first of all, let me say this: I love declarative sentences. They're great.

secondly of all, I wish the LW all the best if she's a real person, even if she happens to be shallow and stupid and narcississtic. And all the best even if she's sent in a fake letter.

thirdly of all,part of being sophisticated and nonjudgemental, and offering vaguely helpful-sounding but ultimately useful advice is accepting people as they are.

3beely of all, It's even more important than making declarative sentences.

fourthly of all,it's also important not to think ill of the fake letter writers either. Maybe they're sending in fake letters as A Cry For Help. I liked this fake letter, but I was disappointed the guys weren't named Basil and Gaston.

fifthly of all, even though I like these fake letters about interesting shallow yuppies and their latte-sipping interesting problems, shouldn't we have more letters about the problems of blue-collar schmoes like me? I think we need more letters from people who work as cashiers at Walmart and such. I don't care whether they're demographically atypical of Salon readers or not. You'd think there would be enough earnest white guilt among Salon's staff and readership to accomodate this.

sixthly of all, I propose a fake-letter writing contest. I propose for the month of January we innundate Mr Tennis with interesting fake torments, whether of the latte-sipping or more demotic variety.

sorry, I pressed the wrong button. I meant to say

"thirdly of all,part of being sophisticated and nonjudgemental, and offering vaguely helpful-sounding but ultimately useless advice is accepting people as they are."

Oh, and my actual advice: if you are a real person, you tell them you want to see both of them. Then the one who dumps your ass is the one who was worth holding on to.

No, my advice doesn't necessarily result in a happy result, but it might be instructive, especially if you decide to hold on to the one that's left and find a growing mistrust welling up inside of you. (As you feel yourself increasingly troubled by the ease with which he accepted the idea of you seeing both of them.)

It's good to see somebody acknowledge the tilt that the white house has been showing for some time. Now if only George W. would see it too.

Please don't do it. Stay away from the fetish video. You're only 25, so you can accumulate debt and probably be done with both school AND paying off said debt by the time you're your early 40's. Maybe even a little sooner.

Look back 10 years, to when you were in high school, or a little farther back, to when you were 11 or 12, if you can remember. Did most ordinary people really believe you could go to a local department store or Walgreens or Walmart and buy an off the rack phone that could take pictures and transmit them instantly to the other side of the country, or Argentina, or Australia, probably set up and ready to go before your folks were out of the parking lot, on their way to the next errand? How about Youtube and Myspace, and related phenomena? Nowadays if you can't get the local TV station interested in your Rodney King video(1991), you can just upload it yourself.

We already have facial recognition software, although presently it's not a low-cost consumer good. What about in 10 or 15 years? If there is a market demand, it will happen. Maybe you'll be up for tenure at that point.Please don't do the video, even once.

Go to school, and best wishes.

thank you for this article-- I still wonder how many ordinary Americans know about Padilla(let alone Demetrius Crocker).

And he was guilty of what? Oh, that's right, they can't tell us.

military school.

he'll possibly learn discipline, and both you and he will have a break from each other. If he or other adults responsible for him object, go visit 2 or 3 and let him pick the one he ends up attending.

the BBC says that he was convicted specifically for deaths in a supressed uprising from 1982, when we were still pals with Saddam.

If George Bush jr, so hungry for the trappings of gravitas, had said that he wished Saddam's sentence be commuted to life in prison, it would have immediately been thus commuted. Does anybody doubt that? And our president would even get the chance, several hundred thousand needless deaths later, to demonstrate that Jesus really is his "favorite philosopher", as he once claimed.

are the stores insured for the inevitable top heavy mannequin falling on top of a customer or hapless employee? how often do they fall over? have they done studies?