A Chain Letter of a Different Sort

by Perette Michelle Barella. For humorous purposes only.

Do you have all kinds of crap that you'd like to get rid of, but can't bear to? Stuff like an unmatched left glove, a Commodore 64, or a used disposable enema bottle? To you the stuff is useless, but it's still good and don't want to see it go to waste. If only you knew someone who needed these objects, you could let them go.

This is how it works:

Estimate n, where
n = min (# friends^* , # useless objects owned)
Go buy n copies of this letter and enough postage, envelopes, and boxes to mail all the aforementioned crap to people.
Wrap the stuff in envelopes and boxes. Be careful not to pay too much attention to which envelopes and boxes contain which stuff. This way it'll be a surprise for you and the receiver.
Apply postage to the envelopes and boxes as necessary.
Randomly assign envelopes and boxes to friends. Address them and mail. Voila! That stuff is gone, off to a new person to love it.

So you want effectiveness stories? Well, I'm sure I can make some up.

A man named Jay Bartfley received a cat along with the chain letter. He didn't forward anything. He just put the cat in a box and put it on a shelf in his garage. Two weeks later, he died when his house collapsed because of the weight of the World War II tanks he was storing in his attic. Just think, if he'd mailed away even one of those tanks, he might be alive today.

A woman named Muffy Rabbitgrabber from the South Bronx took advantage of the chain. She sent off 208 useless objects to new homes, in the process finding her cat which had been missing for nearly 2 months. She even got rid of the cat, which was pretty badly decomposed and smelled really bad.

I'd like to note again that this chain letter doesn't have the six-person retransmission problem (We're using a dynamic linked list rather than a static array). Send it to as many (or as few) people as you like. Have a silly day.

* Note: # people in phone book may be substituted for # friends.