Dear Ms. Manners,

Someone's using their cell phone in the stall next to me in a public restroom and I flush. Which one of us is being rude?

Sincerely,
Kayla Bradshaw

P.S. Everyone, I have a new blog over at http://kaylabradshaw.wordpress.com. I'm not all the way done formatting it and I haven't really gotten a feel for wordpress yet, but there are a couple posts up and if you feel like reading still, you should update your blogroll. XO

Dear Everyone,

I take that back. I do know one thing and that is that Michael Phelps has the hottest body of anyone ever.

No picture for you.

Dreamily,
Kayla

Dear Everyone,

Please don't ask me any questions about the Olympics. I don't even know what you are talking about.

Thanks,
Kayla

Dear Rev. Jesse Jackson,

Just in case you didn't catch Jay Leno (of all people) handing your nuts to you on tv last night, I've copied and pasted the transcript below:

Jesse said he thought Barack Obama was talking down to black people by lecturing them on things like fatherhood and being a responsible husband. Jesse thought it was insulting, not only to him but to his former mistress and their love child.

Zing!
Kayla

Dear Becks,

You're the only one in this picture who wishes they still looked like this. (With the possible exception of Nick Carter.)

Sucks,

Kayla

Dear Ramona Quimby,

I signed a twelve-month lease on my apartment today; by far the most grown-up thing I have ever, ever done. It made me think of you because, well, we sort of grew up together and I haven't heard from you in a while and I was wondering what you're up to these days. If you've joined the Grown Up Revolution or not. I imagine that you'd be with me... one of the reluctant ones.

I mean it's been since like, before middle school, dude, so I don't even know what you did for college. I thought about looking you up on facebook, but I'm not a big fan of "the poke" and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't remember me by name/profile picture only and I definitely don't want to make my profile public so, you know... whatever.

Anyway, signing the lease made me kind of sad and miss the days of waking up whenever I felt like it every day of June, July and most of August, recess, actually using my library card and not just reading summaries and interpretations on Wikipedia. I've done all that I can to maintain my carefree 8-year-old existance, making minor allowances for things like a piece-of-crap car, a couple "jobs" that allow me to feel "creative," and not wearing my shirts tied in a knot that rests above the left side pocket of my jeans. Gotta keep the line short of offspring and a 9-5 to maintain what's left of my integrity. Not that I don't want to have kids, because I do... desperately... so much so that it's almost embarrassing. It's just that I'd rather rewind to 17 and do that for the next ten years and then repopulate the earth. (No offense, of course, if you're a wife or a mother or a career woman or corporate or anything like that.) I just really miss corn dogs and flavor-ice popsicle afternoons and asking permission to leave the house.

I miss you, too. Look me up on facebook if you're not too grown up for one.

Your friend,
Kayla

Dear Yoga,

Look, I've been an idiot. The short story is that I'm sorry and I miss you. I realize now that I don't like myself when I'm not with you.

You're everything I never knew I always wanted.

It still isn't over.

You complete me.

I'm back, baby.

xoxo,
Kayla

Dear Fellas,

If you want any kind of success for yourself in this life and expect me to take you seriously, I suggest you rethink the soul patch.

Think I'm joking?

Love ya like a milkshake,

Kayla

CC: Howie Mandell, Jack Black, Guy Who Tried To Flirt With Me At Starbucks, Graphic Artists

Dear Gwyneth,

1. I can't eat any meat that is still attached to the bone. This applies most often to chicken. I don't love the taste of fried chicken (real fried chicken, that is) anyway, but I can't stand to see it being picked off of its bone and if I see veins, my stomach is gone. If I am in a situation where I have to eat a meat (chicken, or otherwise) in this state, my mom will still de-skin, de-bone and de-vein it for me. I don't really need her to cut it up for me, but she still does. I don't eat pork, just because in the 9th grade I decided I didn't want to. This decision wasn't based on any moral or religious reason, but simply because I wanted to think it was gross. It was easy for me to stop eating bacon, less easy to stop eating sausage because I love the breakfast burritos at McDonald's but I just learned to pick the little sausage balls out (now they remind me of dog food.) Once in 2002, I decided "that was so silly of you, Kayla" and tried to eat a sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and had to spit out the first bite. Then last year I was mistakenly served a pasta dish with bacon in it and I threw it up promptly. I have been able to successfully eat a ham and cheese since then, though.

