10th July 2003

May 31, 2008 2:39 PM

To Whom It May Concern: If you are reading this then I can only assume that you have removed the pond under which this note is buried...

For those of you who have not yet clicked on the first link, go click on the link. We'll wait here, but don't make us wait all day. I have a tuna casserole in the microwave.

...

For those too lazy to click on the link, a young woman named Vero has a friend named Simon. They live in the UK. Simon recently moved to a new place that had a pond. He didn't like the pond, so he emptied it out. At the bottom of the pond was a letter from the previous owner.

The makings of a cable movie? Probably not. Still, it made me smile. If it doesn't make you smile, I hope your head falls off. You snivelling pond destroyer. What I found curious was that only five years had transpired but the laminated letter is already difficult to read. Being under the water all that time was causing the ink to run. Like duh. Even laminated, didn't the original author anticipate that? The letter would not have survived more than a couple decades at most, so the original author probably expected the pond to be destroyed relatively soon after she had put it there. Otherwise she would have left a note in such a way as to survive the test of time better.

This begs the question: why do it in the first place, if you KNOW someone else will come along and destroy it? Are garden ponds in the UK the new sandcastles? Who was this person? Why did she make the pond? Why did she lose the pond? Why did she know as she was making the pond that she might lose it? If she loved the pond so much, why sell the property?

Please discuss, and no you can't have any tuna casserole.

posted by ZachsMind (92 comments total)

Your post is weird but that letter is hilarious.
posted by loiseau at 2:48 PM on May 31, 2008

I hope your head falls off.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 2:48 PM on May 31, 2008

Metafilter: I hope your head falls off.
posted by kbanas at 2:52 PM on May 31, 2008

I am now going to write a short version of that for everything I do.

If you are reading this, you must have eaten the sandwich that I left in the fridge. It took me a long time to make that sandwich. I hope it was tasty. And I hope your head falls off.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:53 PM on May 31, 2008 [2 favorites]

I HOPE YOU BEG YOUR QUESTION IN HELL!
posted by Krrrlson at 2:54 PM on May 31, 2008 [13 favorites]

If You Can Read This

You have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
I was
saving
for breakfast

They would
have been delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I hope
your head
falls off
posted by designbot at 2:56 PM on May 31, 2008 [102 favorites]

If you are looking at the second link in the fpp then I can only assume that you are signed-in to Yahoo.
posted by finite at 2:57 PM on May 31, 2008

(I hope Flickr's head falls off)
posted by finite at 2:57 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

This begs the question: why do it in the first place, if you KNOW someone else will come along and destroy it? Are garden ponds in the UK the new sandcastles?

Actually that begs the question: Did she actually think that the pond would be destroyed in just a few years, or did she think that the laminated letter would survive longer?
posted by delmoi at 2:58 PM on May 31, 2008

The letter would not have survived more than a couple decades at most, so the original author probably expected the pond to be destroyed relatively soon after she had put it there had no idea how to preserve a letter underneath a pond for any significant amount of time, and we're all just darned lucky it got dug up before it melted into nothing.
posted by cortex at 2:58 PM on May 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

As the posters before me have so eloquently shown, "I hope your head falls off" qualifies as one of the most useful phrases evar.
posted by WalterMitty at 3:02 PM on May 31, 2008

If you people don't learn what "begging the question" means, I hope your heads fall off.
posted by tenmuses at 3:03 PM on May 31, 2008 [11 favorites]

I think that he both trotted out the newer popular (and popularly reviled) usage of "begs-as-raises the question" and, prior to that, actually old-school begged the question, is kind of superlative, though, even as a freakish accident, and I'm not afraid to string commas together at length to say as much.
posted by cortex at 3:06 PM on May 31, 2008

Back in the day my friend and I earned extra money doing odd jobs -- building fences, repairing screendoors, painting -- and we made it our custom to hide messages in our handiwork. We called this game "future tag." We left our names, and the date, as one would expect, and something about current events, and finally something we thought was "clever" (the definition of fustian, say, or "Who's sorry now?" in big block letters) and might seem out of place or profound or funny to whomever happened to find it.

But we never hoped for anyone's head to fall off.
posted by notyou at 3:07 PM on May 31, 2008 [5 favorites]

I just got back from London where my host, quite a distinguished gentleman, spent a disproportionate amount of his life trying to prevent children from throwing stones into his garden pond, which might puncture the lining. And now this.

