The Special Stoopid

I am writing to apologize for leaving you alone in the bomb shelter with the paint fumes all this time. My home life has been getting pretty complicated, but that’s no excuse to drop off the face of the earth like I did.

As you may have noticed, I am learning how to type. I found this old typewriter in the thrift shop over by the viaduct, and I didn’t even have to pay for it because I know Todd the Manager’s been buying those corpse-cleaning beetles from Toothless Abe and he’s already wanted for murder in five states.

That reminds me-- I heard what you did to the Postmaster General, and I have to say, when you first started talking about pig-butt-to-face surgery, I pictured it a lot different. That being said, I think you did a real good job. Did you find a way to open the wormhole again? How’s Beans McCallister? Has he died of the Syphilis yet, or is he still hanging on? Good ol’ Beans. He sure did have a way about him. He sure did have a lot of unprotected sex with all manner of gutter-dwelling unhygienic ladies of the night. Then again, he was only trying to stave off the grief of losing his only brother and best friend. The dysentery can be a real you-know-what in the you-know where.

I’ve enclosed a generous helping of spaghetti with this letter-- you’ve undoubtedly found it at this point. Spaghetti is good for the paint fume head, so make sure you eat all of it and then some. Dog bless you and your dollhouse furniture, old friend. I’ll be back soon.

Love,

I know we haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but we have a common enemy, and I think it's high time we put aside our differences and fabricate a conspiracy to eliminate that most heinous of foes: the Postmaster General.

Don't pretend you haven't been ill at ease since the wormhole closed; I know for a fact that your employees have been getting devilish and ornery without their twice-weekly visits to the old west to blow off steam shooting holes through the hats of cowboys. Yes sir, those mail carriers are a mean, aggressive, casually-evil bunch of backstabbing frontstabbers, and so is the Postmaster General.

So why, pray, would he close the wormhole? Is he trying to provoke a war between the postmen and the UPS guys? The postmen and the freemasons? What about the Girl Scouts? They have the power to destroy us all! Danae said she'd shrink me if I didn't buy three boxes of thin mints! I know she can do it! Danny DeVito is her cousin! How do you think he got so little?!

I'm sorry, I appear to be getting a bit emotional. It's these fumes, you see. Jacobean-style dollhouse furniture won't paint itself.

I am available to foment on tuesdays and thursdays between four and six. Wednesday won't work for me, that's when I follow my wife around all day begging her to give me another chance and crying and crying like a tiny baby. Please let me know when you are available to foment.

I have to go now. Bucky needs to go for a walk. I need some fresh air, too; he's beginning to look like a small dog.

Best wishes,

It has come to my attention that my unfortunate boyfriend has been harassing you. I'd like to take this time to apologize for his behavior and to make it abundantly clear that no anthrax is being sent anywhere. I beg you to reconsider pressing charges.

The thing you have to understand is, Craiggie is really a very compassionate, tender, beautiful man. He just cares too much, and he can get a bit out of hand, especially with lotion. I don't know why, but it really upsets him. His sister is the same way-- not with lotion, but with horses. She doesn't like it when they talk back.

You have to believe me when I tell you that Craiggie would never hurt another living thing. He's too sweet and kind. He's been a real support to me lately; my dog is learning to type, and it's been really ruff. I can hear his little paws tapping on the typewriter deep into the night. In the morning, there are sheets and sheets of paper all over the living room that just say "Tom" over and over again. Tom is the man from his nightmares. I'm worried about him, and I'm worried about me-- but Craiggie's been by my side through it all: the howling, the scratching, the existential crises... I feel really fortunate to have him in my life.

Please consider what I've said. I'll leave it at that.

Beseechingly,

I don’t know where you get off sending me all these catalogues or how you even got my address, but I’d like you to stop it right now. I’m a married woman. The only ones who should be telling me what underwear I should be wearing are my girlfriends or my mother, or my husband, if it’s his birthday.