2. I've only been a girlfriend to boys whose names began with the letter R. I am a repeat "Ryan" offender. In chronological order: Riley, Ryan S., Riley (again), Robert, Ryan M., Ryan G., Ryan M (again) and Raj. First dates that never lent themselves to a second date: Brandon, Bradley and Frederick (who went by his middle name: Boston.) I don't plan these things.

3. Asking me to be your maid-of-honor is the kiss of death for your marriage. I've been asked on two occasions and shortly after being fitted for the dress, the groom did something unforgivable and the wedding was off. (Side note: since I was seven, I've sung at fourteen weddings. All of those marriages are still going strong.)

4. When I get a new CD, it's impossible for me to listen to any song all the way through before I feel like I'm familiar with the project as a whole. Then I can go back and take the CD song-by-song. I tend to listen to the radio single last and hate it the most. In my opinion track 11 is usually the best on any CD and if there is no 11, track 2, provided it's not the radio single or namesake of the album.

5. Can't listen to commercials on the radio. Can't stand it when someone changes the channel during commercial breaks on the television. Go figure.

6. I am internally conflicted until I can identify a celebrity that reminds me of all the people I know. This is why I'm forever saying, "You remind me of Dakota Fanning" or "Isn't he like a young Dustin Hoffman?" etc. I've never really found anyone that reminds me of myself. It makes me a little sad.

7. I can't drop a deuce with shoes or socks on. Add that to the list of reasons not to take a dump anywhere but your home.

Pretty quirky indeed,
Kayla

P.S. You looked so hot in Iron Man!

Dear Pat Buchanon,

THIS* is the most foul thing I've ever heard anyone say EVER.

Right from the beginning, my ass,
Kayla

*First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Dear Rev.,

So you ask me in this ridiculously dramatized voice, 'What if "he" came into your church... What if he sat down and you could literally smell; not just see, but smell how dirty he was? What if he sat down right beside you?" I know you were trying to get me to think, but probably not like this:

I think we are trying to be "post-modern" in a "post-post-modern" world. We assume that the homeless and downtrodden, that the black eyeliner and white faced ones, that the pierced and tattooed, the the ones without teeth and the ones without SUVs need something we have. We generalize and profile and we become hell bent on "showing them Jesus." On ministering to them, because of course, they are the ones who need to be ministered to.

These, clearly, are the ones who don't know Jesus because if they did they'd be wearing pleated front Dockers and driving Ford Explorers and trading in art for theology and communal living for a 9-5 at Kinkos or wherever it is that you've chosen as a career. Obviously, poor people are lost and kids with dog collars and mohawks need YOU to go TEACH them something that they couldn't have possibly learned from the Holy Spirit themselves.

And while we're at it, the Catholics need to be "saved," too. And if one ever walks into your church, so help you, you're gonna be the one to do it. You're gonna explain to them exactly what's wrong with their doctorine and you're gonna be the one that leads them to Jesus because there's no Catholic on God's green earth - not Mother Theresa, not the Pope, no way, not anybody who claims Catholicism that knows more about who Jesus really is and what he really wants than you. Because you're Protestant. And you're wearing pleated front Dockers. And you drive a Ford Explorer.

And because his hair is matted together and hangs over the collar of his visibly dirty shirt and his shoes are worn on the bottom and he doesn't smell like he's had a bath yet this year there is clearly no way that he could have something that you need. That he could minister Jesus to you. That the very word of God could be in his mouth or that he know who Jesus really is and what Jesus really wants.

Yeah, what if? What if John The Baptist came into your church? What if he came as a thunder in the dry desert of your congregation? What if he came as a voice crying out to the wilderness of your comfortable and safe doctorines? What if he came preparing the way of the risen Lord to the spiritually dead places you've kept in your heart? What do you think he smelled like? What do you think Jesus smelled like?

