Dear students,
In light of the recent severe drop in temperature, we here at the university are quite worried that you might freeze to death. We want to make sure that you don’t. And we are going to do that by telling you not to.
Alfred Thayer Mahan is the kind of historical figure who proves that fame and aptitude are not always bedfellows. By the late nineteenth century, he was the undisputed authority on naval history, the man who coined the term “sea power” and lent it enough gravitas to send Congress scuttling toward new battleships. His seminal work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783, was the TED Talk of its era—if TED Talks were 500-page treatises on naval strategy, dense with charts, footnotes, and historical examples. Mahan became the intellectual godfather of America’s rise as a global maritime force.
When I heard that Johnny Depp had curated blasting Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes from a rocket launcher, I was, quite frankly, underwhelmed. Granted, the drama did celebrate Thompson’s outlaw gonzo spirit. Depp had commissioned the erection of a phallic looking rocket launcher topped by a double-thumbed fist. Fellow bad boys Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn were among the guests; Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played and sang; there were fireworks and I expect liquor and drugs flowed freely. Still, I shrugged. Fully ten years before Depp’s carefully curated spectacle, my family had blasted our dad’s ashes into eternity. With an old shotgun, from the side of a mountain at sunset. For a lot less than the $3 million that Depp shelled out.
Recently you received a legal summons or actionable complaint, hand-delivered to you at your residence or place of employment, regarding your unpaid taxes, unpaid rent, unpaid child support, marriage dissolution, property damage, felonious assault, drug trafficking, or other indictable activity. Please take a moment to rate your delivery so that we at Gammert and Daughters Legal Summons Delivery might improve our service to you.
When my neighbor Trudy Canowitz died at ninety-three, I was heartbroken. Of course I was going to miss her kindness and warmth—but I was also going to miss her driveway. Especially her driveway.