One of the reasons I'm still alive is because I never sent these letters. Whenever I write a letter like this, I stick it in a file and wait a week, then read it again. Usually I'm glad I didn't send it. Sometimes I surgically remove the one sentence that could be mistaken for rational and use it in another letter that I actually send.

Some things are best said in person because in print they might be taken incorrectly if read with the wrong delivery. After all, the only difference between "I soar!" and "eyesore" is delivery. You better say "lox" with the right delivery when asking for directions at the supermarket or you'll get sent to the hardware section.

More than once have I sent something sarcastically that was replied to in earnest. If your sarcasm comes out of anger, as most does, and the anger in your communication comes across stronger than the sarcasm, you will more than likely end up misconstrued.

Examples abound.

All my letters end with a quote from somebody, sometimes random, sometimes pointed. My quote file, as you must imagine, is enormous. When I finish writing a letter, I scroll through the file to find an appropriate quote, sometimes funny, sometimes profound, sometimes mysterious and oblique, and I cut and paste it into the signature of the letter.

There was once an employer who objected to a quote from George Bernard Shaw. He thought I was calling him an idiot because I used a particular quote. He was offended. I owed him an apology. 

He didn't DISAGREE. If he had merely disagreed with Shaw's statement, I could have engaged him in a hearty discussion. Interpretations of Shaw 'R' Us. He could have rebutted with another quote saying the opposite of the Shaw quote. Perfectly acceptable retort in a quote volley. But he didn't disagree, he OBJECTED. How could I have quoted such a thing to him? If we were going to work together, how could I call him an idiot? What I wrote and almost sent was "You think George Bernard Shaw was talking about YOU? Hey man, if the shoe fits... If you disagree with George Bernard Shaw, you should take it up with George Bernard Shaw, and you should be glad I didn't quote Adolf Hitler."

Instead, rationality and humor reared their ugly heads and I ended up promising never to quote George Bernard Shaw to him again, and that actually solved the problem.

What an idiot.

So I read these letters a week later and usually say to myself "Boy, I'm glad I didn't send that one," and it immediately gets sent to the "Letters I'm Glad I Didn't Send" file. That file's gotten pretty big...

Dear sir or madam,

Fuck you, you scumbag.

What the hell's the matter with you? Haven't you got a brain? Where were you raised, in a bubble, in a cave, in a castle in the clouds? Take a look around you, bub, you can't define the world on your terms, the world defines itself despite you. Get the hell out of the way of progress. How the hell can you possibly believe that YOU are THAT important? We've all got lives, schmuck, and everything involves give and take. You can't pull that kind of retrograde, con man, grass roots, just out of college bullshit on me. I know what the fuck is going on. Whatayuh think, I don't pay attention? Is that what you think I'm doing? You think I'm lying around not paying attention? YOU'RE one who isn't paying attention or you'd notice the stink.

Take that thing with the whatever. How could you do that? You had to have known it was going to a) explode, b) fail, c) roll away, d) never happen, e) fall down, f) get you in trouble, g) spill all over, or h) make me angry, so why did you do it?  Stop acting like an idiot. You're not an idiot (unless you are, in which case I apologize), so stop acting like one. Even real idiots know when it's time to stop acting like one.

So get anal cancer and die screaming. Kill yourself and make the world a better place. Git offa my property, you varmint. I'm going to spend the rest of my life pretending that you don't exist. I look forward to testifying at your trial. MY version's the one people are going to believe. I don't need this. I've got better things to do, things like absolutely anything. I could be doing dishes, you fuckwad. Have you seen my kitchen? It's your fault. I blame absolutely everything that's gone wrong in my life on you and you alone. Please disappear. No one will miss you. You're confusing me with someone who cares enough to write.

Sincerely,

MD

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."- George Bernard Shaw -

Cleverest Cartoon of All Time
G-rated read left to right
R-rated read up and down

From National Lampoon

Sick Puppy

According to back-tracking Bush, "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction" has mysteriously mutated into "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related-program-activities," leading me to mysteriously postulate that if no death camps had been found in German after WWII, Roosevelt would have justified our attack by claiming that Germany had "Jew-killing-related-program-activities."

