EDITORS: I'll never get over the weirdness of meat eaters treating their diets as somehow, well, remarkable. [Meat Issue, March 16.] Um, guys? EVERYONE eats meat. Do you think you're being rebellious? Outrageous? Do you think you're sticking it to The Man? Get over yourselves already. Meat isn't just dead, it's also boring. And so are you.

Bennet Grimes, via e-mail

EDITORS: I was so disgusted by [the March 16] Stranger, I didn't get beyond the first few pages. I don't know if you were trying to be funny, but all you did was come off as depraved, sick, and unreadable. Shame on you!

Tiara Walker, via e-mail

EDITOR: I am a professional woman with a lot of contacts. I will be telling them all what a disgusting, idiotic, shameful, irresponsible, sorry piece-of-shit excuse for a magazine you have. You don't speak for me or any other civilized human being.

Anonymous Professional Woman, via e-mail

TO THE CLASSLESS EDITORS OF THE STRANGER: With [March 16th's] pathetic offering, The Stranger, known for placing shock value before less-than-competent journalism, has achieved a new low. For those of your readers with IQs larger than their meat-bloated belt sizes: Meat consumption is the number-one cause of health problems, the number-one cause of cruelty to animals, and the number-one cause of rainforest destruction. In the meantime, pluck that piece of chicken from your teeth, order an angioplasty, and design a tombstone for your child who will die of E. coli.

Che E. Green, Eastern Washington

EDITORS: Your meat issue is the most disgusting and perverted piece of journalistic trash I have ever read. As a progressive business owner, you seem to insist upon driving people like me to the Republican side.

Lars Pardo, Wholesale Fire Services, Seattle

DEAR EDITOR: I was horrified when I looked in my favorite publication and saw an article by one of my favorite columnists (Dan Savage) promoting animal cruelty ["Catch, Kill, Cook, Eat!"]. Maybe Savage thinks it's all a clever joke to suggest wringing the necks of your neighborhood cat or dog, but this issue is no laughing matter. Some people do kill neighborhood animals just for "fun" or a "joke." People who start out with cruel acts to animals are often working up the courage to commit cruel acts toward people. No matter how campy or witty Savage thinks he may be, no one can make cruelty to animals funny.

Hilary Renaissance, Seattle

EDITORS: The Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) was particularly disappointed by your recent [Meat Issue]. We can take a joke, and we recognize the humorous intent of the issue. But where was the humor in Dan Savage's article, in which he encouraged people to go to the PAWS Greenwood Cat Adoption Center, adopt a cat, and then shoot or wring her neck, drain her blood, cook her, and then eat her? PAWS has spent the past three decades investigating cruelty against animals, and we have long recognized the connection between cruelty to animals and violence toward people. Portraying the abuse and killing of companion animals as an acceptable activity is certainly not a laughing matter.

Kay Joubert, PAWS Companion Animal Advocate

DEAR EDITOR: While I did not pore over every word of [the Meat Issue], I skimmed enough to confirm first appearances: You don't get it. The point you missed, of course, was reality -- and reality is in the slaughterhouses. Spend a day in the stockyards then come back to your hip, happening offices and come down on the side of great taste and texture. The only piece worth a damn was the one you are likely catching the most hell for: Dan Savage's "Catch! Kill! Cook! Eat!" which at least made the basic connection between the beast and the plate, but did it so forcefully (capturing the horror of butchery in the blithe tones of a consumer self-help guide) that the irony was sure to sail right past most readers.

Andrew Christie, Friday Harbor, WA

EDITORS: I have lived in Seattle for almost six years now, and I have [enjoyed] your paper every week. I am an absolute proponent of freedom of choice, freedom of the press, and personal expression in pretty much every way. However, your latest issue about death, murdering animals, and eating flesh is in terribly bad taste. I will never again read your paper.

Stephanie Wolk, via e-mail

ATTENTION ALL SERIAL KILLERS AND ASSORTED MURDERERS: PLEASE VISIT THE STAFF AT THE STRANGER. THEY LOVE MEAT AND WOULD LOVE IT IF YOU FED THEM SOME OF YOURS. MAKE SURE YOU BRING A METAL PROD TO SHOVE IN THEIR ASS AND THEN DON'T FORGET TO MAKE 'EM BITE DOWN ON A COAT HANGER PLUGGED INTO THE WALL!!!!

Alyssa Lee, via e-mail

HEY NAZI, you make me fucking sick. Do you think the barbaric slaughter of living, breathing, feeling creatures is a joke?! These animals feel pain, pleasure, and fear in the same way you and I do, and [your] making a joke out of this and actually urging people to support the holocausts waged on animals every day in this country makes you no different than a Nazi. Someday the tables will turn and the animals will get to watch you hung by your legs, castrated and slit, your stomach cut open and your entrails splattered all over the ground. Does this still sound like a joke? Fuck you and your kind!

Anonymous, via e-mail

EDITORS: Your feature on meat is the last straw. Instead of encouraging a healthy lifestyle of moderation, you only prove how gluttonous American society has become. You may want to tell your writer Wm. Steven Humphrey to do a little research on his articles ["Going Whole Hog"] -- Ellen DeGeneres is a vegetarian.

Daphne Fletcher, via e-mail

EDITORS: The first and foremost most pathetic thing about the bunch of you is that you think you are so leftist, so radical, and so forward-thinking because you are part of this rag. The truth is that you are a mainstream, brainwashed bunch of losers. The second sickest thing is that most of you who contributed are women. You probably consider yourselves feminists, and you couldn't be further from it if you can't see the connection between the extreme violence bestowed upon animals by this patriarchal society and the same violence bestowed upon women coming from the very same patriarchal roots.

Mimi Perrin, via e-mail

"HI, I JUST HAPPENED to see your issue on "Three Cheers for Meat," and I just want to tell you, not only is it disgusting, it's also unethical. Jennifer Vogel seems like a very sick person to say that it's okay to take [pig] hearts to school and watch chickens run around without their heads. The only consolation I have is that all you guys will have hardened arteries, and you'll die young, because eating meat is not a human thing!"

Anonymous, via voice mail

"AH, JENNIFER [VOGEL]. I was born and raised in South Dakota, but I'm not a vicious person like you! I left that place as soon as I could... and now I know why -- because of people like you! You haven't come out of your cave yet, girl! Go back to South Dakota, if you love it so much! Live next to that slaughterhouse... wallow in the blood!"

Anonymous, via voice mail

"YEAH, I'VE BEEN HEARING about your article on meat. That is DISGUSTING! You guys are scumbags; you are the scum of the earth! You're so sick -- my friends and I are gonna work till we are [pause] halfway dead to make sure you are gonna pay for that DAMN article! You animal haters! YOU... WILL... PAY!"

Anonymous, via voice mail

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: In our March 16 story, "Seattle Wants to Marry a Millionaire," we mistakenly identified a program that counsels people facing foreclosure as Home Choice. The program is actually called Housing Counseling.