To Vasily, prominent economist,
I wanted to ask you about China’s investment strategies in various countries, because I had a theory that the same strategies will be applied to Russia now that Russia is having a bit of a tiff with the U.S. and Europe and trying to pivot to China. I guess, in a way, accidentally sending you a sticker of a unicorn farting a rainbow wasn’t that weird, not when you really think about it.
We all know that in the economic sense, Russia’s desire to lean on China is exactly as cute and useless as a unicorn fart. In that sense, I wasn’t being unprofessional.
I mean, maybe I was being a little bit unprofessional, but when you’re a well-known economist who insists on scheduling all of his interviews strictly through Facebook Messenger you have to accept that sticker accidents will happen from time to time.
To Linda, news site editor
I think it’s really nice that you guys run author pictures alongside all of the opinion pieces, even though you’re not the New York Times or anything. As a former editor myself, I think an author picture really personalizes the argument being made by a particular piece, and I feel like a lot of younger web editors sometimes don’t get that?
Which is why I’m especially sorry for randomly attaching a picture of a bucket to my e-mail to you in response to your request for a photo. I can’t explain what happened there.
I guess I could offer up a lengthy excuse about how the gig economy forces freelancers to constantly multi-task and that I wasn’t paying attention to what I was sending you as in my mind I was already busy composing the angry e-mails I will be forced to send to your accounting department after my tiny honorarium inevitably winds up late. But I am not going to do that.
The thing I’d really like to know is why I have that bucket in my pictures folder to begin with, and why the file is named after me. There is something very David Lynch about it, and I don’t like it.
To my dad,
I know that you don’t approve of my lifestyle. I’m not mad at you for this. Let’s face it, if my kid turns out to be like me, I will be a little bit wistful too.
But I also don’t think that it’s particularly fair to accuse me of having “a problem” when I accidentally send you blurry photos from the back of a cab in Hell’s Kitchen at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Nothing untoward is going on in those photos. Nick, the man with me in the back of a cab, is just a fellow journalist and handsome former war correspondent I sometimes have a bonding drink or five with when our spouses are out of town. We were trying to Snapchat someone, but forgot how. We also had a chaperone, Mandy (or Sandy, but I’m 99% sure it’s Mandy), she’s a cool girl who needed a ride from the bar after getting separated from her crew, you can see her napping off to the side in several of the sixteen pictures I sent you in total.
That’s not Nick’s hand on my knee, that’s a glove that he forgot there. He wears gloves in the summer, because he is a gentleman.
To Nick, handsome former war correspondent,
I enjoy late chats with you because you are smart. You go to dive bars and have real world experience in the sense that you’ve been to Iraq and Libya. I respect that tremendously, because I can’t even bring myself to visit my aunt in South Carolina.
I realize that my recent pairing of the cat-with-hearts-for-eyes emoji with the eggplant emoji in a recent message to you could be read in different ways.😻🍆 One potential reading is “I want your penis.” I know it hasn’t occurred to you yet, but you’re so smart that it will occur to you eventually, and I just wanted to preempt any possible misunderstandings.
I mean, you’re married. I’m married. We’re all married. We’re at that age. Speaking of cats and eggplants, don’t you hate it when people try to turn their pets vegan and get self-righteous about it online? Seriously, what the hell.
When you drunkenly tell me that you may have married the wrong person, I don’t see that as my chance to pounce. This isn’t why the cat is there. I forget my exact reasoning, but it was probably along the lines of wanting to point out that cats are nice. Which they are. I don’t think most people, besides dog people, would dispute that.
Maybe the eggplant does relate to dick, but in the sense of your war dick. You know how war correspondents are measuring each other’s war dicks all the time, right? Maybe I was just trying to say that you have an impressive one.
Let’s do happy hour later this week? Here’s a heart and a popping champagne bottle. ❤️🍾 Before you ask, sometimes the visual act of popping champagne is just the visual act of popping champagne. Sometimes, but not all the time. But those are just statistics that I am pointing out. Anyway, here’s a cute blond girl waving.🙋 Notice how I’ve chosen her instead of the cute blond girl dancing in a red dress?💃 This proves my intentions are innocent. Call me. 📞
Photo: Awesome Foundation/Creative Commons