Dear The Chive

On the surface, you seem like a nice diversion from any work I currently have at hand.  Upon closer paranoid inspection, or veiled through general depression, your true intentions become much more sinister.  I am convinced that you are a site tailored to show me all of the things that I want and can never have.

The most obvious posts would be all of the attractive, scantily clad, or simply fun seeming women you show daily.  This in and of itself doesn't distinguish you much from Maxim magazine or any other website or publication.  Things geared to men in their twenties tend to try to show insanely beautiful women, but try to make them seem approachable and human.  Your take on this is "Newly Single Chivettes" and "I Need to Find a Goofy Girl" threads.  I find it hard to believe that any of those women stay single for remarkably long periods of time, and despite some of the comments to the contrary, when women say they want a funny guy, they always mean a hot funny guy.  The H-O and T are all silent. 

Next, you have posts about all the neat places I will never live, and places I can never afford.  Posts about Man Caves and Bachelor pads that appear to cost at least six digits may be inspirational for me to get my ass in gear and make the money to get them, but I know I could never even come close.  In the end, they simply become an unrealistic benchmark to cheapen any accomplishment I end up making.  The salt in the wound is your "Midweek Getaway" posts where you show awesome vacation retreats that you would have to be a pimp that also robs banks and sells Faberge eggs to afford.  Given my typical work schedule, I am off midweek when this rolls out, and I get to oggle the tropical paradises from my beaten up recliner in my bleach stained "comfy clothes".  The only thing left to make me feel less awesome would be if I was jobless, unwashed and watching a video of my high school crush mocking me and laughing while I sit and wonder why I can't fly out to Malibu on a whim.

You go over the line with your "Cat Saturday" posts.  It is not fair to post pictures of cute, loveable fluffy kittens.  I have a giant orange stripey bastard cat that moans like a leper when picked up and cackles wildly while running around the house with his toys.   His favorite game is opening up bathroom doors, then running away, and he wails like a drunk until he is fed.  Don't make me despise this national treasure of a cat.

The absolute worst thing you do make me feel left out is by actually not including me in your little crew.  There are magical things called KCCO shirts.  They are green and say "Keep Calm, Chive On", the official motto of the site.  All of the posts that feature your shirts make it seem like if you have one, you are part of something special.  If a Chivette sees you out on the street in one, she will approach you.  People will buy you drinks, and you will be included in all of the camaraderie.  The only problem is, you can never buy a shirt.  They are not on sale constantly, only on the special occasions when you decide to sell them.  Worse, they sell out within minutes of when they go on sale.  Thus, you are worse than Krispy Kreme with their "Fresh Donut" sign.

Of course, none of this means I will stop going to your site, dreaming of better days ahead while loathing today.  Thank you for that. 

Dear Greg from Last October

Hopefully, my time machine has worked.  If not, fifteen fuzzy little hamsters will have bravely given their lives for science, but nothing will change for me.  If it has worked, then I was able to pierce the fabric of time and get this letter to you.  That in and of itself should prove how serious this is.  Greg, no matter how good of an idea it is, you should not start a blog called "Open Letters to My Enemies".

If you really think about it, this a terrible idea.  You're creating more work for yourself and you are going to have to take time out of your busy writing schedule to do this.  Can you really afford to stop work on that book you've been writing since 2007?  I mean, after over five years, that thing has to be reeeeaaaaallllly long, and it has to be almost finished, right?  Can you afford to tax your unique talent and voice with another writing project?

Don't forget about that podcast you are doing.  I know you said a few weeks ago that you are going to take a short break from it, but you will definitely come back to it.  There is no way that you will have already recorded what will be the last lackluster episode, and then keep making excuses to the five people who tune in.  I totally haven't shut off payment of the website account.  That was a great idea, by the way, to pay more for higher bandwidth.  You never know when that podcast is going to blow up big and exceed your page limitations.  That was a really sound investment. 

