The Mailbag

Tessie Dibbs of Little Rock, Arkansas writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. I know that you recently got a new notebook computer, Lucille II, but what ever happened to the original Lucille? How is she doing? I liked her.

Tessie, yes, Lucille II is much faster, slimmer, sexier and more desirable as a laptop than the original Lucille could ever be, you're absolutely right. I think Lucille I is doing okay, although it's been several months since I visited her in the assisting computing facility where she's living these days. I intend to send her an email this month or possibly next month just to check up on her and I'll tell her you asked about her. I'm quite sure she's doing just fine though, the staff people there are marvelous, they should be for what I'm paying them. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do with her when I can no longer afford to keep her there, but maybe she will have quit working entirely by then and I won't have to deal with it at all, just chuck her into the garbage. We can only hope I guess. Thanks for writing; Lucille II sends you such love as she can spare these days what with all the gala affairs we've been attending together.


Gina Johnson-Smith of Coyote Gulch, Arizona writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. Since Polly seems to be asleep or passed out in a ditch somewhere these days, I guess it falls to me to tell you that the self-denigrating preface to your post "The Prado" sucks. No one wants to hear your sniveling apologetic shit; either write it and post it or don't. We'll tell you if it isn't fit for human consumption, trust me. Or at least I will; who knows about these other candy-ass readers? You can send my official Hulles Curmudgeonette button, secret decoder ring and year's supply of antacid tablets to the enclosed address.

Ouch. But it's a good ouch. Thanks for writing, Gina, your letter echoes some email I received recently. And you're absolutely right. In fact, I'm going to excise the offending preface from the post itself today and let "The Prado" live or die on its own. But you should know that this is only because I agree with you from an artistic point of view, not because your picture is on the wall in my local U. S. Postal Service office. Nice hair in the Wanted poster, by the way. Did you really hack all those men to death with just a nail file?


Tirzah Arnett of Stilton-On-Rye, Wesson, England writes:

I am an avid fan of your blog. My spouse and I are curious: how is your search for gainful employment coming along? We hope you are doing well in this. You should be aware if you are not already that you can emigrate to an EU country and find work over here. And by the way, as a show of support for you, before our evening meal my spouse and I utter dire imprecations toward 3M for eliminating their Iconoclasm Division and we are boycotting Post-It notes.

Tirzah, thanks for writing, and forgive me if I call you "she" and you're really a "he." I have a fifty-fifty shot at getting it right and those are betting odds for Hulles. So thanks to you and your husband for the gesture of solidarity and the tip about the EU. It is my understanding that there's a boat from Ellis Island leaving for Britain in the next couple weeks; I may well be on it.

To date things aren't going so well for me as far as income-producing enterprises are concerned. I recently abandoned my pitch to Oakley for newly updated X-Ray Specs; the Oakley people claim that advertising in the back of comic books (which are now called graphic novels, it seems) is prohibitively expensive and that even my fancy improved X-Ray Specs don't let you see under women's clothes.

Failing this, I decided to pursue the "do what you do best" school of thought. I finally determined that what I do best is come up with catchy blog titles, so recently I've been trying to market titles for country-and-western songs. So far I have not had a lot of luck with this, but if you know of anyone who wants to buy "Lite Beer And Dark Roots" let me know. $29.95 gets it, cash on the barrel head.

On second thought, fuck it. I'm going to write a book like everybody else.

-- Hulles