Letters From Barry Cuda

Barry Cuda
Cedar Park, Texas 78613

November 29, 2006

Claire's Accessories
2400 West Central Road
Hoffman Estates, IL 60192

RE: Lakeline Mall Claire's Retail Store in Cedar Park, TX

Customer Relations,

This past weekend, my 13 year-old daughter went into your store at Lakeline Mall in Cedar Park and paid to have her clitoris pierced with a silver barbell. Unfortunately, I only found out early this morning after rushing my daughter to the emergency room. She was writhing around in bed half the night until she finally began screaming in agony that something was seriously wrong with her "cooter" (the word she and her mother use when referring to the vagina). Imagine my shock when I was informed by the ER nurse that the problem with my daughter amounted to the severe infection caused by the piercing one of your store associates performed on her clitoris.

My daughter had no intention of having anything other than her belly button pierced when I dropped her off at the mall last weekend (and I will admit I did not know she planned to do this, either). But after she went into Claire's, she was coerced by one of your employees into having her clitoris pierced. She is still young and quite susceptible to pressure of this sort. I thought she would be relatively safe during her short time at the mall. I was obviously wrong!

I have tried my best to mull the situation over today in order to make some sort of sense of this, but I must say that I just do not understand how your company can legally get away with doing such a thing to a minor. As sick as it is, I realize clitoris piercings may be the latest trend, the thing all of the cool kids are doing or whatnot. Regardless, I have to ask how a reputable company such as Claire's Accessories can defend the method of increasing their revenue by performing such a vile service? I would expect an adult could get such a piercing in the back of some dive bar or perhaps a tattoo parlor, but how do you justify allowing a child to enter your store at a local mall and have your employees mutilate her privates with foreign metal objects?

Sincerely,

Barry Cuda

Calling Barry Cuda
12/6/06

After writing the letter above, Kelly received a phone call at the house from Katie Michaels, the Director of Consumer Affairs at Claire’s, who asked to speak with Barry Cuda regarding the letter. This was quite odd to me since my Barry Cuda is not listed as a resident with the phone company, and Barry certainly never includes a phone number on the letters he sends out. It didn’t take me long to figure out how this woman put two and two together as I did a quick search on Google for “Barry Cuda” and found that out of the top five links listed, two of them linked to Barry Cuda prank letters on my website. One of those links was to the letter Barry wrote to O’Reilly Media, and if you take a look at that page, you will find the only other person I know about who linked Barry Cuda to me when Kathryn Barrett replied to a Barry Cuda letter by sending a response to him through me via my personal email address. At the time, Barry Cuda wasn’t easily linked to my website through a search engine and wasn’t listed through a Google search, but someone Kathryn worked with did some very deep digging and found some obscure page where I had posted a message on a listserve or something and used Barry Cuda’s name in the text with my own. I don't know why I ever did that...

Now that I know that people can easily search for Barry Cuda on the web and discover that their letter is nothing more than a prank, I have to find some way around the problem. Easy enough – I’ll just have to change the name on the letter. So instead of Barry Cuda, I will use another name on the actual letter from now on; however, when I post the letter on my website, I will still credit Barry Cuda authorship of the letters although I’m actually using a different name. If you look at any of the actual scanned letters closely, you might be able to make out the new name I’m using, but I won’t be divulging it in text on my website since eventually a search engine will discover the new name and link me back to the prank letters all over again.

Anyway, Claire’s wrote back. Below you will find Katie Michael’s short, uncreative, and mundane reply which asks Barry to call and speak with her directly on the phone to discuss the matter further. Blah blah blah… As far as I’m concerned, this prank sizzled out and Barry will just have move on to writing something else.