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A Personal History of BoneStamp®
It is a natural enough question to ask how I
discovered male post-pubescent pre-senescent vengeful stress syndrome and and how I
invented the perfect therapeutic appliance to treat it. It was pure serendipity,
beginning with the fact I was born male. A little over eighteen years later, at the
University of California at Davis, two friends of mine shared a room together in Bixby
Hall. They were a riotous pair who managed to extend their academic probation from
the prior year throughout the entire academic year of 1964-65. At the end of
the Spring semester of their second year, both bandsmen were both notified they had
flunked out. As they were packing their belongings to go home, one of them came to me with
a secret offer I couldn't refuse: the purchase and stewardship of the
mysterious and infamous "finger" stamp for $5.00 (at the time,
approximately 6 Big Mac Meals at McDonalds® or four tickets to a good movie or three gallons of Red
Mountain Wine). It was a ridiculously high price for a gum eraser into which had
been carved the image of a hand giving the gesture we called "flipping the
bone." This particular image was well known to the residents of Bixby Hall
because it had found its way on to every regulatory notice ever posted there. That is,
whether coming from the august Regents of the University of California or the poor
beleaguered Dorm Mother, every notice had been decorated within 24 hours of posting by a
red ink version of the bone carved in the gum eraser. No one knew where the stamp
came from or who was doing the stamping. Suddenly, I knew both secrets and the opportunity
to assume a legend was mine. I leveraged my assets and managed to raise the
outrageous price the broken bandsmen were asking. The next year, just minutes after
the first official notices were posted, the red stamp of "the finger," was
affixed to them. This mark evolved over the next year to be called
affectionately, the "bonestamp."
Over the years, the gum eraser treasure
was lost. Sadly, there have been many times in my adult life that I wish I still had
it, times when only the imprint of the bonestamp
would have captured my disapproval and repugnance for what I was reading. My friends
from the dorm (now judges, bankers, attorneys, veterinarians, specialty builders,
bureaucrats, winegrowers, theoretical physicists, dentists and captains of the aerospace
industry) have confessed to me that they too have yearned to still have the bonestamp
at hand to add their strong personal editorial comment to some offensive document crossing
their desk (or arriving in their mailbox). As a doctor, I had always been aware of
the terrible curse that every man must bear from having a chronic case of male
post-pubescent pre-senescent vengeful stress syndrome. It's not easy to have a cave
man's aggressive responses hard wired into you brain while forced to live up to the
Twentieth Century standards of NPR. Still seeing my friends suffering so, these most
respected men of their communities, made me realize there was a gaping hole in
the personal and intellectual armamentarium of our gender. Then, when my
neighbor sold sixteen of my (these days, my attorney prefers I say, "disputed")
acres along with her house, I developed a near fatal case of male post pubescent
pre-senescent vengeful stress syndrome. Between court ordered depositions, suffering
in extremis, I reinvented modern BoneStamp® in a desperate
attempt to save my own life and to ameliorate similar afflictions affecting my oldest
friends.
Just because it saved my life is not to
say it will save every man's life. In fact, it might even cost a few lives: especially from beatings by unhappy
recipients of BoneStamp® messages. There is also the possibility that a
rage episode from over zealous bonestamping session could result in your unfortunate
and unnecessary death. BoneStamp®
intensified rage can
be a real pip. I apologize in advance to the men whose arteries may not
support the physiological excursions brought about by revisiting sub-lethal anger episodes
through the use of BoneStamp®. I know that were it possible to build a BoneStamp® that might not push a million or so men into a premature death from rage
induced heart attack and stroke, I would have built it. The problem is that anything that
is as much fun and as primitively gratifying to use as BoneStamp®,
has just got to be dangerous. I asked myself, "Should we stop
selling cherry bombs and bottle rockets on the 4th of July just because we know a few
scores of kids blow their little fingers off, or blow their tender eardrums
out, or painfully lose use of their eyes by errant fireworks displays during that glorious
patriotic celebration?" Well, of course not. Besides, I don't sell
the BoneStamp® to children. It is also true that there have been
other behavior induced dangers to the public's cardiovascular health long before BoneStamp® . Consider the Menninger brothers' advice to men just before World War
II: based on their erroneous inferences drawn from a retrospective study of heart
attack victims, the Drs. Menninger suggested that getting angry and blowing off
steam was good for the heart and arteries. This counter-intuitive
conclusion was promoted in the press by both the doctors and remained in the press
because of the public relations value for the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.
Between the WW II and the Vietnam War, the Menningers were probably responsible for more
American fatalities than the Nazis, Japanese, and Viet Cong soldiers combined.
Of course, the Menningers meant well. . .So what the Hell, besides, BoneStamp® is
priced reasonably for a behavioral health appliance of such high quality, even if using it
can result in a premature death.
- A
registered copy of the software Registered
Virtual BoneStamp® (Ver 1.00) at $9.99 is almost free (and the beta version actually is free
while it lasts) and will suffice for you e-mail needs.
- The rubber BoneStamp®
at $14.99
is the ultimate accessory for every man who isn't
trying to pretend that he has actually become the somber parental authority
his kids and employees believe him to be. It's still great for the dorm too.
No one with more balls than brains (including you lucky gals) should be without one.
What a deal at about the price of two six packs of imported beer.
And
for a limited time only, you can save almost $10 because Registered Virtual BoneStamp ®(Ver 1.00) is yours free when
you buy a rubber BoneStamp®
- The impact
of BIG
MAN'S BONEstamp® at $24.99
is that of standard BoneStamp® raised to the fifth power. A 12 gauge imprimatur,
BIG MAN'S
BONEstamp® is too much for
a boy. Yet costs far less than than 1/10 the squared price of the standard
BoneStamp! This item is priced so ridiculously low relative to the standard stamp,
you'd think I didn't know any more about math than a social scientist. Better still,
Registered
Virtual BoneStamp ®(Ver 1.00) comes along
for free with that big old bone so you save almost $10 over the regular price of each item
sold separately.
- If that's not enough of a
real deal then buy both stamps at the same time you will receive not only a generous
discount on the price of the rubber stamps but two a pair of Registered Virtual BoneStamp ®(Ver 1.00) downloads for
free. That is, you will receive $59.96 worth of BoneStamp goodies for only $29.99 (only 2.5 Automatic Teller Machine Units) in the Set d'Bone Special
Thanks for stopping by, enjoy your
stay at BoneStamp®
Have a Nice Day and
if that's not enough
--Dr. Bone1
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