17 posts tagged “open letter”
Dear Faculty Members:
Thank you all for sending me your submissions to the departmental newsletter in an almost timely fashion. Three weeks past the deadline isn't that big a deal. It's all good.
Because of recent kerfuffles concerning edits to the brilliant literary masterworks that you submitted, I am taking a bold new step as the editor of this newsletter. I'm taking my name off of it. If all you want me to do is paste in the articles you write, without making editorial improvements to your spelling, grammar, and syntax, I don't want anyone knowing that I'm the "Editor." Frankly, I wouldn't want anyone to think that I'm at fault for the steaming pile of crap you're asking me to mail out to donors and alumni. I have a reputation to uphold.
While we're on the subject of my reputation, I'd like to remind everyone that I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS DEPARTMENT WITH A MASTERS DEGREE IN ENGLISH. You can stack up as many PhDs in OTHER subjects as you want and my puny little MA will still trump your PhD, because I STUDIED ENGLISH. Specifically, I studied WRITING. You know, the science of stringing words together into coherent sentences? I served as an editorial intern at an international literary magazine. I've written and edited newsletters for a dozen different organizations. I know what I'm doing, but I can only do it if you let me.
So, from now on, you'll get what you deserve. Copy & paste. I won't check to make sure you haven't spelled it "Universtiy" for the ten-thousandth time. If you won't let me fix your grammar and syntax, I'm not going to fix your spelling. And the only person's name that'll be on it is yours.
Cheerio,
~(name redacted)
Dear Betty,
I don't mind your habit of coming around in oddly numbered days, 25 or 27 or 29, without warning. I'm prepared for that. I'm pretty much resigned to the way you trample all over my boobs in steel-toed work boots. After 25 years, I don't even mind the way you wreck the place every month. I'm used to being on clean-up duty.
But bitch, let me tell you right now, there's one thing I won't put up with. That's you driving around my uterus for four days straight making threatening remarks, running over my trash cans, knocking down my mailbox, and leaving tire tracks on my lawn.
If you're gonna come visit, you just need to knock the door down, flop on my sofa and proceed to drink two six-packs of hate and cause a big mess. Don't be threatening unless you plan to carry through with it. Don't be calling me at three in the morning and saying, "Baby, I'm on my way," when you don't plan on showing up. That shit pisses me off. And there are ways to fix that. Trust me, you twat, there are ways to deal with your indecision and bad behavior.
So you need to commit to this fucked up dysfunctional relationship or get the hell away from me. Are we clear?
Fuck you,
~Redzilla
Dear Editor,
Thanks very much for accepting my story for publication, but could you please stop e-mailing me? I get it, you think you're a man of considerable experience and you disagree with what you see as my "stereotypical view of prostitution." The problem is that you don't recognize you are a walking, talking, e-mailing stereotype of American manhood.
It's great that you know some lovely Brazilian prostitutes who are in the business because they love sex, but no matter how many times you tell me that, you won't change what I've seen of prostitution in America. Of the hundred-odd prostitutes I've met in my various non-profit jobs, not one of them was in it for the kink. All of them were in it for the money.
Some were in it for the money to buy drugs. Some were in it for the money to buy food for their kids. Some were in it for the money to pay tuition. Some of them hated what they were doing. Some of them didn't mind it. Some of them got into it because they couldn't get other work. A lot of them got into it because the other work they could get was even more degrading than sucking strangers' cocks. (Consider that I was willing, no, eager to become a topless waitress to escape from my minimum wage job as a hotel maid. Looking back on it, I'd say sucking cock for $20 would have been less degrading than scrubbing toilets for $3.55 an hour.)
None of these hard-working ladies considered their jobs "sex." The sex part was an act, like the smile the customer service rep wears while talking to you on the phone. Do you think that "Emily" in Mumbai is really that happy to help you with your account? Prostitution is a role to be played. It's no more sexual than if you hired the same woman to come home and clean your toilet.
