Q&A Big nothing on campus

On Mar 5, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Two Student LEAD Activities Coordinators wrote:

Hello.

We are the Activities Coordinators from Chapman University in Orange California. We stumbled upon your website and have become intrigued, fascinated, and just flat out entertained really, by NOTHING. We are intersted in doing a presentation on nothing. Would you be willing to come onto our campus to help us promote nothing.

Thanks for nothing!


To which I eventually got around to responding:

Dear Student LEAD Activities Coordinators from Chapman University,

You may have already guessed that my response to your request would come off as shallow and trite and that it would be full of now clichéd witticisms about nothing. Well, as you may by now have second-guessed, nothing could be further from the truth. I suppose you are still reeling to have found that the sentence just prior to this was stated without the slightest irony intended. I would venture a guess that you are very disappointed about nothing, in the sense that nothing of note seems to be happening in this little e-memo. I would like to reassure/disappoint you further by stating that nothing by which you are now saddened is exactly as it seems.

Now I will present my concerns:

I am concerned that your long titles (which seem to include acronyms as well) might detract from the purpose (or lack thereof) of such a presentation. I too have a acronymous title (KON), but it is not placed within another title like yours is. If you could somehow convince me that your titles are meaningless or somehow logically negated by their own existence then that would certainly clear up a major obstacle to my physical arrival at your campus to assist you with nothing. Alternately could you just acronym the whole deal in one of the following ways, by either beginning with current acronym and then creating a second acronym after that (LEAD SAC) or just shoving it all together as an acronym in the current order (SLEADAC)?

I would hate to arrive at your campus only to find that you don't know nothing. Can you prove that our combined efforts would result in a unified message (or lack thereof)? What type of presentation did you have in mind?

Finally, everything costs money. You would logically then assume that nothing (being no thing) would be exempt from any charges. Here is where I could say something to pseudo-cleverly twist the meanings of words and pretend that I had logically made it perfectly sensible to purchase nothing or to pay me for assistance with nothing. There is no reason to do such a thing because you already see that nothing is truly invaluable and my guidance on matters which may or may not pertain to anything is of inestimable worth. It is understandable then that doing my taxes is nothing short of traumatic. In other words, you don't expect me to do nothing to help you for free, do you?

Notice that I didn't say "do nothing to help you for nothing"? That would just cause confusion.

Thank you for your interest in nothing. It is truly an exciting time for nothing now that almost everything sucks. I hope I can assist you in your goals (or lack thereof) and encourage as many as possible to accomplish nothing with their lives. Some young people, being optimistic and innocent, think they can't do it. But I KNOW they can't. If they just have someone who believes in them, there's nothing they can't accomplish or whatever.

--Xymyl (KON)