Writing exercise three: offensive letter writing

Hello, and welcome to day three of "writing exercises week", where I take the crap you didn't want to do in English class, and force it upon myself for . . . well, for no real reason I can think of. My God, why the hell am I writing this, anyway?

Is anyone learning anything from these exercises? Because if someone is, I'm going to force a kitten in my eye. That's right, I'm going to mash up a kitten and shove it in my eye. Any takers? No? GOOD.

Let's move on. Today's lesson is to "Write a letter, but not to send". I'm not sure anyone reading this column even knows what a letter is anymore, since the only correspondence sent through the mail nowadays is credit card offers and "Legal action will be taken" late fee payment requests from Blockbuster. But allow me to explain this thing called "letters" for some of our younger readers.

You see, back in the day people used to send conversations to one another through the mail. It was kind of like e-mail, in that you could include attachments in the envelope, like stickers or glitter or sandwich bags full of vodka. But letters have decreased in popularity, because the possibility of sending glitter hasn't been good since the anthrax scare. If you sent glitter in an envelope today, the recipient might think it was anthrax, and come beat the bejeezus out of you. Or maybe they'd know it was glitter, and would come beat the bejeezus out of you for sending them glitter in an envelope. Either way, I'm lost in this tangent and unable to escape it without abruptly moving on to today's writing exercise.

Writing a letter but not sending it has long been a healthy way to release anger. Today I read a sickening article about "artists" arguing about plagiarism. I was pulled into the article because as a journalist, conversations about plagiarism peak my interest. But as it turned out, the article was painful to read because the artists were arguing over whether one of them stole the idea for "invisible art" from the other. And yes, "invisible art" is just as stupid as it sounds. Here's my letter to the artists:

Dear Carey Young and Anna Livia Lowendhal-Atomic,

(Editor's note: I did NOT make up that second name. Seriously.)

One of you did a piece of "invisible art" that was merely a legal document stating that show promoters could not reveal the actual art project you created. The other of you did an "invisible art" project that was 37 documents for sale, each offering a secret from your life, with the buyer having to agree to never tell the secret.

Let me be the first to point out that both of you are goddamn morons.

I love art. I find strange paintings and sculptures to be very interesting, and watched Bob Ross every chance I got as a kid. But as a columnist who is quite possibly the laziest man alive, I can tell you that your work isn't art; it's lazy pieces of crap. By your standards for "art", the column I wrote entirely in Spanish and French would technically qualify as artwork.

I even once thought of an idea to do "The White Column", similar to The Beatles' "White Album", in which I would have typed the entire column in white font on a white background, forcing the reader to highlight the entire column with their mouse cursor in order to read it. But the difference between you two and me is that your ideas are blatantly lazy attempts at collecting a $31,800 prize for something that took you five minutes to do, while my "The White Column" is a blatantly successful attempt to piss off my readers.

If you're going to be a lazy jerk, at least do it for the pure sadistic joy of it, not for monetary gains.

And not to take sides, but "Anna Livia Lowendhal-Atomic" is the dumbest name since Dirk Diggler. Hi everyone, I'm Paul Christopher Ryan-Thermonuclear. Will you give me grant money so I can do crystal meth and try to convince others that crapping in my underpants and walking around with them on my head is conceptual art?

Please send all grant money through Paypal. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Paul Christopher Ryan-Overweening (Ooh! A closing bite of sarcasm! How artistic!)

Tomorrow's writing exercise: bombarding yourself with inane questions until you punch yourself in the face.

Wednesday Music Spotlight. This week's band is one of my favorites, though it can be hard to find their music. They're called "I Voted For Kodos", a clever takeoff on an old episode of The Simpsons. This song is off their new album, which comes out this May.

I first saw these guys a few years ago in Duluth, Minn. They were opening for Reel Big Fish, and to tell you the truth, I almost liked them better. It's hard to find good ska music these days - or any, for that matter - so this band is a welcome addition to Wednesday Music Spotlight. Especially since the download is only a measly 789k.