I get (too many) press releases, Volume 6

The kid (okay, my kid) has a cold. Not a lot of fun when you're a nine-month old. Basically, all you know is that sometimes you have a hard time breathing, then mom or dad inflicts the evil big blue nose vacuum on you. Sylvi hates the nose vacuum more than just about anything else on earth, even more than the 12th showing of "Rocky IV" on AMC. Anyway, she has this cold, which is also causing her right eye to water and is flushing her cheeks, giving off the effect of an extremely small Emmett Kelly.

But even whilst I tend to her nasal aspirating needs, I have a chance to check out two promising press releases that have shown up in my in-box. First, from the publishing world, this book pitch (actually, the subject line is the highlight of the release):

Adoption experience inspires author's kung-fu novel

The tome itself sounds like a perfectly nice children's book, so I won't get on its case too much, save for the last line of the news release, which invites readers to:

"Log on to http://www.fiveancestors.com to test your warrior-focus!

This is a dangerous invitation for most of us in the journalism field, as our collective warrior focus is generally focused on fighting off colds (see above). Anyway, that allows us to move on to a news release from the Medical Industry E-mail News Service, which wants to inform the world (and elsewhere) that:

MEDICAL INDUSTRY E-MAIL NEWS SERVICE(TM) GARNERS CLIENT PRAISE

COSTA MESA CA USA -- MEDICAL INDUSTRY E-MAIL NEWS SERVICE(TM) -- MARCH 10 2005 -- The popular "Medical Industry E-mail News Service(TM)," now in its 5th successful year of operation, transmitting press releases for over 700 regular clients [Mitch's note: "...such as itself."], released direct quotations from them today, regarding results they received.

The total distribution list is now approx. 200,000 individual e-mail addresses worldwide -- all updated daily & hourly, year-round.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Direct quotations! Here we go...

Typical Unsolicited & Unedited Testimonials

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We received a tremendous response back from our press release that you transmitted last week. We would like to go ahead and purchase 2 more.
-- Director, Conference Division

And if two more press releases weren't enough:

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Thanks for sending out the emails. We got a lot of registrations from it.
-- Executive Director, Medical Association Meetings Division
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Note the quote doesn't specify exactly which medical association gets the e-mail registrations, but we can safely assume it's something cool.

I just want to remind all my loyal reader(s) that, after they see this stuff on the front page of the New York Times, or even the Ironwood Daily Globe, you read it here first.