Letter From The Front - Feb. 21, 2005

VICTORY!!!!

Well, Mom, we did it! It's V-Day over here, with lots of hootin' and hollerin', soldiers pouring beer over each other's heads (we don't have any champagne), and the locals cheering us along the road, throwing us kisses and flowers and shaking patriotic signs that read:

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-- We Love --
-- You, Esé! --
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After killing 50,134 enemy combatants, the defeated unwritten-word dictatorship signed an unconditional surrender late tonight, just before midnight. Our commanders met with their leadership in the capitol city, Blankpage, for the signing of the surrender, an event covered extensively by the press. (By the way, the city has been renamed from Blankpage to 'Bestseller', an exotic, high-sounding name the Administration chose to serve as a constant reminder to the local citizens of the unending possibilities they can now enjoy as liberated words on the page.)

We certainly did our job as warriors. We kicked some major unwritten-word butt. But quite honestly, the literary war we fought left a landscape of relative chaos and disarray across 293 pages. So now we'll turn it over to the nation-builders to come in and clean up the mess we made and make it a respectable country again. Rumor has it the U.N. nationbuilders will arrive on March 1st, with an aggressive goal: to completely turn around this war-torn (but liberated) country into a functioning, revenue-generating book within the 31 days of March.

Well, I'm gonna stop writing now. Better to hurry up with my outprocessing and get home as soon as possible. Then I can tell you all about it in person, instead of in a letter.

Can't wait to see you and the family!

You know, right after I got called up, Dad promised me a new computer when I got home from the war. Has he ordered it yet? I trust he has. I'll be ready to celebrate the victory by ripping out the flight simulator as soon as I get home!

Well, gotta run. I'm gonna go cheer on some of my buddies, who are still making their way to the raging party going on here at the main Army base in Bestseller, before we all ship out.

See you soon! Get that cake ready!

Love,
Your boy