More Letters From A Nut

Who is Ted L. Nancy? He's a superstitious Vegas high-roller who wants to gamble at a casino in his lucky shrimp outfit... He's the genius inventor of "Six Day Underwear"... He's a stage actor who only travels while dressed as a stick of butter... He is, in reality, a twisted prankster—a supremely off-kilter alter ego who sends patently ridiculous letters to corporate honchos, entertainment conglomerates, national publications, politicians, celebrities and heads of state. His innocent requests, queries, complaints, demands, and suggestions are so absurd it is amazing they fool anyone—but often the deadpan responses he receives are even more hilarious: "Dear Mr. Nancy, It is not often that we receive such enthusiastic support for the paper bag." —The Paper Bag Council "On behalf of Greyhound, there should be no problem traveling while in your butter costume." —Greyhound Bus Lines "I look forward to working with you to create a better future for this great nation." —Vice President Al Gore Letters From A Nut is an insanely inspired, truly madcap collection of Nancy correspondence, a wet-yourself-in-a-public place funny aggregation of official—and officially certifiable—requests, complaints, fan mail and questions that could not possibly have been taken seriously...but, amazingly, were.

Seinfeld. For more than 33 million viewers, the Emmy Award-winning television show has become a Thursday night ritual. Now, even though the show has ended, Jerry Seinfeld's distinct brand of humor can still be yours. Ted L. Nancy's first book, Letters from a Nut, with an introduction by Jerry Seinfeld, now has more than 225,000 copies in print. In More Letters From a Nut, master-prankster Nancy shares even more sidesplittingly funny letters he has written and the unbelievable true responses he has received.

Welcome to the world of Ted L. Nancy. Some have called him inspired, some have called him a goofball, and many have wondered who Ted really is. All we know is that Ted loves to write and it shows-Extra Nutty! is chock full of nut, a record of real live correspondence from America's favorite pen pal to a cross-section of this great nation. Extra Nutty! is bursting with all new letters showing Ted at his looniest. Take, for example, this: Dear Business Permits Dept.: I want to apply for a business permit in your fine city...I operate the Soup & Sleep Restaurants. You can either order soup or sleep. A hostess will greet you and you would say, "I'd like to sleep." She will lead you to a table where you can catch a few winks. Or this: Dear Helena Ocean & Dog Licensing Dept: I will stage the play "Mark Twain with Tourette's Syndrome.". . . Let me know what arrangements I need to make to store my anchovie tank at your seaport. Thank you. I await large crowds. Or even this: Dear Kmart: I have invented a male underpants liner...This liner fits right in your shorts and can be thrown away after 15 weeks. I have been wearing the same pair of underwear for 105 days now and although they feel a little stretchy they are perfectly clean. Ted's unique way of looking at the world-and how the world responds to Ted's schemes--is captured here in this extra nutty, hugely hilarious collection.

The best-selling author of Letters from a Nut presents a latest collection of whimsical correspondence between the author and the unwary establishments, organizations and government offices that attempted to respond to such requests as a hotel room for 300 hamsters and a 59-foot piece of bologna.

Is Wilber Winkle a consumer advocate extraordinaire or just a nut with too much time on his hands? Whatever the verdict, this hilarious collection of complaint letters to American corporations and their responses are a laugh-aloud page-turner. Readers everywhere will recognize the beefs that Wilber strives to get to the bottom of: Denny's waitresses disturbing the delicate balance of cream and sugar in their coffee, the disappearance of the almond from the 5th Avenue candy bar, and insulting automotive technicians at Jiffy Lube. After studying Wilber's letter-writing campaigns, readers will learn how to complain the Wilber Winkle Way and translate customer service-ese. An unflinchingly funny look into the world of customer service and one consumer who will not stand for life's little inconveniences.

Humour.

Look out, public relations; take cover, customer service -- Paul Rosa's letter is in the mail and his inventively imbecilic queries about consumer products have a way of eliciting equally idiotic and even more unlikely answers from some of America's biggest companies.

A bewitchingly brilliant collection of never-before-published letters from the renowned author of “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS • “This biography-through-letters gives an intimate and warm voice to the imagination behind the treasury of uncanny tales that is Shirley Jackson’s legacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates Shirley Jackson is one of the most important American authors of the last hundred years and among our greatest chroniclers of the female experience. This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson’s beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad. i am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as grand central station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet. Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson’s college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson’s writing over nearly three decades. The novel is getting sadder. It’s always such a strange feeling—I know something’s going to happen, and those poor people in the book don’t; they just go blithely on their ways. Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson’s own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.

It has long been a central conviction of western humanistic thought that reason is the most godlike of human traits, and that it makes us unique among animals. Yet if reason directs what we do, why is human behavior so often violent, irrational and disastrous? In Within Reason, leading neurologist Donald B. Calne investigates the phenomenon of rationality from an astonishingly wide array of scientific, sociological, and philosophical perspectives--and shows that although reason evolved as a crucial tool for human survival, it is an aspect of mind and brain which has no inherent moral or spiritual qualities and one whose relationship to our thoughts and actions may not be as central as we want to believe. Learned, lucid, and always illuminating, Within Reason brings together the latest developments in the science of mind with some of the most enduring questions of Western thought.