Lord of the Flies

First of all, let me apologize for not updating.  I am going to blame work, even though it’s probably not apparent, I really do work hard.  These past few weeks didn’t afford me the luxury of blog-posting time.  It would have been a great week for the ‘Contributors’ to step up – but no, they didn’t.  FAIL.  That’s right contributors, I’m calling you out.  And while I’m doing so, I might as well introduce you to our small little faction of readers (which in all honesty is probably only us *shrugs*).  We have two other contributors on board – eccommie and pollywonk.  Both think they are busier than me, but they’re not.  They’re simply lazier than me since they refuse to make time to contribute.  I think I might be willing to forgive eccommie since he supplied me with the wonderful letter posted below.  The last contributor to introduce is one of my interns, aptly named internbeatit.  I KNOW he’s not busy, and he is basically just dicking around all summer since he has no classes.  No excuses intern.  I am putting this in your letter of recommendation.  Oh, and while I’m directing my anger towards you, intern, I might as well point out that the user name that you have chosen can be misconstrued to be sexually inappropriate.  Just thought you should know.

Alright, now on to our constituent letter!  Note – my comments in the constituent letter below is the stuff in parenthesis that is not italicized.

Mr. *I Spelled Your Name Wrong (*she really did spell the official’s name wrong)

I am writing to you because I don’t know were to go for help on a issue concerning our public hall and public safty.  I am *an elected official of *Blank Township in *Blank County (first term) but I with to remain anonamus due to the fact that I have gotten know were with my fellow elected officials on the issue I am about to address to you.  The issue is that our Public Hall is over run by flys.  I am not talking just a few flys, I mean flys to the point that when the hall is rented the renter must vacume at the least two times in a twenty four hour period to clean up the dead ones.  The flys are in the hall all year round but they are much worse in the winter.  I feel this is a helth issue (not to mention the fact that it is grotess) because food is offten prepared and served when the hall is rented.  I feel that our tax payers should not have to deal with this sort of thing.  I would not pay to eat in a place were I have to pray that the bugs won’t fall into my food so why should our citizens who’s tax dollars have paied for this building have to put up with this when they rent the building?

Thank you for your time and any help you can offer.

Dear Lord of the Flies,

There many things I have to talk about regarding your letter.  I would first like to address the issue of the Township Hall and flies you are so concerned about.  Have you ever seen and/or read The Amityville Horror?  They too were plagued by flies (please take note of the correct spelling of flies), even during the winter months.  And since you mentioned that the township tried using an exterminator to no avail, I suspect supernatural phenomenon is to blame.  Has anyone ever been brutally murdered at the hall?  Was it built upon an Indian graveyard?  Did you ever have a problem with satanic cults in that area?  Is there a deep, dark secret about the hall that the rest of the board is not telling you about?  Maybe they aren’t supporting you on this because they know about the hall’s terrifying past, and since you are an outsider who only has lived there for four years, they won’t let you in on the secret.  If I were you, I would either 1.) Hire a priest to bless the hall in hopes of driving out the evil fly spirits or 2.) Pack up, move, and never look back.  Since my boss is neither a priest or a mover/real estate agent, he will be unable to help you.

Now that I’ve given you such stellar and helpful advice, I would like to move on to the many issues I have with your letter.  You know, when you send me a letter telling me your elected position and the location of where you are from, that makes you an easy google search away from being known.  So, you are not anonymous.  I now know your name.  But anonymity shouldn’t be what you’re worried about, you should worry that people have a hard copy example of your embarrassing display of written language.   The atrocious spelling, grammar, and punctuation in your letter made me cringe.  So, like any good person would do, I broke out the red pen and corrected your letter.  You receive an F for your inability to use commas, poor spelling, run-on sentences that are garbled with nonsense, terrible grammar (a and an are not interchangeable – you literally only have to say the sentence out loud to know which one to use), and misspelling my bosses name (as well as calling him Mr. instead of the elected title – that’s just rude).  And we’re not talking the run of the mill typos here.  It takes effort to spell that poorly!  I know, because I retyped your letter and spell check kept auto-correcting.  I had to actually go back and un-correct most of these words.  I feel as though someone needs to point out those red and green squiggle lines under the offensive grammar and words to let you know they are wrong.  It’s called spell check, and it automatically does it for you.  Because you do not have knowledge of this, and you are an elected official is terrifying.  You are actually representing people, albeit on a small scale, but still.  Your ignorance had made me lose all faith in our system of government.  I was about to resign from my position when I realized that I could instead draft legislation to avoid such intellectual train wrecks in the future:

I am proud to introduce Legislative Bill Spell Check!  This bill is designed to test all political candidate’s ability to properly use grammar and spell check before any written proof of ignorance could leave their office.  All candidates must arrive at a testing area where a computer will be place before them.  They must show that they recognize the spell check button (usually easily recognized as an ‘ABC check mark’ button) in different email and office programs.  Once we establish that you can at least write a sentence without making your staff and constituents cringe with second-hand embarrassment, you may be placed on the ballot.  We will be traveling the state with the large annoying paperclip mascot to rally the people around this legislation.  We will be coming to your town soon, and I’ll at least be kind enough to not point you out as the reason this legislation had to be drafted.

Yours truly,

Spell Master Staffer

He's coming to a town near you.

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