For the grudge-holders out there who can’t get over petty slights and nasty oversights, this one’s for you.
Listen up, oh men and women with malice toward all.
For those of ill will, resentments and animosities large and small, it was only a matter of time before somebody dreamed up a product to make your life just a little easier.
For less than the cost of a fish wrapped in newspaper delivered to the enemy of your choice, it is now possible to write hate letters in the actual handwriting of the killers of your choice.
Imagine the added impact of a letter to the person at the top of your Enemies List if it were composed like this:
Dear Sir or Madam:
If you don’t stop calling the police about my dog, I will be forced to fry your kidneys in olive oil with a touch of cilantro.
Cordially,
Your Name Here
P.S. This is the exact script of Jack the Ripper.
The sale of “Killer Fonts,” as the product is known, is the demonically delicious idea of Stuart Shapiro, a film producer with a penchant for dark humor.
Shapiro is just one of a growing list of creatively strange people with stuff to sell or merely tell over the Internet. (Lee Harvey Oswald)
(Other examples include Club Methane, which is the home page of the “profoundly flatulent” and “My Colon, from the Inside” which consists solely of four color photos of one man’s colon taken during a 1995 medical exam.)
But, back to the killers. (Billy the Kid)
Shapiro, 49, who lives with his wife and 10-year-old son in Austin, Texas, said that the idea of selling handwriting of killers was born out of “old fashioned irreverence” and a desire to provide a product that seemed suited for the Internet. He insists, incidentally, that the fonts are “absolutely, meticulously correct” based on handwriting samples he found in library books and manuscripts.
“My sense of the Internet is that it’s really anarchistic, really kind of young and fresh and bold and kind of punky.” He wanted to create an inexpensive product that lived up to most of those adjectives. (This one is $4.95. http://www.killerfonts.com/)
“I get a lot of responses that say, `This is really sick and I love it. (John Dillinger)
Shapiro’s wife, Stella, says he has always been “marginal, cutting edge, underground. He’s never broken from that inner child who likes to do strange things.”
“Can’t you think of something that’s more wholesome?” Shapiro’s sister asked him. And, indeed, he’s branched out to sell handwriting fonts of dead people who weren’t killers, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and he’s working on Beethoven and Da Vinci.
“It’s killers! It’s presidents! It’s celebrities?” he says. Depending on what depravity you’re into, other killers available include Public Enemy No. 1 John Dillinger, Billy the Kid and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
Make of it what you will: Wisconsin cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer deserves the Best Penmanship Award.
