when welcome to night vale said: “Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first, and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us, we can cope with that. We can do this together you and I.”
One of the perks of my job (for a person like me) is that I am often tasked with writing letters that amount to exquisitely formal, meticulously researched “fuck you”s to people that I strongly dislike. I have, in fact, acquired something of a reputation for one particular letter, directed to a man I’ll refer to here as Asshole Bully. The letter in question has been circulated around my entire company. While that two-page letter is remarkable in the sense that I managed to incorporate a “fuck you” in every single sentence, with each sentence containing just a little more “fuck you” than the one preceding it, there’s a particular line I came up with in the final paragraph that is so poetically jam-packed with “fuck you,” that people are still quoting it to me verbatim four months later. They just call it The Letter.
Yesterday at around 3:00 pm, Boss asked me to write another letter to the same Asshole Bully, addressing a related, but significantly more complex issue. It needed to go out to Asshole Bully that same day. I immediately got to work.
At 8:00 pm, just as I was putting the final touches on my five page letter to Asshole Bully, Boss emailed me to make sure that I was okay, and to check the status of the letter. I wrapped up, and I emailed him my draft. “Thanks!” he replied. “I’ll review it.”
Eight minutes later, I received a second email from Boss, which I have screenshotted for posterity:
I had to travel today, so I haven’t been back in the office yet, but I’ve still already heard about The Second Letter from five co-workers.
… I can’t believe I get paid to do this.
We need the letter op. We need to read the letter.
Today the lady behind me in line at the grocery store checkout politely tapped my shoulder and when I turned around she motioned toward my giant bundles of kale and asked: “what do you do with your kale? Do you cook with it, or make juice, or…?” And i admitted there in front of god and the world “oh I feed it to my peacocks.” And she just looked so taken aback that I said “I’m sorry that’s not the answer you were hoping for”
And that’s how I learned other people don’t really know what to do with kale either. We’re all pretty sure it’s edible, though.
People are sending me kale recipes like they honestly believe I will try to eat bird food
