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What is up my peoples?  It's your old pal Art "Renaissance" Dodger here with the oft-delayed twelfth edition of the P.Net Mailbag.  I know that I have been a little lacking in my duties and for that I sort of apologize, partly because I really enjoy forced sentiment but also because it's not my fault.  You see, I was walking down the street minding my own business when I suddenly tripped, fell, and came down with a chemical imbalance.  Also, I skinned my knee.  Anyway, it was a rare kind of chemical imbalance, the kind that makes you forget how to read.  You can't exactly do a mailbag update if you can't read, right?

I caught this guy trying to steal your letters.

But let me just say that it wasn't a total waste of time.  You see, I was pretty busy during the mailbag off-season befriending a few handicapped people and joining a barbershop quartet that sung songs about the homeless.  Eventually, my chemicals righted their balance and the wave of words came flooding back to me.  I was finally able to read again, which is great because I was pretty damn tired of getting lost.  So, what does all of this mean to you?  Nothing.  I just wanted to share a little something before we lost each other in the bounty of the mailbag.  I know that you don't care about me or my problems but if pretend to act interested, I won't tell all of your friends about your night in Iraq with that camel.  You sure showed science that a camel can handle more than two humps!

So, yeah, I suppose we probably ought to get down to the letters, huh?   I mean, that's why you're here, right?  I'm just making sure because you totally have that creepy look in your eye, a 40 year old hitting on a 15 year old kind of creepy.  Please stop.  So, without any further delay, let me reach in and wrap my hands around some letters for you all to enjoy.  Today's theme is all about people who are unhappy with the content we so proudly display.  For some reason, it doesn't seem to stop them from reading it though.

Hello P.Net Writers,
I was pointed to your site by a collegue of mine and, while I think that what you write is nowhere even close to funny, that's not why I am writing you today.  After painfully reading a few updates, I noticed that you seem to thrive on taking serious situations and making fun of them.  You reference midgets and mentally handicapped people, drug abuse, and even go so far as to condone violence and murder.  I find your light-hearted approach to some of these topics simply appalling.   Of course, you're probably some 12-year old kid who lives sheltered in the suburbs and you have no idea what living in the real world is like.   I hope that one day you can experience just a fraction of the pain that some of these people face everyday and then perhaps you won't be so smug in your writings.  I can only hope.
-- Dr. Jeff Bramley, Professor, UNLV

Dear Dr. Jeff Bramley, Professor, UNLV,
My, what a unique name!  I have to admit that while I haven't seen a whole lot of the real world (the basement doesn't have any windows), I have never come across a name like yours.  I didn't know that it was proper for people to put punctuation in their names.  Those kinds of things are only reserved for sentences I thought.  How weird would it be if you became a doctor or some kind of teacher at a college?  Then your business card would read "Dr. Dr. Jeff Bramley, Professor, UNLV, Teacher."   Crazy, huh?  Anyway, enough about your name.  Let's get down to the business of answering your letter.

I find it almost insulting for you to assume that I haven't experienced pain and suffering in my life.  Why, just the other day, I was on my way to the grocery store to pick up some hemorrhoid cream because I was hungry when this van pulls up next to me and I'm snatched from the curb, kidnapped by muslim extremists!  At first, I start laughing a little because I figured that it was just a joke put on by some of my christian friends who also happen to excel at staging fake kidnappings.  However, once I found out that they were real extremists, I started to get a little scared.  Not a lot scared, mind you, since I am no sissy but just enough scared for them to know that I knew that things were serious.  I think nerds and perverts call it roleplaying.  I even urinated in my pants to really sell the acting job.

"Hey guys, I'm googling to see how to get urine stains out of a van."

There was like 50 of them all packed in the van and in addition to being very cramped, it smelled like sand and body odor.  They were all wearing vests made of dynamite and talking in what I presume to be street slang or ebonics because I couldn't understand a damn word of it.  Also, I didn't have a dynamite vest.  I felt like that guy who can't decide what he wants to be for Halloween but decides to show up to the costume party anyway.   I mean, someone letting me in on the whole "we're all wearing our dynamite vests" thing would have been nice.  Seriously, would it have killed them to plan ahead?

