The following was recieved the morning of April 19th, 2001. What follows is Mr. Ferm's reply.

Dear Chad,

While I appreciate the fact that you and your fellows care about my future employment prospects and the way possible employers would view me, I am going to have to decline your kind and worthy offer.

Through out history, the more skills a person has had defined their earning potential and the wealth of their family. A person who forever stayed at the apprentice level of silver smithing would have had a far harder time than that of a person who achieved a mastery level. After the industrial revolution, and especially in the post-war America, we have become a predominately white collar nation, the drawback of which is that the skills are far harder to prove. The advent of the resume, a skill set and list of prior employers, was important because one hoped that showing past performance would justify a higher earning rate for their potential growth and show that, in the modern lemming like fashion, that if somebody else hired them, then you should also.

Your service is clearly a worthwhile venture.

However, I must decline the opportunity you have so generously offered. You see, kind sir, that I am now self-employed at my own company, a little consulting venture, that I pray with the remaining vestiges of Victorian protestant humble piety will survive the precarious market conditions of late so that I may meet success on my own terms. You can see that your product offers little to me in the way of benefit.

Lastly, I do not know how my contact information made its way into your little file, but frankly I would appreciate if you were to pretend that it were not there and withhold any further correspondence that is not personal in nature. Subjects I would be willing to converse on via email are many and include, but are not limited to: Post-War Conditions on Comic Books as a medium, Grunge era music and the return thereof, The pluses and minus of American Foreign policy, and any programming on NPR after 10pm.

By the way, Chad is my favorite African country.

As always, your friend.

- Colin