So take a look at yourself. Do you wonder why you've seen a different side of prostitution? Because you're a potential client. Of course, the prostitutes you meet aren't going to tell you the truth about what it's like fucking a stranger for cash. I'm not saying there aren't women out there who get into prostitution for sex. I'm just saying they must be few and far between when stacked against the hordes of regular hookers who just need to earn some money.
The reality is that you, like many men, want prostitution to be sexy. It wouldn't hold the allure it has for you if you realized it wasn't. As long as you can pretend it's sexy, you don't have to pause in mid-thrust to wonder, "Is she really into this or is she acting?"
Probably you even need prostitution to be sexy, so you don't have to think about the ambivalence prostitutes feel toward their clients. Or frankly, the ambivalence women feel toward men in general. You belittle us, ignore us, hit us, rape us, and kill us with an alarming regularity. Of course we're ambivalent about you.
Please, enough. You refuse to accept my experiences as truth and I consider yours tainted by your own desires. Can we end this farce of a dialog?
Best,
Redz
PS: How can you even waste time preaching at me about the need for decriminalization? Of course, prostitution should be decriminalized. You may be locked in your stereotype, but don't try to lock me into one. I've seen the sad, ugly underbelly of prostitution, and police harassment, arrests, fines, and jail time all wreak havoc on prostitutes' lives. The truth of your opinion about prostitutes is in the mantra of "properly regulated." Why should hookers have to be any more regulated than other professions? Because you want them to be pretty, sexy, clean girls eager to serve you? Because regulation will remove the taint of desperation? It won't. It'll just create another layer to the caste system that already exists.
Dear Scott McClellan,
Does the phrase "a day late and a dollar short" mean anything to you? You spent two and a half years as George W. Bush's official spokesman, but now, now you want share with the world that you feel the White House used "propaganda" instead of "candor"? Wasn't that your job, you asshat? To pass off propaganda as truth?
Everything that you swore for years was true, now you're telling us it was the result of Bush being "ill-served" by his advisers? So, what? Bush gets a pass? He's not responsible for parsing truth from falsehood? That's not the president's job anymore? Wasn't that what his excuse for being an ignorant fuck--that he was going to have a bunch of great advisers to make up for his stupidity?
As for you, do you think this is going to earn you points with anyone? Now, when it doesn't matter, when nothing you say or do is going to pull America out this spiral of debt and war, you're going to tell us, "Oopsie, some of those things I said weren't really true"? Are you worried that there might some day be a tribunal to investigate the crimes of George Bush and you hope that this book will absolve you of any responsibility for your role in those crimes?
If the White House is "puzzled" by your tell-all book, color me utterly fucking perplexed. What's the point of telling everything now? We've already figured it out.
With contempt,
~Redzilla
Dear Receptionist:
You're a nice person. I like you. You're friendly and pleasant and mostly reliable. You were a big help to me when I first started the job, but now you're becoming a drag on my own slacker-productivity. I can't slack when I have to hold your hand through the smallest thing.
You're getting stupid and it's because you smoke TOO MUCH FUCKING POT! So knock it off.
It's killing your brain cells and turning you from a sweet old hippie into a stupid old hippie who is going to feel my wrath.
If I give you a stamped envelope addressed to the Provost's office and two offer letters for a new lecturer, with a post-it note stuck on it with an address in New York, do not come back to me half an hour later and say, "I could just walk this over to the Provost's Office. We don't have to send it through the mail." DUH. Send it to the address on the fucking post-it note. It has to go to the new lecturer and he sends it back to the Provost's Office.
If someone breaks the photocopying rules, how many times do I have to tell you to document it? I'm not going to chastise someone unless you're actually keeping records of their previous infractions. It's that simple--every time somebody screws up, write down their name, the date, and what they did. And hey, here's an idea: don't do it on a fucking post-it note that you're going to lose. Keep an excel file or a folder or something.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, you dope fiend. You wanna have a doob on the weekend, that's fine, but stop going home every night and lighting up.
Sincerely,
~Redzilla
P.S. If it turns out that this is actually early onset Alzheimer's, uh...sorry about this. Oh, hell, you won't remember it anyway.
As of today, I'm adding another rule to my list of guidelines for public bathrooms.
