Rest in Peace, Lisa

This past week my family suffered a terrible loss when my cousin's fiancee unexpectedly passed away. This letter is for her.


Dear Lisa,

Family is not defined by ceremonies. I've always maintained that love, like time and space, is a dimension. In which bonds are forged but remain unaffected by things such as distance or minutes, hours, days, months or years. Love exists outside of all laws, histories, borders. Bonds created on the plane of love can only be undone on the plane of love. It's those bonds you have with all of us that will forever make you an integral part of our family. Though in space and time you've left us, in love you'll be there always, your soulshine lighting that which the sun can't reach. Our hearts. We love you.

Kevin

Give the People AIDS (a letter to Anderson Cooper)

This is unlikely to come as a news flash to anyone, but AIDS is killing people. Lots of people. People here, people there. People on a train in the rain, in a box with a fox. People everywhere. But nowhere more than in Africa where 1 in 6 will die real soon if more isn't done to help. Common knowledge for the most part. What you might not have heard is that a few years back the WTO (World Trade Organisation), responding to outcries by large U.S., British and Swiss pharmaceutical companies, halted the free cross-border trade of AIDS drugs from Argentina to South Africa. This was due to what the WTO calls Trips (Trade-related intellectual property rights). Someone else owned the patent to the AIDS drug that could be produced cheaply in Argentina and sold cheaply by them. In response to public outcry (not made all that public by the media) the U.S. agreed to lend $1 Billion a year to South Africa providing that they buy all the drugs from America (more expensive) and pay back all the cash at commercial interest rate levels (ludicrously expensive when you consider how much interest will pile up by the time S.A. is able to pay it back). This is just one example of news. Real news. Real news that's 6 years old and that shouldn't have taken me forever to dig up, especialy considering that the deal is still in place. But guess what? Angelina Jolie had a fucking baby. It's name is Shiloh. Who gives a shit? I know who. CNN's Anderson Cooper, I'm sure under orders from Ted Turner or one of his clowns, decided that a celebrity, post-natal baby shower is deserving of an hour-long, prime-time segment on the most watched 24 hour news network on the planet. Corporate criminals? International extortion rackets? AIDS? Don't worry, here, look at the bunny. Look, look at da wittle buwny.

Before I present you with the Anderson Cooper letter I'd like to point out that I don't blame Angelina Jolie for this. To her credit she has done a lot of charity work to help the sick and the poor. It's not her fault she's being used as an opiate to pacify the masses.




Dear Anderson Cooper,

I'm writing to thank you for your courageous reporting. My name is Tchalla Mubawe and I live in a small village in South Africa. I rarely get the chance to view television because I don't often leave home due to the exhaution caused by AIDS. Yesterday however, while away buying food for this year, I caught your show on the 14", black and white tv in the other town's square. You are a godsend, Anderson Cooper. You see, I am dying of AIDS, as is my daughter. Dying of AIDS, that is. My wife and brother died of AIDS last year along with many others from our poor village. My country simply can not afford to buy enough of the treatment drugs from the United States to help us with the symptoms. The AIDS symptoms.

My poor daughter had not been doing well the past few weeks. As I was leaving home yesterday, she grabbed me frailly by the arm (AIDS makes you very weak) and she said:

- "Father, I fear that I may soon die of AIDS. I have one last wish."

- "What is it, my daughter who has AIDS?" I replied.

- "Before I take my last breath, you know, because of the AIDS and all, I only wish to know how things went with the delivery of Angelina Jolie's baby. Oh, and also how Jennifer Aniston feels about the whole thing."

I was crushed. How was I to find out about such important, classified information for my daughter? Surely I could not tell her that her last wish (before dying of AIDS) could not be granted by her loving father (also, with AIDS). Then along came our gentle, but serious blessing in grey, devilishly handsome hair on the neighboring town's television box. Anderson Cooper. You got to the bottom of the story for the good of the people. Put your reputation and life on the line to bring us every last detail of little Shiloh's birth. Through hell and high water you braved, ready to fight for our right to know about celebrities babies and labour pains and other such globaly relevant stuff. Yours is the type of investigative reporting that makes me stand up and cheer, until I have to sit down again because I have AIDS. Lots and lots of AIDS. Seriously, it's exhausting.

