Columbia City Paper

Dear automated data tracking software,

According to this pie chart, roughly 30 percent of all Letters to the Reader are crude tributes to bodily functions, while 40 percent make poorly masked references to alcoholism and other vices. It says here that 5 percent of LTRs display a penchant for celebrating anti-social and neurotic behavior in the workplace; 10 percent are half bright socio-political rants; with the remaining 10 percent dedicated to “pompous, self-masturbatory stream of consciousness inanities.” …That’s what it actually says on the chart. Who designed this software? We know numbers don’t lie but somehow I just don’t buy this data.

Columbia City Paper

Dear hot Publix cashier,

OK, I’ll level with you. I don’t really need all this stuff. In truth, most of it is just a smokescreen to hide my primary purchase: this roll of Angel Soft double ply. But, it would be weird if I just came in and bought that, like maybe I was having a major intestinal emergency and raced down here in desperation. Huh? Oh no, I can hold it. If it were a real emergency, I’d just grab some used fast food napkins out of the trash at home.

So, now that we’ve cleared that up, what are you doing for dinner?

Columbia City Paper

Dear self help book,

I recognize that you have a basic need to disseminate helpful information and I own my responsibility to that. However, after using the Self Checklist on page 42, I don’t believe it will puncture our Friend Bubble if I use you to prop up this wobbly computer table so I don’t spill my Scotch while I watch Russian porn online and quietly weep.

Columbia City Paper

Dear new office guard dog,

Since we moved the City Paper offices from our humble Five Points roots to a more swanky locale downtown, you and the high-powered alarm system are our only line of defense against crackheads looking to score a Mac or scorned nut jobs seeking to burn us at the stake. But, that still doesn’t give you license to run amok when we’re not in the office, boy. While odd smells and the occasional errant turd could easily be attributed to the news staff in the old office, all fingers point to you in this new space. Also there will be no audible lapping out of the toilet during sales meetings. Otherwise, help yourself to all the treats we can spare and feel free to ogle the neighbor’s hot female Collie. (And, hey, whatever happens between you and the publisher’s neck pillow is your business).

Columbia City Paper

Dear South Carolina legislators,

As the newspaper of record for the more degenerate and vice-oriented of your constituency, City Paper would like to congratulate you on your recent spate of fair and balanced lawmaking, both on state and municipal levels. Sure, folks can no longer smoke in public, but we can now buy beer on Sundays. We can’t play video poker but at least you kept the hallowed institution of the lap dance intact. Taking advantage of this give-and-take atmosphere while we can, we’d like to propose another trade off. Let’s see… we’ll give you a motorcycle helmet law, more stringent penalties for public drunkenness and you can have common law marriage back, all for marijuana decriminalization. We’re just throwing it out there.

Columbia City Paper

Dear deep thought in the checkout line at Bi-Lo,

You know, maybe the Weekly World News is onto something. Maybe the human brain is the true organism. The rest of the body was grown in its service, to do it’s bidding. It is not an organ in service of the body; the body was grown as a shell to encase it. To see for it and to feed it and to protect it from predators. After all, how can a mere organ be aware of itself? The brain knows what it looks like. With a mirror, anesthesia, and proper training, a brain could actually perform surgery on itself. Sadly, the brains developed an understanding of death millions of years ago and they have dragged that knowledge, as if shackled to a heavy stone, across the plains of time since the predawn of history. They envy other creatures for their seeming ignorance of that ultimate truth. The brain has enlightened itself but, in doing so, has also damned itself.

Eventually the brain grew tired of bumbling around in its never-ending search for sustenance and copulation, so it invented farming and prostitution. It could then spend more time inventing gods and watching sports and starting wars. Later it invented the car and this supermarket and plastic so it could acquire food by expending even less energy. All along the way, it developed art and theater and music and literature. It invented fart jokes and comic books and medicines and hair care products. Later still, it invented reality television. …Huh, oh sorry. Yeah, I have my bonus card.

Columbia City Paper

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