Not to get all Ron Burgundy here — “I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.” — but I have many e-mail addresses. I went through a delinquent phase when I tried to see which was the best service and in the process I ended up with two or three or sometimes more accounts with what had to have been a half-dozen or so providers.

I’ve since pared things down a bit, but I do admit I have different accounts with different providers for different uses: commercial usage (online shopping, online registration, etc., basically for anything you have to give an e-mail address for and is going to result in spam or updates) work usage (the Daily Mail account), social usage (casts a large net and injects me into a large network) and what I like to call Personal A (similar to, though more exclusive than social usage as it’s for people I like to keep in touch with regularly) and Personal B (very much the opposite of personal A, but you still give them an address at which you can be reached).

I sometimes struggle to keep up with them all since Personal A and work are the ones that keep me most busy. I hit up the social usage account the other day and was delighted to see this.

From: **** 
Date: Apr 27, 2008 8:56 PM
Subject: An interesting gaffe

I just came back from dinner at my mom’s, where I still get a little bit of mail sent. There was a fundraising letter there from the Mountaineer Athletic Club signed Larry Aschebrook. How sloppy! For one, hasn’t the guy been gone for a few months? Second, obviously, his is not a name you want to use as your pitchman these days.

I could see if they used a nonprofit mailing indicia — we use one for the magazine I run, which means you get a steep mailing discount but it moves slower than molasses. But it says it was sent standard. Granted, I haven’t been over there for two weeks or so, but hadn’t that story already broken? WVU really needs to put a new name — any name — at the bottom of these letters. 

I agreed and he sent me a copy of the letter with instructions to note the date as well as the tone of the message

If nothing else, it’s good for a chuckle. You’d think by reading it that Larry A is pretty excited to be in Morgantown.