I rushed home to tell my AIDS...I mean daughter of our angel Anderson Cooper and the fantastic news that he had brought us. That he had granted her last wish. That though she and a quarter of our country was dying of AIDS, Angelina Jolie and her newborn baby were O.K. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, I found that my daughter was dead. Dead from lead poisoning. Because we don't have very clean drinking water either. I...still have AIDS.


Yours,
Tchalla Mubawe


P.S. Please ask Paula Zahn to do a report on dogs that can do backflips and maybe one on what Renee Zellweger wears on dinner dates. The fate of my country may depend on it.

Flesh-Eating Killer Zombie Death Bombs (ATTN: Paul Bremer)

I'm breaking the rules of the site again, sorry. I definitely plan on writing a letter to Bremer but the background for it, I'm afraid, is in need of it's own entry.



General Jay Garner was initialy the man chosen to be a sort of viceroy in Iraq following the American invasion. He was to act as el presidente extremo of the war torn nation during the time period between Saddam's reign and that of the American appointed bastard king in president's clothing (don't kid yourselves, "free"-elections for the Iraqis only meant that it wasn't going to cost America a dime). The Bush administration quickly learned of their mistake however after Garner began to fight tooth and nail against the neo-conservative "Iraqi Economy Plan" saying such ridiculous things as; "I don't think the Iraqi people need to go by the U.S. plan. I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi governement that represents the freely elected will of the people. It's their country...their oil." Garner also foolishly suggested that Iraqi elections should be held as soon as possible, within 90 days of Saddam's dethroning, so that the Iraqi people might be able to choose their leader and quickly begin rebuilding their country to their liking. What a fool. Democracy? Freedom? Elections? Obviously these things have nothing to do with Bush's "Operation: Friendly Iraqi Democratic Liberation of Freedom". You see, the plan was to give Iraqis the opportunity to vote, but not before the most important matter was taken care of; The Iraqi Economy and it's ability to allow foreign nations to freely rob from it. General Garner was quickly fired by Donald Rumsfeld (The day after the above quote actualy) and replaced by a man named Paul Bremer. Bremer studied under Kissinger when king Henry was quoted as saying; "The issues are too important to be left to the voters." before greenlighting the assasination of Chile's elected president some 30 years ago. It's too bad for Garner, but hey, you can't make a sub-par commercial goods dumping ground omelette without breaking a few legs. Did I say legs, sorry, I meant eggs. Good ol' whitebred American eggs. And wheat. And a vast number of other products that the Iraqi people have always been able to farm or manufacture themselves. You see, the Iraqis were promised that they would have a vote, not a job. Allow me to explain: Immediately after Bremer replaced Garner he proceeded in pushing back the election date again and again and again. While he did this he also got to work on redefining Iraq's economic and foreign trade regulations. These new regulations, set by an American, were all stamped with the friendly signature of "for 2004 and all subsequent years" meaning that a future government elected by Iraqis couldn't change them. One of the actions taken was to sell off all Iraq's national banks to foreign investors. Another was to remove all trade tariff protection that Iraq had, meaning that imports from foreign nations can not be taxed by the Iraqi government. What this means is that Iraq was easily made a free-for-all for huge multi-national corporations that the local Iraqi manufacturers have no chance of competing with, so Iraqis are shit out of luck and shit out of work. The multi-nationals didn't waste any time either. Iraq was flooded shortly after the tariff removal by tons upon tons of wheat from American manufacturer Cargill. The Iraqi wheat farmers were helpless and are now out of work. That's just one example. The unemployment rate in U.S. occupied Iraq is now at 60%. At what price freedom?

