirt, use the coupon code bringingoiltoamericanshores. This code is valid through Friday, I think. Which may be longer than the shirt is available for sale, if history is any guide.

UPDATE: BLACKOUT PROMO IS OVER

Starting Tuesday, April 12th at Noon CST
OUR Greatest Sales Event of the Year RETURNS!

SPECIAL NOTE: Before I even launch into my typical rambling promotional e-mail, which I highly encourage you to read in its entirety, I’m going to do a favor for those of you who have other more pressing matters demanding your attention (however unlikely that is) and for those of you who have some sort of attention deficit disorder. I am putting the MOST IMPORTANT FACTS about this Blackout Promotion just below this in Bold Red Type. If you do nothing else, please read the FOUR IMPORTANT FACTS:

1) This promotion begins at Noon Central Standard Time on Tuesday, April 12th- and not a minute before. (I’m very sorry it didn’t launch as originally planned earlier on Monday- our e-mail service provider had technical problems!)

2) Sale items will NOT be discounted until the promotion begins. So don’t try to order early or you won’t save any money.

3) If you want to score the free Insight Desktopper, you MUST add it to your cart. It won’t be included with your order otherwise.

4) Lastly, certain links in this e-mail WILL NOT WORK until after the promotion begins- namely, any links pertaining to Despair’s new Mousepad line. (I put that link in as a test of your attention span. If you clicked on it- and found yourself redirected to the Despair.com website, then you just punk’d yourself, beets!)

(We now return to your regularly scheduled Blackout promotional e-mail… Get comfortable!)

It’s time. Time once again for Despair’s Greatest Sales Event of the Year, the Blackout! It’s our Private, Exclusive Sale for You, the Readers of Despair.com‘s Sporadically E-Mailed and Haphazardly Sent Newsletter, The Wailing List. For 48-hours only, we are discounting nearly everything in the store to prices so low they’re almost reasonable!

But incredible discounts aren’t the only benefit of a Blackout Sale… For the duration of the sale, we’re offering freebies with any order! Want to get free Insight Desktopper with your order? Just add one to your shopping cart and it’s yours! Want to get a free Insight poster with your order? Just Buy Any Poster and we’ll slip in a free one. Want to get a free as-yet-unavailable Economics poster? Just order a second poster and we’ll include it- along with the aforementioned free Insight poster! (BTW- you won’t see either of those posters appear in your shopping cart when you place the order- just trust us… We’ll get them in there!)

But those freebies are only the start- because we’re also offering these incredible discounts!

For 48-hours only, all Demotivator® Lithographs are $9.95 (that $6.95 off- a nearly 40% discount!)

All Desktoppers are $11.95 (that’s $4 less, or over 25% off!)

All DespairWear is $12.95 (that’s up to $7- or up to 35% off!)

All Laptop Skins are $12.95 (that’s $7 off- and 35% off- too!)

And guess what? We’re also introducing an entirely new product line- Mousepads! And for 48-hours only, we’re selling them for $9.95!

(That’s $3 off their future retail price of $12.95 each!) And not only are we including ten Demotivator(R) designs, we’re also making several other hilarious designs available- including mousepad versions of popular DespairWear designs like the Social Media Venn Diagram, The Toyota Slogan, Vote Whig, Too Big To Fail, and many, many more!

So check yourself before you wet yourself (while I drop in a picture below to further illustrate the point that this particular new product line is especially worthy of your attention…)

And- as awesome as all that is- we’re going even further! Not only have we discounted all of our Build-Your-Own-Calendars by 35% for 48-hours, we’ve also updated them to include Summertime Start Months! That means you can now order fully-customized Demotivators Calendars for all the gift-giving holidays that are quickly coming up in the months ahead!

“What gift-giving holidays are you talking about?”, some of you might be wondering.

Well, Mother’s Day is May 9th, for example. And Father’s Day is June 20th. And of course Cow Appreciation Day falls on July 15th, for all your farmer out there who are looking to Demotivate(tm) any special heifers in your employ.

And hey, we’ve still got a couple thousand of our Pre-Printed 2010 Greatest Hits Calendars left in inventory, and we’re going to discount them to $7.95 just to get them out of the warehouse. Please, order some. They’re gorgeous, and ship complete with 4 beautiful mini-prints. Plus, the pallet they are sitting on is right next to the shrink-wrap machine- and that device puts out an incredible amount of heat. I’m worried that this is some kind of fire hazard and we’d really appreciate it if you’d do you part to reduce the immolation risk to warehouse employees because apparently it’s too much work for the foreman to slide a pallet jack under that baby and move it to a different part of the building… Please- save them!

IN CLOSING:

Please note: Did I mention how important it was to pay attention to those FOUR IMPORTANT FACTS at the beginning? I’m sure if you made it this far, you probably aced that part. But still, I just really don’t want anyone to chumpatize themselves.

Also please note: Did you make it all the way to the end? I’m so impressed! I’m going to reward you for your diligence by telling you a secret… I lowered the price for Pessimist’s Shot Glass to $0 for the first one you add to your cart. (Any subsequent ones added to your cart will be full-price.) So go ahead, treat yourself to a freebie! My only request: please limit your shot glasses to one-per-order if you can. We’ve only got 800 or so in stock, and any ones you buy will take away from freebies other later customers might pick up. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

That’s all. See you Tuesday at noon at Despair.com.

Here we go again! It’s our second Caption Contest of 2010- and once again, we’re bringing the big bucks for the smartest caption! The winner of this contest gets $750- not a bad payoff (plus whatever money your employer pays you while you waste time at your workplace trying to come up with a funny caption!) So- my fellow disgruntled masses- LET’S GET READY TO GRUUUUUUUUMMMMMMBBBLLLLLLLE!!

