Dear Editors,
I was offended, nay, aghasted, by the amount of space you devoted to footnotes in the December editorial. Are you still unaware of the climate impact of footnotes? I expect such ignorance of the Social “Sciences”, but Linguistics, as Noam likes to say, is science.
Do your research, and stop the insanity! No more footnotes!
Nevil Chamber Potts
Shiny College, Ontario
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Dear Weevil,
Thank you for the feedback.1, 12, 13
—Eds.
1 Notice that we didn’t say “helpful feedback”, or “useful feedback”, or even “feedback worthy of printing on toilet paper”.2
2 And in case the implication is not clear, it isn’t that we don’t have room for printing such adjectives, since clearly we do.3
3 Again, given the intellectual4 deficits you demonstrate in your original message, we might have to make this more explicit: your “feedback”8 is worthless.10
5 Not that your obvious6 immorality is relevant.7
6 And odious.
7 We just like pointing it out.
8 If you can even call it that.9
9 Which we are apparently contractually obligated to do.
12 Ugh, leave Noam out of this.
13 Of course we purchase footnote offsets, BTW.14
14 Duh.
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Dear Editors,
We who live downwind of you are obliged to order you to cease and desist with all the footnotes. It is well known that feet exude capric acid, yours especially so. While this does occasionally (rarely more than four months of the year) require massive amounts of air freshener and large florist deliveries, and usually no more than once a year a trip to the otorhinolaryngologist for a temporary nerve block, your latest emissions render you fully as noxious as you are obnoxious. The brown clouds wafting on the wind from SpecGram Towers like toxic clouds from a plant that uses dioxin and nerve gas to render livestock raised within the restricted area around Chernobyl are tortious in the extreme. So please, remember to say hi to the EPA guys for us whenever they get around to dealing with you.
Sincerely,
B. Lowell Ehrhard, Esq., DSc.
General Counsel / Head Linguist / Chief Cook and Bottle-
Academics for the Nullification of the Treacherous Influence
of Footnotes’ Outrageous Overutilization, Twisted
Nefariousness, and Obvious Total Evilness
(A.N.T.I.F.O.O.T.N.O.T.E.), LLC
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Dear Blowhard,
Thank you for the feedback.a, g, h
—Eds.
a By which we mean, no, your feet are stinky!b
b And your taste in air freshener and floral arrangements is cliché, trite, hackneyed, and banal.c
c As well as hokey, pedestrian, prosaic, uninspired, and vapid.d
d Yes, the editorial interns did get a thesauruse for Festivus and/or Indogermanischen Urlaub.f
e Technically, they got access to a thesaurus. It’s not like we can trust them to actually own one.
f Why do you ask?
g Speaking of nerves, we only have one left and you are getting on it. Can we block you?
h Funny, we agree that we are as noxious as we are obnoxious. We are also twice as noxious as we are obnoxious, and half as noxious as we are obnoxious.i
i Are you bad at math?j Does this help?k
 |  | | |||
|
n = o 2n = o ½n = o | | | | ||
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⇒ n = o = 0 | ||
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|  | | |||
j We know you are; that was a rhetorical question.
k We know it doesn’t; that was a rhetorical question.l
l Do you know what rhetorical means?m, o
m We know you don’t; that was a rhetorical question.l, n
n Do you know what recursion is?m, o
o We’d explain it to you, but that would be condescending.p
p That means talking down to someone.
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Dear Editors,
I loved the footnotes. They were very musical and delightfully podiatric.
Yours,
Lord Stiletto of Metatarsus
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Dear Dr. Foot Fetish,
Thank you for the feedback. You may have misspelled pedantic, but we are glad you enjoyed them, nonetheless!
—Eds.
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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-