Dear Readers,

The delightful people who put on the National Blog Posting Month have come to the conclusion that there are more Mos to BloPo.

It has therefore been decreed that every month of 2008 shall be a BloPoMo, and those who desire to do so shall be challenged to post every day for any given month. It has furthermore been declared that each month shall have its own theme, and that the theme of April shall be Letters.

Your humble host hereby admits that he freely, and in a moment of weakness, volunteered to participate in April's festivities.

Although it is not mandatory that the Letters theme be adhered to, failure to do so carries the same penalty as failure to post once per day throughout the month— the shame of defeat!

However, your host is of the opinion that although every post already carries an implicit "Dear Reader," by making the salutation explicit and variable, the theme might encourage him to address topics he might otherwise pooh-pooh.

Your host would furthermore like to assure you that he has neither the desire nor the endurance to speak of himself in the third person for thirty consecutive days. He is certain that the gag has almost certainly already lost its charm, but is a firm believer in not changing gags in mid-stream.

In conclusion, it is becoming painfully obvious that this challenge should have been better thought through. Your host fully intended to close the post with "Until Next Time..." but as it happens, someone's using that sign off, and using it quite well.

Cheers,

E.R.I.K.

Dear Noisy Eaters Of The World,

Congratulations, you're the first to recieve an Electronic Replicant Cease and Desist Letter. Why? Because the ludicrous amount of sound you make at your snacks and meals drives me completely and utterly mad. Sometimes I can hear your smacking, slurping, crunching and grunting from another room entirely.

Is it so much to ask that you people keep your lips together? Please don't tell me that you'll suffocate. You know that thing in the middle of your face, the one with two holes? The thing that leads you to your food? Guess what? That thing is actually connected to your lungs, and it's fantastic for breathing through.

If you can't close your mouth because you've overstuffed your face, you should take smaller bites. Really. A cheeseburger is not bite-sized. Not even those cute little mini-burgers are bite sized.

Experts agree, you shouldn't bite off more than you can chew in ten seconds. This is so that you can carry on mealtime conversation without reminding your tablemates of Gallagher's Sledge-o-Matic.

Now, if your meal has left a bit of food wedged uncomfortably between your teeth, do not just sit there trying to suck it out. You'll sound like a leaky faucet, but you'll be twice as annoying because you can't be turned off. There are a couple of fantastic inventions— called the toothpick, the toothbrush, and dental floss— that are perfect in this situation. Hie your ass to the restroom and dislodge that sucker, and as a bonus you can freshen up that garlic breath.

Chewing gum is also good for freshening the breath, but let me point out something about gum-chewing technique. The actors in chewing gum commercials only gnash their teeth to demonstrate to you that they are chewing gum. This is totally unneccessary for anybody else to do, because it makes a sound not unlike a large horse walking down the street.

In conclusion, noisy eaters of the world, loose lips are freaking annoying.

Sincerely,

The Electronic Replicant

Dear Drafters of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,

By moving the start of Daylight Saving Time back three weeks, and the end of DST forward one week, you've created four weeks of annual electronic chaos. I was busy enough last year updating time zone files and implementing network time servers. I thought such an opportunity would never roll around again, but I was wrong. It seems that when people set up computers, they'll install security packs and updated drivers, but they won't ever remember to update time zone files.

And let's not even talk about legacy systems. The time clock from 1996, the PBX from 1987, the rickety Exchange server in the closet, the mission-critical Java apps, and the routing daemon written in positively barbaric Perl? No patches exist for any of those. Don't think I didn't look. Companies go out of business, cease supporting old products, lose their original source code, and make extremely bad decisions all the time. So unless anybody stuck with any of the above forks out a buttload of cash (or, more realistically, convinces their superiors to do the forking) there will be three annual weeks of chaos in the spring, and one in the fall.

The fact that these periods of chaos abruptly cease means that once the superiors' calendars spontaneously snap back to normal, the problem will be forgotten, and the hoped-for buttloads of cash will instead be forked into new bad decisions.

In my humble opinion, the result of this Act has been an overall waste of energy— particularly by myself— which will continue into the foreseeable future. Well done, Drafters of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. But least there are now 28 more hours annually of afternoon sunlight, all the better for the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Convenience Stores to, er, stimulate the economy.

Sincerely,

The Electronic Replicant

Dear Investigators of the Paranormal,

I am a man of science. This doesn't mean that I believe only what I read in textbooks. Rather, I believe in the scientific method: observation, hypothesis, testing, repeat. The scientific method refines our knowledge, eventually correcting false assumptions while validating others.

Your personal experiences are the worst type of evidence, anecdotal evidence. I don't care if someone touched your hair, if you felt a shiver down your spine, or if you just plain felt uncomfortable in the evil wing chair in the evil corner of the evil room. How can anyone else verify what you felt? Of course, if everyone feels uncomfortable in the evil wing chair, then there might be something to its alleged evil-ness.

That brings up another point. Some people are so credulous that they'll believe anything you tell them. Under the right conditions, they may even believe themselves to be possessed. I would be quite interested to see the results, should you be unknowingly given a mixture of genuine claims and placebo claims. Would both sorts of claim be validated equally?

I am not saying that your efforts are completely without merit. Are there psychologically intimidating locations? Yes there are. And do strange things happen at some of these places, things which are difficult to explain rationally? Yes, they do. But are these happenings the work of spirits? I don't think so. Then what are they caused by? That's what I'd like you to find out.

But be warned, if you come to a conclusion along the lines of "fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field have created sympathetic vibrations in the quartz crystals in the bedrock, resulting in these apparitions," then I will definitely ask to see a reproducible demonstration.

Sincerely,

The Electronic Replicant

From The Desk of Victor Frankenstein, M.D.

Igor—

You can cross the heart off your "shopping list."