PUT IT ALL ON RED

Best,
Pros: Safe and innocuous. The vanilla ice cream of email sign-offs.
Cons: Nondescript and underwhelming. Demonstrates an utter void of personality.

Regards,
Pros: Slightly warmer and more genial. Has a vintage feel recalling the days when letters were handwritten and delivered by horses.
Cons: Can come off as sarcastic. Unclear whether the regards are positive or negative.

Best regards,
Pros: More specific than either. Unambiguously positive.
Cons: Shows you are not decisive enough to choose between “Best” and “Regards.” Generally understood as a sign of weakness and cowardice.

All the best,
Pros: Strong and clear. Unambiguously positive.
Cons: Nobody will believe you want them to have all the best.

Sincerely,
Pros: Very classy. Makes you sound older and more mature. And more sincere.
Cons: Makes you sound too much older, like someone who would call a computer a “flashing picture machine” and think Obama is a Muslim.

Later,
Pros: Simple and concise. Tells them you are unpretentious and laid back.
Cons: Low brow. Commits you to future communication. Cajoles them into future communication.

XOXO,
Pros: Reminds family of their importance. Good for love letters.
Cons: Loses it’s sincerity if you electronically hug and kiss too many people. Terrible for office memos.

Cheers,
Pros: Upbeat and classy while suggesting a propensity for drink and mischief.
Cons: Reinforces American cultural inferiority complex to Britain. Spits in faces of Founding Fathers.

Thanks,
Pros: Polite. Makes them feel appreciated and eager to open your next email.
Cons: Weak. Very weak. Two emails in a row signed “Thanks” sends the message, “if you kick me and call me a worthless sack of shit I’ll still come back and thank you for it like a golden retriever puppy.”

Peace,
Pros: Amicable but dispassionate. Conveys awareness of youth culture.
Cons: Lazy and generic. Implies a lack of intelligence and basic hygiene as well as a strong preference for hemp garments.

Adieu,
Pros: Suggests membership in high society and allows for the possibility that you know a foreign language.
Cons: Patronizing. Very embarrassing if the recipient knows French and you don’t.

• Zombie Obama breaking down the door of a suburban family’s home, disparaging the lack of fresh produce in the fridge while seizing their assault rifles
• Bill O’Reilly being trampled by a horde of ambitious career women
• Dennis Kucinich, standing triumphant on the steps of Congress as he is sworn in 2016
• Dracula, fangs bared
• Geraldo Rivera, chest bared
• Justice Ginsburg putting Scalia in a sleeper hold
• High school teacher explaining safe sex to a room full of teenagers
• John Boehner crying on the floor in the fetal position in his office, an empty can of spray tan in his limp hand
• Karl Rove making a coherent, factually correct statement
• Gay werewolf wedding

I was 14 years old when I flew on an airplane for the first time and my mother went out and bought me a suit for the trip. In those days, they wouldn’t let you on a plane without a suit. It was double breasted because only pimps and dope peddlers wore single breasted suits. And a woman wearing anything cheaper than her wedding dress was rightfully assumed to be a two bit harlot. I also got a cane and top hat for the flight because we couldn’t afford a proper monocle and golden pocket watch. Hell, times were tough but we managed to conduct ourselves with dignity anyway. Nowadays you get on a plane and the men all have their toes exposed and their Hawaiian shirts and the women have the midriff and the crotchless womanpanties.

And when was the last time you saw someone dressed appropriately to go to the pictures? People go in wearing their jeans and their t-shirts and their hacky-sacks and their wrist bongs. Not like the old days, no sir. If someone walked into a theater today wearing a tuxedo, people would assume he was going to the goddamn opera. And don’t even get me started on the garbage people wear to the opera.

It’s an epidemic that’s hit everyone in our society from the spiffiest big cheese to the least spiffy little cheese. Even our gangsters dress like a bunch of fish-smellin’ hobos! When I was a boy I’d go every day to deposit my eight cent wage from my after school job as a taste tester for the lead paint factory even though there was a five cent charge for the deposit and only Jews collected interest in those days. Why? Just to get a sliver of a chance to witness the spectacle of a robbery. One time in ‘aught four or some crazy old year like that I got the privilege to be there first hand.

My, did those robbers came in dressed to the nines! Each of the rascals had a different colored seer sucker suit with a matching pocket squares. And every man of them carried an extra square matching the boss’ suit because in those days people had heard of a little thing called loyalty and a related little thing called respect. Each tommy gun was painstakingly monogrammed in 24 karat gold lettering with the initials of the owner, his mother, his wife, his children, and his mistress if applicable.

Nowadays the thieves’ fedoras aren’t even made of felt; they’re cotton and elastic and they cover the whole face like they’re going skiing after. Hell I’d hide my face too if I had planned such a tacky robbery.

I know how young people feel about us old timers. They just roll their eyes every time we complain about them being lazy and having no idea how to deal with prairie measles or orphanhood. So I know it’s a long shot, but if I can convince just one youngster to avoid being seen in public in a shirt costing less than his parents’ house, then I can die a marginally less embittered man.

1. Clinic where procedure is done must be half-ambulatory surgical centers, half-Chuck E. Cheese’s.
2. Rick Perry is required to be present for the initial consultation. He will be wearing surgical scrubs with cowboy boots and will ask extremely personal questions about your sex life. It’s kind of his thing.
3. Doctor who performs procedure must have hospital privileges within 6 miles of clinic and bear some resemblance to fictional TV doctor Gregory House (i.e., white and male).
4. Patient must rub tummy and pat head through duration of procedure, even if anesthetized.
5. Human biology should re-evolve so that God should make it so that babies are fully formed geniuses at conception, like that talking baby on that one E-Trade commercial.
6. Budgets showing in stark monetary terms how poorly Texas provides for mothers and children in poverty after birth shall be reformatted to show amount of jelly beans, rainbows, and/or unicorns recipient could buy with government aid.