Rafer3@aol.com

Rafer3,

Thank you for braving time and space to contact me.

a) I'm not a democrat, was not then, and am not now, a Gore supporter.

b) Bush was "appointed," not "elected." To be "elected," you have to win the "election." Bush absolutely, beyond the slightest shadow of any doubt, did not win the election. He did not get the most votes, even in the electoral college. The fact he was appointed by a corrupt court makes his presidency technically legal but not technically moral. The election was a fraud, Bush is a thief, and by supporting him you are condoning thievery. I, and millions of others, will never, ever, "get over it."

Don't take my word for it...

Dear Republican:

GW Bush lost the national election and the election in Florida as well. But, not only did he lose, he benefited from an unprecedented and illegal series of actions, in Florida especially, but also in Tennessee and Washington, D.C.

Vincent Bugliosi's recent book, The Betrayal of America, outlines in vivid detail the extent to which the U.S. Supreme Court not only erred in throwing out the votes of 100 million plus citizens (the majority of which had voted for Gore), but also the extent to which their decision was malicious, illegal and even, yes, criminal. This is a big part of the picture of the Republican coup d'etat, but not the whole picture. Bugliosi's article None Dare Call It Treason gives the main argument on which the book is later based. For a complete listing of articles lambasting the Supreme Court's idiotic decision, including the denunciation of it by 600 plus law professors throughout the land, go to our complete collection here.

The USSC court's idiotic decision was a necessary, but not a sufficient, cause of the coup d'etat. Even before the election took place, tens of thousands of legal voters were illegally purged from the voting rolls by the Florida State Department, run by Katherine Harris under the aegis of Jeb Bush's government. A Database Technologies/Choicepoint Vice President has testified under oath TWICE that his company informed the State of Florida of the extent to which legal voters would be purged from the voting rolls, yet the Florida State Department decided to go ahead in any case. Further, exonerated felons who had served their time and had their citizenship rights restored in other states were illegally required to apply for clemency in Florida, to Jeb Bush's Clemency office. This was not the standard practice and was illegal, as several court cases made clear, cases of which Jeb Bush could not have been ignorant as they happened in his own state and ruled on his practice. Much of this can be found in Gregory Palast's great investigative journalistic work, and we've compiled a complete list here. If you don't like to read, we suggest you at least view Palast's BBC Newsnight broadcast, which ran nationally in Britain. While the national mainstream news carried this story in England, U.S. news consumers are, in the case of the vast majority, completely in the dark. The story was reiterated in the Nation by the Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist John Lantigua here.

Furthermore, the recent spate of articles on the recount confirms that at least 25,000 more voters voted for Gore, and even where ballots should not have been disqualified, a complete recount of all uncounted ballots would have given Gore the win. (See the story at USA Today.) While no intentional illegality is alleged in these areas yet, Theresa LePore's butterfly ballot design is highly suspect, as are the ballots in other counties. We know these ballots were illegal, yet to date, no one has suggested that criminal mischief was involved. While we were told that LePore is a Democrat, the fact is that she only became one to win an election. She has subsequently reverted to "independent," though her longest standing affiliation was Republican. For a list of other recount stories that confirm that Gore won, go to our recount page or our recount links. You should also see all the relevant articles currently on our front page .

Beyond illegality, systematic disenfranchisement disallowed poorer urban voters from recognizing errors, while wealthier, mostly white, northern and mostly Republican voters were warned by the machines when their ballots were invalid, and allowed to revote. (See USA Today article referred to above.)

The case is clear: Gore was the rightful winner not only of the nation, but of Florida. Bush was installed, not elected, and as such, he is not legitimate. His policies are rejected by the vast majority of Americans (66% in the last polls) and they are unfit for the world in its current condition. He is a retrogressive, arch right-wing fanatic who does not recognize nor represent the national will. He should be removed from office, and we will continue to oppose his every action. He has no right to any executive actions at all, let alone the pro-business, anti-majority, anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-world actions that he is taking and proposing to undertake. (For the complete list of articles on Bush's atrocities against humanity, go to the record -- warning, you could spend a week reading them.)

