Dear Editors:

I look forward every month to your ready repartee and amateur-friendly surveys of the field. You guys are real gut-busters! How in the world can you keep producing a never-ending flow of high spirits month after month? In any case, your magazine’s a treasure.

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Dear Editors:

I dread your monthly output of canned jokes and potted linguistics. It gives me a stomach ache. How in the world can you keep pumping out an unrelenting stream of moonshine and rotgut month after month? In any case, your magazine should be buried forthwith.

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Dear Chuck and Chas,

It’s rare to have two letters submitted the same month making exactly the same points. We appreciate the high praise and can only say that, like Piero Manzoni, we do what we can do and can what we do do.

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Dear Sirs,

In a recent letter from Associate Editor Jonathan Downie, I was promised 40% more mirth, but I would estimate my mirth to have increased by only 2-3%. I am (apparently) not (sufficiently) amused. What gives?

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Dear That Which Girls Just Wanna Have,

Statistics, my good sir; statistics. The 40% increase is collective and in aggregate. Some win, some lose; more go up than down. Many are increasing their mirth by laughing at you!

Dear Editors,

I was wondering why you didn’t give me the job I applied for as Intern Morale Specialist. I’ve boosted more morale than Booth Tarkington boosted Indiana.

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Dear Gail,

As you asked so nicely (this time), we’ll tell you. While we were impressed with your long history as personnel manager with several companies that each went bankrupt within a year of your hire, in several cases after bleeding qualified employees like hemophiliac elephants boosted by catapult onto pointed stakes (remember, the Internet is forever), we were deeply concerned by your suggestion that we institute free cookies every morning for the interns. Now, if you meant that the journal would pay for them, then clearly you do not have native-speaker competence regarding the semantics of “free.” On the other hand, if the cookies truly were free, then we could not see such a program boosting intern morale in any way. The deciding point, however, is that among your publications you listed It’s Puppy Dogs and Rainbows All the Way Down: A New Philosophy for Living. Clearly you’re not from this planet, and we have a policy against hiring aliens.

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Eds,

Olga Gerakova in her ranty little screed had me nodding my head in approval up until the parenthetical about Eugene Goostman. Once I looked up what Eugene Goostman is, it made sense—the first time. I don’t understand why the parenthetical was repeated again at the end of each of the following two paragraphs. Any help?

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Dear Dr. Conrand,

Programmer error.