So- for those of you NEW to Despair’s Wailing List newsletter, lemme explain how this works…

Despair has gone to great pains to procure a wonderfully perfectly caption-worthy image- the beaut above. Now we’re calling on YOU to author the perfect title & caption for it!

From now until noon CST on Tuesday, we’re accepting your caption and title submissions. And by “title”, we mean “title for the poster”- NOT your job title. You could have the wittiest caption in the world- but if you title your poster “CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SPECIALIST“, you are probably not going to win the contest.

After the Submission window closes, then the Peer-review window opens! From Tuesday at 12:01pm CDT through Wednesday at midnight CST- YOU are all invited to vote on randomized, unedited submissions from other participants- should you want to do so. (You will receive an e-mail invitation to judge captions Tuesday morning…)

A WORD OF WARNING: I know you longtimers are tired of hearing this, but I get complaints every time- so I’m repeating it. If you CHOOSE to join the Peer-Review stage, you’re inevitably going to be grinding your way through a seemingly barrage of frequently annoying or tiresome material. Yes, you’ll find some gems along with way, but you’ll endure more than your share of groaners in the process. It’s the price you pay for joining the loser-generated content revolution! But the reward is worth it- because once the contest is complete- Despair will offer, for a very brief time- a chance for you to get a framed 5×7 of the winning design for FREE.

On Thursday, we will announce the semi-finalists from amongst the top contest vote-getters. If you don’t want to participate in the caption-judging but you do want to vote on semi-finalists, you’re more than welcome to do so. (It’s a lot more fun, frankly…) A final vote will be held starting Thursday afternoon to determine the final contest winner!

All you need to do in order to submit your entry (or entries) is visit this link. Remember, you have until Monday at midnight to submit your suggested caption(s)!

And- once again I’m inviting my Twitter followers- should they want to- to you Retweet the CONTEST invitation below. By doing so, you’ll automatically be registered for a chance to win $250. Simply cut and paste the blue text below into your Twitter update window and tweet it to the world!

DESPAIR.COM CONTEST: Write the best caption for this pic to win $750! http://bit.ly/1hk74 (Retweet 4 chance 2 win $200)

(Yet again, let me remind you: In order to qualify for the Twitter drawing, you need have at least 5 followers. And if it looks like all 5 of your followers were generated by YOU hastily so they can have fake conversations with you, you’ll be disqualified. We’re not trying to encourage multiple-personality disorders, here- you’ll have enough personality problems already!)

Let your brilliant caption submissions begin!

And hey- a quick-reminder for you DespairWear t-shirt fans out there… If you want to save 20% on one of our recent tees, such as The Flash Tee, The Help Tee, The Toyota Tee, My Opinion Tee or the Vote Whig Tee- just use the coupon code iwanttosave20percentononeofyourrecenttees (this coupon expires at end of day tomorrow, or Friday the 26th).

So in my haste to get last week’s awesome tee out, I apparently missed an email from Product Development that included info on the SECOND t-shirt I was supposed to launch at last week… It’s the simple yet hilarious little Toyota Tee you see above.

So- belatedly- I’m flacking it!

If you’re a Toyota owner who wants to pick up one on the cheap, you can score one for 25% off the purchase price- just use the coupon code HELPICANTSTOPMOVINGFORWARD when you place your order for the shirt and you’ll save a bundle!

Hey- it’s another brand new DespairWear Tee! But this time we’re giving you good Wailing List subscribers a chance to scoop it up on the cheap! If you want to buy this snarky bit of swag for you (or that special condescending elitist in your life), just use the coupon code opinionated when you place the order- and you’ll pick it up for the bargain price of $11.95! But don’t tarry- that coupon code expires on Saturday- after which you’ll have to pay the full price!

Hey, while I’ve got your attention, a special shout out to my ten winners of the Retweeting Contest from last week… They are Twitter Users @NickSchweitzer, @doughibbard, @theMadJayWoman, @madzephyr, @edmj, @JamisonFaught, @mcnulty6, @donnakfitch, @bshermcincy and @KevinPJackson. Congrats on winning!

I already announced this via my Twitter Feed but if you missed it, I wanted to do it here- since SOME of you folks have emailed me and accused me of running contests without actually giving out the awards! (It’s actually a pretty nifty idea- thanks for suggesting it! If I falsify future contests, I could use the savings from my inconsequential e-mail newsletter marketing budget to splurge on importing a new bottle of Yoichi 20 Year Japanese Single Malt Whisky or some other storied spirit equally out of my price range and equally certain to make me the envy of my elitist peer group of would-be novelists, screen-writers and poets who, like me, continue to sell-their-souls-year-in-and-year-out in the Marketing and Advertising trades. So I’ll give it some consideration…)

(Dangit. If only…)

I really think this one is about as straight-forward as we get… And it’s gorgeous to boot! It’s the perfect tee for, well, apparently the majority of voters. So rather than waste a lot of time with a protracted sales pitch, let me just simply instruct you to buy it, right now!

And if you want a chance to win one of ten free $20 Gift Certificates (for use at Despair.com), just tweet about it! You could use the one included below, or you can write your own (if you make sure to include the URL below).

DESPAIR.COM unveils “Vote Whig” t-shirt! http://cli.gs/rp1U3u – RT for chance to win 1 of 10 free $20 gift certificates!

Remember- the usual rules apply. (You know the drill by now, right? You need to have at least 5 followers- hopefully more- and you need to have a real history of tweeting for it to count!) I’ll announce the winners on Monday afternoon- via email and twitter.