A few months ago, I made a brief note on the front page about how much the available check designs suck. Because I'm a cheap hack who just wants to fill space, I'll paste in that note here:
I recently had to order new checks. I decided to go with something different, since I've had the same old design for quite some time. I rather quickly learned something about the available check designs.
They suck.
I suppose they're great if you like that sort of thing. But I don't want my checks littered with pictures of kittens, or NASCAR races, or infants dressed up like flowers, or Scooby Doo, or sylvan glens. Or lighthouses, or puppies, or afrocentric symbols, or classic Ford Mustangs. Or baby polar bears, or William Shatner, or the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Or golf balls, or Bible verses, or Celtic symbols, or Mickey Mouse. Or cornball home-sweet-home iconography, or black-and-white-but-colored-with-pencil photographs of children handing flowers to each other.
So in the end I went with the same old design. Oh well.
Now, I know what you were all thinking after that. You were thinking "Yes, but what of it? You've shown us why the checks you can buy in the mundane world are so obviously inferior, but what are we to do about it? Where is the humorous followup? Have you deserted us, O comedy writer?" (Admit it. You were thinking exactly that and you know it.)
Well, fear not! Because...well, because that's a silly thing to fear. But, on the off chance you were really afraid of a lack of a followup, I'm here to prove that your nightmares have been in vain. Behold! I present to you: Alternative Proposed Check Designs!
(Also note how I repeadedly refer to this page as comedy, hoping to trick your subconscious into thinking that this drivel is actually funny! Yay!) But enough with the mind control! Here are my designs!
Each check features a different picture of whatever the hell popped into my head! A shoe! A telephone pole! The headquarters for the Arizona Democratic Party! A tuatara lizard! Former Australian Prime Minister Arthur Fadden! Sprockets!
When you tear off one check, you never know if the next thing you'll be writing on will be a funny-shaped stain on a carpet, or the back of a billboard, or something else entirely! The fun never stops! Hours of fun for the whole family!
Hey, you can get checks with Bible verses, pagan symbols, and probably even pictures from a Scientologist baby-eating ceremony, so it's high time the outright devil-worshippers got their due. Now, when you're out buying your toilet paper and Doritos, you can show the checkout clerk that these groceries are going to be used... for EEEEEVIL!
One minor inconvenience with these checks is that they're black, and so writing on them with a normal pen gets rather tricky. And using one of those flourescent-colored gel pens doesn't really fix anything either - your sinister aura of mystery kind of goes away when you're using a pen you borrowed from an eleven-year-old girl.
The height of inconvenience for all! Watch as any writing vanishes magically into the hopelessly confused background! Just the thing when you need to make sure it'll be a few weeks before the credit card people can figure out how to cash your check!
Also great for folks who like hand-drawn mouse scribbles a whole lot.
Hey, we're all "slaves" to our checking accouts, aren't we? (Heh. I made a funny.) Now you can live out your darkest, most secret fantasies while paying the gas bill. But then again, maybe it'd just reinforce the feeling of being owned by your mortgage company, and no one wants that.
Well-known images, logos and trademarks, sitting in unauthorized glory inside your checkbook! For people who like to take chances and really live life on the edge.
If you're one of those people that really likes being hated by other people.