To clarify: this is a public bathroom. Not your own private toilet. Things you would do at home, you should not do here: like spray yourself with a liberal dose of feminine hygiene spray. Aside from the fact that the shit is bad for you. Aside from the fact that it's been linked with vulvar cancer. Aside from the fact that chemically speaking, there's no appreciable difference between feminine hygiene spray and Lysol air freshener. Aside from all those things, that is some nasty, foul stuff. I heard you spray yourself for about five seconds and in those five seconds you released a choking, noxious cloud of flowery chemicals that made my eyes water three stalls over.
Bottom line: not just rude, but unnecessary. I couldn't smell your cooch when I walked into the bathroom, so it clearly did not smell as powerfully bad as the cooch spray you spritzed on it. In fact, I have never smelled cooch that smelled as bad as your crotch Lysol. Three hours later I could still smell that nasty cooch spray when I went to the bathroom, and I can only imagine people around you could, too. Like you'd stuffed a big arrangement of dried flowers and potpourri up your hooha.
Dear Professor Zombie,
It's not that I don't understand or sympathize. Yes, you're so old that dirt calls you "sir," and 50 years of academia has sucked out your soul, leaving you a mere husk of the young man who received his PhD all those years ago. I understand that you must pray for death on a regular basis, and I don't blame you, but I wish you could show a little mercy to those of us who have to work in the same building as you.
If the academic life has devoured your happiness, decamped with your joy, befouled your golden years, that's unfortunate. Must you visit it on the rest of us, forcing us to look upon your bitter, wizened, lifeless visage every day? If cancer had eaten a hole where your nose used to be, would you walk up and down the halls expecting us to look at that?
I'm not asking you to go home and kill yourself, although that might be the best choice, considering the desperate case of ambulatory misery you seem to have. I just wonder if you couldn't wear a bag over your head? Perhaps in a nice houndstooth to match your jacket, with suede patches over the ears? Or if a bag is too onerous, maybe you could conceal your dead eyes and withering mouth of eternal suffering behind something more positive, like this:
Sincerely,
~Redzilla
Dear Republican Congressmen who may be playing for the other team, light in their loafers, peter puffers, queers, poofters, nellies, queens, fudge packers, sodomites, fags, or butt pirates,
Sirs, it is time for you to come clean, before you meet the unpleasant fates of your fellow Republicans Mark Foley, Bob Allen, and now Idaho Congressman Larry Craig.
Look, guys, there is nothing wrong with being gay. The American Psychiatric Association says that it's perfectly normal and healthy. The American people embraced Will and Grace. They love Elton John. Some Americans love gay people so much that they want to marry them!
I realize that your closet may be quite comfortable, and you may indeed love your wife of 30+ years, but the bottom line is that you have two choices:
1.) Acknowledge your sexual attraction for other men
OR
2.) Accept that you will never be able to safely engage in sweet, sweet man-love as long as you're a respected Republican politician.
If you try to somehow indulge your secret pleasures while serving in public office, you're going to get caught eventually. Even George W. Bush got caught with a gay male escort brown-nosing him at White House press briefings.
I don't expect all of you to make a mad dash out of the closet door, but at least consider what I'm saying. Your secrets, they're no longer safe. If you're wondering why everyone seems so gleeful when you get caught with your pants down, look no further than the efforts of your party to make gay folks into second class citizens.
~Redzilla
Dear Freshmen,
Welcome to college. I hope you learn a lot and broaden your horizons--there really is more to the world than you heard about in Podunk, Kansas. I'm glad you're here, because your tuition pays my salary. So be sure to pay promptly; my mortgage is due the first of each month. Now that you're here, however, let's just run over a few quick ground rules that will help all of us get along better in these first few weeks.
- If you're walking along with four of your friends, please leave a reasonable space on one side to allow people traveling in the opposite direction to get past you. If you do make the mistake of walking five-abreast and you encounter me, one of you will certainly be injured, and on my good days, I'll get two of you by taking my share of the sidewalk out of the middle. I may look harmless, but I will hurt you and it won't be an accident. You'll get an elbow in your kidney as we pass, or I'll step on your unprotected flip-flop-wearing toes, or my large backpack will slip off my shoulder and slam into you. As you may not yet know what I look like, I recommend following this precautionary guideline at all times.