What if someone with blue hair had the prophetic word of deliverance for your life? What if someone dressed as a mourner, a wailing woman - I think you would probably want to call them "a goth" - came saying "Repent. Mourn. Weep. Lament?"

You would automatically take John the Baptizer down the Romans Road, right? Teach Blue Hair the ABC's of Salvation and have Gothic Girl repeat the Sinner's Prayer. Am I right? Because surely that's what they needed. They need to be delievered and set free and born again into the Church of the Pleated Dockers and Ford Explorers who consistantly reject the Word of God Made Flesh unless it comes from someone in pleated Dockers or a Ford Explorer, or whatever your Sabbath Day Observances may be.

Yeah... what if?
Kayla

Dear Sasha,

I LOVE THE ALLEY OOP!

Marry me?

For reals,
Kayla

Dear Elvis,

If you really are alive somewhere and crusing truck stops these days, I urge you to come out of hiding and bring your dag'um guitar. I don't know if you've heard the wire out on the C.B. but they're saying that Madonna and none other than Mariah Freakin' Carey have one-upped you on the Billboard Charts. Can you believe that crap? Me neither.

I'm calling "shenanigans" on this one, and here's why: While genius is rarely appreciated in its time, it is far more often that we lose our heads about something and twenty years (or two weeks) later look back and go, "What were we thinking?" This is evident, oddly enough, in offender #1, Madonna, herself. You call it "reinventing yourself," and I call it "damage control." Madonna has not positively contributed anything to music, society, England, Eva Peron, Kabbalah, Britney Spears, etc. since... since, freaking, A League of Their Own. I'll give Mrs. Richie two thumbs up for Dress You Up but then she'll owe me some for Hung Up, the video that goes with it, that song from Austin Powers and I also believe she owes Don McLean an very sincere apology. I wasn't even angry about the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame thing, I really wasn't, but you better know that I wasn't gonna let this one slide. And you probably haven't heard this Four Minutes song but did you happen to catch Promiscious, Give It To Me, The Way I Are... SexyBack? Same, same. I'm not sure why Lady Gap Tooth gets the credit for this slight against God, but she did and that puts her at 37 Top 10 hits and you with a slighty shabby 36. Did they count Paul Oakenfield's remix of Rubberneckin'? Somebody check on that.

And Mariah Carey. This chick has cranked out 18 Number 1's. And by "cranked out," I mean, she threw a couple of sexy trigger words into the same MadLib from two years ago, borrowed T-Pain's vocoder and tricked a whole bunch of old men and jr. high school boys into think she wanted their grubby mits all over her. While she is infinitely hotter than you were at thirty-eight and sang the heck out of Vision of Love, I'm pretty sure even the people with Billboard smell something rotten. Whispery songs about sex, songs about sex sung in ridiculous octaves (both directions), songs with vague food and sex references featuring ugly rappers you and I both know she's not having sex with rapping about how they're "tapping that." Not only that, but the whole time trying desperately to convince us that she's twenty-two instead of thirty-eight in these ridiculous videos that have about a two week shelf-life on TRL or 106 & Park and, oh! The Billboard Hot 100. Also, the movie Glitter.

And apparently this is no joke, Mr. P. People on the news are saying this stuff with straight faces. "Mariah is bigger than Elvis." "The Queen of Pop takes down The King of Rock N Roll." They're suggesting that one day me and a shuttle bus full of other eighty-year olds will be touring her homestead one day. Or like, freaking, Madonna Ciccone BLVDs in every urban metropolis. I'm okay with people impersonating Madonna and Mariah at gay pride parades, but I don't think this fragile soul could stand up to it in Vegas or... like, Branson. And I imagine that you're none too happy about it, either.

Which is why I'm earnestly requesting a Return of the King. Just one two-and-a-half minute ballad will put those foul heifers in their places and (I can only hope) shut them up for good. These women are brazen and shameless and a reproach upon my generation, because I know it's not thirty-eight year olds downloading this non-sense. C'mon, Elvis! You didn't blow your cover when your only (only? I'm just assuming) daughter married that white lady, but if you're going to exact your revenge, do it now! It can only get worse.

