Category Thirteen

Everyone who works at The Agency has his or her own personal quirks. Stan Manley is highly anxious in nearly every conceivable social or interactive situation. Bambi St. James basically seems annoyed and/or irritable even when she’s actually trying to be nice, which isn’t very often. Monica Salters will only drink coffee from purple mugs. Vicki Furlong does, in fact, lack even the most basic levels of social grace and tact—she is, for all intents and purposes, blunt to a fault. Zooey Feeney is incredibly nice to everyone she works with—including Travis McEvoy—which her coworkers hypothesize stems from a strong desire to never intentionally hurt anyone’s feelings or rock the boat or create any kind of social dissonance whatsoever. Travis McEvoy mysteriously can’t pronounce Darrell’s Sweeney’s first name properly; instead, he sort of monosyllablizes it as “Drrl,” which everyone who isn’t Darrell actually finds pretty amusing and says is basically Travis’s one redeeming social quality. Darrell himself always seems to bring leftovers for lunch that makes the office refrigerator smell bad, but always bad in different ways.[1] Rachel Bauman keeps stockpiles of expired, individually wrapped food items in her desk. Kathy Adkins is often inappropriately sweet, syrupy sweet,[2] even in situations where numerous other emotions would be much better suited. Xiang Liu and Dharini Mohapatra literally compete over just about everything imaginable[3] and somehow still manage to stay both friendly and professional w/r/t each other at all times. Todd “Fuzzy” Lomeier unfailingly smells like old hotdog water.

Tom Banerjek steadfastly refuses to evacuate his bowels at work.

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Similar to McSweeney’s “OPEN LETTERS TO PEOPLE OR ENTITIES WHO ARE UNLIKELY TO RESPOND.”

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Dear Lance,

Cycling season is underway, but seeing as how you are getting old—sorry, but let’s call it what it is—and you are constantly getting hounded with all those doping allegations—which is, let’s also call it what it is: bullshit—I wanted to offer my services as the new phenom of professional cycling, even though I am not technically a professional… yet. Hear me out:

When I ride my bike, I can just feel the fat melting off me.  I mean I can really fucking feel it! All those “big c” Calories just liquefying inside my insides. Just liquefying and then, bam! fucking eliminated!  See ya!  When I’m riding, you can’t even call the whole process liquification anymore based on what I’m doing to it. Nope. More like lique-faction, which is what happens when there’s like a shit ton of heat and rocks basically just melt like in an earthquake.  Massive energy!  Abatshit-fucking-crazy-ass-turbo-nuts-load of energy!  I learned about that shit on the Discovery Channel, those guys who used to sponsor you, remember?

Anyway…

When I get my legs pumping, I’ll pop a spoke if I’m not careful.  Massive fucking energy!  And all that fat I was talking about? I don’t even really have that much of it, any of it really.  My body fat is like one percent, which the doctors tell me isn’t healthy, but fuck them!  I’m on a “big c” Crusade against fat.  It’s my enemy.  I’m on a Crusade, a Jihad and a partaking in a fucking Inquisition when it comes to that shit!  The doctors tell me with their “healthy” nine percent body like the fat fucking fatty-fat-fats they are!  My body, my temple, bitches!, that’s what I say.

So anyway, sometimes I think I could hook a generator up to my indoor bike trainer for when it’s raining outside.  Like if the fucking lights and power went out I could just hop on my bike and power back up the fucking neighborhood because I can make big “n” Nature my bitch!  I mean I really hate rain, only second to body fat.  I hate Nature third because it pisses me off when it’s too hot or too cold outside, but I digress…

My friends tell me, Lars, calm the fuck down with all that shit, man.  Fat this, energy that.  It’s almost like you got an eating disorder!  And I say fuck you, guys!  You wouldn’t be saying this if you assholes weren’t such a bunch of fatties!  Which, basically isn’t true because all my friends ride the bike too and people are always telling them they look a little gaunt, whatever that means.  What, is it a crime to be skinny now, Lance?  They call it an eating disorder; I call it sheer adamantine mental toughness, which pisses me off if I have to say it more than once. Batshit pissed off! Like when that punk Alberto Contador totally attacked you up the mountain and you were on the same team and he was totally pissing on your Tour de France campfire. Just like that.

And so anyway, Lance, I mostly ride by myself now because basically there isn’t anyone who can keep up with me any more, and I’ll just get pissed off if I can’t drop the fucking hammer, like full tilt boogie!, whenever the mood strikes me. Racing amateur?  For pussies.  What’s the point if you’re racing for second?—which is obviously what place they’d be racing for if I was in the race.  Pussies.  If Superman was real, even he wouldn’t race me.  Even Superman has some fucking pride, Lance.

So yeah, it was pretty hard for me to decide what kind of bike to get.  You’ve seen those guys who crush empty beer cans against their heads—which is fucking stupid because of all the empty calories in the beer, but whatever.  They don’t call it a Super-Protein-Power-Shake belly, do they? No. It’s a beer belly—but you’ve seen those guys, right?  Just crush that shit up on their melon like bam!  Batshit crazy!  That’s what my fucking harbinger-of-destruction-like-quads would do to a panty-waste aluminum bike. Bam!

Steel? Same fucking thing, Lance, only more bendy.

Titanium seems more like it.  Carbon fiber is supposed to be stronger than steel but it looks like fucking plastic to me. I can’t be generating like 6 billion watts of fucking power just to have my fucking plastic toy bike snap in half.  That’s fucking just asinine.  But titanium might be the ticket.  They make tanks out of titanium which, I personally think, they create as an homage to my quads. Fucking batty!

But anyway, that’s all I got for now Lance. I hope you’ll consider. It’s your loss if you don’t. But whatever. I’m not like going to cry in my Fiber One cereal if you don’t call. Just steer clear of me at the Tour of Gila because I’ll be there. Unless you have that contract with you and you are all like, Hey Lars Friedrichstëinerson, why don’t you come ride for team Radio Shack? It’d be really fucken swell. In which case, I’ll politely accept and we can proceed to crush opposing souls. Think about it, Lance.

Sincerely,

Lars Friedrichstëinerson

We need gas masks to breathe the toxic ozones, spilled chemicals mingle like singles at a mixer and you can only think about your lost pair of spectacles and some perspective. What are we doing here anyway? Are things getting too real for you? I can’t remember the last time we just talked and reminisced about things we never did. You’re goddamn right we have a problem, Houston. I’m not really here. Motion sickness Dramamine can’t fix. A light switch switched off and you can’t reach because you are sinking, ever-sinking. Why do you fight it? The mud only sucks you down faster if you struggle.

The midnight oil burns the candle at both ends because it’s too hot to do anything else. I’m panicking. Why won’t you answer my calls? Was it something I said? Cut out pictures from the newspaper and smudge the faces because you like the way the ink feels on your fingertips. Kiss the earth because you’re always better when you are grounded. Hurl yourself into full bodily contact with the manmade lagoon and watch as hope washes over you and then away. Life itself crashes and breaks over the banks of your levee, your ironclad resolve. There is a doomed sense of righteousness beading about your brow.