Well, now it's settled in my mind, my garden pond will be a foot thick epoxy concrete, generously laced with rebar, with a couple of metal fence posts driven down a few meters as pilings. I think I'll weld the rebar while I'm at it.

Damn impermanence.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:08 PM on May 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

Incidentally, does the batshitinsane tag refer to the letter-writer, the pond-destroyer or the blogger? I just think that everyone involved has a sense of humour.

As an aside, appropriate use of "batshitinsane" includes Bill O'Reilly, Birthday Celebrations for Hitler and Penis Theft Disease. A "I hope your head falls off" letter to the Destroyer of Ponds? Not so much.
posted by WalterMitty at 3:08 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

and might seem out of place or profound or funny to whomever happened to find it

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESURRECT POND
ON YOUR HEAD FALLS OFF
posted by cortex at 3:10 PM on May 31, 2008 [9 favorites]

Problems with this post:

1. Improper use of "begs the question" -- get it right, people

2. Yahoo/Flickr requires a login to see the full-res photo, which is the version linked, which breaks mefi posting guidelines [Flagged]

3. This post would be better with everything after the "..." omitted or confined to a comment. If people are "too lazy" to click the link, why would they bother reading your post?

Despite these issues, I hope ZachsMind remains atop Zach's shoulders.
posted by finite at 3:11 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

In response to TenMuses saying my use of the phrase begging the question is incorrect, I must point out that the word "gay" used to just mean happy. "Ho" was not always short for "whore." The word "pond" used to refer to a naturally occurring small body of water, and not holes in the ground commonly made by human hands. Times change. Language is a constantly evolving creature. And you, sir, I hope your head falls off.
posted by ZachsMind at 3:14 PM on May 31, 2008 [10 favorites]

Well, now it's settled in my mind, my garden pond will be a foot thick epoxy concrete, generously laced with rebar, with a couple of metal fence posts driven down a few meters as pilings. I think I'll weld the rebar while I'm at it.

This reminds me of a story my father told me of an acquaintance of his who was an often drunk college dean. This dean had, once before, hit and destroyed his neighbor's mailbox coming home from a party. The neighbor, an enterprising gentleman, had a new mailbox post fashioned out of a chunk of salvaged railroad track welded to a buried cog from a dragline . Indeed, the next time his acquaintance hit the mailbox, several years later, it ripped the engine out of his new Cadillac.
posted by mrmojoflying at 3:16 PM on May 31, 2008 [8 favorites]

I changed the link to the main flickr photo page so as to prevent unnecessary additional falling off of heads.
posted by cortex at 3:20 PM on May 31, 2008

It's been a while since I've heard anyone use the word "miffed". The note was pleasing.

... Definitely leaving spiteful letters preserved in imaginative places the next time I and a property part ways. Perhaps inventing childhood associations, maybe with a nice passive-aggressive slant "Oh, you decided against these paving stones did you? Hm. Well, it is your place now isn't it? (sigh)".

Though actually, the idea of inflicting your associations with a place on someone else (albeit at a distance) is somehow exhausting.
posted by eponymouse at 3:20 PM on May 31, 2008

That musta been a kickass looking mailbox.
posted by ZachsMind at 3:20 PM on May 31, 2008

Uhm... Thanks, Cortex. =)

...there was something wrong with the link? And yes I am logged into Yahoo. Why you ask?
posted by ZachsMind at 3:24 PM on May 31, 2008

If You Can Read This

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE Success!
It's hard to overstate
My satisfaction.

...

P.S.
I hope your head falls off
And I'm still alive...
posted by mystyk at 3:27 PM on May 31, 2008 [4 favorites]

In response to Zachsmind; your examples are poor. Each refers to broad acceptance of slang terms into general usage. The incorrect usage of begging the question is more akin to spelling the word lose as loose. It highlights no cultural evolution, merely misuse - regardless of the apologiees of descriptive linguists.