So, there we are.  They're driving all over town and I can't really see where we are because some guy is hogging all of the window space.   We've been at this for what seems like hours and I'm still hungry.   I ask if maybe we can go through a drive thru or something and get some grub but all that netted me was a slap in the face.  Really, what kind of grown man slaps these days?  Well, now my cheek stings, my ass has more bumps than a teenager's face, and my stomach lining is eating itself.  This sucks worse than the time I walked in on my grandparents having intercourse and they asked me if I wanted to join them.   But aside from college, Art Dodger is no quitter and I wasn't giving up that easily.  I asked that if food was out of the question, perhaps we could stop somewhere and get a drink?  I was thirsty.

Can you guess what they did next?  The driver stopped the vehicle and they kicked me out of the van.  Well, it was more a throw than a kick but there were a lot of guys in that van so anything is possible.   They said I wasn't good enough to be kidnapped.  They said that I "didn't fit in with the theme they were looking for."  Can you imagine that?  Can you imagine the feeling after getting rejected like that?  On top of everything else, then I had to walk home!  Uphill!  And I was on the other side of town!  So, don't you tell me that I don't know the pain that life deals, Mister I have periods and shit in my name.  You don't know me!

To The Editor,
I'm not sure what kind of operation you're running over there but it makes me sick to my stomach to know that sites like yours exist.  As a recovering drug addict, I find your cavalier attitude towards narcotics in very bad taste.  A quick search of your site revealed more than 50 written pieces that joke about drug usage in one form or another.   I'm curious, are you guys drug addicts yourselves or do you simply get a thrill out of poking fun at other people's problems?
-- Conrad

Dearest Conrad,
First, I'm not the editor so I hope you don't mind me reading his email.   I'm pretty sure he died quite some time ago and the broom that we hired as his replacement hasn't exactly been productive lately.  Second, with regards to your last question, I wonder why that has to be an either/or scenario.  Is it not possible that we could at once be both addicted to drugs and still like to make fun of other people?  You don't seem terribly thrilled about the idea but I'll admit to being a little intrigued at the prospect.

However, in all seriousness, I think your problem with the site is simply that you're not reading deep enough into the material.  Just because we write about drugs frequently doesn't mean that we ourselves condone using them.  For example, have you ever seen one of those old black and white sports clips from the early 1900's?  They're supposed to be about people playing baseball or football but nine times out of ten, it's really just a bunch of half-naked guys running around spanking and kicking each other.  Now, to someone who just skims the surface of life, these clips would come across as some kind of homosexual recruitment film when in reality, they are what they are: clips of the greatest athletes of that era doing whatever it is great athletes of that era did while simultaniously looking like that aren't doing much but spanking and kicking other great athletes.

This guy just might want to play sports with you. Or possibly spank or kick you. Or both.

Our updates are a lot like that.  If you just skim the surface, all you see are frequent drug references and talks of midget circuses.  But if you really dig below the surface, well, I guess you still see frequent drug references but they're usually followed up by some kind of biting social commentary on the state of the union or perhaps the state of North Dakota.   And that's only the second layer!  However, I wouldn't recommend that you try reading any deeper than that.  Rumor has it that somewhere around layer four are naked pictures of Randy which include a subset entitled, "The time I had that rash down there."  Yeah.  Also, one time someone wrote an update about My Little Pony so I think that really qualifies as diversity.  Besides, you've only written one letter to us and all you did was talk about drugs.  That's like 100% right there.  Maybe it's you who should be looking to diversify.  Just a thought.

And with that, we draw the string closed on yet another mailbag edition.   This one was short on letters but long on answers, like a dwarf who stars in adult films but with words instead of all that rated X crap.   Anyway, I hope it won't be months before we meet again, so I am going to try my best to keep hydrated and not fall victim to a violent, but senseless, murderous rampage that would claim the lives of hundreds of innocent people.  I love you.

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