Do you ever feel like your life would be easier if you could relay messages to the objects in your life that are supposed to make things better? Not people (you can tell them how they’re f*cking up any old time), rather the inanimate objects that you likely don’t even think about. Consider what would happen if you could tell something to behave, and it did.
Dear Work Desk,
I would like to know once and for all what you have against me. Your chair is too high; the tops of my legs rub against the keyboard tray. The monitor is too low; this causes me eye strain. Yes, I know, it is a sophisticated Acer flatscreen monitor, but nonetheless it should be higher. The piece of wood used to keep my Meridian phone at a 45 degree angle keeps slipping; this startles me and makes a loud noise. You allow other employees to take the push pins that I BOUGHT and PLACED there, leaving me to wonder, à la Paula Cole, Where have all the push pins gone? If this were not enough, you seem to eat my pens, my scraps of paper covered in important telephone numbers, and my sanity. I think we can work something out. How about you let me do my job with minimal catastrophe, and in return, I will treat you to a Swiffer Duster treatment every week, and possibly even an African Violet? I do hope we can reach some sort of compromise.
Sincerely,
Gwen Styles
Dear Toronto Transit Commission,
You are an embarrassment to transit systems everywhere. You should be ashamed of yourself. Your buses are old, your streetcars smell, your subway trains stop every two minutes, and there are not enough handrails to hold on to. In addition, you are ridiculously expensive. You allow degenerates to board you, hampering the enjoyment of other, non-degenerate TTC passengers. You are slovenly and filthy – it took your maintenance personnel almost two weeks to mop the vomit off the bus bay platform at York Mills station. If this were not enough, you are the cause of numerous injuries and deaths each year. Your attempt to stroke your own ego with your claims that “it’s the better way” make me want to gag. I repeat: you should be ashamed of yourself.
Disgruntled commuter,
Gwen Styles
Dear Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation,
Pick me! Pick me!
Forever in your debt (unless you pick me),
Gwen Styles
Dear birthmark on my forehead:
Okay, while I admit that you have a cute name (stork bite), I nonetheless resent your presence on my face. According to medical documentation, stork bites are supposed to fade within the first few months of a newborn’s life. Yet here I am, twenty-nine years later, with a perpetual look of “freshly waxed unibrow” between my eyes. I do appreciate your attempt to look like the lightning bolt on Harry Potter’s forehead, it’s not enough to make me love you. You are impervious to concealer and too cost prohibitive to warrant undergoing cosmetic laser surgery. You are the one and only thing about my body I do not like. Thanks for f*cking up my face.
Yours in blotchiness,
Gwen Styles
Dear Dirty Laundry,
If I ignore you long enough, will you go away? When I get home at night, I’m much too tired to wash you. I know I’m lucky, and that I don’t have to do it by hand like my forefathers (or, more realistically, their wives) did. But the machines are smart-card operated and the ATM loading machine is often out of service. What is a girl to do? I can only hand-wash my unmentionables in the bathroom sink so many times before I go crazy. At Mark’s Work Warehouse, you can buy wrinkle-proof pants, so why hasn’t anyone invented self-cleaning garments yet? This is supposed to be the twenty-first century.
Too lazy and tired to do it,
Gwen Styles
Dear DAUGHTER’S dirty laundry,
I resent even having to look at you. The girl is tall enough to reach the buttons on the washing machine, and is old enough to care about her appearance, so why the f*ck is it so difficult to make her do her own damn laundry?!
Yours in frustrating parenthood,
Gwen Styles
Dear Mexico,
Do you want me back? I want you back! Lets run off together and live happily ever after.
Thinking of escaping,
Gwen Styles
Dear bacon,
Thanks for the heartburn, jerk. You’re supposed to be on MY side.
In (lack of) gratitude,
Gwen Styles
