Oh dear. Have you seen the pork industry’s “other white meat” advertising campaign? Last April 1 the blog at ThinkGeek.com offered canned unicorn meat as “the new white meat.” Earlier this week they got a cease and desist letter from the pork association. You get the joke, right? The pork association lawyers didn’t. How embarrassing that has to be.

And how funny. ThinkGeek is having a ball with it. They posted Officially Our Best-Ever Cease and Desist on their blog yesterday, obviously enjoying every last detail. There’s an image of the actual letter, as serious as it can be, talking about infringement and dilution of trademark rights. It cites other sites that picked up the joke and ran it with headlines like “the other other white meat.”

ThinkGeek apologizes with all the seriousness of a 13-year-old boy whose wisecrack has the whole class laughing uproariously and the teacher mad. Holding it’s breath, trying to keep from giggling:

We’d like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork–and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn’t actually exist.

I got it from Andrew Sullivan’s The Other Other White Meat on his Daily Dish blog on the Atlantic site. Which reminds me, if they give out awards for a prolific stream of day-in-day-out interesting blogging, Andrew Sullivan has to get one. He’s been churning out multiple good posts a day, every day, for several years. He jumps over a lot of topics, and I suppose he offends a fair number of people with his opinions, but I’m just in awe of how much good writing he produces.

And I really feel bad for the pork people who didn’t get the joke. We’re all too busy, so easily distracted. And protecting the brand is so important. Still, this is a reminder to us all. I feel like revising my “Stop. Breathe. Think.” holiday post to add “Chuckle” to it. My wife reminds me why angels fly: “because they take themselves lightly.”