There are several metrics one uses to determine the success of a new venture on the web. Page views, user retention, and brand awareness are three of the most common, but there is a lesser known, and harder to quantify, indicator that suggests a new website is coming into its own: crazy emails from random strangers.
While many startups will receive their fair share of odd inbox effluvia once they've begun to attract attention, it is only sites with a serious potential for growth that attract the high-quality bizarro queries from correspondents with nonsensical sender addresses. I am happy to inform those of you who care about the health of The Awl that both the volume and peculiarity of the missives we've received has increased a great deal over the last month. In fact, someone wrote us today with what may very well be a serious request for information. Perhaps you can help?
Our correspondent asks:
What happens to american debt if you move to canada? It has become obvious I need help with this. Any ideas you have would be very much appreciated. Any help appreciated. Thank you very much.I could probably Google this, but I'm not gonna. Surely, though, you have some ideas? Thanks! And keep those cards and letters coming.
The banks and the healthcare system are in great shape in Canada. Let's all move there!
What happens? It follows you! Any company which extends credit to individuals in the U.S. will have a branch in Canada ("America's Hat"), so they'll just find you again. The collection agency calls won't even be any politer (as you might expect) because they're all outsourced to call-centers staffed by meaty psychopaths in Southern prisons.
Now on the other hand, the Canadian credit score services don't talk to the American ones, so when you move to Canada you'll have a blank Canadian credit history. This can be good if your credit sucks, but is also bad because nobody will issue you a credit card, you tabula rasa you.
Can Answer Lady tell me if you dump your American Girlfriend who claims you are indebted to her, does she follow you to Canada?
You gave me a crippled dolphin.
I want to reply.
but by doing so in the way in which I think I should reply,
I may in fact be falling into the trap of
"yes that's exactly what we were thinking, dolt"!
Fruits and vegetables are free, so we should sell them at the farmers market.
This is California!
As other commenter's have pointed out, debt from Canada's underwear will follow you. Girlfriends, no unless they can read a map or have a passport (both rarities from what I've experienced).
But perhaps the correspondent means the "The Awl" ( he does say "you" implying he's referring to all of you down there)and the american debt is the 2 trillion that's in hock to China. As the Watson-Yau rubix regression suggests, moving "The Awl" to Canada would trigger a default in the Mezzanine structure of the Dollar backed CDO's( a Ming the Merciless moment - lesser known than the Minsky Moment) leaving the value of american debt( as denominated in Nigerian Naria) plummeting faster than AIG executives being defenestrated by angry investors.
No wonder he needed help!
American debt not only follows you to Canada, it stalks you in Canada, relentlessly, and your new Canadian friends will only laugh derisively when you try to explain just why it is you seem so jumpy.
Does it then shoot you from a helicopter?
Sadly, you never get to find out where it shot you from.
The debt follows you, but it can be repaid in beaver pelts.
I bet Canadian Prisons are actually kind of nice. Like a Days Inn, but probably with an above-ground pool.
In a totally unrelated matter, I'm moving to Toronto on Friday. Totally unrelated. I swear.
If you grow a moustache your debt will be erased in accordance with the Waxman amendment to the stimulus bill.
You convert it to kilometers, idiot.
FTW!