Letter from Someone With Rapidly Waning Interest

Jesus, this is long. I can't read all of this. Why did you make it this long?

How could you possible have this much to say about some old guy living by himself? This is like a fucking term paper. Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I guess it's good. I didn't read all of it. I had to collate some copies, talk to my supervisor about a project, then talk on Instant Messenger. I do have a life.

Hey, did you watch American Idol last night? That show is so great. You should write a letter from Simon Cowell. That would be funny.

Letter from the Movie "The Day After Tomorrow"

I am really happy with the way I came out, and let me unabashedly and at great length tell you why. First of all, how many "disaster movies" do you see that ultimately carry a message of humbleness and hope? Who else can straddle the bright golden line that exists between high concept drama and overlong destructionist fantasy? Not many! "Volcano"? The coast was toast but Los Angelino's simply carried on with their normal lives after the volcano quit erupting. (After only one night! How many actual volcanoes do that? It took me two whole weeks just to destroy the northern hemisphere!) "Twister"? Some crackers and Cary Elwes take the long nap, but otherwise it's totally meh. "The Core"? They saved the world but Hilary Swank remained fully-clothed! "Dante's Peak"? I don't even remember that one! "Independence Day"? Pffff. I'm not a racist, but who honestly believes a black man and a Jew can save the world? Hey, I'm just telling it like it is. It's society that's sick, not me.

No, seriously, I'm so not a racist. Here, fast forward to scene 4 where the black guy in Scotland kisses his white wife goodbye. I fought for that scene, really I did. The suits, they wanted to cut it because they said the scene made no sense, but I fought for it. And now you can see that whole scene intact, glorious and free as it should be! Granted, this is the first and last time we see his wife and baby before we send her "to Spain" and leave him to die slowly in the cold over the course of the film, giving his character two more scenes but still adding absolutely nothing to his persona or backstory and subsequently abandoning him to die in the cold without even a reaction shot of his face. But at least his white wife survived! And their interracial child! That says something. Love is love no matter what your color and nothing can come between that except a new ice age.

Some people say it doesn't count because I didn't have the guts to make the interracial couple Americans, where race is actually an issue, but I think I had enough going on in America, thank you very much! The rest of the movie's entire cast is there! I already had people there, stationed in major cities as convenient plot devices. Also I had a black dude there, too. Remember? He represented the homeless!

Don't ask how his dog mysteriously disappeared after the new ice age set in! Man, the focus groups hated that scene. But I fought for that one, too. There was so much truth in it, you know? But I had to cut it. It's still sort of there, though. If you look closely in the beginning of scene 25 you can see one of the background people picking something out of their teeth.

I'll tell you what the focus groups didn't mind, though. The destruction of New York City by tidal floods so soon after 9/11. I was really prepared to go to bat for that and explain our artistic reasons behind it. It was symbolism! Also we really wanted the radical natural reaction of the ecosystem to inspire some primal terror in people. If we couldn't explain that they should stop their current ignorant attitude towards the world, then we should scare them into stopping. And what better way to terrorize people than toppling the seemingly invincible island of Manhattan? None, I tell you! I mean, what would you feel if you saw an unstoppable kinetic force barrelling towards you? You'd get on your knees and pray to survive, that's what! You know you'd have no hope against that wall as it crashed into you with the tenacity of a madman.

But, like I said, our focus groups in L.A. actually cheered at this part, so we kept the whole thing in.

I was really pleased with the love story between Jake Gyllenhaal and his female debate team friend. You just knew as soon as you saw them that they would end up together at the end of the film. I mean, the airplane, the sudden gripping of her hand in fear! Very Bogart and Bergman. Classic. Did you see the big doe eyes she was making at him the whole time? I certainly did. Even when she was briefly given a tour by that guy on the other debate team that she thought was cute, I just knew that the guy would end up doing the noble thing in the very next scene and let the lead man in the film go for the girl. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if the new ice age hadn't come on them at that moment. She might have gone with the guy she was attracted to instead of the guy she who's ego she had to constantly massage and prop up.

She was a great actress. I forget her name. Great actress.

Speaking of great actresses, I was so moved by Randy Quaid's wife and her arc with the cancer-stricken kid who she refuses to abandon in the two hours between when the power goes out and the ambulances come to pick them up. I can't believe those ambulances drove through all that snow to get them! That must have been a heck of a struggle through the blinding blizzard and dropping temperatures. What perserverance those EMT's must have had! I wish we could have showed their story, or seen something other than their ambulance's headlights shining in the window, but I didn't want to lose a drop of the story between the doctor and the realistically thin cancer child. Not a single drop.

Gosh, listen to me! Going on and on about the characters in this movie when you want to know about the science and special effects! I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it, you know? I've grown so attached to these characters and their stories that I wish I could somehow put them through another ice age so I could see them grow a smidgen more.

