Anonymous Postcard: Claims

		Claim No.: 008820081003 To: Black Pepper Claim: Salt is doing all the heavy lifting in your relationship. You should feel damned lucky you got paired up with her. Damned lucky.
		Claim No.: 010220081007 To: The NCAA Football Issues Committee Claim: Please make drinking legal in all university football stadiums. My town is ravaged by early morning, television-addicted, red-state, Palin-worshiping, Jack Daniels guggling SEC football fans every home game, all trying to drown themselves in booze before they go in the gates, as alcohol is prohibited during the game. If they could drink like regular NFL football fans, perhaps they would be less inclined to get obliterated so early on in the day, and in such a rush! My walk to work during these days would be tolerable, our town would not be littered with blue and red plastic cups for three days afterwards, and less people would go to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped, I believe. It's simply backwards. Allow them their Budweiser and we will all be the better for it: colleges will be richer, the people healthier, the town cleaner and more sane. A concerned business owner in Athens, Georgia (Go Dawgs!)
		Claim No.: 006520080917 To: Milton Bradley Company c/o Hasbro, Inc. Claim: Missing Ice Cube Why in the world wouldn't Hasbro continue to make Milton Bradley's brilliant game Ice Cube? Since my mother donated our copy to children in need one Christmas in the early 80's, I have been desperately searching garage sales, thrift shops and basements for a replacement to no avail. And I am not able to swing the $350 it would take to win it on an Ebay auction. I implore you to put those little ice men back into production, so that we may torture them once again.
		Claim No.: 010920081009 To: David Remnick, The New Yorker Claim: I know you have a business to run, but the thick-paged ads in your special issues are for things I can't afford--and they get in the way of otherwise worthwhile material. This week's politics issue, for example, would have a lot more to say without all the glossy schlock.
		Claim No.: 009220081004 To: Moody's Diner Waldoboro, Maine Claim: When it comes to lobster rolls, there is a genuine and thriving debate--at least among the features editors of the travel and food magazines that rely on such things to fill their pages--about what type of roll is best and about where to find it. My wife and I believe that Red's Eats should lay claim to the title. But we are open-minded enough to recognize that reasonable people may differ. When it comes to pie, however, let me say for the record that I publicly ridicule the sanity of any ass, fool, idiot, imbecile who doesn't recognize your chocolate cream pie as among the finest baked goods on the eastern seaboard, or any other.
		Claim No.: 009420081004 To: The person(s) living in our old house Claim: Hi. We used to live here. We moved out in a hurry and didn't get a chance to paint all of the walls. Sorry that some walls look "splotchy" that's because we had a small amount of a lot of different shades of white. I never knew that white came in so many shades. I hope you enjoy the shed that I left behind in the side yard. That is, if the landlord didn't remove it for himself. If he didn't then I guess that kinda makes up for the "splotchy" walls. Have an enjoyable day!
		Claim No.: 009120081004 To: David Brooks, New York Times Claim: It is disheartening that a person so serious as to have written an entire column lamenting the vapidness of Obama's convention speech, would fall so hard for the underdeveloped know-nothing-conservative gynoid the Republicans have nominated for Vice President. I for one would like to hear your honest, content-oriented (rather than horse-race-spinning) evaluation of her debate performance.
		Claim No.: 008920081003 To: Governor Sarah Palin Claim: Congratulations on your better-than-expected debate performance. It will remind anyone who has ever been a teacher of the most disappointing type of student--those who show, as you did, that you can remember and regurgitate an enormous amount of material about the issues of the day, without understanding anything about any of them.
		Claim No.: 008620081003 To: test s vsadc Claim: ytwcgjg
		Claim No.: 006420080916 To: San Francisco Opera Claim: Congratulations on the $40 million donation! Now, can you maybe earmark some of the money and get some better graphic design? The ads in the Chron and especially the lamppost banners are embarrassingly bad.
		Claim No.: 004020080906 To: Ginny Lewis, Director, Nevada DMV, Carson City, NV Claim: A four-way stop is a totally different thing than a two-way stop. Shouldn't there be two different kinds of signs?
		Claim No.: 006620080918 To: Robin Blum, Brooklyn Claim: As I was passing through my old neighborhood, you invited me in for dinner so that we could catch up with one another and talk about our families and the good times we had. You were so generous to make dinner for me and I was thankful. However, my appetite took over and I finished off all of the Buffalo Wings. I know your husband was coming home later and I was polishing off his dinner. I felt terrible about it but could not resist the Buffalo Wings. The cold beer only made it more difficult. I would like to apologize. Lee
		Claim No.: 006920080926 To: Dog walkers, Sao Paulo, Brazil Claim: Please, please pick up your dog's shit! It' s just horrible to have them around, to step on them, and even just to smell them when it's too damn hot.
		Claim No.: 006320080915 To: City of SF / Gavin Newsom Claim: there's no art / poetry in BART stations / on trains
		Claim No.: 005720080910 To: Lance Armstrong Claim: Lance, Very few athletes earn the opportunity to transcend sport. You have. And, for the most part, at least in terms of your public mission, you've made a good start on trying to make the world better. Now, please listen. Don't screw it up. Muhammad Ali. That's where you want to end up: a cultural icon, symbol of significant social change, someone who has mattered. Roger Clemens. That's the nightmare no sense of public service and renewed public attention to your foibles can bring. Tiger Woods. The power to change the world for the better. Michael Jordan. A wasted opportunity to transcend, lost in the irrelevancies of his sport, a commercial triumph and a cultural zero. This is hard to say because watching you accelerate away from your rivals up a major climb, touch the hand of one who stuck with you all the way to the top at the finish, and wait for one who fell on the way down to catch up are memories I cherish. You've made me fiercely proud more times than seems entirely sane to me. And being the person who did all of that must make this even harder to hear. But here goes. Don't come back for the wrong reasons. Think long-term, and long and hard. Don't squander the larger platform you've already earned, which is so much more important than winning an 8th Tour. I know you're floundering a bit; you're still young and have a lot of energy. But don't go backwards out of boredom or hunger to regain the world's attention. I started out meaning to say: Lance, don't do it. I can't say that. Because I want to see it too. But the success rate of hall-of-fame, all-time-great-caliber comebacks--in all sports--is very low, and it would be painful to see you tarnish your long-term potential. So, if you're determined to just do it, please just do it right. Make it about more than you. Whatever happens, find the way to rise above. Make it count.

All images copyright Tucker Nichols