New Site

Anyone who visited my old site at blogtitlewastaken.blogspot.com recently was sure to have been redirected to this flashy, visualy stunning, new masterwork of internet wickedry. Sorry for the switch, but I felt as though the new URL, hooliganletters.blogspot.com, made more sense in the grand scheme of things as it's easier to remember and compliments the site's purpose. I've also divided the site in two. The Hooligan Letters is now a stand-alone, automomous site soon to be complete with it's own Starbucks. All the personal poetry and other self-serving, pretentious shit has been moved to another site so as not to interupt the flow of the letters but rather work as a sort of weapons cache for my written war on idiocy. I felt the two themes would be better served in blogs independent of one another, though I'll continue to post in both. Also, my apologies to those friends of mine whose comments were deleted in the transfer, but I couldn't find a way to move them with the posts. I assure you that they were greatly appreciated, encouraging, and that the letters wouldn't have been able to continue without them. I'm cooking up a couple of things for later this week and I'll post them as soon as possible.

Kev

Harry Potter and The Ku Klux Katastrophe

Another letter. I haven't been able to stop writing lately. Either things just keep popping into my head or the planet is ripe with lunatics. I'm leaning toward the latter theory. My favorite idiocy peddlers though, I have to admit, have always been racists. I love the little bastards. They're so easy. They seem to just toss the gag ball to you, right over the plate, and all you've got to do is bat it out of the park or bunt it (if you want to be a critical dick about it). So today we'll be tackling our friends in the Ku Klux Klan and our own down home, Canadian racists of the Canadian Heritage Alliance with one brief swing. Everyone knows the clowns who call themselves the KKK, but to fill in those unfamiliar with the Heritage Alliance (just brought to my attention last year) they're pretty much the canuck equivalent. A group of inbred, toothless, white folks who believe that inter-racial relationships are an atrocity, minorities are trying to con the oppressed white man, etc. For more info you can visit their site at http://www.canadianheritagealliance.com (sorry, links still aren't working).

Anyway, the head of the KKK is known commonly as the Grand Wizard. I shit you not. The Grand Fucking Wizard is the official title of the man the KKK take most seriously. I find this to be absolutely hilarious as it leads me to believe that the racist world must be one of magic and wonder that all of us rational humans are missing out on, though last time I checked, Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry taught little about white supremacy. As if this isn't funny enough, following a trail through the KKK website, www.kkk.com (I know, I didn't think it'd be that easy either), I found that the official e-mail contact address is Asktheknights@hotmail.com. So between the Knights and the Grand Wizard we have a regular Round Table of racist ignorance. So I figured I'd write a letter appealing to them as a member of the Canadian Heritage Alliance, because there's a problem in Biggotry-Land and only the Wizard can save us.




ATTN: Ku Klux Klan, A Matter of Great Urgency



Salutations White Brothers,

I'm appealing to you from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in hopes that you may, god willing, be able to aid us in a matter that might very well affect the world as we know it. I'm a proud knight in the Canadian Heritage Alliance, sworn to protect the white brotherhood from the forces of evil that threaten to consume this world, but alas, a recent discovery leads me to believe that our time may be shorter than we had originaly believed. I can only hope that this letter reaches you in time. Some weeks ago one of our squires was dispatched to Calgary where we had recieved information that groups of Negroes were mysteriously congregating there. The news with which he returned chilled us to the bone. It seems, my brothers, that the blacks have found the fourth crystal of Karnaak. The knights charged with protecting the sacred stone fought bravely, but unfortunately their efforts were in vain. My clan and I gathered swiftly upon hearing this ill news and intercepted the convoy of tricked out Cadillacs on the Trans Canada Highway in Saskatchewan and there we fought a great battle on the prairie plains. My sword fighting with the spirit of the great prophet Gremlok himself, I slayed eleven men. It was hardly enough however, as we were outnumbered ten to one. Our leader Sam, The Supreme Almighty Magician, made an attempt to cast the Spell of the Demons Tongue on the enemy hordes, but was struck from behind and, though he fought galantly, was taken prisoner. Hundreds more of our knights perished that day on the battlefield. The negroes escaped with the crystal, but fortunately, all was not lost as we had taken a prisoner of our own. For two weeks we've been squeezing him for information, forcing him to listen to Rod Stewart and watch The O'Reilly Factor, but his will was strong. Today we brought Ann Coulter's new book into his cell and he finaly broke, but the information we recieved, I'll warn you, is hardly comforting. According to our prisoner, not only have the blacks learned the location of the fifth and final Karnaak crystal, but they've made plans to ally themselves with the Jews. This alliance must be prevented. With the Negroes' X-Ray vision and the Jews' powers of levitation their combining factions would spell certain doom for us. The prophecy of the great Gremlok is finaly upon us, though admittedly, sooner than we had all hoped. What remains of our knights will be congregating at our normal meeting place (Jimmy's Waffle Hut on Strumling Rd., make a left off of Highway 35 when you see the giant corn ear thingy with the fading paint) this coming thursday and it is of the utmost importance that the Grand Wizard be present. He is our only hope.


