(posted by assorted and AMG )

Dear New Yorker:

Thanks for sending us your magazine! Gosh it is terrific, and we both love reading it and quoting from it to each other. Thank you sooo much for sending your magazine to our home address on a regular basis.

We’re just a teensy bit concerned about the other things that have begun to be sent to our home on a regular basis.

Since our subscription has begun, we’ve received poignant and well-crafted offers from other publications such as Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, some art magazine that we think is named after a river or something, and, our personal favorite so far, MoMA.

Wow! We ARE popular!

Thing is, and what we find so exceptionally charming and delightful about these offers is, we don’t actually have any money. We haven’t even paid you yet. We just subscribed and checked the “bill me later” box, and believe us, you can ask Con Ed what “bill me later” means at this house.

I’m a waitress. Mike fixes computers for rich people. Maybe he’s been to your house! We are afflicted with active minds but no ability to make money whatsoever.

This, we understand, is not a problem that afflicts your magazine. So, how do you make money? By selling your subscription list to other magazines. And, of course, museums. (And, dare we suggest, the upcoming Democratic presidential nominee?) We know that our name is being sold to these lists because no other mail comes to this house. Why? Because we’re on the run from every other entity that could possibly want money from us. As a few examples, consider the following: consumer creditors, state taxes, and, naturally, Sallie Mae.

While we appreciate your confidence in our ability to pay, we wonder: are there ulterior motives? We suspect that your business model is based on the sales of marketing lists and that your advertising rates can be raised on the basis of the number of subscribers to your magazine (whether they pay or not). With this in mind, we feel that our value as subscribers has indeed surpassed your subscription rate and actually is in danger of putting you in the red.

Not enough can be said about the contribution that your magazine has made to our household. Indeed, it would pain us greatly to feel the need to invoice you for any further solicitations. However, there have been four such offers in the past two months. And, as the latest solicitation is addressed to a misspelled surname, we can only conclude that future lists will contain increasingly erroneous information about this household (the most erroneous piece of information being, of course, our ability to afford any of these offers.)

Erroneous or not, apparently our name is valuable. As we have nothing else whatsoever, we offer our humble name and address in exchange for our continued magazine subscription service. Our phone numbers shall remain private.

Sincerely,

Mike O’Shea aka Osnea
A—– G—-

Cc: Harper’s