Dear annoying people of the world...

Dear e-mail-duplicate senders,
Thank you for sending me that dirty joke/picture of a dog in bunny ears/political tirade/Jesus chain letter. I appreciated your thinking about me and throwing it my way. I enjoyed the six seconds I spent skimming before hitting the delete button. However, I couldn't help but notice that the latest Jesus-with-puppies picture looked familiar. You sent it to me two months ago...and another time four months before that. I am well-acquainted with the puppy Jesus e-mail, which alerts me that my decision to forward or delete this e-mail determines my eternal resting place. Are you passing this on because you believe that the Jesus puppy e-mail will send you on a direct flight to hell, or did you just forget? Please stop being so cavalier in your e-mail forwarding that you forget which e-mails you've forwarded in the past. Usually, they're not good enough to be passed around a second time.

Dear encroaching shoppers,
I hear the shuffle of your Crocs and the faint squeak of your shopping cart behind me as I'm trying to figure out what the heck mom meant by "the cooking oil with the red cap." You stealthily slide in next to me, reach across my face and grab some Crisco. I move to the left, out of your way. At this moment, you decide the Crisco wasn't what you were looking for and take a few steps to the left yourself. I then back up and pretend to be enamored with the salad dressing on the other side of the aisle when suddenly, you're done with the oil and it's Hidden Valley time! You pivot your cart on it's back left wheel and park it on the back of my shoe. I take this opportunity to run back to the oil side when you move your cart and perfectly position it in the middle of the aisle, and I, being the clumsy person I am, almost trip and fall head first into your carton of organic eggs. See where I'm going with this? Personal space still applies in a crowded store. The trick is to be as unobtrusive as possible. Ninjas, baby. Learn from them.

Dear extreme Michael Jackson mourners,
It's horrible that the life of this amazing performer was cut short. I feel for his family and friends who will miss him so much. However, fans, you did not know him personally. He was 50 years old and didn't appear to be the epitome of health. 50 was considered "old" 100 years ago. To be honest, I wasn't shocked until I saw how much media attention it commanded. You won't miss Michael Jackson; you didn't know him. You will miss his music, which will still remain a legacy forever. It makes sense to send some love to his friends and family (I almost cried when his daughter took the microphone at the funeral), but even today, the day after his funeral, talk shows and newspapers still address this as if Obama was assassinated. He had an awesome voice, and God knows how many people (including myself) have tried to learn the moonwalk and the Thriller dance...but you didn't lose your best friend in Michael. His funeral is over, let the man rest in peace now.

Dear iB2kewl4U,
U can unerstand mee wen i tawk liek dis? OMG u gotz da L337 $|<1LL$. U tawk 2 ur freinz liek dis all da tiem. Unfortunately, I don't care about your whatever skills. I don't want to spend extra time decoding your chatspeak sentences. Type out the word, you lazy teenagers. My sister got a letter in the mail from her friend from camp and she had to have me read and decode the handwritten chat acronyms. I lost some respect for that girl. She wasted my energy. Grow up, type as if you've mastered English, and stop thinking it's cool to change the spelling of common words with no purpose behind it. It stopped being cool after 5th grade. Cut it out, you're being a dork and insulting your own intelligence, as well as that of the person you're talking to.

That last sentence sounded weirdly formal, but I took a practice SAT the other day and I guess I'm in the mode.

Love,
Juliana