Yours in skin pigment,
Sean Burke,
Ranking Knight of the Canadian Heritage Alliance


P.S. This thursday is also our annual bake sale so feel free to bring whatever sort of goodies you'd like with the exception of rice krispies squares (Tom makes them every year and he gets a little irked when people try to compete with him).

Are You There, Anne? It's Me, Sean

Ok. First thing's first. It occured to me that the reason I may be unable to post working links in the "Foreword" sections of my posts is that I was posting them in italics. So, from now on, the Foreword portions will be in standard print and the letters themselves in italics. Next, while reading over the Rumsfeld letter, though I still really dig it, I found that it didn't exactly strike the point home as much as I would have liked it too. The purpose was to openly mock his ludicrous action as well to point out what I felt to be his obvious opinion of women as evidenced by his taking said action (though I did take it to a sarcastic extreme because that's what we do here at the Burke Letters). Those goals I believe were accomplished, but there's still something missing. It's too obvious that I'm mocking him. I want my letters to hurt when they're read by the intended recipient, not just be discarded like another piece of hate-mail. So last night while watching the Daily Show I was reminded of one of my favorite recurring segments; Great Moments in Punditry as Read by Children. For any who haven't seen it, the segment showcases children reading transcripts of political pundits' appearences on various television news programs. The result is a very funny, though terribly eerie image of innocent kids spouting hateful soundbites at each other. The kids don't understand what they're reading, but they're still, to use the cliche, bickering like little children. That's when I was reminded that kids aren't born racists. They're not born sexists. Biggotry is learned somewhere along the line. That's what I was missing. Rumsfeld could tell (would he ever have read it) that my letter was written by someone who had already made up his own mind and decided to mock him. So to commemorate the release of Anne Coulter's new book (I believe it's called Godless: The Church of Liberals or some such bullshit) I've decided to write her a letter under the guise of a 8 year old boy. Incase you'd like to learn more about this lunatic you can visit her site at . You have to register on her site in order to e-mail her, but it's worth it to read all the ridiculous shit she has to say on her message boards.

One more thing before I post the letter. A favorite author of mine, Greg Palast, is also releasing a book today entitled "Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf". Palast was one of the first journalists brave enough to tackle the theft of the 2000 American election and is constantly working to expose the underhanded dealings of organisations like the WTO and IMF. If you get a chance, be sure to check out his book and for more info you can visit his website at Ok. Here's the goods:



Dear Mrs. Coulter,

My name is sean and I go to Ste. Anne's school. It's in dayton in ohio. We are almost done forth grade and mrs. kennear wants us to write a letter to our hero. You are my favorite person and my mom and dad like you a lot to. They say one day I can be just like you if i work hard and speak my voice. They say i'm smart like you to. I already jumped one grade because i'm only 8 and in grade four. I don't think the towel heads are very smart do you? and I think libarals are stupid idiots. They dont have pakis in my school and dad says its because its only for people who like white god. I like white god do you? sometimes i think that maybe he put you and me here to help get rid off pakis and towel heads. And dad says that joos have all the money and dont share. I think they should but only with people who like god and not the bad guys. Dad tells everybody to read your books and he says your the best. I got in troublr the other day for saying another boy was a lazy dumb mexican but its because my teacher is a stupid libaral. Do you like the president because i like him a lot because its time somebody bombed thos damed towel heads right? One time if your in dayton you can come to my house for dinner. it would be fun.

