Abstract Academic: Bad news at a good price

Have you ever wanted to tell someone that the person they’re dating is a scumbag, but can’t think of a tactful way to go about it without losing his or her friendship?

What about that co-worker in the cubicle across the aisle who chews his breakfast burritos really loudly, spraying the office with visible chunks of egg and salsa, as he loudly regales all within earshot of his inappropriately personal weekend? Wouldn’t you like to pay someone to come in and (legally) shut him up? Or at least make him chew with his mouth closed?

Well, now you can! We here at Blunt Incorporated will gladly send one of our trained bluntness counselors (for a small fee, of course) to your office, home or anywhere you’d like, armed with a toolbox full of frank and direct instruments of life-altering advice!

Troubled by that brother-in-law who’s starting his own online company out of his mother’s basement? Is that online company based around the marketing of early ’90s TV merchandise (“click here and receive one free Fraggle Rock lunch box! It goes great with a pair of authentic, glow-in-the-dark, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air sneakers!”)?

Give us a call, and we’ll send a pair of forthright Blunt Inc. technicians to box up all those Step by Step posters and Family Matters Urkel glasses, and send your brother-in-law off to business school (or, at least, to apply for a job at Walmart).

Still not sure? Listen to some of our customer testimonials.

“My aunt is a lovely person, but she doesn’t know that no one actually uses their phones as phones anymore. She would call at all hours of the day, and it was making me nuts. I tried teaching her how to text, but her thumbs are large and unwieldy. I called Blunt Inc., and two guileless guys showed up to inform her that, no, phones are not used to call people anymore. My name was, of course, never mentioned, and my aunt and I now communicate exclusively through text and e-mails. Thanks, Blunt Inc.!”

“My brother was dating a total princess. She wanted my brother to change his major from early childhood education to pre-law or pre-med or something so she could afford gold-plated curtains and weekly facials, and she could blog all day about gourmet pie recipes. I paid one of your qualified bluntness counselors to wait outside her car one day. The counselor handed her a stack of feminist literature, and now she’s working on her second master’s degree in French architecture.”

We specialize in delivering the rough-but-necessary news your friends and family so desperately need to hear. Here are some of our specialty situations:

1. Know anybody who goes up to a week without showering because “she’s too busy and no one notices”? We’ll help rid her of her unhygienic ignorance.
2. Is someone revealing too much personal information on Facebook, including adulterous affairs, past drug abuse or discrete bodily functions? We’ll get them to read aloud the last month of status updates in front of a crowded auditorium filled with nuns. If that doesn’t change them, then nothing will. (And Blunt-O-Rama has an entire division devoted to annoyingly smug political posts.)
3. Got a roommate who spends more on video games than he does on rent? Or a sister who buys more makeup and hair products than Nicki Minaj? We’ll fix them.
4. Major personality disorders in your relatives? Our mental health and honesty department handles these special cases by taping banners over the driveway. Imagine driving home to a giant sign that says, “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU SHOULD BE TESTED FOR OBSESSIVE-COMPULSION!”
5. Is your husband unwilling to give up his collection of graphic T-shirts? We’ll gladly swap them out for some conservative button-downs and even throw away that couch he brought into the marriage.
6. Does your best friend think that calling music “indie” makes it good music? Watch as our taste specialists force him listen to thousands of indie podcasts, all over-dubbed with the musicians explaining their craft (“like, Pablo and I were, like, at Arctic Circle, and we just, like, thought that, you know, people were so mean sometimes, and, like, he pulled out his mandolin and I, like, wrote “People Are Selfish” right there, while I finished my brownie sundae”). He’ll never want to listen to anything but Top 40 hits for the rest of his life.

And we don’t stop there. We’ll fix Mountain Dew addictions, relationships with securities’ salesmen, sons who won’t move out and reality TV fanatics. Honesty is our mission at Blunt Inc., and for that same small fee, we’ll anonymously tell everyone you know everything that is wrong with them.

But don’t be surprised if someone hires us to come tell you about those skinny jeans.

Other stories you might be interested in:

Posted by Kory Wood on October 16, 2012. Filed under Abstract Academic, Campus Community, Columns, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry