EDITORS: Man, this issue really sucked ass [Bones in the Garden, Monica Drake, Aug 17]. Did you guys all go to the Up in Smoke concert and decide to take the week off? I'm glad I'm not an advertiser with you--I'd be really pissed if I was. Me and everyone I know threw it in the trash and didn't bother to read it. It blew.

JBH, via e-mail

EDITORS: Greetings. I pick up The Stranger and look forward to reading it. It's the only Seattle paper I find even remotely interesting. Your issue today, entirely devoted to Bones in the Garden by Monica Drake, was extremely annoying. Your previous "prank" issues (remember the backward version?) were rather entertaining, but this issue was completely and utterly absurd, and not in a good way. Did your writers need a vacation? If that's the case, then forego their contributions to the paper for a week or two and give them some vacation time, instead of publishing this drivel.

Ron Rutherford, Seattle

DEAR POWERS THAT BE: Please stop SCREWING with my favorite publication! PLEASE cease with the "cute" issues. It's not cute, and it's NOT APPRECIATED!

A Concerned Citizen, Seattle

EDITOR: Who the fuck is Monica Drake and why the fuck is her stilted, tired-ass prose wasting paper and space in my favorite news weekly?? What the fuck? I want Schmader and Mudede and Savage and Humphrey and hell, even It's All True, not some canned novella by a freelance writer. I'm sure Ms. Drake is a wonderful person and I wish her no ill will, but I am upset because one of my favorite things to do on Thursday is to read The Stranger after work while lying on the couch drinking beer in my underwear. That just can't happen this week. No way. What the hell happened to my Stranger?? Who decided that it was a good idea to do this?

Come on Jen, I expected more... I know you've gotten heat for the Meat Issue and the backward-upside down text, but I liked that. I liked the unpredictability. But to sacrifice every word from your exceptionally gifted staff writers for some kind of wacky "we'll print a whole story" idea is a very, very, very bad idea. I'm willing to wager that you get more complaints about this than any other issue. Wanna know why? Cause it was a stupid fucking idea, that's why. Dammit, I'm really disappointed. Fuck. My whole day is ruined now. Thanks, Stranger.

Anonymous, via e-mail

EDITORS: Whatever! Did the entire staff go on vacation or something? It looks like Monica Drake just did a bunch of tweak all week to meet everyone else's deadlines. That was the worst issue of The Stranger that I never read.

Duane David, Seattle

EDITORS: THUMBS DOWN FOR THE WACKY FORMAT!!! Is this some kind of experiment to see how much hate mail you'll get? What's on the menu for next week: an issue [consisting] only of one week's accumulated bitching mail??

Crabby McSnivel, Seattle

EDITORS: This issue was NOT "something to read." What a waste of pulp. I am not sure what was going on in your editorial brains this issue. Maybe you were thinking that the regular columnists needed a well-deserved vacation. Maybe the columns submitted by Dan Savage and Police Beat and the astrology writer were trite and unimaginative and hackneyed attempts this week. Maybe you have a secret staff strike going on. Maybe your common sense took a vacation. It was criminal to let Monica Drake ramble on endlessly through nearly every page. An injustice to your loyal audience, a total disregard for the trees cut down to make your paper, and an insult to the workers who had to man the presses as these pages passed by them.

I'll grant you, I did attempt to read Ms. Drake's story twice. I am sad to say that this issue won't even make it to bathroom duty. I'll reread last week's story about Tacoma. That alone should be a sad enough commentary on this issue... reading about Tacoma a second time. Luckily for you and your advertisers, I'll still look up my favorite events and activities.

Dwayne Edwards, via e-mail

EDITORS: I am a 31-year-old, single white male. I have been "reading" your newspaper for over five years. Most of the time I think your rag is strange, peculiar, and difficult to understand. I think you should seriously consider publishing a "How to Read The Stranger Guide." Your August 17 issue is the strangest yet--who is Monica Drake??? What exactly is this authored by her in your paper? A novel? News? I don't want to read all of it to find out. Why are you doing this? Please don't do it again. Damn, you people are so strange!

Skip Wilson, via e-mail

EDITOR: This is an outrage. I suggest if someone wants to publish their work this badly, they find a PUBLISHER. It's an outrage to anyone expecting their friendly little Stranger to provide them with the same entertainment each week to pick up a friggin' novel. If I wanted to read a novel, I wouldn't have picked up a Stranger. Hmph.

K from Fremont

EDITORS: All week I wait. Patiently, even. Friday rolls around and I settle in at work with a bad cup of coffee and a good Danish to catch up with all my favorite weekly columns and listen to the rain dapple on the windows before the lunch crowd starts pouring in. This is my Friday. This is how I relax on my last workday of the week. Given that this week sucked ass more than most, AND knowing that the long-absent rain would make for grumpy locals as well as tourists, I was ready for a good laugh. I needed it. Noting that something was amiss with the letter page (but never really reading it), I gave whatever the hell was printed there a brief glance, deemed it skip-worthy, and turned eagerly to peruse Last Days. YOU FILTHY DIRTY COCKSUCKERS!!!!! I did my best to think like an alternative newspaper and put two and two together (I swear the closest I came to 4 was 3.96). My neck got tight, my jaw clenched, but I remained calm: Having been moist all week in anticipation of Dan's twisted tales of love, I rested in the knowledge that no one in their right mind would mess with Savage Love and flipped the pages, my eyes and sour disposition growing larger every second. I CURSED, I spat blood, I SWEAR my head rotated at least 360 degrees. AAAAAARGH!!!!! I come to The Stranger every week for dry HUMOR, NOT DRY LITERATURE!!! I mean c'mon people, it's called an insert....

Ben Chambers, Seattle

EDITORS: Jesus Christ! What the hell happened?! Whose wacky idea was this?! If I wanted to read a book, I would've bought a book. Probably not this particular book.... Please kids, don't let it happen again.

John Sutton, via e-mail

EDITORS: I look forward to reading The Stranger every week. But this last issue--what a poor excuse to charge your advertisers! The story wasn't even interesting, and what did Monica Drake have to do to hog the whole issue? Sleep with the editor????? I was really disappointed. If you just wanted to give the whole staff the week off, reprint some articles out of the first editions of The Stranger, say, as a history lesson. But spare us the crappy fiction. PLEASE!

Anonymous, via e-mail

Last week's Stranger sucks.

Think I will wipe my ass with it.

Brown poopy stain smear.

Dino Gelato, via e-mail

EDITORS: Wow! I really enjoyed Bones in the Garden. Thank you for providing a forum for outstanding fiction. (It almost makes up for the damn Meat Issue, which provoked my silent boycott for many months. I didn't write then, because everyone else did.) Thanks to Monica Drake and everyone else at The Stranger who made the fiction issue fantastic!

Jim Mouritsen, Seattle

TO THE EDITORS: Volume 9, number 48 is beautiful. Please, more mass strangeness.

Arthur S. Aubry, Seattle

EDITORS: Thank you Stranger, for Monica Drake's GREAT article in BITS and PIECES.

Philippe René Claringbould, via e-mail