If only we could bury these words/phrases under a pond as well - maybe we could at least reclaim them at a future date when their reexposure might highlight the significance of their loss.
posted by tenmuses at 3:30 PM on May 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

I still can't read the damn letter. Is it worth it for somebody to transcribe it?
posted by yhbc at 3:34 PM on May 31, 2008

Yet more evidence on why not to have children.*

* Are children these days so delicate? In the house we lived in from about my age five until eight or nine there was a several-acre pond and swamp in the backyard. I can't recall any of my friends drowning in it. Kids even skated on it in the winter.
posted by maxwelton at 3:34 PM on May 31, 2008

If I found a letter like that in my pond, I'd be really pissed off. It's incredibly passive aggressive. Someone's spent enough time to sit down and compose, type, laminate and bury this - just to insult the person undoing their 'work'.

As if their decisions and effort are superior and worth more than whoever came along afterwards. This person cost Simon time and effort to get rid of something dangerous to his children, and he gets attacked because they can't possibly imagine anyone having a valid reason to undo their lack of foresight. As if some shitty garden pond was the most important gift to ecology and garden design the world has known.

I don't find it funny. I find it creepy and arrogant.
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:34 PM on May 31, 2008

Erm... doubts do surface: was the erroneous "it's" already so common (in the U.K.) in 2003 - "it's subsequent filling"? Beyond that: if this was under the pond lining (did i read that correctly?), are the remarks about the effort to fill and stock the pond to be read as putative, too?
posted by progosk at 3:37 PM on May 31, 2008

yhbc (I think this is accurate):

"10th july 2003

To whom it may concern

If you are reading this then I can only assume that you have removed the pond under which this note is buried.

Of course, as I am not around at the moment, I am not in a position to comment on why you may have chosen to remove the pond and, it is fair to say, that there could be any number of reasons for doing so. I will not try to list those potential reasons right now but there could be quite a lot them. One of the more bizarre reasons could be that the removal of the pond was the direct result of a bite on the ankle from a Wildebeast, but I shall not speculate.

Anyway, I would like you to be aware that the digging of this pond and it's subsequent filling with water and stocking with fish and aquatic plants took a considerable amount of personal effort. It's not just the digging of the hole you know (although clearly that is a major part), but also the consideration that had to be given to the siting of the pond, its shape and size, its location close to a convenient electricty supply, etc etc etc.

I have to admit that I am a bit miffed about all this. You have just destroyed (yes, I know this is a strong word to use but there are principles involved here) something that took me a long time to do. If I came along and destroyed something that it had taken a long time for you to do then I think you would be a bit miffed as well, so just think of that.

Enough of this. Just get on with what it is you think you are doing, you sniveling pond destroyer.

Oh, and by the way. I hope your head falls off."
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:44 PM on May 31, 2008 [4 favorites]

People who misuse apostrophes don't deserve to have their ponds remain for long periods of time.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:44 PM on May 31, 2008 [2 favorites]

Flagged as annoying.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:52 PM on May 31, 2008

Damn. The misspelling of electricity is my fault, not theirs, and it should be 'just think on that'. I fail at transcribing.
posted by ArkhanJG at 3:56 PM on May 31, 2008

Found inside my neck:

If you are reading this note, then my head has fallen off.
posted by DU at 3:59 PM on May 31, 2008 [21 favorites]

I think I am going to start calling people "sniveling pond destroyers" when they annoy me.

I like finding things like this when I am working on houses. When I spent way too many hours tearing down wallpaper that had been painted over a few hundred times in one of my apartments, I found a note from the man who designed and hung the wallpaper, which I thought was pretty cool. It makes the work go faster. I've never stuck newspapers in walls or anything like that, but I really should start doing it because I like finding it.
posted by ugf at 3:59 PM on May 31, 2008

The real problem is that we can't send messages back in time to the people who built the bloody things. Some friends of mine might have sent one to the effect of

Why are you building this hideous concrete pond? It's an eyesore in your backyard. Furthermore, why are you engineering it to survive a nuclear blast as well as the ten thousand years that intervene between the blast and the rise of a new civilization? The next owners are going to rip it out you know, so just lay down some plastic sheeting instead of pouring concrete a foot thick and reinforced heavily with re-bar and wire mesh. Now we're going to have to rent a jackhammer just to get rid of this stupid pond of yours, because it will be impervious to sledge and breaker bar. I hope your heads fall off.

posted by agentofselection at 4:01 PM on May 31, 2008

Now I give you fair warning, having dug out this pond either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time.