- Similarly, do not stand in the cafeteria line talking to your new friend behind the counter while I'm trying to get lunch. I only have an hour and if you steal 10 minutes of it, there will be dire consequences. I may not be the secretary in your department, but when you inconvenience a secretary, there is karmic retribution. Someday your time sheet may go missing, or your add/drop permission form may be filled out incorrectly and ultimately, it will be because once you stole ten minutes of a secretary's lunch hour.
- As for you, Class Act in the bathroom stall next to mine, consider this your one and only warning. If you come into the bathroom and stall #3 is occupied, you have four other toilet stall choices. You can go into stalls #1, 5, 6, or 7. Never, never, never go into stalls #2 and 4. Once you're in your stall, you can blow it up. That's what it's there for, but do not ever take out your cell phone and begin talking while you're in the middle of taking a crap. If you insist on taking the stall next to mine and talking on your phone, do not be surprised when I yell, "OH MY GOD! WHAT IS THAT SMELL? FUCKING CHRIST, LADY, IS YOUR ASS ROTTING OFF? THAT SHIT IS BURNING THE HAIR OUT OF MY NOSE! COULD I GET A COURTESY FLUSH?" Also, when you come out of the stall and I'm giving you the stink eye, don't waste your breath saying, "That's so rude," because all I'm going to say is, "You know what's rude? Treating the bathroom like a phone booth. Get some fucking manners, you little twat."
- If you're nice to us, we'll be nice to you. If you have a question, you can ask it. If you need help, just say so. If you're lost, just point hopelessly at your map. I recognize the universal gesture for "Oh hell, where am I going?" I even have a time machine that lets me travel back to yesterday and unfuck whatever mistake you made with your paperwork. All you have to do is say, "Excuse me, could you..." And at the end, just say, "Thank you."
Sincerely,
Redzilla
Dear Sandwich Minion,
You did it again. You screwed up my chicken wrap. It's like you don't want it to be edible. You throw the stuff together on the tortilla, and I don't mind that, because it's all going to the same place. What makes me want to kill you with a straw through the jugular is your complete and willful incompetence.
I asked for black olives, so you sprinkled them along one side. Even that wouldn't be a big deal, if you'd sprinkled them on the inside edge, but NOOOOOOOOOO, you sprinkled them on the outer edge, so that when you folded it up, they all just fell out of the edge of the wrap. I glared at you, but you just went on wrapping, letting all the olives fall loose on the paper wrapper and the counter top. I could already see how useless it was, how you'd completely failed to get the ends tucked, how wobbly and loose the whole thing was. You could see it, too, you little sandwich monkey, because quick-quick, you made a half-assed cut only halfway through the wrap, then started wrapping the paper up around it, to hold the huge mess together. Then you sealed up your crime with a big sticker to hold it together. Then came the big smile as you handed it to me.
"I want a pickle," I said, and oh, you knew you'd been caught then. You're supposed to wrap the pickle in the tail end of the sandwich paper, but you didn't dare open that time bomb to put a pickle in. So what did you do? You picked up the pickle, plunked it down in the middle of a sandwich wrapper and proceeded to Cleopatra my pickle in a voluminous carpet of paper.
"You suck," I said. You smiled and said, "Have a nice day."
You little fucker, I am calling your boss. Not the cafeteria shift manager who looks like she's praying for death. No. I'm calling the Dean of Housing and Hospitality to tell him how shitty and shiftless the sandwich shop monkeys are. And I'm giving him your name.
~Redzilla
P.S. UPDATE: Hey, Dean of Hospitality, your secretary said you were "at lunch." At two-effing-thirty? At lunch? Yeah, I'll bet you weren't trying to eat the cafeteria's new-fangled salad-on-a-burrito-plate. For the record, burritos make lousy plates. Too floppy. Fine, Dean At Lunch, I'll just send you an e-mail.
