Well this is stupid...

The other day I randomly got the April 2009 issue of Blender in the mail. The address label said that my subscription will run until April 2010. The thing is, I didn't subscribe to Blender, I don't read Blender, and I have no interest in a Blender subscription. So rather than have to throw it in the recycling bin for the next 11 months, I decided to just go online and cancel my subscription.

My first stop was Blender.com. I mean, obviously they'll have some sort of subscription services link, right? No...no they don't. They don't have much of anything useful on there. I didn't even make that URL a hyperlink because I don't recommend that anyone actually go to Blender.com. It's like Myspace and blogger had a baby...a talentless, ugly baby.

But I digress. Anyway, Blender.com didn't get me any closer to canceling my subscription, so I decided to leaf through the magazine to see if the masthead would have any answers. And answers it had. "For subscription inquiries, please visit us at blender.com/customerservice."

Perfect, that's exactly what I wanted to find. Let's go on over to the customer service page...

That's it... that's the entire Blender.com/customerservice website. Two sentences amid a sea of white space. They couldn't even bother to put up a picture of a Maxim or a sad-faced Blender. And why the hell would they send out unsolicited year-long subscriptions to a magazine that's defunct? Did they just need to get rid of all of their remaining stock?

The day before my issue of Blender arrived, the first of my random year-long subscription to Rolling Stone showed up. I really have no interest in Rolling Stone either, but it did have this great article.

update: About two weeks after receiving my April 2009 issue, I received the March 2009 issue. Apparently now they're working their way through their back catalog.