This thread is now the first hit if you google "I hope your head falls off". Go TEAM!
posted by eponymouse at 4:12 PM on May 31, 2008

Ha ha bonk.
posted by jack_mo at 4:16 PM on May 31, 2008 [2 favorites]

Whoa, Arkhan. Take some vitamins or drink some orange juice or something. I think you left your sense of humor in bed this morning.

And I have to come down on the side of Tenmuses on the begs-the-question debate. Lingual evolution is different than lingual erosion. Using the term "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" achieves nothing other than to destroy the original meaning of begs the question.

And I hope your head falls off. Mostly to keep us on top of Google, not out of any particular antipathy toward whoever the antecedent of "your" might be.
posted by Caduceus at 4:20 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

Erm... doubts do surface: was the erroneous "it's" already so common (in the U.K.) in 2003 - "it's subsequent filling"? Beyond that: if this was under the pond lining (did i read that correctly?), are the remarks about the effort to fill and stock the pond to be read as putative, too?

- I wouldn't be shocked if it turned out to have been ginned up as a prank.
- I'm not shocked by the idea that a genuine passive-aggressive letter like this could be written in advance by someone with a modicum of planning and anticipatory skills, though, so there's nothing too weird about the description of at-time-of-writing-yet-unperformed work steps as having been accomplished at the time-of-reading juncture.
- I would be manifestly shocked to discover any compelling evidence that possessive it's was remotely new, to the U.K. or elsewhere, in 2003. Why would it be new?

Also, you damn kids get your heads fall off my lawn.
posted by cortex at 4:20 PM on May 31, 2008

If you can read this

Click the mustard yellow plus sign which is below and to the right of this text

I hope your head falls off
posted by fire&wings at 4:22 PM on May 31, 2008 [12 favorites]

ps - Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

pps - if your head does fall off, you will be one of the fortunate ones

ppps - the rock garden on the north side of the house - do not dig that up, assuming you are allowed time to do something that foolish

"Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread."

pppps - i hear something coming - i pray to got that my head would fal
posted by pyramid termite at 4:25 PM on May 31, 2008 [5 favorites]

gaddamn designbot, that was the first thing I thought of heading into the comments. Awesome work there.

Also: if you are reading this you may have come to delete this comment. Why you want to delete this comment I can only speculate but it took me a lot of work to write. I hope your head falls off.
posted by GuyZero at 4:31 PM on May 31, 2008

Caduceus: You mean humour, you damn yank. I hope your head fall off!

Sorry if I shat in anyone's cornflakes. I just know too many prissy passive-aggressive middle englanders with a stick up their arse who would indeed write something like that seriously, and mean it, up to and including writing and laminating in advance of actually filling in the pond. Without actually, you know, wanting to cause a conflict. Much.

that said - wildebeast. Who knows?
posted by ArkhanJG at 4:36 PM on May 31, 2008

Sorry, 'begs the question' used incorrectly, note is invalid.
posted by fixedgear at 4:39 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

The interesting question is, why does everyone assume the person who made the note and laminated it was a woman? Did I miss a pronoun somewhere along the way?
posted by SassHat at 4:44 PM on May 31, 2008

I didn't assume the writer was a woman, for what it's worth; I think ZachsMind did when writing the post and it was picked up thereon. Odd.
posted by eponymouse at 4:57 PM on May 31, 2008

I assumed it was a man, SassHat.
posted by maxwelton at 5:00 PM on May 31, 2008

This post would be better with everything after the "..." omitted or confined to a comment. If people are "too lazy" to click the link, why would they bother reading your post?

The exhortation to read the link was unusual and had better not become standard behaviour.

As a once-off, it was a helluva great way of introducing the post and really made it stand out from the crowd. I'm pleased that Zachsmind wrote it as he did... this once.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:05 PM on May 31, 2008

They should go over the hole with cadaver sniffing dogs before filling it in.

Just sayin'.
posted by localroger at 5:06 PM on May 31, 2008

As if their decisions and effort are superior and worth more than whoever came along afterwards.

