Dear ‘I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother’,
Thank you for opening the dialogue on mental illness – not enough people want to talk about this. You’re right, this is a conversation that needs to be had, and I had to respond to your letter.
You said in your letter that your 13-year-old son is a genius, with IQ scores off the charts. I am an adult of 25 now, but as a child I was also exceptionally gifted, and as a teenager I was also what the adults in my life would have described as “troubled”. I self-harmed throughout my teens. I had few friends. I scared the s**t out of my parents. I shouted at them. I told them I hated them. On many occasions I expressed a desire to kill myself, and I really wanted to, I was so angry and unhappy. I was medicated on Zyprexa, the same brand of medication you...
Lifestyle
To the creative directors at Rolling Stone Italy,
After seeing your EDM diss video, I was very hurt. Elite Daily music writer, Daniel Lampert, responded with an emotionally-charged column decrying the video as insulting and hurtful. I think Daniel’s article was very well written and very well informed. EDM lovers were all insulted. We were all hurt.
So Rolling Stone, here’s why your distasteful video was embarrassing;
You’re showing your age. You deemed EDM a drug-fueled flair-out of a movement. That’s exactly what your parents said of rock and roll. While they were listening to orchestral / big band “real music,” you were eating Jimmy Hendrix’s other-worldly sounds and chasing them with every drug you could find.
You call EDM ‘fake’ music. Keep in mind: synthetic is relative...
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Mr. Moore-
Good afternoon there sweetheart, I hope this finds you alive and well.
You can thank our men and women of the armed forces for that, by the way, and that also includes us cowardly snipers.
It seems you’ve found time between licking the jelly off your fingers and releasing your grasp of a bear claw to tweet some junk about snipers being cowards.
My buddies and I got a good laugh over the tweet, so I thank you.
For a guy worth $50 million dollars, you sure have quite a bit to bitch and cry about.
I guess like a moth to flame, you too gravitate towards things that are popular and in the moment — in this case it’s snipers.
Too bad for you that your attempt at being relevant via your 70+ year old family experience has failed. It has only made you look dumber...
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Hello, my future wife.
Whether you are reading this before you meet me, or stumble upon it after, I want you to know a few things.
The reason I am writing this today is because I can’t stop thinking about you, and I can’t stop myself from imagining how happy we will be. Let this letter be a promise to you that I will do my best to be the man I want to be for you.
I may not yet know all of the difficulties that come with a lifetime commitment, but I have enough relationship experience to know what I want and how I picture my life with the person I will commit to: you.
Those around me are a continuous source of education and inspiration on how I want our relationship to be. So here and today, I vow to try my best to do the following:
I promise to do my best to make you beam...
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Dear Chetan Bhagat,
Ever since the announcement of your new book 'Half Girlfriend' appeared on the front page of a leading daily you have become the favourite whipping boy of the chatterati.
Your writing has been criticized for its half-assed simplicity and lack of depth; your appearances in public have elicited half-hearted praise and the views expressed in your columns have been singled out for being half-baked, or even half assed!
Let me tell you Mr Bhagat, given half a chance, your critics would love to have the same advances that publishers give you, the same rapport with the readers you enjoy and the same freedom to live the life of an author, without worrying about the financial implications that usually come with the choice of a writer's life.
The reason your critics...
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Dear Girl Who Walked Away,
It’s not like you weren’t aware of what you were getting yourself into. He told you he was nice. He trusted easily and gave you all he could when he could.
The nice guy believes in doing things right. He was there when you needed him to be, and he went out of his way to make sure you knew just how much you could mean to someone.
We live in a generation where we all have to wear masks and play parts to make it through the battlefield of dating in the 21st century. There is no such thing as giving it your all.
We like quotes on Facebook and post things on Instagram stating we want the masochist one day and the romantic the next. We play these games where being available can only happen sometimes, and playing hard-to-get must be our number one priority...
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Dear HEB,
First let me say, that I have been a big fan of your grocery store since I first moved to Austin back in 1986. That’s a lot of years of me singing your praises, HEB. So, as a fan, let me express my extreme disappointment in this product.
My first reaction, as a woman, was that I enjoy all of the nuts in this mix. Did nature not intend for me to eat these nuts? Or, is it that this particular blend of nuts should be exclusively marketed towards men because its benefits only apply to them. If that’s the case, is there no blend of nuts that are exclusively beneficial for women? No Womanly Mix? Is it the colloquial use of the term “nuts” that excludes us from having our own mix?
Then, I thought to myself, perhaps I will gain some “manly” benefits by eating your “Manly Blend...
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Dear artists,
A year ago, in order to support the blackout against SOPA, I wrote a blog post explaining why I was pirating your work. A few hours later, the sudden closure of Megaupload gave an unexpected popularity to my text. In the weeks that followed, nearly 100,000 people read it on this blog, not to mention the numerous translations.
With Flattr, I earned a total of € 34.70 for that post and its French translation. If I had a 1€ paywall, this post alone would worth € 100,000. Even considering that only 10% of readers would pay, it would still be around € 10,000. Not bad, isn’t it?
But if I charged visitors, nobody would have read that text in the first place. It would never have become viral and I would not have earned a single euro on Flattr. This seems obvious, isn’t it?...
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Dear Lonely Soul,
I thought about you this week when I was struggling. I thought about you again this week when I was reading a verse of the Qur’an. I thought about you again this week when reading an explanation of a verse in the Qur’an.
I thought about you this week.
I made a prayer for you this week.
I sent you loving thoughts this week.
You may be truly alone, or you may have no verbal explanation for this deep down ache that you constantly feel. You may be surrounded by people, everywhere you go. You may never get a moment to yourself, to be physically alone…yet still, you are a lonely soul.
And with that being said, I wanted to reach out today and tell you that YOU may be a special friend of God. Even if it feels like God has not given you all that you feel you...
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Mr. Perry,
I had promised myself months ago that I would not comment on your movies anymore because it was only serving to raise my blood pressure. Like the Serenity Prayer says, I was going to accept the things I cannot change. It worked for a while, too. But then you released Temptation, and I had to say something.
For years, I have believed that Black folks deserve better than you. I realize that this can be seen as patronizing. You see, I am not Black. Some may say that I do not have a right to comment on you and Black communities. I would actually agree with them. I may have my opinions about your “artistry” and the impact of your movies on Black communities but that is an intra-community discussion for Black folks to have. This will certainly not stop me from holding my...
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