Minutiæ

1867

Gen­tle peo­ple of the Minu­tiæ readership:

We are pub­lish­ing this open let­ter to address the awful acci­dent that took place at our Arkansas print­ing press facil­ity this past Spring­time. Many immi­grants failed to remain alive through­out the ordeal. It is impos­si­ble to know how so many gears could be spun in so many wildly dif­fer­ent direc­tions, yet spun they did.

Now, before we rush to judge­ment (and I can­not stress this enough) DO NOT BLAME THE GEARS. Gears are what has made this United Amer­i­can coun­try so great. Not only the gears that power our steamed eng­y­ned trains, but the gears of our clocks and the gears of our exper­i­men­tal mechan­i­cal ser­vants. Not only the gears of indus­try, but the gears of com­merce and a new seg­re­ga­tion based on the only value that mat­ters: social class.

Were we with­out gears, the Irish or Scot­tish, at a moment’s notice, could bluntly fall our beau­ti­ful nation. With­out gears, might the peo­ple of south­ern con­ti­nents force us into a rootbark-based econ­omy. Let us bless our­selves, the fallen immi­grants, and the mighty teethed wheels that power this grand col­lec­tion of states we call home. God blessed thy.

1917

Dear Vic­to­ri­ous Amer­i­can Read­ers: At our con­verted Ham­burg Print­ing­haus recently, faulty ven­ti­la­tion caused the death of thirty eight of our dirty-finger-nailed Jerry employ­ees, and, I guess, we must address this.

Firstly, we must say that only the tiny hands of moth­er­less chil­dren can mash pulp prop­erly. Only that pulp, formed into paper, will hold the eco­nom­i­cal Turk­ish ink that we use to print Minu­tiae. We all make sac­ri­fices to bring impor­tant news and report­ing to the world. For instance, our edi­tors log long hours hold­ing their hands behind their backs, slowly nod­ding while peer­ing out through win­dows over­look­ing the print­ing shoppe floors. Our lay­out­men spend days on end shuf­fling around wooden bits of let­ters, wear­ing cum­ber­some leather aprons, gog­gles and gloves. There­fore, remem­ber, it is not only the moth­er­less chil­dren who sub­mit them­selves to ser­vic­ing the greater good. As you read this I grow tired from leaf­ing through the many con­tract pages required to have a his­toric river­front man­sion burned and con­verted into a world class brawl­ing stage.

In this publicly-reported-upon instance, the pulp­ing of paper occurred on a par­tic­u­larly chill­ing Win­ter day. To amass sav­ings to pass along to you, the reader, we use the heat gen­er­ated by the pulp­ing process to warm our paper pro­cess­ing plants. If any heat escapes, then we lose those sav­ings and must raise the price of our pub­lished mate­ri­als. Wouldn’t you agree, dear reader, that it is in the best inter­ests to keep vents closed and the fume-ed heat held within? Exactly.

Again, we can only blame the vents for not being able to sep­a­rate fumes from heat and we have tasked our Minu­tiæ Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­tory (once they are done draw­ing up plans for a world-class brawl­ing stage) with cre­at­ing such a vent. Until then, pulp­ing will con­tinue with tiny and even more moth­er­less chil­dren. Think of thy savings!

2011

It recently came to light that con­di­tions in our off shore Korean print­ing facil­ity were less than humane. Jolly whistle­blow­ers, under­cover blog­gers and biased union­iz­ers uncov­ered the facil­i­ties that our con­tract work­ers were pro­duc­ing Minu­tiæ (and the all new Minu­tiæ Day Beds) under. These reports cite sev­eral griev­ances includ­ing ele­va­tors that tipped over, leak­ing light bulbs and a gen­eral lack of suit­able floor­ing. And, of course, we were aston­ished that such hor­ri­fi­cies saw the light of day.

We blame the one man who we entrusted with the health and safety of our Korean con­tract work­ers. This man we only knew as 론 울프 아이 (The Lone Wolf Eye) and he dis­ap­peared shortly after the ter­ri­fy­ing con­di­tions were reported in the media.  While there were sev­eral red flags that should’ve indi­cated his untrust­wor­thi­ness (his con­stant light­ing matches off his cobra skin boots, his lean­ing back in chairs and look­ing at the ceil­ing to dis­miss con­cerns, and his fre­quent inquiries to if we enjoyed “salty tastes”), we were being urged by stock hold­ers (many of whom are no longer Amer­i­can cit­i­zens) to sign the agree­ment for him to look over our Korean print­ing facility.

We want to make it clear that Minu­tiæ prides itself on appear­ing to hold our­selves to the high­est of work­ing con­di­tions. From our pub­lish­ing team’s Cold Stone Cream­ery gift cards down to the Minu­tiæ mea­sur­ing tapes given in lieu of hol­i­day par­ties, Minu­tiæ has stated we are com­mit­ted to a high stan­dard and we will con­tinue to state that we are com­mit­ted to such a high stan­dard. If any­one sees 론 울프 아이 in a South­ern state, please tell him to get in touch with us as we are still eagerly await­ing the arrival of the first ship­ment of Minu­tiæ Day Beds.