Google ["off my lawn" site:metafilter.com]
Results 1 - 10 of about 654 from metafilter.com for "off my lawn". (0.23 seconds)


Google ["brotherhood of man" site:metafilter.com]
Results 1 - 10 of about 21 from metafilter.com for "brotherhood of man". (0.37 seconds)

For better or worse, I dare say you've pretty much defined the human condition.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:12 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

On a more positive note, when remodeling our bathroom, we found a 2x4 with a handwritten note telling us when it was remodeled (the year I was born, on my mother's birthday), and the name of the original builder of the house (built by a German-American in the year my mother was born, 1926). It's a Denver brick bungalow. It was a nice piece to show to a pleasant traveler who wanted to revisit the house in which he grew up.

And the carpenter did not threaten mystical decapitation for anyone who dared to remodel his remodeling fifty years later.
posted by kozad at 5:49 PM on May 31, 2008

Get your brotherhood of man off my lawn.
posted by nevercalm at 6:02 PM on May 31, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wouldn't the world be a better place if all the people who replace something beautiful with something ugly had their heads fall off (and not those who replace something ugly with something beautiful)?

There's a local election next week where I live, and I swear, half the candidates for County Supervisor would be in serious danger of head loss.
posted by wendell at 6:22 PM on May 31, 2008

When filling in the hole in the garden, they should bury a laminated note that starts, "So you've decided to put in a pond, have you?"
posted by steef at 6:24 PM on May 31, 2008 [15 favorites]

Last week my buddy and I put a new floor in my house. Underneath it, in duct tape, we wrote BOOBIES in two foot high letters. Once I have all the baseboards and thresholds in I'll show a picture of it to my wife.
posted by popechunk at 7:24 PM on May 31, 2008 [5 favorites]

Dear AskMe, after reading a certain post on your site, my head fell off. How do I cancel the google in order to fix it?
posted by blue_beetle at 7:32 PM on May 31, 2008

The neighbor, an enterprising gentleman, had a new mailbox post fashioned out of a chunk of salvaged railroad track welded to a buried cog from a dragline .

My friend's parents did that.

See, in the countryside outside of Toronto, bored kids like to play Mailbox Golf. That's where you drive along at high speed late at night, probably drunk, with an aluminium baseball bat.

Then you hit mailboxes with the bat. Fun for everyone.

Except my friend's dad, who was sick and tired of replacing his mailbox several times a year. So he rebuilt it, with a 4" diameter steel pipe as the post, going right up into the actual mailbox itself. Then he waited. Spiderlike.

Sure enough, a summer night rolls along, he hears a car zipping down the road outside, then a godawful CLANG and something along the lines of "FUCK FUCK OW GODDAMN FUCK" and tires speeding off. His mailbox was never touched again.

Cruel, yeah.

More on-topic: when I was a kid, my stepdad built me (and my little sister) a sort of fort in the crawlspace at the back of the basement, under the mudroom--no tree in the backyard for a treehouse, that came one move later. It had windows! And I seem to recall writing messages on the walls inside. I wonder if whoever has subsequently lived in the house ever found them, or any of the random odds and ends I'm sure I must have left in there, and what they thought if they did.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 12:21 AM on June 1, 2008

I'm sad the pond was destroyed.

But also excited, because it was in Over, Cambridgeshire. They like water there - in 1670, they asked permission to reflood their fens/marshes, because they weren't wet enough.
posted by jb at 12:41 AM on June 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Last week my buddy and I put a new floor in my house. Underneath it, in duct tape, we wrote BOOBIES in two foot high letters. Once I have all the baseboards and thresholds in I'll show a picture of it to my wife.

Funny! And don't worry, dating is much easier for men after divorce. As the years go by, the odds seem to shift in our favor. Here was my gag -- which is now in my standup act. When my ex expressed anxiety over gaining weight and whether she was still attractive, I said "Hell, I'd do ya. (pause) Couple a beers, maybe. What?! I'm just kidding, honey!"
posted by msalt at 12:50 AM on June 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

Hey designbot, that might just be my favorite poem (at least in the original, that is).

As to the letter at hand, it reminds me of a friend of mine who, upon entering college, was asked to write a letter to himself which would be delivered 4 years in the future at graduation. He immediately removed all of the money from his wallet and put it in the envelope. So now, when the graduates get their letters, everyone else will have mere words and he'll have five(ish) bucks!

Damn, wish I'd thought to do that.
posted by pwicks at 1:34 AM on June 1, 2008

Are garden ponds in the UK the new sandcastles?

