I SWEAR I DON’T CARE

DEAR MERCURY—Okay, that does it. Your news is
laughable, you pander to the basest, cheapest cross-section of the
local population, and I don’t even care enough to list a third element
of your multi-faceted worthlessness. Imagine my surprise to find big
sappy apologies all over the last issue to Thomas Beatie [Letters and
One Day at a Time, April 17]. I don’t care enough about you or your
worthless magazine to tell you why you’re gutless and ball-less.

 Nathan Daniels

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

DEAR MERCURY—RE: the letter from “Douglas” [Letters,
April 24]: Like you and me, Thomas Beatie has an innate sense of gender
identity, and a mental map of what his brain thinks his body should be.
Unlike you (I assume), Beatie and I have bodies whose topography is at
odds with our self-knowledge. Like you and me, Beatie dresses and acts
so as to reinforce his internal identity: That’s gender presentation,
and everyone does it (usually without thinking much about it). Unlike
you (I assume), Beatie and I have also had to take certain steps to
buttress our gender presentations by altering our secondary sex
characteristics. The only difference between Beatie or me and the next
guy on the street is that it’s taken a little more effort for the likes
of us to make our presentation match our identities. When you meet a
new person, you observe their gender presentation and categorize them
as a man or a woman accordingly. You don’t categorize them by looking
at their penis, at their vagina, at their chromosomes, or by asking
them to prove their ability or lack of ability to reproduce, or the
lack thereof. I assure you that our masculinity does not in any way
diminish yours. Only you can do that.

Tim Chevalier

CITIZEN IDIOT

DEAR MERCURY—Hey, that citizen is an absolute idiot
[“Turning the Tables,” News, April 17, regarding a citizen citing a
police officer for a parking infraction]. So what if the officer was
parked in a no-parking zone getting his lunch? What happens if while
he’s inside, a serious emergency call is dispatched and he has to
respond immediately? That officer is still on duty even when he’s
eating his lunch. I hope that citizen never needs a police officer in a
hurry.

Sergeant45

TRAIPSING OUR PAGES

OH MERCURY—How I love thee, let me count the ways…
(1) When you’re offensive, you crack my ass up. (2) When you offend
others, you crack my ass up. (3) Every single one of your writers,
articles, comics, and so on crack my ass up. I don’t know how many more
cracks could possibly be on my ass but please, please keep offending me
and all the other readers that dare traipse the pages of the best
fucking weekly we’ll ever see!

Nashyra Tuininga

SUCK ‘EM & SHUT IT

DEAR MERC—[To I, Anonymous, “Cracking the Window Whip,”
April 24] Sorry, but when you begin your request to a bunch of people
AFTER you’ve used an array of adjectives that have nothing to do with
their personality in general (fat, ugly, smelly, I mean Christ, you’re
more intolerant of trivial attributes than the KKK), I can only think
of one equally unhelpful suggestion: Suck my balls and shut the fuck
up.

Doug Young

JUNKIE GEOGRAPHY

DEAR MERCURY—As a longstanding member of Portland’s
drug abuse subculture, I would like to point out the very basic and
egregious flaw in the title of [Gus Van Sant’s] recent movie
Paranoid Park. First of all, what is referred to as “Paranoid
Park” is actually just the Burnside Skatepark, and has no commonly used
nickname at all, as the movie would lead you to believe. Secondly, as
anyone who has ever bought drugs on the street in downtown Portland
would know, the actual spot known as Paranoid Park is O’Bryant Square.
The reason for this is that it is located across the street from a
police sub-station, and is the site for much of the methamphetamine and
heroin traffic in Southwest. I would think a Portlander so in touch
with the youthful masses of PDX, such as Van Sant, would know this, but
then again maybe it’s just bullshi… I mean, poetic license.

 Vik, former street junkie

AND THEY SAY DRUGS make you stupid! Congratulations to Vik on
kicking the smack and winning this week’s Mercury letter prize.
He gets two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater and lunch at No Fish! Go
Fish!, where only the fish are paranoid. (And how can you blame them?
That name is disorienting.)