They've gotta (try to) give me credit

Say what you will about the junk mail industry. Call them vile names. Accuse them of wasting paper. Visualize yourself punching them in the face. Whatever your opinion, though, these are people who clearly know their business.
I closed on my new house in late November and by the time I moved in last Sunday I'd received somewhere in the neighborhood of 83 applications for pre-approved credit cards, all in my name and with my current address. At this rate, I figure I'll have enough to paper the bathroom by the end of the year. Add in the menus, coupons and other special offers and I could probably move on to the smallest of my bedrooms by early February.
If we really want to get serious about catching Osama bin Laden, we just need set the countries armies of bulk mailers loose in Afghanistan. They'd have anthrax-laced MasterCard offers and warnings that the warranty on his car is about to expire sitting on the stoop of his cave within a week.
The plan isn't perfect, I'll admit. Since nobody actually opens their junk mail this particular strategy would have limited strategic value.
While we're on the subject of moving (We were, weren't we? Back before we started talking about terrorist leaders?) I have a few thoughts.
First, and maybe most important, don't do it. I can't emphasize this strongly enough. Moving solely with the help of those people either closely related or indebted enough to you to feel obligated, is not a pleasant experience. My house would be so much tidier now if I'd never moved in. The floors wouldn't have gotten mud tracked over them. And I'm sure nobody would have left a big gouge on the stairwell because the couch we were trying to move upstairs was squeezed in tighter than Britney Spears in her Video Music Awards outfit.
I realize not all people feel this way. When I was growing up we moved so many times I started worrying we were on the lam. At one point we moved from a house on the 16th fairway of a golf course in Stillwater to a new house on the fifth hole of the same course.
I figured my parents had blown up a government lab during a protest of the Vietnam War or something. Anyway, that's the story I told all my friends. I didn't care if it was true. It sounded a lot cooler than any alternatives.
If you must move, I seriously recommend doing it sometime other than a day in early December when the temperature is somewhere in the neighborhood of absolute zero. I don't know if boiling water would have frozen when thrown into the air last Sunday, but it was cold enough that a light fixture in my stairwell shattered when all we did was ram a couch into it. Talk about brittle.
I also recommend putting a ham into the oven as soon as you start moving. I don't care if you don't like ham. It smells really good. Also, the oven will provide some heat.
I'm not sure when this moving process will actually be over. There are boxes and bags I have yet to fully unpack. There are some that haven't made it out of my old residence yet. I don't have cable TV. I don't have an Internet connection. I don't even have all the pieces of my desk yet.
But if I ever need a sweet rate on a credit card I'm set.