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Open letters
(18 Feb 2008 at 17:23) |
Do you guys know what open letters are? I don't mean like a piece of post that you've unsealed, or typographical glyphs with holes in them like the vowels 'e' and 'o', I mean like when someone writes a complaining letter to a company or politician but instead of sending it postally (obviously it would end up in the comment box incinerator anyway) he posts it on his blog, like as if a company or politician has ever thought, oh, I gotta go check my open-mailbox by searching the whole internet for letters that happen to be addressed to me. This is I guess because posting complaints in letter form rather than just in lj-whine style gives them automatic gravitas and posterity, for just the small price of having to write "Dear such-and-so" and "very truly yours" and if for some strange-ass reason you compose your blog posts in Microsoft Word then some dog jumps out of like nowhere and goes wtf dude are you trying to write a letter? And now you have two open letters to write. Anyway I find this phenomenon amusing and so today is Open Letter day on Tom 7 Radar.
Dear someone that makes shaving razors, How come you think all dudes want to have close shaves that make their faces feel like a baby's smooth bottom? What if grizzled hard-style guys like the hombres in Lost or pretty much any movie with guns or horses (except if it's a unicorn horse or animated) want to freshen up a bit and they want to do it with a new store-bought razor and not some rusty old thing that they've been saving for a special occasion? What kinda extra rough shave offering do you have for these men? Bet you didn't think of that but now you did,
Tom
Dear assholes who think that cars are supposed to have the right of way through crosswalks with active walk signals, especially in the rain or snow but also any time, even just for thinking that and not merely when you are actually doing it, You are assholes.
Dear dogs, If I had to pick one thing about you (in general) that is my favorite, it would be the eagerness. If I had to pick one thing that is my least favorite, it would be all the pooping.
People whose job it is to write on hand lotion and soap packaging, I hereby forbid you from using "science" words or mathematical symbols. Examples of things now disallowed: "With amino proteins!" and "Vitamin E + Jojoba oil = moisture"
Dear Thinsulate Company, Sometimes when I put on black gloves it makes me feel like a murderer.
What is wrong with you? Extremely truly yours,
Tom |  |
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| Anon, how about phrasing your complaint in the form of an open letter, as discussed? |
| My newest pet peeve is people who don't shovel their sidewalks. Some days I see multiple people slipping and falling on the ice, while the homeowners are (presumably?) peering out their windows and laughing. |
Hilarious!
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I was slipping only on the sidewalks where people had shoveled, yesterday.
Drivers who ignore pedestrian right-of-way, totally assholes. |
| Haha. Nice. RE: the first letter. Do you know Ben Lambert? He's always got a nice layer of scruff on, but never seems to be clean shaven. He's got a secret. I once got it out of him when we were drunk. I forgot it, but you could always ask him. |
| It's true; sometimes it's better to have some crunchy packed snow than ice slicks. Certainly when I'm winter running I prefer crunch. |
| heh, okay, I will ask him! |
| I asked him tonight. His secret is: use a beard trimmer. A-duh. My question is, how to make hairs with length of Pareto distribution? There is no satisfactory answer at hand. |
Dear Newton and Leibniz,
Great job on the whole discovering calculus thing; I really appreciate it and all, but why does it have to be so hard sometimes?
Yours,
Mathcheck |
| I just realized the irony of my handle and my math frustrations. Oh well. |
This other guy's blog is also hilarious: http://ekarj.com/
This post reminded me of an open letter:
Just because the face of a clock is oriented so that 12 is the start of a new day doesn’t mean 12pm has the right to follow 11am. Where I come from, you don’t count up a series of something and then randomly switch units. If one begins a sequence of AM hours in a base-12 numbering scheme, one would eventually expect to arrive at 12am. But you get to 12 and all of a sudden PM bursts in all like, “Who wants lunch, bitches?” Where the fuck did you come from? What have you done with 1pm through 11pm? Oh, you mean to tell me we’re going to count through those hours now? After we’ve just put up with 12pm’s childish antics? Go fuck yourself, time.
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Dear Tom,
Your open letters made me laugh out loud so much at work that it caused my coworkers to inquire what was so funny. This laughter destroyed the delicate illusion that I am working when I'm sitting in my cubicle. Fortunately my boss is not in the room, so the possibility of personal consequences is remote. However, my coworkers are now likely to feel more comfortable goofing off in their own cubicles, and a spiraling decline in productivity in the entire federal government is likely to commence. Thanks a lot.
Somewhat sincerely yours,
Josh |
| Sorry for ruining the government again, Josh. |
Dear Tom 7,
When I was a kid, they made razors on which you could set the number of days growth it would leave behind. (From zero to five, if memory serves.) This was so that you could get the "Don Johnson look." (He used to have a show called Miami Vice; you might be able to catch it on TV Land.)
Very truly yours,
Karl
P.S. Please clarify: Is a decline in the productivity of the federal government good or bad?
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These must be electric razors? I'm thinking about the safety razor kind. I think they should make pre-rusty and chipped ones of those, perhaps with a dial for exactitude if that is what the Don Johnsons of the world desire.
PS: I guess it depends on what they're up to at the time, right? |
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