Heuristics for Arguing

I figure if you're here you're probably my friend so I don't mind you having this information...just don't use it against me. Oh, and just cause I posted these doesn't mean I use them...hey come on! I'm no sophist.

Thirty Eight Ways to Win an Argument
from Schopenhauer's "The Art of Controversy"....


1 Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it.
The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it.The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

2 Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his argument.
Example: Person A says, "You do not understand the mysteries of Kant's philosophy."
Person B replies, "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking about, I'll have nothing to do with them."

3 Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing.Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it.
Attack something different than what was asserted.

4 Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end.Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order.
By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.

5 Use your opponent's beliefs against him.If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage. Example, if the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.

6 Confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.Example: Call something by a different name: "good repute" instead of "honor," "virtue" instead of "virginity," "red-blooded" instead of "vertebrates".

7 State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions.By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the proponent's admissions.

8 Make your opponent angry.An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9 Use your opponent's answers to your question to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10 If you opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.

11 If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusions as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12 If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition. Example: What an impartial person would call "public worship" or a "system of religion" is described by an adherent as "piety" or "godliness" and by an opponent as "bigotry" or "superstition." In other words, inset what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.

13 To make your opponent accept a proposition , you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical. Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must to everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, "whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents." Or , if a thing is said to occur "often" you are to understand few or many times, the opponent will say "many."
It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white; or gray next to white and call it black.

14 Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your question without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

15 If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.
Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition.Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment.You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted. For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.

16 When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action. Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, "Why don't you leave on the first plane?"

17 If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

18 If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19 Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific. Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

20 If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21 When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character.
But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him.For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth. Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice, emotion or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

22 If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23 Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating their statements.
By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement. Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than your intended, redefine your statement's limits and say, "That is what I said, no more."

24 State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears that opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so appears to be indirectly refuted.

25 If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary.
Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition.
Example: "All ruminants are horned," is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.

26 A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against himself. Example: Your opponent declares: "so and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him." You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."

27 Should your opponent suprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal.No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28 When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who is not an expert on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.

29 If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion--that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute. This may be done without presumption if the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30 Make an appeal to authority rather than reason.If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case.
If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance.
Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most.You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.

31 If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a find stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
Example: "What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can't understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.

32 A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category. Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "Atheism" or "Superstition." In making an objection of this kind you take for granted:
1)That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited;
and
2)The system referred to has been entirely refuted by the current audience.

33 You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.
Example: "That's all very well in theory, but it won't work in practice."

34 When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so.
You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35 Instead of working on an opponent's intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive. If you success in making your opponent's opinion, should it prove true, seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately.
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma. You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church.
He will abandon the argument.

36 You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what your are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37 Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases. If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.

38 Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand.In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character.
This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.

Class Today

Well, today in my medicine class I was completely unprepared for a quiz. The professor said to one student who was similarly unprepared "well, if you can't think of anything to write just write me a limerick." I decided I'd probably pull the limerick off better than the B.S. so I gave it a shot. It was a one minute quiz so it was very hard. This is what I came up with:

I don't really know what to say,
because I didn't pay attention last Monday,
So please be kind,
with the inaccuracies you find,
And give me a good grade anyway.

I told the professor I took the limerick option and he read mine aloud and said that my submission wasn't a real limerick cause it has to be about a young boy or a young girl and then he made up a few other criteria for limerickness. I'm not sure if he's right or not (Wikipedia will decide that later), but I wanted the points so I took a shot at coming up with another one. This is what resulted (as far as I can remember):

There once was a boy named Dan,
From his reading responsibilities he ran,
So when he came to class,
He pulled something from his (expletive)
And said "I did all I can."

The teacher thought that one was better. I'll find out on Friday if it was enough. Fingers crossed.

