Ballard Street by Jerry Van Amerongen for December 11, 2007

Cory’s elbow is about as interesting as downtown Cleveland.

Well, Cleo, as P.T. Barnum said….

If the envelope says “Presorted-standard,” just toss it into the recycle bin. Claude, you have gotten Clara and Cleo’s hopes up for nothing. Check with Betty to get an excellent tour of Italy arranged for you.

Ah, Claude is leaving out the very beginning of the very first sentence….

the phrase in a tiny font that always precedes the giant “You have won!”

We can’t make small fonts any more on the comics… I even tested to see if it changed back again after this update….

So you’ll have to imagine the microscopic letters in which I’m sure it says (bold is mine…)

" IF yours is among the lucky 100 first entries drawn on Dec. 11th, 2017…"

Here’s the breakdown….

587,432 entries turned in at the Cuyahoga County Fair,

added to 5, 432, 618 entries from the rest of Ohio.

100 winning entries drawn.

One Grand Prize trip to Paris

One First Prize trip to London

98 Second Prize Cleveland, Columbus or Cincinnati Bus Tours (depending on street address of winner.)

Odds of winning anything, including a bus tour

100 in 6,020,050….

or 1 in 60,200.5

The only thing you are certain to have won is 3 years of free dinnertime phone calls,

from “Aloha Vacations Unlimited,” plus all their “strategic business partners”.

Who now ALL have the right to call you because you filled out a sweepstakes ticket at the county fair, hoping to win a free Hawaiian vacation…

thus establishing a “business relationship” to circumvent the Do Not Call list.

Plus they will sell your number to spammers who don’t care about breaking the law anyway,

as they use the internet to place recorded robocalls from outside the US.

The moral of this tale:

Never never never enter those phony contests!

There’s a 99.9999999% chance you’ll be seeing Cleveland from a bus.

Art imitates life. 

http://tinyurl.com/y8b44fn6 

Good Golly, Miss Molly!!!! Is this why I’m getting a kazillion telemarketing calls?!?! All I did was START to fill out a form to receive some free samples of one of my favorite lotion suppliers, and OOPS! All – day – long. Now the calls are automated, so I just hang up, but they use our area code now, and I’m not sure if it’s a legit call or not. UGH!

Clara………don’t let Claude fill out the form!!!! (although a complimentary bag of peanuts sounds interesting.)

Is Downtown Cleveland anything like “Beautiful Downtown Burbank?” (You gotta be old to remember Laugh-In gags!)

Well, free anything is good!!!