Ruddy Inc.

The comeback of Ruddy Ruddy continues with the arrival of the best-ever piece of mail. I arrived home today to find a manila envelope from Natural Resources Canada addressed to "Ruddy Inc."!

After making sure it wasn't from the Department of Justice (which might have been a bad thing), I was pretty pleased to see it, and I couldn't wait to get it open. Inside: five fact sheets on Climate Change in Ontario, each exhorting me to visit the Government of Canada climate change Web site. Information in the fact sheets is derived from "Weathering the Changes: Climate Change in Ontario", which can be viewed online here.

According to the sheet, one of the things I can do to help reduce the amount of energy I use at home and help reduced greenhouse gas emissions is to install a low-flow showerhead. Coincidentally, I'm actually having a new showerhead installed at this very moment, so the government is amazingly on top of things by sending this little reminder to me. This is why I pay taxes.

Another intriguing inclusion is the packing slip from St. Joseph Digital Solutions, which indicates that Julie Labonte from Natural Resources Canada sent this package to Ruddy Inc.; gives invoice, purchase order, and client numbers; and features the following items:

Catalogue No. and Description.................................Quantity.............Code
M27-01-1666E
CLIMATE CHANGE IN ONTARIO (GOVERNMENT)................5.....................00...
M27-01-1681-1E
CLIMATE CHANGE ARE YOU DOING BIT? (KIT)...................5.....................01...

Consulting the legend, one can see that "00" is the code for "Item shipped" and "01" is the code for "Back order, item to follow."

So, this intriguing piece of mail leads me to the following conclusions:

1. The government of Canada officially recognizes Ruddy Ruddy. Let me put that in capital letters: The Government of Canada. That means, in theory, the Prime Minister and the Queen.
2. Somehow, Ruddy Ruddy actually appears to have gotten incorporated. If so, that actually makes Ruddy Inc. a legal entity.
3. For the first time, someone's actually dared to sign her name to the junk mail sent to Ruddy Ruddy. I could actually call her up and get to the bottom of this.
4. It looks like I'm going to be getting more mail from Natural Resources Canada. It looks like five kits of some kind.
5. I have no idea how this might have happened, since you wouldn't think that the government would be buying up lists of names from bulk mailers. But it's pretty cool.