Three Sides of the Same Coin (guess that doesn't make much sense)

Well, I've been thinking about how conflicted I get when I try to figure out what I feel for a girl. It is very frustrating for me to care about anyone cause when I do all my caution, all my comfort, all my thinking...it just seems to get tossed out the window by my tyrant emotions. I have a carefully balanced life, and in my mind there is no room for anyone else. I've found falling in love to be quite similar to having an unwanted house guest...they come in and throw off your routine, complicate your life...and you're always left in a mess when they leave. But, cynicism aside, I have decided to write a letter (or more accurately letters) to depict what I think as I try to figure out whether a girl is worth the inevitable frustration. I am rarely this open with my thoughts so I doubt I have expressed them very well. What I've written is what I often think/feel (and what I can only imagine others think/feel to some extent) when they try to decide how they feel about someone. So, here is my attempt at a very honest (and because of this, very unorthodox) "love" letter. I hope you enjoy it.

Dear X
Well, I’ve been debating whether I should try to tell you how I feel about you. My problem is that I’m not sure that I know myself. I’ve given serious thought to what I should say to you about my feelings. Every time I try to figure them out I just get confused. It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you, and it’s not that I’m unaware my feelings; the problem is the variance in my feelings. I am so across the board in my emotions (as far as you’re concerned) that I feel that if I were to make a statement regarding how I feel I would only hint at, and probably truncate, the breadth of my feelings for you. So, in the interest of explaining myself and letting you know where I’m coming from, I thought I would explain my position from three different perspectives. Hopefully one of these three perspectives will resonate with you and make my intentions clear.

I know telling you the same thing from three different perspectives sounds crazy. To be honest I think it might be a dumb idea. But since it promises to be a fun creative writing exercise I’m going to do it anyway. I think a movie came out a while ago called “Vantage Point” or something like that that played with this idea. In the movie there was a single event, but the truth of the event could only be had when the viewpoints of all the onlookers were put together into a single picture….or something like that. Well, similarly, the truth of how I feel will be told from three different vantage points. Hopefully from the different shades of the truth brought on by a single cause (you) you will be able to synthesize correctly the multifaceted (and multidirectional) feelings I have for you.

Now, I’m not saying that my feelings are so deep that they warrant three perspectives. Rather, I am saying that my feelings are so conflicting they deserve three perspectives. Because, you see, I feel all the things I’m going to tell you, and all these feelings at times are mutually exclusive. Sometimes one feeling outweighs the others and I decide on a course of action, then later that feeling falls below the surface and another takes its place that leads me to some other course of action. But, I’ve been going on for too long on what I will say and I’m not saying all that much. So, let me get to it. My three different perspectives will be explored in three different letters. One letter will be romantic, one letter will be reasonable, and one letter will be spiritual. Hopefully from these three letters my true feelings will become clear. Please keep in mind as you read what I write that my feelings are still developing, and as such, they are only half-formed and unclear. My intent is to let you know what I’m thinking—not what I’ve thought. These are ideas in process, when you’re done reading you’ll know as much as I do. Well, enough of that, on with the letters. Enjoy!

Speaking Romantically…

Dear X,
I think about you all the time. Sometimes I wish I thought about you less, but deep down, I wonder at this because these thoughts make me feel wonderful. Every time we go out it is the highlight of my week. I often think too much, and my thoughts are sometimes too analytic, but when I’m with you I just feel peace and comfort. When I’m with you I feel the way I think I should feel. I know it sounds silly but your presence is like sunshine. When I’m around you I feel warm, alive, I feel….right. Every time you laugh I feel like something clicks inside me, like some part of me just fit a little bit better than it did before. Your sense of humor puts me at ease, your kindness opens my heart, and your humility softens my pride. Put simply, you are wonderful. But for all these feelings of rightness there is something wrong too. I wonder at how I can feel so much for someone I don’t even know all that well. I wonder how I can reasonably maintain feelings of such intensity. But, when I feel these warnings, I just say to myself “why worry, why be afraid of feeling too good?” All I need to do to remove my misgivings is to think on how you make me feel. When I do this my reservations fade away into nothingness the way last night’s dreams fade away with the fog of sleep. Simply put, if the quality of one’s life after meeting someone is any indicator of feelings, then I feel for you, and I feel strongly for you. You lift me up, you brighten my life. I am grateful that I met you. You have improved my life and my only wish is to return the favor.

