I've been completely engulfed in work. The blog suffers. But I managed to read this entire piece by John Cusack over at The Huffington Post. Cusack is not thrilled about the State of the Union. He is not alone.

Did I mention that this post is 2 and a half years old. I didn't think I was busy for that long, but what's changed? Hunter S. Thompson is still dead. Iraq is still a mess. The wolves are still in the hen house.

And to all the grammar geeks out there, it's "has" not "have", since I'm talking about the chain of office superstores, and not individual staples, and they're a helluva lot more fun than the superstores. They would've posted my review.

Staples (the office superstore) asked me in an e-mail to submit a review of a recent purchase. And what I purchased was a 10-pack of blue two-pocket portfolio folders. And I typically don't buy these without first consulting Consumer Reports, but this time it was all impulse. No wonder my credit card bills exceed the per capita income of some less favored nations. (You know I really wanted to put the extra "u" in both "favor" and "humor" tonight. Is that the Brit in me that I never knew was there? Is that even an English thing? Granted it does look better, and so does "colour". Well, maybe.)

So today I noticed that my review was no longer on their website. In the context of this blog it certainly may seem more of a lame stab at humour (ha-ha!), but was downright hysterical over at Staples (the website of the office superstore, not at the website of a collective group self-realizing staples that wrestled the URL from the corporate monolith). Alright, so it wasn't that funny, but here it is. If you can't fill the Internet with crap that has nowhere else to go, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again. Or not.

Staples product review for blue 2 pocket portfolios

By larzini from NJ on 3/7/2008
Your rating: 5 stars
Headline: Holds Papers Exactly As Described!

Pros : Easy To Open/Close, Durable Construction, 2 pockets,
Potty-trained, It's Blue, Nicely textured, Fun for the whole family
Cons : Poor gas mileage, No puree setting, Don't feed after midnight,
Slight metallic taste
Best Uses : Organizing Documents, Conversation piece, Bud vase, Holding
papers, Fanning, Placemat
Describe Yourself : Value Oriented
Primary use of this product : Business

These folders are great. First of all, they are blue. A blue so blue.
And blue is a color. And it is a color I enjoy wholeheartedly. I have
used many of these folders, and each time they lived up to my
expectations of holding my papers. Except one time when I turned a paper-filled
folder upside-down. Guess what? Yep. The papers fell out. Not just one.
All of them. DO NOT TURN UPSIDE-DOWN WHEN PAPERS ARE INSIDE. THEY WILL
FALL OUT! Sorry about yelling, but I cannot emphazise that point enough.
And I can't spell emphazies either. Did I mention there is not
spell-check feature? Well, there's not. Perhaps in the next release.
Unfortunately, Staples have not opened up the next version to users for beta
testing. By the way, the folders are blue. I opened the folder and closed
it numerous times. And it performed every time without fail. Another
nice thing is that there are 10 in a package. I really didn't need that
many, but rather than waste them, I spread whatever documents I need to
transport evenly among the 10 folders. If I have less than 10 papers I
need to transport, I grab magazine blow-in cards or junk mail and put
those in the empty folders. It kills me to have 10 folders and even
leave one empty. If you really need a folder, I would consider this one,
maybe the red model as well, but your insurance rates will go up, so let
the buyer beware.

All proper spacing removed for your inconvenience.

Did that post make this read like a splog? (That's "spam blog" for you home-gamers.)