2003. Lemme see. Wasn't that the point at which Ground Force was at the height of its popularity? When a certain braless icon was installing a different 'water feature' on prime time TV in someone's garden on a weekly basis?

I dunno about the new sandcastles, but in 2003 gardening was definitely the new black, and a water feature was de rigeur -- at least for the home-improving, equity-building middle classes of Middle England.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:15 AM on June 1, 2008

Funny! And don't worry, dating is much easier for men after divorce. As the years go by, the odds seem to shift in our favor. Here was my gag -- which is now in my standup act. When my ex expressed anxiety over gaining weight and whether she was still attractive, I said "Hell, I'd do ya. (pause) Couple a beers, maybe. What?! I'm just kidding, honey!"

Wow. So is that stick up your butt made of salvaged railroad track or what?
posted by nasreddin at 4:31 AM on June 1, 2008

My head just fell off.
posted by lipsum at 5:15 AM on June 1, 2008

This reminds me why I can't ever do stand up comedy. I can't come up with anything half that good.

...I didn't mean that as a compliment, msalt.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:20 AM on June 1, 2008

Back when I used to do tile work, I went in one morning to a house that was under construction to find someone had written "WE FUCKED HERE" in caulk the night before.
posted by BeerFilter at 6:06 AM on June 1, 2008

BeerFilter: Ha! I used to do tile too, for my dad when I was growing up.

One day, we were doing a bathroom at the top of a three story house. Huge frickin house. Huge frickin bathroom. After we (I) carried all the mud up for the wetbed, I pulled up a sheet of wire and wrote underneath: "DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING LONG IT TOOK ME TO LUG THIS SHIT UP HERE? WHAT AN ASSHOLE!"

So, one day, when someone decides to break through the tile, quikset, an inch of wetbed and the wire they are going to feel like a jerk.
posted by Loto at 7:11 AM on June 1, 2008

I just broke through some tile, quikset, about an inch of wetbed and found some wires.
I feel like such a jerk.
posted by Dizzy at 7:38 AM on June 1, 2008

msalt won't be quitting his day job any time soon...
posted by five fresh fish at 8:56 AM on June 1, 2008

Re: snark about my joke

It's a very consistent bit in clubs. Of course it has to do with the persona I'm projecting onstage, the narrative of the failed marriage, the humor of saying the obviously least appropriate thing possible, etc. In real life, you would have to know my ex and our relationship, but jokes like that were the least of the problems of the marriage. More of a symptom of the lack of intimacy and simmering resentments, maybe.

is that stick up your butt made of salvaged railroad track or what?
???
posted by msalt at 9:16 AM on June 1, 2008

Hey, I favorited your comment MSalt. Don't take the criticism so literally. *smirk*

Oh. And I hope your head falls off.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:59 AM on June 1, 2008

...I mean heck. At least you get up there. I had an opportunity once and I declined. I'm a coward. I have no 'persona' on stage, cuz I ain't never made it to the brick wall. So you could stink worse than I imagine you do, and you're still better than me. =P

I did mean that one as a compliment. I'm a complicated guy. *ducking*
posted by ZachsMind at 10:04 AM on June 1, 2008

It's so odd to me how much people fear stages in general and doing standup in particular. I had a GI fresh back from Iraq tell me how brave I was to go onstage. WTF?!? Oh yeah, if I'm not totally on it, some drunk I don't know won't laugh at my joke. That takes some big brass balls right there.
posted by msalt at 12:22 PM on June 1, 2008

???

Sorry, I misread your comment. I thought you were trying to say "BOYZONE!!!" Pre-coffee, hung over, you know.
posted by nasreddin at 1:04 PM on June 1, 2008

For some reaon the letter reminds me of this children's mini story by Tolstoy:

Mother had bought a pound of plums, washed them, and left them on a big plate in the center of the table. They were for dinner.

Little Vanya had never tasted plums in all his life and was very curious. First he sniffed the fruit, wrinkled his nose at the pleasing smell, and decided he liked them very much. Dinnertime was still a long way off and Vanya could not wait.

As soon as he was alone in the dining room, he seized a big plum and ate it quickly.

When dinnertime came, Mother counted the plums and noticed that one was missing. She informed Father.

The whole family sat around the table to eat and in the course of the meal, Father asked, ''Now then, children, have any of you eaten a plum?''

Each child answered in turn: ''No.''

