Pretty Lady Is Irate

James Lileks, shocking as it may seem, needs your help.

My column will end a week from this Friday. (There’s a series of pieces I can’t wait to write.) After that, it's just-the-facts-ma'am - and I'll no longer be telecommuting, either. This means I will start burning my share of hydrocarbons like a good American. Hell, I may leave the vehicle running all day outside the building just to make up for lost time. Maybe I will put a green roof on the car to balance things out. Some turf, some switchgrass. It's murder on the paint but we all must do our part.

Would it matter if you contacted the paper? It very well might. Here's the reader's rep's page.

My dear Star Tribune Reader Representative, whoever you may be:

I shall be brief. What on earth does the Star Tribune think it is doing, canning James Lileks? Are you all fools? Do you not understand that the columns of James Lileks are the one thing that may, possibly, in the misty reaches of time, earn the Star Tribune a place in the History of Journalism? That the rest of your paper is worthless, foolish, forgettable garbage in comparison with James Lileks' mastery of the wry, rambling, sardonic, neurotic, self-referential English Language?

And you would THROW THIS AWAY? Throw this away in favor of forcing this quixotic genius of a man to churn out bland, factual, banal journalistic prose like the rest of your Star Tribune drudges?

Let me tell you something. James Lileks will transcend this insane sabotage on the part of envious and shortsighted editors, oh yes, he will. It is not James Lileks I am worried about. It is you, and your karma, and your immortal soul. You are besmirching your characters to an extreme degree, by attempting to smother the incandescent glow of James Lilek's genius.

A word to the wise.

Seriously annoyed,

the Lady