Anyway, back to this blog thing.  You aren't a fifteen year old girl who has to let the world know about how great her favorite band or actor is.  There is no reason you need to have a Blogger account.  What exactly do you hope to accomplish with this thing?  Show of your rapier wit?  Fame?  Seriously, we've done sixty of these letters at this point.  You want to know what that got us?  Did you become the next Hyperbole and a Half?  The next The Oatmeal?  You would need over 1000 times the page views we get for each post to get into their level.  Text with Dog is a blog that will start pretty soon after you get this letter.  That guy goes viral in about 2 days.  He got a book deal too.  We will not be going viral.  We will never get the book deal. 

Oh, I know!  You want to impress the ladies!  Yeah, ladies love a man that tries to shame kids a book fair, or engages in an internet war with a song bird.  Posting letters like that is like posting that picture your mom has where she dressed you in a half shirt, short shorts and knee socks when you were five because she obviously didn't respect you, or she wanted you to be single for life.

You might as well just start up a public access tv show where you do Jazzercise with old ladies.  The results will be shockingly similar, and maybe you will actually lose some weight. 

Dear Credit Card Company Merchant Services

"Thank you for calling Viking loving, Alec-Baldwin-ass-kissing Credit Card Supply Center.  Please hold and an associate will be with you shortly.  Please note that the call may be recorded to ensure quality."

This is the message that I listened to for 38 minutes, 12 seconds while you had me on hold at work.  The message would play for 19 seconds, then you would play music for another 20 seconds, and the message would begin again.  With that math, it is safe to assume I heard your announcer woman's nasally, grating voice repeat this roughly 58 times, interspersed with a truly uncomfortable piano concerto version of Metallica's Unforgiven.  I am fairly certain I could bring you on trial for war crimes and win a swift victory. 

Why would I wait on hold for so long?  That would be because you have failed to send me the credit card thermal paper I ordered from you over two weeks ago.  I was told four to seven business days.  Did you mean 4+7 business days?  It has in fact been eleven days, so if you meant that, you would no longer be a bunch of whore liars.

Somewhere around fifteen minutes of this version of oral scabies you set loose on me, I started to think that perhaps you had forgotten to change the on hold message, and that you were in fact out of the office.  Certainly, a credit card company should be available to companies on a Saturday, seeing as how we may need you for authorizations or credit card terminal problems, so that shouldn't be the case.  I instead chose to believe that my call was interrupting some epic game of hide and seek.  I hate hide and seek, so that is why I put one call on speakerphone, then called you from another phone of the desk next to mine.  This was a miscalculation on my part.  The effect of having this in stereo can only really be likened to the time the US Government bombarded Manuel Noriego with Van Halen night and day.  I was ready to hand over all of my control over Panama just to make this torture end.

I sincerely hope you were recording that call.  I hope you have to listen to that tape far longer than I had to listen to yours.  May my soft weeping and pleas for a swift death or the delivery of my thermal paper haunt your dreams. 

Dear Sleepy Time Sound Machine App

I recently purchased your App for the Kindle Fire.  I have a hard time falling asleep, because nighttime tends to be the time when all the other Gregs that live in my head like to talk to me/ mock me/ remind me of all of the things I forgot to do that day.  I tried your limited access free version, and liked it a good deal, so I went ahead and bought your full version.

I must say, I am big fan of Distant Storm #1 and #2.  The light sound of rain and far off lightning puts me right to sleep.  My mind was actually tricked into thinking it was storming outside at one point.  That is how good you are at capturing these sounds.  I do find that some of your other sounds leave much to be desired. 

I tried your "Camping" sounds out.  I had in mind that there would be soft crackling of a fire, maybe some soft wind, and leaves rustling.  I was basically right, in the same respect that you can say that Necco wafers are a candy.  They are made of sugar, and people pass them out at Halloween, but that doesn't change the fact that they taste like someone ate chalk and green beans and then sneezed into your mouth.  There was crackling, and there was wind.  The crackling sounded like Louie Anderson jogging on bubble wrap, and the wind is reminiscent of the ghostly wails of the damned.

