Shopping for greeting cards can be a humiliating ordeal. They command an entire aisle at your local drugstore, but damned if you can find a single one worth stealing. No matter how they’re tricked out with chirping sound chips, ornate pop-ups, encrustations of glitter, or the wisdom of Garfield, they tend to express feelings you don’t feel in images you don’t recognize and in words you don’t believe. Speaking plainly, they’re for people whose lives are perhaps simpler than yours and mine.
But don’t despair: now there’s Oops, a set of real talk greeting cards for grown folks. Did you “get wet” last night and run into trouble with John Law? Oops has “got your six.” Sexually attracted to your mother-in-law? You’re a loser at Rite Aid, bucko, but you’re royalty here. Need to comfort a bereaved friend and hit him up for cash at the same time? Then you need Oops. Or has a toilet with muscular arms been controlling your nervous system by means of a PlayStation handset that is plugged into your brain? Oops can help you express how that feels.
(inside) Let’s have this one end in some death?
(inside) I’m so sorry, This card didn’t seen nearly so inappropriate when I bought it
(inside) Can you drive me to the hospital?
(inside) Can I borrow $40
(inside) “WHY THAT”
The set of eight cards is the latest offering from Sam McPheeters, the polymath hardcore singer, visual artist, graphic designer, record label boss, novelist, raconteur, magazine editor, VICE reporter and army of clones. I know Sam personally, but our friendship has only strengthened my suspicions that “Sam McPheeters” may be no more of a real identity than “Carolyn Keene,” “Betty Crocker” or “Luther Blissett.” Didn’t lots of people believe they were close, personal friends of JT LeRoy’s, too?