Dear Kid Rock,
Congratulations on your new album! You're everywhere these days promoting it and, while I wish you the best and baddest of luck, I can't help but notice that right in there with "First Kiss is a return to form" and "Kid Rock is a real American badass," a key element of your marketing campaign seems to be "it's fun to use the word 'gay' as a pejorative." You told TMZ that selfies are "so gay." In an interview with the Guardian, you called rap-rock "gay." You regaled Howard Stern the other day with a story about how miserable and oppressed your son felt in a Malibu high school that hung a single sign forbidding the use of the word "gay" as an insult, and how you shared a moment of father-son bonding over how gay the sign itself was. "If someone says you can't say 'gay'...
Entertainment
Dear Steph,
Saturday morning I noticed what I thought was a gigantic plastic bag plastered to the end of my driveway. I didn’t think much of it at first, other than to say to myself, well, there’s another piece of trash that has found its way to my yard, I guess I’ll be the one who has to pick it up.
Which I did not do. Not at first.
So it sat there in the rain for a while.
In the afternoon the rain slacked off, and during one of my treks from the front door to the car, headed off to shuttle my daughters to their various activities, I saw it again. I thought again about how it had become one more chore on my to-do list.
Then I noticed it had writing on it.
When I came closer I saw that it wasn’t plastic at all, it was thin, wax-coated paper, tangled with a bit of twisted wire. You...
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Dear ArenaNet,
When you sell someone a game, when you take their $60, you are promising that person a good or service, in this case Guild Wars 2, or as I now call it, Politically Correct Wars. You may have designed, developed, distributed, and hosted the content of the game, but that doesn’t give you the right to take away what the Constitution of the U.S. of A. promises me (and all your other customers from around the world).
Last Thursday when I logged into your so-called MMORPG (how can it count as “online” if you get banned?), I was unceremoniously notified that I had been suspended for 72 hours from the service I paid for. Even though you were willing to take my money, enough money to buy at least fifteen Red Bull energy drinks, you seem to think you can take away my ability to...
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Dear YouTube,
I’d like to spend more money with you. A lot more money. My clients are spending significant amounts on TV advertising, which is becoming increasingly expensive and the value is hard to quantify.
AdWords has been a revelation for our digital media spend. Where once we were stuck to buying bespoke packages based on estimated impressions, real time bidding has allowed for a more efficient, targeted use of spend that means we can get our content in front of the right people at the right time. Alongside AdWords, Google Analytics has allowed us to track the performance and value of our adspend alongside our referring traffic from links, social media and organic search, meaning we can better understand our customer conversion funnels; and thereby create better ads which...
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Dear Gwyneth,
I really enjoyed your recent comments to E! about how easy an office job is for parents, compared to the grueling circumstances of being on a movie set. “I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening,” you said. “When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day, and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”
As a mother of a toddler, I couldn’t agree more!
“Thank God I don’t make millions filming one movie per year” is what I say to myself pretty much every morning as...
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Dear Judy Blume,
We are fourth graders from Mrs. Sonnenberg’s class at Howe Elementary School in Wisconsin Rapids. Our class really liked your book Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Earlier this year we also read Freckle Juice and The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo. Your books are funny and entertaining.
In Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing we thought Fudge was very hilarious. Especially when he ate flowers, played with socks, ate Dribble, and didn’t eat his food. He seemed like a normal two year old boy at times though. Like when he was banging on pots and pans. We did enjoy the ‘Eat it or wear it!’ part very much.
Peter tried to act all mature. There were many times Peter wished Fudge was never born. Boy, we had a lot of connections with that. One time Peter was really...
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Dear SeaWorld,
Your stocks are dropping by the day. You’re bleeding financially in the wake of the powerful documentary “Blackfish” and, more importantly, the public’s growing realization that confining intelligent cetaceans to cruel and small tanks and forcing them to perform is just plain wrong. As the backlash continues, there is a better move forward – and a better use of your money – than your plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build bigger orca tanks.
As a company responsible for the care of animals, with any steps that you take, you should be asking yourselves “Would this change be better for the animals? Would they want this,” as Sea Shepherd’s Founder Captain Paul Watson says. Yes, bigger tanks, giving these massive orcas more room to swim, would undoubtedly...
3,101
Dear Camille Cosby,
It is very believable that the man you hear about in the news with over 20 victims coming forward telling their Screen Shot 2014-12-18 at 1.23.26 AMstories of having been drugged, sexually harassed and abused by him is not the man you know. I don’t doubt it. Consider this — the vast majority of men who buy women to abuse in prostitution are married. Their wives would say the same thing you have said about Bill were they to hear from prostitution victims and survivors of their husband’s sexual abuse. This is relevant to Bill Cosby how? The descriptions and testimony women are giving of his alleged abuse mirrors how men who buy women for prostitution treat them. And no, they don’t like it, want it. But yes, we live in a world of family-loving sexual predators.
The...
3,213
Dear Dr Then,
Thank you for your letter dated 18 November 2014.
In your letter you are responding to the open letter published by the GRACE Consortium on 10 November 2014 in response to the report and press release dated 7 November 2014 and issued by your organization on its website. In these documents, you criticize a recently published scientific article (Zeljenková et al., 2014) on 90-day feeding studies with diets containing genetically modified MON810-maize varieties and their comparators performed within the EU-funded GRACE project. In your letter you also ask me for further clarifications and actions:
1) You ask to withdraw the publication and subject it to further evaluation.
Response: The authors of Zeljenková et al. (2014) and the GRACE Consortium do not...
2,768
Dear Kendall,
Take a moment and remove yourself from your current situation, if you can, to a life that isn’t riddled with excess and only hearing the word “yes” to your wants and requests. Now, imagine you’re from a small town and/or Third-World country where your only way to get out of your current social class, achieve your dreams, get a green card or just gain better work conditions is to become a high-fashion model. You have to leave for six months to a year sometimes, signing contracts you can barely understand, let alone oblige to, almost without choice. You’re away from your family, your friends and everything you know. You live in a one-bedroom apartment with six other girls in the same situation in this Big Apple, New York City.
Did I mention you’re only 17 when all of...
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