Seriously,
Kayla

P.S. If John and George are around, please forward this letter to them, as Ms. Carey is only three MadLibs and a drum machine away from taking The Beatles.

Dear Ticketmaster.com,

I was pre-ordering my STEVE MILLER BAND (!!!) tickets on your website today and noticed that the words at my "security check" log-in were "president fatality."

Uh... any reason for that?

Just wondering,
Kayla.

Dear High School Crush,

First of all, let me preface this letter by saying: OMG! (Please read that Alicia Silverstone in Clueless style, if, by chance you remember that movie. And why wouldn't you? It was genius.) Okay, OMG! I saw you at Chipotle with some other girl from High School (who I was actually friends with in the 8th grade but we're too cool to speak to each other now) and you look HORRIBLE. I mean, you look the same, which is kind of a compliment so... you know, you're welcome, but gosh! what was I thinking back then?

Okay, I'll tell you exactly what I was thinking. When I was sixteen, I was really into obscurity. I mean like, the weirder the better. I didn't want to listen to any band that played on the radio or watch the movie Titanic (even though there was nothing wrong with it... I saw it some time later,) or vote in the student council elections or do anything else that more than three people were doing. I would purposely search out the most indie-st of indie bands and hurry up and buy their t-shirt and wear it to school before anyone else could ask me if I had their CD. It was my thing. And I was so into you because you were pretty obscure yourself. And I know that everybody had a crush on you, too but you acted like you couldn't give a piss and that was totally righteous to me. I mean, did you brush your hair one time during those four years? Just wondering, you know, because.. it didn't ever look like it. And the suitcase you carried around? A suitcase! instead of a Jansport backpack. What an intrepid idea.

So, okay, I'll admit that it was preeeeeeettttty silly of me to write you that poem for your graduation. Wait. Scratch that. It was pretty awesome of me to write you a poem for your graduation, I just wish the poem would have been better. I was only a sophomore and I was getting just used to my impressive vocabulary so I had to use like, every four-syllable word I could think of. Sorry. Further to my defense, Suzanne made me give you the poem otherwise she was gonna tell you that I spent all of first hour writing it and I just decided that it would better for me to flex nuts and hand it to you then to hide from anyone who knew you after she told you about my raging two-year crush that I spent so much time trying to conceal. (Because, you know... I needed to be obscure.)

But none of that really matters some four years later when I see you at the Chipotle with What's Her Face and you're eating what is most certainly a CARNITAS BURRITO. A.) Shouldn't you be a vegetarian, or something? I thought that all poets/writers/musicians/artists were. B.) You could have made a better choice on your shirt. Like, remember in the Spring of 2001 when I saw you in the hallway and you were wearing a shirt that you had written "SMASH CAPITALISM" on with a Sharpie? I'm pretty sure that pearl snap button down you're sporting is from The Gap. Not that I have anything against The Gap, it's just that I'm certain that YOU did. C.) What are you still doing in town? Shouldn't you be abroad, taking lovers and writing memoirs? I had much bigger plans for you, High School Crush, I really did.

(And the biggest cake-taker of all cake-taking things is the perverted messages you leave my friends on Facebook. Hello. Have you ever heard of a text message? It is the preferred method of communication for booty-calls.)

But anyway, the point of this letter isn't to scathe, I just wanted to know if I could have my poem back, please? (I know you probably have it wedged in your yearbook.) You see, I wrote that poem for someone too obscure for a fast food chain, no matter how noble the attempt of said fast food chain at an edgy aesthetic. I wrote that poem for someone who would one day fall in love with me because I alone knew the lyrics to the Elvis Costello song he had just forgotten. I spent the entire first period (during finals week, mind you) writing an embarrassing, exposing poem for someone who wrote columns in the school newspaper that inspired me to get a tattoo, to ask out that boy who was in my American History class freshman year of college, to perform that ridiculous rap song with Suzanne at the Winter Workshop junior year. I wrote that poem for someone who reminded me of what I imagine Paul Rudd is like in real life, should I have the great fortune to meet him. Not for some el duderino at Chipotle four years later that I would have walked by and not even noticed had it not been for me recognizing ol'What's Her Face from 8th grade Communications class.