Did I mention I have twenty-seven grandchildren, many of whom like to go through my things? Just last week I caught little Bobby with his sticky jam hands in my purse! Luckily, I don’t own anything particularly feminine. I even keep my underwear in the safe ever since I found out why Sally’s bobby pins are always getting bent out of shape-- she’d been trying to jimmy the lock on my hope chest! I had to call my priest! Do you have an inkling of how troubled these children are? I hate gossip, and I never do it, but their father is never at home anymore. He sits in his friend’s bunker all day painting Jacobean-style dollhouse furniture and getting stonered on paint fumes. My daughter Allie wants a divorce, but I told her that isn’t how we do things. She made her choice, and now she has to live with it. Of course, I thought he was a darling when they were first married. I told him, “Tom, you take care of my daughter,” and he said “Mrs. Diver, it would be my privilege to take care of you both”. Isn’t that the sweetest? Whatever man he used to be is gone now. The man started vanishing for long stretches of time, and every time he came back he seemed a little different. I think maybe it was drugs. They can do all kinds of things, I hear. Then one day he went insane. He came home crying (not very manly at all), and when the children asked what was wrong, he told them he’d found a hole in space and time, and he’d been visiting the old west, but now the hole was gone. I’m sure it was the drugs. My Allie is beside herself.

Is it possible you meant to send the catalogues to the gays upstairs? Craiggie and whatshisname, the Jewish fella? They like that, don’t they? Ladies’ underthings? I pray for those boys day and night, but it doesn’t seem to do any good. Maybe if they get a good look at some of the tarts in your catalogues it’ll set them right.

In conclusion, please send the catalogues to apartment 401, not 301. Some good may come of this yet.

Best,

Dolores Diver

I bought ten bottles of your lotion based on your company’s assertion that it “pampers skin with silky, comforting moisture”. I am disappointed to find that you’re all a bunch of liars. My skin doesn’t feel like it’s being pampered at all-- actually, my skin feels like a ten-year-old whose parents have just had another baby-- and the moisture isn’t comforting, it’s gross and sticky and just plain weird, and it’s making people avoid shaking my hand.

For your convenience, I have compiled a list of my body parts which simply won’t allow the lotion to be absorbed:

-My knees

-My lips

-My nipples

-My ears

-My feet

-A twenty-six-by-eighteen-inch dry patch on my back and side

-Texas (that’s where my heart is)

I have also made a list of household items the lotion had leeched out of my skin onto, and which now have to be replaced:

-My couch

-My favorite lamp

-My ex-boyfriend’s car

-Everything in my bedroom

-All of my towels

-My new boyfriend’s dog, Bucky

-twelve bags of frozen meatballs (Bucky only eats spaghetti and meatballs now; he thinks he’s a human being dreaming he’s a dog, and eating dog food hurts his dognity)

-My best friend Tanya (I’ve been meaning to get rid of her anyway-- she eats all the cereal)

Please fix all the problems with your lotion and replace everything I have lost to this terrible decision or I will send my mother anthrax in the mail.

Love always,

I know you can hear that demonic sound our toilet has been making. Craiggie told me that when you came over to fix it yesterday you said you couldn’t hear anything. If I may, I’d like to call shenanigans.

Roger, everyone in the building can hear my toilet. Mrs. Diver, the antisemitic church lady from the third floor, slid a note under our door last week asking me to please stop practicing voodoo during the night. Even though I wanted to pop her one right in the kisser (who is she kissing with that mouth, anyway? Eugh), I instead went to her door and told her that it wasn’t me, but my toilet, and that I’d hire an exorcist as soon as my next paycheck came. She agreed wholeheartedly, and then mumbled something about my “New York sense of humor”. I don’t know what her deal is, Roger, but I do know I get extremely uncomfortable whenever her fifteen blond-haired grandchildren come over to ride the elevator.

Roger, I know you don’t want to fix the toilet. Hell, I don’t either-- why do you think I emailed you in the first place? The thing is, it’s your job, and at the moment, I actually like being at my job, because if I’m not at my job, I’m at home, and at home there is a beast who lives on sewage and can read my thoughts. Roger, I need you to kill the beast. My poor dog, Bucky, is frightened out of his tiny little mind. He says he’s been having bad dreams, dreams where he is a human being and he has to build a shelter with his friend Tom because the world is ending.

I’m begging you, Roger. You need to fix the toilet.

Thanks,

Ezra