AP UPDATE: Scottsdale, AZ — TheEditWeapon arrived into this world on January 10, 2008 at 9:07am at 169 pounds and 177.80 centimeters.

His gestation period lasted approximately 6 months while his carrier, Patrick Sullivan Jr., mostly just plopped his ass down on the couch every night to watch 3 hours of Anything, Bill O’Reilly, and then hopefully fell asleep during Special Report.

Reportedly, this was done to divert his brain from obsessing over how turn Jigsaw Health LLC into a 100MM company.

TheEditWeapon was co-fathered by Seth Godin , who planted his Permission Marketing seed in 2001 and c0-induced the birth on January 6th with a Meatball Sundae ; Jeffrey Eisenberg (who planted his Barking seed on August 12, 2006 and co-induced on January 7th with a slap to the face); Brian Clark (who planted his seed on 9-26-07 and induced on 12-19-07); and finally by Roy H. Williams (seed planted December 4 2006, and every Monday since). Mr. Williams did not induce.

TheEditWeapon’s birth happily resulted in the tragic death of Patrick Sullivan Jr.’s tortured belief and use of old world marketing.

Andy Rouney eulogized the event as only that why-isn’t-he-dead-already-bastard can:

Telemarketers really bug me. I’ve got a trio of tips for handling them.

We all have to do our part. We all have to do our part. We all must do our part.

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1) The three little words are: ‘Hold On, Please…’Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.

Then when you eventually hear the phone company’s ‘beep-beep-beep’ tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task. These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end? This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone. This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a ‘real’ sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer.

(3) Junk Mail Help: When you get ‘ads’ enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these ‘ads’ with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those ‘pre-approved’ letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope. Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 41 cents postage ‘IF’ and when they receive them back. It costs them nothing if you throw them away!

The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes. Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you send them. You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 41 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they’re paying for it…Twice!

Let’s help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that’s why they need to increase postage costs again.

This post wasn’t sponsored by TIVO , but it should have been.

"Uhh, who is this moron, and what have you done with Patrick."