FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Media Relations
Email: media@despair.com
www.despair.com

AUSTIN, TX – April 9th, 2012 – Employees at Austin-based cynical goods retailer Despair, Inc. reacted angrily today to news of Despair’s inadvertent involvement in the recently-emerging junket scandal that has rocked the General Services Administration.   In response, representatives at the company vowed to take immediate legal action.

In a GSA-created video recently unearthed by the Huffington Post titled “The Angry Office Clown”, a cigar-chomping Federal employee in clown garb shares his oppressive management philosophy of making ‘as challenging an environment for the others (at GSA) as I possibly can‘.  To that end, he then interrupts an in-progress workplace presentation on strategies for improving Customer Service and then begins spouting cynical aphorisms directly lifted from Despair.com‘s well-known Demotivator® product line while papering the white board with cheaply-produced imitations.

(We apologize for the terrible quality of the video itself… But what do you expect? It’s Government made.)

“This asinine GSA Video is a damning indictment of the utter incompetence and laziness of our Federal Government itself,” Despair co-founder and COO Dr. E.L.Kersten explained, “It was produced using taxpayer money, featuring intellectual-property stolen from the private sector, which was then incompetently redesigned by public sector employees using lowest-bidder stock photography to produce a mediocre imitation of the original.”

“It’s ironic enough to see a Federal Employee dressed up as a clown- as if he’d be mistaken for anything else,” Kersten remarked, “But to watch that Federally employed clown perform as a hack comic in a d-grade ripoff of The Office while spouting our original aphorism about Government malfeasance achieves an ironic sublimity that I’d normally find screamingly hilarious… would that someone other than myself were the victim.

“But given that it’s me on the receiving end of this infinite jest, I’m outraged.  And I intend to take immediate legal action.”

INFINITE IRONY – A Government Employee – dressed business-casual – inadvertently demonstrates just how true Despair’s “Government” Demotivator really is.

DR. KERSTEN OUTLINES HIS LEGAL STRATEGY

When asked for clarification on his intended legal action, a clearly agitated Kersten replied, “Well, first I’m going to call my lawyers and ask what we can do… And then they’re going to tell me that I’d be utterly idiotic to engage in any sort of lawsuit with the Federal Government… And then they’ll remind me of how painful our 2008 IRS audit was, and that that one wasn’t even punitive.  And then I’m going to kick my office wall in impotent rage and scream a lot of very crass synonyms for ‘poo-poo’ while describing what I think about the Feds AND lawyers.

“And then I’ll get a legal bill for $1200 for the call.  That’s my legal strategy.”

And then, as if suddenly remembering something, he added with a resigned sigh, “Now I have to go finish working on my taxes.”