open letters

There's nothing quite like getting it off your chest, whatever "it" is and despite whether "they" are listening to you. Such seems to be the operating principle behind the "Open Letters" at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, in which people write in with whatever small life absurdity they'd like to acknowledge and move past. They're vastly entertaining in that grownup way (because, let's face it, other people's issues just are). And many of them seem to be exorcising the ghost of whatever idea they ever had that one can truly reason with pets.

For example, somewhere there is an Amazon parrot that has been freeloading for over 15 years without offering much in the way of return. And a cat who has made a hobby of pushing breakables off the sink when everyone else in the house is sleeping. And a pair of mean dogs who shouldn't bank on the fact that they belong to somebody's sibling. And the turtle letter - well, I got a flashback to the first time I read Oscar Wilde's De Profundis.