Letter to Vanity Fair

Dear Editor of Vanity Fair:


Originally I thought that the Internet would be the perfect place to publish my stream of brilliant short essays. Eventually I had to admit that the Internet was a horrible place for my brilliant short essays. The Internet does not like brilliant short essays at all! In fact, it turns out, and I think as a magazine editor you'll appreciate this while recognizing that it is probably not safe for you to ever say it out loud, that the Internet is a terrible, terrible place, with a dark, evil hold on the world.

Once I realized that the Internet was poorly suited to my work I wondered if magazines might be, in contrast, well suited to my work. I fortunately work at a large library and have been at leisure to glance at a wide selection of magazines. It did not look promising. Most magazines are subject based: dogs, cats, boats, celebrities, trains, fashion, fashion, fashion, backpacking, celebrities, computers, and so on. This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't seem to all take themselves so seriously. I am more by nature a satirist, or a spiritually guided mocker, and convincing the editor of Tropical Fish Hobbyist to publish an intensely self referential satire on fish tanks that reflects on the perfidy of god seemed from the start to be a decidedly uphill battle.

So imagine my delight when my eyes fell upon your magazine, Vanity Fair. Just at the title we are a perfect match. I am very fair. Perhaps you can already sense my measured judiciousness in my introductory letter to you. And I am also extraordinarily vain. For instance, the reason I don't much manage to write useful, magazine publishable articles about dogs, cats, boats, trains, fashion etc., is because I am so much more inclined to write about what a splendid, important, and for the ages, writer I am. I am also prone to throw around the phrase "Prophet of god" a lot.  Of course, my vanity merely seems justified and fair to me.

Fair vanity.

And thus: Vanity Fair.

I know. Amazing.

I have included some of my most strikingly vain (but eminently fair) work, and for most magazines I would consider that to be way more than enough. But your magazine and I clearly have something special between us, a sympathy, a kind of destiny. So I am going to make a generous offer to you, one I would never make to any other magazine. In my casual perusal of your magazine I detected that you had an interest in celebrities; celebrities in nice clothes, celebrity interviews, celebrity discussion, and celebrity profiles. In our collaboration I am willing to help you out with this. Send me a celebrity, any celebrity. I am conveniently located in Minnesota, which is easily locatable between New York and Los Angeles. I am available to meet with the celebrity at my house on any Thursday, just so long as it is during the day. I would be glad to put together one of those interview/profile articles that your magazine so seems to relish. Naturally said piece will be almost entirely about me, but I think that would be the best thing that could happen to your magazine at this time- not, you know, circulation wise, but rather spiritually speaking and in the sense of getting all your juices flowing again. 

So let me know what celebrity will be coming over. Also ask them if they like coffee drinks as I have a Mr. Coffee Pump Espresso Machine that makes a surprisingly good cappuccino.

I'm very excited that we'll be working together.



With kind regards,



F. Calypso