2008 Mystery Photo

Help?

Regarding your Application for my Money

After rejecting my application to one of their summer school programs, my alma mater, from which I graduated in good standing, with honors, three years ago had the audacity to ask me for money. My response to them is below.

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March 9, 2008 [Liberal Arts ] College
Gift Administration
New England

Dear Alma Mater,

Thank you for requesting my contribution for the _____ College
Initiative. While I assure you that I carefully reviewed the
materials you submitted, I regret to inform you that you were not
chosen to receive my assistance this year. Many factors contributed
to my decision, including your rejection of my application to Language
School this summer.

The number of requests for contributions that I receive is large, my
means are limited, and I regret that I cannot offer assistance to all
who are well-qualified. My decision takes into account not only the
fund-requesters merits, but also the suitability of the program to my
interests. I can assure you that each application received my very
careful and thorough attention.

Thank you for your interest in my financial support. I wish you the
best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Alumnus, ‘05

Dear San Francisco Municipal Lightrail,

Please find your bill enclosed with this letter. You are being charged for 100 hours of my time, accrued over the span of two and a half years in which I have attempted to use your service. Many of these hours were spent waiting for the driver to figure out how to propel the streetcar forward (hint: it’s the lever, and there’s no steering wheel on a train), unjam the pregnant lady from between the doors that he slammed on her protruding abdomen, and retract the hot dog that a Civic Center indigent fed into the coin meter.The enclosed bill includes an additional $60 charge for a dress shirt that one of your officers destroyed with a permanent marker while he attempted to ticket an older gentleman who clearly didn’t understand why he was being threatened by a 300-lb gorilla in a police uniform.

This matter will be handled by a third-party collections agency, should we not receive payment by the end of the month.

Best regards,

pk

2007 Mystery Photo

An Open Letter

Dear Sir,

I am appalled. Your behavior continues to be repulsive, gauche and otherwise intolerable. You lack both taste and common decency. During our recent conversation, you insisted on insulting me with your vague rhetorical style and generalizations. Your ad hominem arguments only serve to demonstrate your complete lack of intelligence and tact. Your tone is shrill and accusative, even though by habit you neglect to place your accusations in context. You have claimed that you have been civil and a gentleman during our conversations, but in truth no true gentleman would have conducted himself as you have. Any ethicist worth his salt would agree with me that you are a scoundrel and charlatan.

Regretfully yours,
PK

In Reponse to Your Offer

Dear Chuck,

Thank you for the offer this afternoon; I would be honored to serve as the CTO of your internet startup. Based on the discussion we had on Muni this morning, I feel that I share your sense of mission and believe that I would make a strong addition to the team. Before I sign on, however, there are a few questions that I would like to clear up:

-I deduce from your manner of attire that you hadn’t had a chance to change or shower in several days. Does your company require the same hourly commitment to work of every employee?

-When we met, you appeared to be enjoying happy hour at 10:00 AM at the Montgomery St. Station. Is this because you work nights to accommodate your clients in Asia?

-Your tinfoil hat strikes me as very avant-garde. Can I reasonably expect to receive one as part of my signing package?

-Also, you seemed to be having a heated negotiation with someone else while we were on Muni, but I didn’t notice your Bluetooth headset. Is this part of the tinfoil hat device, or were you using some kind of cochlear implant?

-Finally, can you please give me the details of the vesting schedule for your stock options?

Thanks in advance, and please feel free to get back to me at your nearest convenience.

Best Regards,
PK

Eight Existential Threats

1. Bumblebees. They pose a threat to the very laws of physics, and by extension, existence itself. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee comments, “It’s scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly, but the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, flies anyway.” While we in the heartland sweat over the possibility of the hostile Africanized bee, the erstwhile wholesome bumblebee threatens the very fabric of our space-time continuum.

2. Scabies. They belong to the arachnid class, like spiders, except that they burrow into human skin and lay eggs. These eggs turn into larvae, which surface on the skin and cause a terrible rash.

3. Hollandaise Sauce. Traditionally ladled over vegetables or fish, its primary ingredients are butter and egg yolks. The French devised this sauce to protectively line their arteries with cholesterol. They subsequently passed the buck to Holland when they realized the flaw in their reasoning.

4. Cheesecake Poppers. See picture under “Where Roast Beef Goes to Die.”

5. CNN.com. Based on the prevalence of articles such as these, our sense of security is inflated, and we are all in mortal peril every second of every day:
-“Toddler crushed by adults in jump house”
-“Giant rat found in ‘lost world’”
-“Pregnant woman hangs by limb on icy river”
-“Jury: Millionaire couple enslaved housekeepers”
-“Is Will Smith really such a nice guy?”

6. Sequels. Civilization is predicated on the power of the human imagination, which Sylvester Stallone dealt a crushing KO in his 2006 “Rocky Balboa.”

7. Global Warming.

8. The Giant Isopod. I can’t believe the Japanese haven’t developed a taste for this critter yet.

Where Roast Beef Goes to Die

The pope’s nose of San Francisco: a greasy polyp in the City so flat and proletarian that you’d expect to find it in the Upper Peninsula. Arby’s — the only Arby’s in San Francisco — lives here.

Now take a cross-country road trip. Somewhere between Mount Rushmore and Missoula, you experience an intense feeling of deja vu. You swear that the Starbucks where you’d stopped for breakfast in Eastern Illinois was the same that you’d seen in South Dakota, the same precise establishment that you’re sipping your coffee in now.It’s not just the decor. You understand that the tables, wallpaper, photographs, and pastries are carefully chosen and distributed at globalization speed to every location in the country. It’s not that the ‘barista’ repeats the same exact line to you that you heard 500 miles east of where you are now. It’s that she is the same. She has the same multiple lip-piercings, the same barely concealed acne, the same nasal voice.

But that’s not exactly it either.

San Francisco is one of those places where I am not frequently beset by that particular anxiety, that same dread of boredom and repetition. I may have been nostalgic for that same existential fear when I convinced a friend to eat lunch with me at Arby’s.

The car lurched up the sidewalk embankment separating me from the very heart of this polyp of the City, this oily Pope’s Nose. A Ross Dress-for-Less pumped something into the air that made me simultaneously want to void my breakfast and buy discount socks.

At Arby’s were a male nurse, a woman with a part in her hair the width & texture of a naked mole rat, and us.

At the counter:

“Hi. It’s my first time here. I’d like the roast beef classic and a ‘variety pack’ of side options — say two jalapeno poppers, some mozzarella sticks, and whatever that triangular potato product is. Oh, and an additional order of Cheesecake Poppers.*”

The man behind the counter stared at me so vacantly that I feared that he was dead or worse. Undead. I feared for my brains.

“I can’t do that,” he told me.

“Oh.”

“Please? Can you just charge me for one side item and mix it up a little?”

Again, the stare. And that’s when it hit me. This was “it”– the “it” of the Starbuck’s ‘baristas’, the thing that we’re proud not to put on display here. “It” was a complete, profound apathy. That man’s apathy had hardened his heart to the hilarity of a Cheesecake Poppers. Here he was, selling a product that consisted of artificial cheese and corn syrup deep fried in the same vat used to make fried chicken. He finally had a customer who actually wanted to eat these crisped turds, alongside a ‘variety pack’ of potatoes variously formed and filled with the same cheese and gristle, and his best response was a plea for mercy, an admission of his disability to go out of his way just two nanometers to please a customer.

Taking notice of my growing furor, the fry cook stepped out from behind the condiment rack like Jesus Risen.

“Sure, I can do that for you,” he said.

“Great, thanks.” Relief, at last.