EDITOR'S NOTE: Not one of these letters arrived in our offices over the last year. They were not written by the people whose names are signed to them. And that's regrettable.



HOWARD'S FREAK FLAG
TO THE EDITOR: I wish I could have hung with you fuckstains longer during my Sleepless Summer Tour visit in August, but I'm glad we got a chance to fire up some herb before that awesome Westlake Center rally.

Which brings me to my point: I'll be visiting Seattle again soon, though this time I won't be able to hang. I'm the front-runner now so I can't be seen in the company of bong-water-sippin' lowlifes like yourselves. Not that I'll miss you shits too badly, except for my man Kaushik. I owe him big time for figuring out all the way back in May that I'm not your typical Dem pantywaist, and for convincing fringe-left Seattle--a total cringing relativist Kucinich town--that I'm the man. Give that faggot a raise, I say--but keep him out of my sight until I kick Bush's ass next November. Once I get to the White House I promise to let my motherfucking freak flag fly, and all of you hippie-pinko perverts will be back on the bus.

Peace out,

Howard Dean

P.S. Which one of you assholes sent me the Confederate flag?

THANKS TO HALL
TO EMILY HALL: Thank you so much for your excellent work: your willingness to take art seriously by reviewing it instead of writing fluffy human-interest stories about artists with no arms, your ongoing inquiry into what art is and does, the way you distill difficult ideas into elegant prose. And it's nice to know where to look for the artists we're going to be interested in next, since they all seem to get written about first in The Stranger! In our opinion, your paper has done more--with the visual art coverage, the art on the covers, the Genius awards--to advance the idea of Seattle as an arts town than any number of French Impressionist or Annie Leibovitz shows.

We really think this. Keep up the good work.

Lisa Corrin,

Seattle Art Museum

Elizabeth Brown,

Henry Art Gallery



LOVE YOUR WORK
TO THE EDITORS AND STAFF: Thank you for bringing much-needed attention to my lifelong achievements in the issue where you pretended (on the cover) that I was dead ["Courtney Love: A Remembrance," edited by David Schmader and Jennifer Maerz, Nov 20]. That Neal Pollack piece was lame, but otherwise I was delighted to find that The Stranger thinks my musical career is over--now I can go back to the much more serious work at hand, such as stalking Russell Crowe and telling the world how Chris Martin of Coldplay stole all my ideas. Which he did, by the way.

Courtney Love



WILSON'S FAIR
TO THE EDITOR: We wanted to thank Kathleen Wilson for her kind review of our new CD, The Set-Up, in the Nov 27 installment of Some Candy Talking. Given our history with Kathleen (we're referring, of course, to the eight-page letter we sent to The Stranger's publisher in 1998 informing him that the band intended to sue The Stranger for libel, a claim which proved to be unfounded), we are impressed by Ms. Wilson's fairness and objectivity.

The Boss Martians



SORRY, JOSH
TO JOSH FEIT: Even though your election wrap-up column [Five to Four, Nov 13] defended me after I got booted by voters, I thought you were putting me down, and I threw a childish fit. Sorry. Like all politicians, my voracious ego sometimes blinds me.

Judy Nicastro



KEEP US HONEST
TO THE EDITORS: On behalf of the Seattle Monorail Project, I would like to thank The Stranger for its bold, incisive coverage of the monorail agency's recent difficulties. Although the hard-hitting stories in The Stranger's news section are too numerous to list, here are a few shining examples: "Monorail Math Lesson: Monorail Supporters Confront Bad Numbers" [Aug 28]; "Monorail Paper Trail: Monorail Agency Overlooked Warning Signs" [Sept 11]; and "Pay Check: Monorail Staffing Budget Balloons" [Oct 9].

Although we have often disagreed with the tenor of The Stranger's coverage (with the exception of several fine contributions by editor Dan Savage), your tenacity has kept us honest. Vetting these issues in public results in a better monorail for us all.

Most sincerely,

Joel Horn

Executive Director, Seattle Monorail Project



THE NAME GAME
EDITORS: On behalf of Ghostface Killah, the Justus League, Kurupt tha Kingpin, OutKast, Sik Wid It, BenGay, BluWater Bistro, Bushmills, cherrydelosreyes, Cliffs Notes, d9 Dance Collective, Eyes Rite, Froot Loops, iREGULAR Records, Janet Pants Dans Theeatre, Ruth's Chris Steak House, Teatro ZinZanni, TheraFlu, Adolf Hitler, Barbra Streisand, d.K. Pan (or dk pan or dK Pan or DK Pan or whatever the hell it is this week), Keyser Soze, robertkarimi, and Tess. Lotta, I would like to thank your copyediting department for attempting to get our fucked-up names right in your fine paper. Keep up the good work!

Condoleezza Rice