But Vanya turned as red as a lobster.

Then Father said, ''It is wrong to steal a plum; but that's not all. You see, plums have stones and if you swallow a stone you'll die. That's what really bothers me.''
posted by Devils Slide at 4:04 PM on June 1, 2008 [1 favorite]

awesome note, I wish I knew this guy.
posted by arnicae at 5:19 PM on June 1, 2008

Sorry, I misread your comment. I thought you were trying to say "BOYZONE!!!" Pre-coffee, hung over, you know.

Nah, I really think it's funny -- just projecting consequences from my failed marriage. It would have TOTALLY chapped my ex's hide to know that a joke like that was down below her feet, every day, and there was nothing she could do about it.
posted by msalt at 7:01 PM on June 1, 2008

Get your lawn off my brotherhood of man!
posted by WalterMitty at 7:16 AM on June 2, 2008

What an odd phrase. Perhaps the letter writer has a monthly cron job that searches google for "i hope your head falls off." In a few days someone will be pleasantly surprised.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:51 AM on June 2, 2008

An angry letter? Way too passive-aggressive for my tastes. If anyone ever digs up the ponds I made, depending on the location, they'll be left with either a vampire crypt, a hellmouth, an angry killbot, a home-made fusion device (unshielded), or if they are very, very unlucky, a copy of my memoirs.

I am a heartless bastard that way.
posted by quin at 8:57 AM on June 2, 2008

This post is two days old and ihopeyourheadfallsoff.com is STILL available? Slackers.
posted by maudlin at 9:22 AM on June 2, 2008

Was this letter written by Douglas Adams?! it sure reads like it, especially the wildebeest line, the word 'miffed' and the last line.
posted by JRGould at 12:27 PM on June 2, 2008

Hey guys, what's going... WOAH.

*quietly fills a wheelbarrow full of heads, sneaks off*
posted by loquacious at 2:41 PM on June 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

When I stripped the wallpaper from my former (1940s bungalow), I found drawings by the plasterers and a sarcastic note adding up [so-and-so's] pay for the week with an "equals" sign pointing to his wife's name... and next to that "HA HA HA! Poor [so-and-so]!"

It was pretty awesome. I wish I could find the photos.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:55 PM on June 2, 2008

To be fair, it reads like a poor imitation of Douglas Adams. Like something I'd write were I trying to come across all Douglas Adamsish.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:42 PM on June 2, 2008

Knew a guy who ripped off 40 year old wallpaper and found a note on the wall with the date and "Never again!" under it.

I lived in a house for 10 years and always wondered why there were very narrow but very long straight creases randomly in the drywall. When we moved out and got the appliances away from the wall, it said Fuck in drywall mud in letters 6 feet high.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 7:11 AM on June 3, 2008

Not to mention Douglas Adams was dead two years when that note was written.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:14 AM on June 3, 2008

3. This post would be better with everything after the "..." omitted or confined to a comment.

Dude, it's called "More Inside" for a reason. A lot of times I don't want to go off to the links. So I liked the summary, and it made me want to click the link.

I hope your head falls offf.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:16 AM on June 3, 2008

Last week my buddy and I put a new floor in my house. Underneath it, in duct tape, we wrote BOOBIES in two foot high letters. Once I have all the baseboards and thresholds in I'll show a picture of it to my wife.

A friend of mine from college one summer break got a job working for a carpet laying company back in his home town, Baton Rouge. His company got the contract to do the new carpet for the new Family Ministry Church home of the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart. Apparently the job was a bitch. Hot, grueling, and to top it off, the client was constantly breathing down their necks, complaining about nothing causing delays and making the crew redo things at a moment's notice. Before the last rolls were to go down on the stage, the crew decided to lay down a little tribute. They left a large "satanic" pentagram and other "devil" symbols before rolling out the carpets. My friend went back to school and thought nothing of it, until the next spring when Satan forced Rev. Swaggart to do bad bad things and give a tearful confession and repentance on the very spot they'd left the symbols.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:40 AM on June 3, 2008 [5 favorites]

Pollomacho, that is supremely awesome.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 1:19 PM on June 3, 2008

Finally a way to get the correct answer to mammary16's question. Just a few more to get a vatful.

I hope all your heads fall off and liquefy.
posted by gentilknight at 9:12 AM on June 4, 2008