Speaking Analytically…

Dear X,
I am not sure exactly what was just written but it sounds like someone cut up the screenplays from various romantic comedies and then vomited them on a page. Why are conflicting feelings romantic? Why is it that you have such an effect on him? Didn’t he say that he doesn’t know you all that well? Is this some sort of amazing unconditional love? What is the value of love if it is not predicated on the qualities of the person at which it is directed? If he doesn’t know you well he can’t love you well. Can you really be as good as he says you are? Are those feelings justified? How do you feel? Why does he feel so strongly for you if you don’t reciprocate? Isn’t it a bit strange that he feels so much more than you? Don’t you think it’s possible that he is idealizing you? Do you feel comfortable being thought so highly of? Honestly, are you that wonderful? Is anyone? If love distorts who you are isn’t it wrong to idealize love as we do? If love is nothing more than a distortion of the idealized then the “power of love” is nothing more than the power of misrepresentation. While it is true that he does feel better and happier around you, I think he should evaluate those feelings closely. Pragmatically you have some positive effect on him, but the nature of why you have this effect is the real issue. Could he feel that way with someone else? Does he have enough experience to properly judge the feelings he is experiencing now with the feelings he’d experience if he loved someone else? These are questions that deserve answering, and in my mind, they either make or break his idea of you. While I’m sure you’re a wonderful girl, I refuse to believe that you are as wonderful as he sees you. Frankly, his love for you just isn’t practical; it is not founded in reality. His love for you is founded in raw emotion and idealized feelings. I wish you two well but I cannot take part in this. Unless a realistic foundation for your relationship develops I cannot see his feelings for you lasting for any length of time.

Speaking Spiritually…

Dear X,
Wow, that analytical guy is a joy kill. Where does he get off? I want to side with my romantic friend and let you know that something about this feels right. I’ve prayed about it, and while I wouldn’t ever push the impressions I get on anyone and say “the Lord has spoken,” I will say this much, the Lord didn’t say no! I know that when I was younger I dated a girl and I prayed about whether it was a good idea to pursue the relationship and I was told very clearly it was a bad idea. I dated the girl anyway and she threw me into a tailspin that I never really recovered from. Dating her was my own little homage to Joseph’s loss of the the 116 pages—very painful but very instructive. So, I’d never say to you that God approves of us together but I do know that he doesn’t disapprove of it. I feel positive around you. I know you’re a good person. You love God and you love those around you. The type of love you exude can only be had by someone who is living their life correctly. You have a bright and sensitive spirit, you are loving and kind. You exemplify the teachings of Jesus Christ. For all these things I can safely say that whoever ends up with you will be amazingly blessed. When it all comes down to it, the most important factor in any relationship is the ability to love, and as we learn in the scriptures, the ability to love (at least in its purest form--Charity) is a gift from God. That is why God must be the center and the foundation of any relationship. I believe my romantic friend is a good person and he understands what is necessary to have a Christ centered relationship. I believe you do as well. So, I see the possibility of your relationship as a possibility with sure footing. The question is whether it feels right to you. Despite my romantic friend’s flowery words you must decide for all the right reasons that pursuing something with him is what you want Honestly, if you ask me he comes on a little strong. But, that analytic fellow isn’t much better—he is so far lost to real feeling that I doubt you can trust a thing he says. I am not saying to focus on what is good, and I’m not saying to focus on what is reasonable…I want you to focus on what is right. Does this feel right? If so, then take hold of it, and take the best of all possible worlds and make some happiness for yourself. Or…you can run. If you run I’ll tell you what will happen…romance guy will cry, analytic guy will say “I told you so” and I’ll pray for you to be happy wherever you go.

