Universal Letter Writing Week: Helpful Advice

What is more pointless than writing letters to people who

never write back, when you don't have a return address?

(Hotel Yani, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia)

Well, I hope I didn't sound very down on the idea of Universal Letter Writing Week. Sure, I question the foundation of its existence, but far be it from me to suggest we swing radically in the other direction and not write letters.

I love letters! Oh, in the name of the Divinity, do I love letters! I love writin' 'em, and I love readin' 'em! In this sense I am 50% similar to my friends, and that would be the latter half. The "I'd love Christmas better if I didn't have to get anything for anyone" half. Or, as the wielder of that somewhat stunted end of the stick, "I'm not worth 20 minutes and 29 cents to anyone I know."

So why not have a week in which the laity are encouraged to please write a letter? Sure! Let's go ahead and do that--everyone put on your stationer's hats and pour a round of holiday absinthe--take pen to paper and have at it with our innermost... well, not our most intimate thoughts. That would be redundant: we already transmit those to faceless strangers via Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal. No matter: just go ahead and write to your friends... well, not your friends online, obviously. Write to your family... unless you live with them.

Huh. Universal Letter Writing Week is a bit of a sticky wicket, what?

To assist with this conundrum, I thought I'd take it upon myself to promote some solutions in case anyone else out there is encountering the same difficulties I have faced. Generally speaking, one can never solve one's own problems, but when someone else has the same trouble, don't we have all sorts of advice for them? Absolutely.

Ideas for To Whom One May Write

• American soldiers
• Enemy soldiers (spell poorly--it's demoralizing)
• Your favorite author, if they're still alive
• Swollen children in Shriners hospitals
• People learning English as a supplemental language
• Farriers
• Your congressman/woman
• Cultural anthropologists
• Manufacturer of your favorite hygiene product
• Geminis (actually written Geminians or Gemineans--they can't decide (gasp and swoon))

Topics Upon Which One May Expound

• Your top three resolutions for 2011
• Why you're staunchly opposed to resolutions
• All the things you know about the culture from which your favorite food emerged
• Half-baked plans to visit every nation with an atomic icebreaker
• If you could build a movie star, what they'd be like
• The sexual fetish you've never confessed to anyone, not because it's naughty but because it's in second place to the other one that you can't stop talking about
• Who your friends were in second grade and why
• Reasons why you shouldn't hit yourself when you make a mistake
• How to get over a cold, in case the person you're writing has a cold