Admittedly, Tuesday morning’s dramatic bank robbery was a tough act to follow. A weapon, a luxury car, a high-speed chase across state lines, evidence flung into the Potomac, a climactic crash and an arrest by an ironically low-speed bike cop: it pretty much had it all.

Still, this is lame by any standards. NBC4 reports that a man tried to rob a Bank of America in Bailey’s Crossroads via pneumatic tube. He sent his robbery note via the air-powered system; the teller sent it back. He drove off.

I suppose you can’t fault the guy’s enthusiasm for better living through cylinders. If 1900s-era Ladies’ Home Journal readers thought that pneumatic tubes would be delivering us apple-sized strawberries, is it really such a stretch to think that in this modern era, bank robbery should be able to be conducted from a comfortable distance, and with a comforting FWOOSH?

Investigators haven’t caught the suspect, but they say there’s no reason to think he was armed. They also don’t appear to have released a description of a car or the contents of the note, however — perhaps they’re just protecting the public from the suspect’s criminal genius. But we’re curious: what could the note have said? Surely some of our commenters can come up with a missive so effective that it would’ve worked.