**Disclaimer: people have asked me if this post reflects my feelings for a specific person. My answer to this is both yes and no. I wrote this post because I was unsure how I felt about someone, but this depiction is dramatized, and, as such, not (at least wholly) representative of my feelings for that person.**

Some Great Poems You've Probably Read Already

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

I heard this poem for the first time in high school. I think it's pretty rare that a poem actually gives good advice. Ever since I first read this poem it has been once of my favorites.

Now, this next one is pretty funny. I'd like to hear most people's interpretations cause I completely misread it the first time. All you need to know to begin is that this guy is a smooth talker and he's trying to bring about an infraction of the BYU honor code...well he would be if he weren't writing a few hundred years before the church was organized. He's not doing a very good thing but he does it so intelligently and melodramatically that it is one of my favorite poems.

THE FLEA.
by John Donne


MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

....and now to clear up John Donne's name so he doesn't appear a total cad, one of the sweetest poems ever written to a woman:

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne


AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.


So, there is some poetry for everyone. Let me know what you think,and also let me know your interpretation of the metaphysical poetry (John Donne's stuff). Metaphysical poetry needs to be read in a group cause it has layered meanings.

Anyway, hope everyone is well, thanks for reading.

Shakespeare Paper

A few years ago I was writing a paper on Hamlet and became discouraged. I decided to play a game and tell the story of Hamlet while sequentially going through the alphabet to determine each word's first letter. I had to really stretch at the end with x,y, and z, but I made it through with only a few misplaced connecting words. So, here it is.

Analytic assertions are allegated as to the allayed avengement of Hamlet. Because a bevy of Brits believe he should have begun bringing justice as he boasted. Carelessly carousing caused causality for complications in his commission creating catharsis. Dead Danes develop due to delayed dishing out of what’s deserved. Everyone ends up extinct from esoteric errata. Families fight, friends fallout foes fortify. Ghosts gives guidance but gradually their ghastly games end in grief. Hamlet sends his heathen uncle to hell for his horrible home-life. Indecent irreligious idiots die ignominiously from injuries. Jerks receive justice, killers are killed, lovers are lost, mothers are massacred, nations are nullified, order is ostracized. People are persecuted, queens are quieted. Ramifications from such ranging stuff stifles the sensate soul. Time teaches truth-seekers that the trials will likely take up unless understanding utopists undertake an unreal vocation by vilifying vociferously our victorious vicars, who want what we all want, xenophobic yodeling zebras.

Like I said, x,y, and z are hard.

Snickers

Well here is my first post. I'm not sure where to start so I thought I'd just share a letter I sent to Snickers a few years back. The background for this letter is that I bought a Snickers bar from the grocery store and the bar was all white and flaky. Maybe you've seen old chocolate before--when it starts to turn white and all nasty. Well, I noticed it was pretty disgusting so I checked the expiration date and it was still good. So, I figured I'd write to Snickers and see if I could create enough of a hubbub to get something free... I don't know what exactly, maybe a certificate for a lifetime of free Snickers or something. Anyway, here's the letter.


To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing this letter in response to one of the saddest experiences of my young life. I have always looked to your fine products, Snickers bars in particular, as a source of culinary delight. Knowing this you can imagine my deep disappointment today when I painfully chewed my way through a pile of stale flaky chocolate sadly mislabeled as a Snickers bar. I truly hope you fire your quality control manager. Others should not be forced to experience such an anticlimactic experience. Tasting your sorry excuse for a confectionary was the sensory equivalent of learning there is no Santa Claus. Please take your jobs seriously, please improve your quality. I have always had a special place in my heart for your many worthy products. Please live up to the faith I have placed in you.

Regards,
Daniel Campbell

Looking back now I guess it wasn't all that funny. I only really like the Santa Claus line. Well, I guess its a start for my blog--albeit an inauspicious one.