Quickly moving on, I tried out a few of your "Box Fan" sounds for a bit of white noise.  Numbers 1 and 2 sound like vibrators that accidentally turned on in a wooden drawer, and number three sounds like a soft spoken man chuckling in the corner of your room which would be the creepiest setting you have, if not for your "Heartbeat" sound which empties your bowels after 3 minutes. 

The most ridiculous thing you added was "Morning Birds".  Why would someone go to sleep to the sounds of birds?  It makes you feel like your entire night's sleep is your attempt to get ten more minutes of sleep before your alarm goes off.  Why not make a sleep machine sound of an actual alarm clock, or your mother opening your bedroom door and yelling "Stop touching yourself!"?

Actually, I take that back.  The most ridiculous setting is "Microwave".  Who in the living hell gets soothed to sleep by the sound of a microwave?

Dear Paramount Pictures

From 1993- 1996, Nickelodeon aired a show called The Adventures of Pete and Pete.  The whole show is a product of the time it came from.  It was infused with the grunge sensibilities that were burgeoning at the time, which was exactly the type of music I, as an idiot kid, had embraced and used to define me as a person.  Dozens of grunge and alternative artists cameo on the show, never as stunt casting, always out of respect for the quality of the show.  It delighted in its eccentricities without being weird for weird’s sake, and that in itself makes it something foreign in programming geared towards children today.  You either see something treacly and wholesome, or something so silly that it is garbage.  Point in fact, there is a thing called Fred on Nickelodeon.  I have seen commercials.  This is a kid acting like a freak with his voice sped up and this thing has a full season of tv, plus three movies, all of which are on DVD.  

The Adventures of Pete and Pete got DVDs too.  In 2005, seasons one and two were released shortly after I graduated from college.   I gobbled up those seasons, and waiting patiently for season 3 to get released in February, 2006.  Some of my favorite episodes were that season, and it was going to be worth the wait.  February came and passed, and Amazon still wouldn’t let me order.  Suddenly the preorder screen changed to a button to receive an email when the product became available.  Now, almost seven years later, the DVDs still have not been released. According to the show's creator, Will McRobb, everything was set to go in 2006.  Commentaries were recorded, extras obtained, and the DVDs were even pressed.  Now, they are rotting in some warehouse, and I would sincerely like to know why.

If these DVDs were made, what do you have to lose by selling them now?  If they are packaged and ready to go, what do you gain by sitting on them?  Looking at the releases you currently sell doesn't help matters.  You sell all of the seasons of Jersey Shore, but I refuse to admit that is anything other than torture porn.  You also have shows I have never heard from dating back to the 50's, all for sale.  You have a show called "Cannon", starring the eponymous Fat Man from Jake and the Fat Man.  I will just pause there so you can think about that.

Good?  Got that?  You are selling DVDs of the SECOND most popular show starring the Fat Man.  You might as well just sleep with my girlfriend in my bed while eating my favorite stromboli, since that might be the only way to disrespect me more. 

You also sell a show called "Matt Houston".  This show looks awful.  For those like me that have no idea what this show is, here is the description, directly from Paramount:

“Matt Houston (Lee Horsley) is rugged, rich and ready for action - and in Los Angeles, the action never stops, Oil may be Matt's business, but solving murders is his passion. With the help of his sexy lawyer sidekick C.J. Parsons (Pamela Hensley), and his unlimited wealth, he won't quit until each and every case is complete. The first season of Matt Houston features 23 episodes packed with the beautiful people and west-coast locales that make this show an all-time classic."

This is not an all time classic.  This is something I would joke about creating to pass the time at work and annoy people.  No one has watched that show and fondly reminisced about the days the show used to air.  Worse, this is something that is geared towards a generation that does not buy DVDs.  My parents have three and they were all given to them as presents, by me.  One of the DVDs still has not been watched.   This is more profitable than releasing DVDs that you have already pressed?

At this point, you are is the kid on the playground that throws the kickball over the fence so that no one can play with it, just because he doesn’t understand the rules.  Don’t be that kid.