TOP 5 LETTERS OF 2011
by Benn Ray
1. JAIL MAIL
At Atomic Books we get a decent amount of mail from prisoners - so much so that we have a staffer who's in charge of our prisoner correspondences (that'd be Dina, of course!). Usually the letters are from bored inmates looking for catalogs or free publications. Sometimes they are indecipherable rantings from someone who very much seems like they need to be behind bars. But in the case of my favorite mail this year, it was simply artwork from a prisoner. Ballpoint pen on a folded-out manilla folder. I love the graff-tatt typography and the uplifting message! The person who sent us this (along with a nice conversational letter and an additional illustration of Bart Simpson) rules!
2. LAWSUIT THREAT #1
This year I (as well as several other people) became involved in a legal battle with a controversial big development. The developer didn't like some things said on this blog, despite this rationalization. So his lawyers contacted my lawyers and threatened to sue me for libel.
I found it particularly interesting that the developer was so concerned about this blog's reporting. I felt a little bit like someone was trying to intimidate me (which I don't typically respond well to). And I was also curious why a law firm would even bother wasting its time threatening a blog with a libel suit when they knew it wasn't libel. A friend suggested the key phrase "Billable Hours" while another friend sent me a link seeming to underline that explanation.
3. LAWSUIT THREAT #2
At some point, the person who sent the above letter commented under something very close to his real name on one of my blog posts. Then later, as he was ready to progress with his career, he must have noticed it came up in search engines. So he emailed me and asked me to remove his comment. I didn't respond right away because I'd have to go digging through my archives and, well, I was busy with other matters more pressing to me. Within a week, I received this official threat in the mail. Never mind that it's not my legal responsibility to look after comments people make on my blog if they later wish they didn't make them. Don't get me wrong, I was willing to oblige the guy, but I wasn't fast enough for his tastes and the result was a threat of litigation in stead of say a follow up email or a phone call. Is this what people mean when they say "frivilous lawsuits?"
4. FIGHT OVER FACEBOOK FRIENDING
Okay, so this is a sort of long story. There's this weirdo on Facebook. Shocker, right? I know!
Anyway, awhile back, he requested to friend me. His name sounded kinda familiar and his picture looked like someone I might know. We had a number of mutual friends - old school Bmorians - so I figured, sure. What the hell? I probably know him from the old days - like the '9os. So I accepted his friend request. Then, over a period of months, on almost all of the even the remotely liberal status updates or linkshares I'd make, he'd go batshit right wing crazy in the comments. But not even like original thoughts - but pure FOX News/Limbaughian/Beckian propaganda and poorly regurgitated talking points.
Finally, after months of this, I concluded I had enough real right wing friends, I really didn't need another one who was a volatile crank (especially since I was unsure if I even knew him in the first place), and I unfriended him.
Shortly after, he requested to friend me again, and I ignored him. At this point, I asked our mutual friends who this dude was, and none of them knew who he was either, they all responded to his friend request for the same reason I did - he seemed kind of familiar and they had mutual friends.
Then he started messaging me, asking me to accept his friend request. I ignored the messages. And then the frequency of the messages started to increase. He'd become more active anytime I'd make some sort of liberal comment on my Facebook Wall. And then I realized what was agitating him so - at that point, if you requested a friendship with someone and they didn't reply, but they had their security settings set like I did, you could see their posts but you couldn't comment on them. So he was seeing me make political comments, and it was driving him crazy that he couldn't share the Limbaugh/Fox perspective. Eventually, he started emailing me. From once a week, to once a day to once an hour to finally every 10 minutes, demanding I either accept or decline his friend request.
He eventually began threatening me - to come to my place of business and show me a thing or two. I felt like it wasn't my responsibility to manage his friend requests for him, and I told him as much. I sent him a link that explained how to remove your friend requests and told him if he still couldn't figure his own shit out, he was most welcome to come visit me, I felt quite confident that I could explain to him, one way or another, how to manage his own crap. And then I never heard from him again. So I guess he figured it out.
Follow up - several weeks after this took place, I was talking to a friend who runs another area bookstore. Evidently, this guy had been busted shoplifiting A LOT of books from their store and trying to resell them at a used bookstore. He told me that they think the guy had been doing this for years and had stolen thousands of dollars in merchandise from their store.
Moral to the story - be careful who you friend. And mutual friendship on Facebook is no indicator of anything.
5. "COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION" ACTS AGAINST COMMUNITY MEMBERS
As part of the above mentioned legal activities I was involved with regarding a local controversial development, one of the neighborhood's two "community associations" took it upon themselves to send the court a letter stating that they didn't think residents like me had any right to call any part of the development process into legal question. Yes, a supposed community organization trying to negate the ability of actual community members to raise concerns about a large, neighborhood-chaning development. The most amusing part is that the letter had no legal bearing whatsoever.
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TOP EMAILS OF 2011
by Shawna Kenney
These are real emails Shawna received from students and the responses she would have liked to send.
1. "I know I tried my best but I am only one point away from getting the grade of my dream. Please I don't know if there is any extra credit that I can do to get just a point to make it up. Please let me hear from you. Thank you and Merry Christmas to you and your family."
Imaginary response: Too late. You should have thought of that earlier in the semester. I never got the grade of my dreams, either. Get over it.
2. "I beg that u don’t report me for plagiarizm. That weekend i was out of town n had bad reception on my phone. I do most of my work thru my phone."
Imaginary response: You have AT&T, too?
3. "Hello Prof. I hope you’ve had a good Thanksgiving and I pray you will live to celebrate more of it."
Imaginary response: Ummm… is there something I should know?
4. "Its been a pleasure being in your class, my writing has gotten way better because of you and good luck with all your other students and see you in the hallway. Thank you for being my english teacher."
Imaginary response: Thanks but OMG. Did you actually learn anything?
5. "One last question, doctor notes written by parents don't count right?"
Imaginary response: Unless your parents are doctors, no—plus, it would be unethical for you to be their patient, wouldn’t it? I am over-thinking this, I know.
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