Sir: It is abundantly clear that whoever is in charge of the worldwide conspiracy of all things is falling down on the job. As a rich person, I am supposed to be immune to all inconvenience. Yet only this morning I had to come to a dead stop while some pokey old woman with a walker held up traffic at the intersection of Carson and 18th, as if she had a right to amble across the street at her leisure just because the walk sign was on in her direction. Now, clearly, in a well-ordered conspiracy of everything, there would be no little old ladies holding up drivers in any car above the level of a Lexus. My own car is a Bentley, so I should not even have to think about inconvenient old women.

It is time for drastic measures. I call for the resignation of the leaders of the conspiracy, and their replacement by competent professionals who know how to run a proper cabal. I also call for aging to be made illegal. Clearly a competent conspiracy would be able to eliminate all the inconveniences associated with advancing years.

Since there are no other candidates publicly announcing themselves, I offer myself for the position of generalissimo or archon or supreme pontiff or whatever it is you like to call the head of such an organization. Clearly I am qualified, since I know what is to be done and have a proper Bentley. But if someone else is willing to take on the onerous duties and get the job done, I have no objection. The vital thing is to make sure the rich suffer no more inconveniences. Otherwise they will lose all motivation to remain rich, and then what will become of our economy?

Sincerely,
Standard N. Poor,
Rich Person with a Bentley.

Sir: I was listening to some doubtless inebriated politician ranting about how America is failing to create manufacturing jobs, and it was making me sick. Now, I was also eating two large orders of Freedom Fries from Bob’s Burger Yurt at the time, so I cannot say whether I can attribute my symptoms exclusively to this yammering America-hater, but one way or the other he was wrong, and people should not be allowed to be wrong on the radio. How can he say that America is failing to create manufacturing jobs? America leads the world in designing products to be manufactured in China. Millions of Chinese citizens would be out of work if it were not for our talented American industrial designers. Look it up on TikTok if you doubt me: America is the engine that drives China’s prosperity. The next time you think you want to insult America, Mr. Fancy-Pants Representative from Some Godless New England State, choose a subject where it isn’t so easy to contradict you with a simple TikTok search.

Sincerely,
Roland Ronald Dorlan,
Arnold

Sir: At least my own beloved state of Florida is taking a stand against cultural decline. At least in Florida no one can try to pass off obscenity as art and get away with it. At least in Florida no one can blaspheme Sacred Scripture in a classroom without suffering the consequences. Who is this artist who calls himself by one name, “Michelangelo,” like the pansy pervert he is? And where does he get off thinking he can turn righteous King David into a piece of vile pornography?

Not in Florida, he can’t! Florida leads the nation in legislating freedom. Not that our job is finished by any means, but we have made it a felony to give books to children, and we have instituted a zero-tolerance policy for inconvenient facts of history. We are on the right track. Soon we will have prohibited enough things to achieve true liberty.

But legislation is only half the job. There must be enforcement. The school principal is out of a job, but the principal is only a pawn in the culture war. The artist is still at large. I call on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, and the National Agricultural Statistics Service to leave no stone unturned until this Michelangelo person is brought to justice. We cannot sleep easily in our beds until he is in jail. Then, and only then, will we be truly free.

Sincerely,
Graham “Ritz” Cracker,
Yankeetown, Fla.

Transcribed below.

Freshman congressman Albert Cardoon, responding to allegations that surfaced in news reports shortly before his swearing in, has admitted that some of the statements he made during his campaign were not strictly accurate. In particular, Cardoon did not invent penicillin; he was not the “mastermind” behind Doctors Without Borders; he did not write thirty-nine plays under the pseudonym “William Shakespeare”; he was not the first American to walk on Mars; he is not a full-blooded Appomattoc chief; he did not obtain doctorates at Oxford and Cambridge simultaneously; he did not win Super Bowl XLVII; he did not write the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation; his parents were not killed in the 9/11 attacks; his sister was not killed in the Johnstown Flood; his son Herbert was not killed in Pompeii in a.d. 79, but is still in the seventh grade at Blandville Junior High School; his Uncle Al is not the same Alexander who conquered Persia; and his wife is not Lillian Russell. Cardoon insists, however, that it is true that his family “in the direct ancestral line” was expelled from the Garden of Eden for what he terms a “very minor offense.”

Sir: I asked for a cup of tea at the coffeehouse around the corner, not the one where they have the mimes, but the other one, and they handed me a foam cup with a teabag in it, and the teabag had a tag dangling from it. And this was the message on the tag: “Trust your identity; be in touch with your reality.” Well, my reality never calls. It never even sends a postcard. My reality and I haven’t spoken since 2014, when I told my reality to take a hike. And my identity was stolen by Slovenian hackers last October, so I certainly don’t trust that. So I think we should tell these big tea companies, first of all, you can just keep out of my personal life, thank you very much, and in return we won’t ask you about your relatives. And second, it’s not “tea” unless it’s made from Camellia sinensis, okay? So don’t go telling me peppermint and licorice root and dogbane and lawn clippings all stuffed into a little bag make “tea,” because you’re not fooling anybody but yourselves. —Sincerely, Name Withheld Against My Will.

Sir: It is clear that whoever runs the National Weather Service is a complete incompetent. Yesterday it snowed. In December! Yes, there was free crushed ice all over the ground—in the middle of December, when the temperature was twenty-eight degrees outside. I don’t need ice everywhere when it’s cold outside, for Pete’s sake. I need it in August, when it’s hot as blazes. But no—every August I end up having to buy my own ice. Then December rolls around, and they start giving it away for free. No wonder the government runs on a deficit. I’m tired of paying taxes for giant entitlement programs that benefit literally no one. I wrote my Congresswoman at the Capitol, but the letter was returned marked “NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS,” so I’m writing you instead. Either we should sort out the mess at the National Weather Service and get the right weather to the right places at the right times, or we should just give up on weather and let private enterprise take care of it. Also, if it’s not too much trouble, could you run a missing-persons ad for my congresswoman? —Sincerely Zimmerman P. Zummer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Canning, Duck Hollow University.