Oh, but before I go any further, I should address the scene at the New Delhi environmental conference. I know the Mid-Atlantic ocean current in the presentation, the centerpiece of the entire theory behind the oncoming ice age and thus the movie, is flowing the incorrect way in the diagram. The thing is, you weren't supposed to actually notice that huge mistake. We sure cut away quickly enough! I'm flattered you were paying that close attention to me, but really you should have been looking at Randy Quaid and taking his warnings to heart. Or, if not that, then wondering why the actor playing the Vice President looks exactly like Dick Cheney while the actor playing the President doesn't look at all like George W. Bush. No one reported on that, did they?

No, I don't know what a troposphere is, either. I just know we needed a way to make people freeze instantly. I thought that was neat. Air from the edge of space, of course that would be ice cold! I sure had some creative writers!

I could go on forever about how awesome I am, but I should wrap it up. I leave you with these words. Watch me with a light and joyous heart, because in the end I'm just a movie and if you watch me too closely then I'll just fall apart on you. At the same time, take me exceedingly seriously, more seriously than you've taken anything else, because what I depict could actually happen within your lifetime. Then you'll wish you had suffered through my plotholes and listened to me.

You'll be sorry.

Letter from the Ghost That Haunts Your Stairwell

To whom it may concern,

My bafflement at the predicament I find myself trapped with has grown to massive, oaken proportions. It is my hope that dictating these thoughts to paper may provide some clarity to the matter. Setting my thoughts to print so that my own words may stare back at me has always loosed new revelation and perspective in my mind, and it is my hope that doing so in this case will provide a panacea of sorts. This missive has a dual purpose, for I seek answers both from you and myself.

Firstly I am afraid I must trouble you with the matter of the stairwell, as it seems that the branches of my madness stem from the trunk of its complexity. I am growing increasingly incensed at the tricks which those accursed stairs play on me with rapid regularity. It is as if the steps themselves fear my tread, and so conspire with nature and God Himself to queer the reality around me. Naturally I hesitate in my steps when it takes but one to cast day into the deep of night, silence into bustle, streaking membranes of blood stain the wood and then are gone and vice versa. Rare are the instances when I am allowed to ascend the stairs unmolested by these swooping changes.

This brings me to my second, but just as dire, concern. These stairs are endless. As if unseating me from logic were not enough, now the wood and varnish themselves mock me by multiplying impossibly. My memory is not so mired in shadow that I cannot remember the very spring in which my father constructed our manor, taking immaculate care in its craft, building all to withstand the ravage of nature and time, and yet keeping space for the very art that occurs all around us. The very curves and whorls of absolute God's creation that propel us forward unknowingly yet instill in us a great pride in His works and their cycles. The ornate workings of the wooden banister are but a tiny extension of this, yet they possess the same spirit, and it troubles me greatly that this which is divine should conspire me to madness.

More and more as of late I have spotted mysterious apparitions in my seemingly endless journey up the stairs. A wide manner of folk these ghosts are, crossing lines of class and color with a quickness that I have never before encountered. They allow me only brief moments of contact before they vanish, fuzzing at the lines, their colors breaking apart like a cheap painting exposed to the elements. Their manner of dress I have found grows only more and more garish and confusing as they continue to appear to me. Not once have I been able to communicate with the baffling figures.

I sincerely wish that I could, though I know not what my actions would be should this ever happen. With my right hand I would strangle the ethereal life from them and send them spiraling back down into the Devil's abyss that spawned their malevolence. With my left hand I would caress and plead for my case, for my release, for word of the world outside, for word of my beloved Josephine.

Can you conceive of the monstrous frustration that grows within a soul when they are denied the sight of their love? Such anger brings with it a righteous power, and there are many a time within which I feel I could split apart the madness that engulfs me with but a stern gaze. My eyes would burn a swath through existence itself if I knew it would clear the bridge to her.

I continue to hope that Josephine will soon leave the drawing room on the second floor to inquire as to the noise I made upon entering. There was a sharp booming snap as I arrived back from the monthly gathering of Architectural Guild, surely I broke something of import. (I could not determine the source of the noise, as it was dark. All I can recall is arriving at the foot of the stairs shortly afterward.) The absence of light might indicate that Josephine retired early, although that is a rare occurence, as Josephine has always made sport from the deep hours of the night and the span of stillness before dawn.

Perhaps Josephine herself has become trapped in the madness and cannot find her way to me. What undeserved irony that would indeed be, to be mired in such Hell.

I am running out of room. Having no paper, ink, or related utensils on my person, I am forced to inscribe my fears on the fine panels of soft balsam that abut these stairs. I will have much time to contemplate these words.

With hope, so will you.

Letter from a Time Without Letters

(To be released in Real Live Book form soon.)