We are working endlessly to remove Bush from office and to stop his every action in the meantime. He is a complete and utter fraud, and a menace to the nation and the world at large, including every species that currently resides here.

Cheers,

Michael Rectenwald,
Founder and Chair
Citizens for Legitimate Government

Gallery of the Week

No, that's not a pool,
it's astonishing sidewalk art done by Kurt Wenner

Don't Take My Word For It

"Champaign for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends."
- Tom Waits -

"It makes no sense to industrialize this incomparable wilderness area when there's only about six month's worth of economically recoverable oil in the entire NPR-A, and it would take at least 10 years to get it to market. The United States has only 3 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and we use 25 percent of the world's produced oil. We can't drill our way to oil independence. We have to wean ourselves off oil."
- Charles Clusen: Alaska Project director at NRDC -

"All a man has that he can really call his own are his values. Once he sells them out he has nothing."
- Col. Sherman Potter -

"The ring of power corrupts whoever possesses it."
- Lord of the Rings -

"What do the Emir of Kuwait and the working poor of the United States have in common? Not much, except when it comes to paying for health care in the United States. They all pay the highest price: up to 500% more than the hospital receives from insured patients."
- Democracy Now!: Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals Are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured -

    "Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.
   "From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics."
-  Charlie Savage: Infiltration of files seen as extensive: Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats -

"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."
- H.L. Mencken -

"We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."
- Martin Luther King, Jr. -

"Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

"The government would rather talk about Star Wars and other sophisticated things. As a result, we have children who need remedial programs and prison programs. We neglect them when they're young and spend more later on prisons. I think we're damn silly if we don't work on the preventive programs and make our children productive citizens. All of us in society have to pick up the slack and play our role in nurturing children."
- Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) -

"I'm going to turn on the light, and we'll be two people in a room looking at each other and wondering why on earth we were afraid of the dark."
- Gale Wilhelm -

"The truth is flexible, white hot, but it soon becomes brittle if tempered with cold bullshit"
- Robert Williams -

"Of the all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."
- Ozzy Osbourne -

"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power."
- Ashleigh Brilliant -

"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men."
- Sir Max Beerbohm -

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation."
- Jean Kerr -

"Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination."
- Ernest Hemingway -

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes the nature of a protest."
- Eric Hoffer -

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
- Hermann Hesse -

"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them."
- Werner Heisenberg -

"A million zeros joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one."
- Carl Jung -

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
- Albert Einstein -

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
- T.S. Eliot -

"In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for."
- Paul Lutus -

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay -

"With each passing year, because of advances in computer technology, there are more things, each more sophisticated, that we aren't allowed to do any more."
- Paul Lutus -

"Be careful while reading health books, you might die of a misprint."
- Mark Twain -

"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever."
- Chinese Proverb -

"Truth never damages a cause that is just."
- Mahatma Gandhi -

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."
- George Bernard Shaw -

"I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here."
- Charles Dickens -

"Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. Temperamentally we are ready to die for certain principles (or, in the case of overripe adults, send youngsters to die), but we show little inclination to advertise the reasons for dying."
- E. B. White -

"If you understand, things are as they are. If you do not understand, things are as they are."
- Gensha: Zen Master -

"I was only pretending to be dumb. That was our plan, remember?"
- Spongebob Squarepants -

"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces on me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool"
- Rev Sydney Smith -

"The trouble with being tolerant is that most people think that you don't understand the problem."
- Merle Meacham -

"A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience."
- Miguel de Cervantes -

"Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world."
- Bertrand Russell -

"A brave man is the one who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil."
- James A. Garfield -

"All personal deceit eventually leads to social deceit."
- Noah benShea -

"Sundance is weird. The movies are weird. You actually have to think about them when you watch them."
- Britney Spears -

Mars to earth: Fuck you!

Next vacation, be sure to visit the Unsupervised Childrens Alligator Petting Zoo.

Random Headline: "Lesbians Beat Out Bacon in 'Things to Add to Something to Make It Better' Poll."

Tell me you can't use free maps of every country on earth.

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