While Mullah Billdoug and Bill Kaul are off chasing their several will o' the wisps, following the wind into their particular willows, I thought I'd untie the knot on the mailbag that's been gathering dust over behind the door and see what our fans have been writing.

And oddly enough, what I find is that we have a whole spate of letters from Thomas Pynchon's characters in Gravity's Rainbow. Since this is an unusual enough event to be worthy of notice early on a September's morning, I'll open them first.

The first is from someone named 00000, which is an odd name to say the least. S/he/it writes:

Mullah Billdoug!

Hey, I love your stuff! You're the greatest! Nobody's better than you! I flip over to your blog ten times a day at work, whenever no one's looking. Whenever I don't find a new post, I feel more zeroes forming inside my hollow chest.

I just have one question. Where can I get a copy of Nothing From Nothing? That sounds like a really cool book. I bet it would be right up my alley!

Not just a loyal fan,

00000

Well, 00000, if you'll just set your coordinates dead-center in the Ground Zero Library at Sufi University, you might just find Mullah Billdoug's infamous classic somewhere in the ashes! Thanks for writing, and keep checking us out!

The next letter is from Jessica Swanlake:

My dear Mullah Billdoug,

When David Nixon choreographed Tchaikovsky's ballet for the Ohio Theater in Columbus, why on earth did he set the Russian Dance in the ballroom?

Yours most sincerely,

Jessica Swanlake

Dear Jessica--As you must have noticed if you were in the audience at that breathtaking première, that was the moment at which Odile had to convince Siegfried that the swan who resembled Odette was in actually her, or she, Odile herself. Does this not make more sense now?

Oh, and while we're on the subject, Jules Siegel tells me that you were based on his wife, with whom his best friend Tom Pynchon had a torrid affair. Is that true? That his wife, riding in Pynchon's car, bared her breasts to the passing motorists, and he put that in the novel as something you did? Please tell me this isn't the case.

Yours, etc.

The next letter is from Teddy Bloat, who writes:

Hey Mullah!

Party hearty, dude! Rock on! Light up a bong for me, man! I love ya, but only in a manly RAF sort of way.

Yours forever,

Teddy B., Commander, RAF

Dear Commander Bloat: Were you ever even in the RAF? Does the RAF even have commanders?

I'm pawing through the piles, here, looking for one from Tyrone Slothrop, but not having much luck. Unless this hasty penciled scribble on a torn dirty old yellowed envelope flap, saying only FUCK YOU, is from the good Lieutenant?

The last one is from Roger Mexico, Jessica's poor jilted lover:

Dear Mullah Billdoug, I sure feel sorry for your agent. You're giving away all your best material for FREE! (notice the allcaps and the exclamation mark - that gives it that extra umph.)

I'm glad that guy is dead. He was probably a Nazi sympathizer, hence his appearance at the RNC.

Well, Roger, if that's the kind of bitterness you're carrying around, I can see why Jessica left you! Maybe you should think about getting some therapy, or at least some psychotropic drugs?

And let me assure you that these posts are neither free nor "all our best material." You're paying for them, indirectly, with your cookies, which we sell to all the Fortune 500 corporations for (as the Mullah would say) oodles of moolah. As for it being ALL of our best material, well--let's just say we've held out one last bit of good material, which we're saving for tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Check back!

Oh, one last thing, while I've got you. That pubic hair you found between your teeth, two weeks after Jessica left you? How can you be so sure it was hers? How do you know it wasn't, say, mine?

Yours in Condoleeza,

Doug Robinson

That's all I've got time for now, folks. I've got some whaling to do!

# posted by Doug Robinson @ 8:29 AM