I don't really remember too much of the poem... I know it started with some confession about how I loved Fridays because it meant that I got to read your column in the paper, but I'm pretty sure it was better than I credit it. Acutally, now that I think of it, it was probably pretty darn good considering all that time I spent reading obscure poets and essayists. (Don't worry about the spelling of that last word, I already wikipedia'd it. I also wikipedia'd "wikipedia'd" and it turns out that it's not a word, much to my disgruntlement. Four-syllable word!) Anyway, just give it back and I'll hold on to it, just in case Paul Rudd ever decides to visit his hometown and I run into HIM at the Chipotle on 87th street.

Please and thank you,
Kayla

Dear Co-Worker,

I think that it goes without saying that I am not the "ladiest" of ladies. And I'm sure that you've got this all figured out (as dense as you are) already, even though we've only known each other for something like seven weeks. I mean, seriously, I wore an oversized, blue Old Navy sweatshirt to work today which is only different from the sweatshirt I wore to work on Thursday in that the other one was grey. I get that I'm no Carrie Bradshaw or even a Miranda Hobbes so please don't read this letter as though it were the words of a polished, pencil skirt, Cosmopolitan magazine editor, or even subscriber. We're not fooling anybody here, right?

That being said, here's a tip for you to take with a grain of or the entire cardboard cylinder of Epson salt: If you have to tilt your head back until your nose is pointing towards the ceiling to insert whatever snack it is you're eating at a ridiculously rapid pace, you've grossly misunderstood the concept of a bite-sized portion.

Hold on, don't start walking away yet. We both know I didn't get this wonderfully curvaceous physique from *not* knocking down towers of thin mint cookies at a time, so please understand that I probably appreciate all aspects of the eating process as much as you do, although definitely not as noisily or offensively, but whatever. The point is, well, as hard as this is for me to say, you're noisy and offensive. You're a noisy and offensive desk eater and seven weeks is quite enough!

I'm probably a little sensitive, I know. Like, it's probably unreasonable of me to think you inconsiderate for picking the loudest snacks ever. Not just regular crackers, but RICE crackers. Nice touch, because wheat crackers wouldn't have been loud enough. And who doesn't love pistacchios? I know... they're great. But what's even greater is the promising talent you show for cracking them open with your teeth as loudly as you do. I understand that mastication is not generally a silent activity and that my toleration of the sound(s) it creates is probably lower than most, so... you know, whatever. But did you, indeed, have to buy the LARGEST BAG of said noisy foods you could find? Or was that just the largest bag you could fit under/on your desk? (P.S. Thanks for bringing in the Family sized bag of Ruffles and not sharing with ANYONE.)

In case this little memo has been to passive-aggressive for your radar, let me put it to you in a different manner: Would you please stop making so much freaking noise eating? It's bad enough I have to listen to your stupid comments that come right off a NASCAR bumper sticker. You sound like da'gum Dale Gribbel from King of the Hill... except YOU'RE A LADY so I'm sure you can figure out how big of a compliment that ISN'T. Have some courtesy. Try smaller handfuls at a broader pace. I shouldn't feel like a machine gun has just deployed when you're only cracking sunflower seeds. On the back of that HUMUNGOUS bag of chips you will find something that says NUTRITIONAL FACTS. In large print (I'm only assuming it's large print, because the bag is the size of a banner) there is something that says SERVING SUGGESTION. Start from there. Take a break in the middle of the day or something; it would probably help my tolerance level if you didn't go on chewing the entire eight hours we're here. It may also keep you from a dangerous choking incident, which, you know, has other positive consequence that are more of your benefit than mine.

After we get this snacking like a lady thing down, perhaps we can move on to the reasons why prefacing all of your statements with "honestly and truly" makes me question your sincerity all the more.

Honestly and truly,
Kayla.