From,
Sean Burke


P.S. Do you think the nigars should just get jobs and not well fair cause mom says so.




This is the kind of thing I imagine coming out of a kid's mouth when I think about all the ignorance and intolerance people like Coulter perpetuate when spewing their shit.

To Rev. Phelps and The Westboro Baptist Church with Christ's Love

I've changed the idea for the first Burke Letter so Wal-Mart will have to come sometime in the future. I saw something on the news that I thought was kind of ridiculous and thought I should comment on it. For those who are unaware, Reverend Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church and has pioneered the "God Hates Fags" crusade. Recently they've been in the news for protesting at the funerals of fallen American soldiers claiming that God has killed them to punish the U.S. for accepting homosexuality. So I've decided to mock the shit out of them. This letter was mailed to the Westboro Baptist Church's official website as an "interview request". If you would like to read more about the ridiculousness of the Westboro Baptist Church or would like to comment yourself on their exploits you can reach them at their official webiste: www.godhatesfags.com (no joke, that's really the name)






Dear Rev. Phelps and Co.,

My associates and I would like to commend you on the great work you're doing to rid our world of the terrible plague that is faggotry, praise Jesus. Recently I was treated to a news segment about your noble protests at the grave sites of fallen American troops and was awestruck. I've always thought myself to be a reasonably smart man and the idea that troops were being killed because God was punishing them for accepting gayness had never occured to me. It's so simple, really. I mean, did you know that fags don't even recognise Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) as being a religious holiday? They just party like the filthy, devilish animals they are without bothering to acknowledge the fact that Mardi Gras was originaly the day Peter was dumped by his girlfriend and Jesus, after miraculously turning regular cream into ice cream, insisted that all the disciples pig out and bitch about women all night. Can you believe the ignorance of some people? Thank the Lord that there are strong willed people like Rev. Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church to stand up to dead soldiers. For years, I and others like me have been waiting for someone brave enough to come out and say "Hey! Listen here, fag lover, I don't care if you're dead or not, bring it on bitch! I'll kick your ass". So courageous. Anyhow, my group, the ADFCC have a vested interest in your exploits and your crusade as we all agree that faggotry is a crime against god and, to be honest, if this plague continues we'll all be out of work. Our first annual Gala is this October and we would be delighted if the good Rev. Phelps could attend and be our guest of honor. If there is any interest please contact us.



Praise the Lord,

Dr. Kevin N. Burke,
President/founder of ADFCC,
Abortion Doctors For Christ of Canada




P.S. As a token of our gratitude, we at the ADFCC have mailed
the Westboro Baptist Church 200 coupons to distribute to it's
parishoners good for one free abortion on their birthday.

The Hooligan Letters (transfered post from my former blog)

This seems to have become pointless lately. Partly due to my painstakingly slow internet connection here in Neverwhere and partly due to my terrible habit of allowing my decisions to be dictated by outside influence. A friend of mine recently commented on the foolishness of blogging and, though his opinion on the matter seemed to be linked to the fact that he'd recieved very few blowjobs since his blog began, I think he has a point. I enjoy writing sarcastic nonsense, but it simply doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So I'm changing the format. From now on, as often as I can post, I'll be writing a letter to an organisation or person that pisses me off. The letters will be posted here with a short foreword and explaination and they will also be e-mailed to the relevant party. I'll also be taking requests or suggestions from anyone who bothers to read. I'm starting with Wal-Mart and the letter will be posted and mailed next week.