Please pardon the all-staff mailing -- I understand that many of you misinterpreted my comments at this morning's marketing meeting regarding our mascot, and I just wanted to set the record straight.

I have no personal animousity toward Pookie, the PrizeWire.com Koala bear. He is, as I asserted, both cute and fluffy. Also, I understand the value associated with him after our Super-Bowl commercial, and didn't mean to be diminutive with respect to the branding he affords our Internet startup.

I am all too painfully aware that Pookie's image and name recognition alone helped us achieve a desperately needed second round of funding and that our little Pookster may have been the only thing to save our online parlor gaming and prize site from the wholesale slaughter that killed eight out of every ten Internet startups after the crash. Yes, in that respect, little Pook puts food in my family's mouth each and every night.

All I'm saying is that we consider that Pookie whizzes like a frickin' firehose. Pookie is capable of emitting rank fluids that cannot possibly be an amalgamation of his diet -- there are chemical processes at work here that man cannot hope to understand.

At the meeting Richter brought up the very good point that Pookie is a marvelous content gimmick. I don't think any of us can disagree that "Pookie's Prize Pouch" is a perfect application of our marsupialian mascot and web traffic seems to bear it out. However, have you ever actually reached into Pookie's pouch? Last Thursday I did and discovered the little shit had my car keys in there.

I'd just like to open it up for consideration that we replace Pookie with some sort of cartoon or puppet Koala bear. Pets.com, for instance, uses a sock puppet -- which is considerably less likely to take a dump in my briefcase. Thank you.