December 18, 2004
Dear New Yorker Shouts &
Murmurs Editor(s):
Please consider this very
essay for inclusion in your ÒShouts
& MurmursÓ column. It is quite funny.
How funny is it? Well, let me
start off with a joke. A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar. The
bartender looks up and says, What is this? Some kind of a joke?
Ha, ha! Yes! Yes, it is some
kind of a joke. But if you publish this essay, it will become even funnier. You see, the world is filled with war, and
pestilence, and hunger, and red states. And thereÕs nothing that any of us can
do about it.
I, for one, have stage four
metastatic breast cancer. My word processor doesnÕt even recognize the word
ÒmetastaticÓ! HowÕs that for a laugh?
You know what else is funny?
Polar bears (whose fur is actually not white, but colorless and translucent); Donald Rumsfeld (in a sick
way); Clay Aiken; Ann Coulter (in a perhaps even sicker way); monosodium
glutamate; Richard Nixon (though less so, as time passes); Memorial
Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; my inordinate pride in my collection of all 14
of the Hallmark Puppy Love collection ornaments; white people saying Òoh no you
diÕnÕtÓ; a photograph of Frank Sinatra that appeared in Mia Farrow's autobiography,
in which he holds both a Lhaso Apso and a Scotch rocks; DisneyÕs ÒPrincessesÓ
line, in which the companyÕs heroines are stripped of any remaining individual
agency or identity; O. J.Õs search for the real killers; my seeming choice of
borderline anorexia over alcoholism as a creative crutch (see Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Faulkner, et. al), which just doesnÕt provide the same highs (I
mean, where am I going to bottom out? ÒI canÕt write without not eatingÓ?);
Michael Bloomberg pretending to be a Republican and the fat lot of good itÕs
doing him; my being married to the best husband in the world, causing me to
wonder whether Jennifer Aniston cries herself to sleep each night because
BradÕs just not him (punctuated by the fact that my husband would probably kick
me out of bed if Jennifer looked at him sideways); the women of the View, and
much, much more.
All that could be yours with
the publication of my work!
You see, your refusal to
publish a humor piece by me has resulted in my creating a Òblog.Ó Nobody wants
that. A blog sounds like something youÕve stepped in, or something you have on
your face.
Eventually IÕll start
submitting poetry, and then nobody wins.
So please publish this essay
today! You donÕt want to force me to begin submitting to ÒThis American Life,Ó
a talk show on NPR that deals expressly in depressing subjects (with, for
example, such show titles as ÒDidnÕt Ask to Be Born,Ó ÒProm,Ó ÒLiving Without,Ó
ÒAllure of the Mean Friend,Ó and ÒCome Back to Afghanistan,Ó but perpetually
redeemed by its prescient broadcast of David SedarisÕ ÒSantaLand DiariesÓ,
which is hysterical yet contains a requisite hint of depression, and is about
Christmas, which we all know is Suicide City, etc., etc.), and talk about all
the things that really arenÕt
funny (like farm subsidies, child labor, global warming, cancer, or
Republicans), now do you?
Sincerely yours,
Kiersten
Conner-Sax
©2004 by Kiersten Conner-Sax
From Ò50 TriesÓ at kiersten.connersax.com