Mr. President George W. Bush
43^rd President of the United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Hello, Sir!

I don’t know how you feel, but I am a big proponent of continuous improvement. Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better! And so are you! Right?

Knowing that you are a like-minded individual (or perhaps I’m just ASSUMING you are, but I feel like I know you!) I have been racking my brain to come up with one – just one! – suggestion for how you might improve yourself, your administration…perhaps even the whole blessed country (or at least just the world). However, either because I’m not that smart or you’re just THAT good, for 6 years I’ve come up dry. But last week I was watching your last State of the Union address and I think I may have finally come up with something! At first I thought it was a small thing. But the more I thought about it, the more I think that instead of a small thing, it’s a big thing!

I know you’re a busy man (and if you did have some free time you’d want to spend it on that cool ranch-themed property you set up down in Texas where you can take pictures clearing brush and wearing cowboy stuff), so let’s not beat around the bush (no pun!) any further. Ready? Read this word aloud: nuclear.

Did you hear that? Do it again! See? That happened three times in your State of the Union!

If you can fix that pronunciation thing you probably just noticed (i.e., the way you say “new-KEW-lur” instead of “new-KLEE-er”), it will send a message to the world that a) you care a lot about that particular topic, and b) you are highly competent. I say these are important messages for a President to deliver!

I know. Words are just words. And normally I’d just say “let ‘er rip!” But this just happens to be one of the most critical words in the history of the human race. Plus, I figure that if you spend the big bucks on speechwriters (like that Frum guy, how much did he make? Heck, I’d do it for half that!), then words must be at least a little important. I find that words make a certain impression. Remember when Kennedy wore makeup on TV and Nixon didn’t? Same idea! And who won that debate? Need I say more?

I myself am full-time employed right now, though there’s probably a scenario where I’d come aboard to pitch in on the wordsmithing. “Answer the call,” if you will.

I considered that one drawback to fixing this pronunciation is that it does have a certain folksy appeal. It’s something somebody’s Uncle Clem might say after a few Blue Ribbons, if you know my meaning. But then I realized that doesn’t help you anymore because you don’t need to get reelected! According to my calculations and thorough review of The Constitution, you’ve gotta vacate White House premises in a couple years anyway (much to my chagrin)! You can totally focus on delivering the dual impression of caring and competence mentioned above. What a relief!

The other thing is, maybe you just don’t want people to worry. You know when your wife asks you the name of that TOTALLY hot new intern at work and you pause for a second and furrow your brow and answer, “Sicily, Cecilia, Sybill…somethin’ like ‘at.” But you know darn well her name is Serena and you’re just trying to pretend like she’s no big deal and you can’t even remember her name. Maybe you’re doing the same thing with nuclear. And I have to say, I appreciate the effort to make the whole topic seem too trivial to merit proper pronunciation!

But I think the real answer is this: you just ain’t sayin’ it right. And with a small adjustment in palette deployment, you can easily change all that. It might in some small measure help with our country’s worldwide approval ratings, which are at an all-time low. Even the Guamanians hate us. Or your domestic approval rating, which is down there in the dumper too. So, aside from getting another good speechwriter on staff, this may be just the ticket. People would talk about this, I know they would. Especially, and here’s the clincher, if you admitted your mistake. That’s the rap on you – never admits his mistakes. So this one you can admit and it’s not that big a deal and you look good and every time you say the word people will say, that Dubya, he owned up to his faults and just listen to the mellifluous tones now! Plus, that sure was one heckuva speech!

Anyway, them’s my thoughts.

Signed,

[Name Withheld Pending Future Rulings On Validity of FISA and Guantanamo]

Los Angeles, CA

Hello Josh Kelley:

You’re intergalactically famous, with scads of talent and a superstar wife. Your biggest problem is where to relocate the cascading piles of cash that festoon every surface of your multi-million dollar home every time you need to clear a space to perch upon the otherwise spotless surface of your mid-century modern seating.

I, on the other hand, am just “some guy”.

But I’m a guy who’s signed up for Google Alerts, and what Google Alerts is telling me is that the volume of online information circulating around the name Josh Kelly is largely now focused on you, despite the fact that your name is spelled differently, and less correctly, than mine. If anyone finds me online, it’s probably because they’re looking for you. I’m getting nothing so much as your sloppy e-seconds.

Sure, there are many instances of online name redundancy for folks with names like Jennifer Smith or Dave Brown. But the name we share is just rare enough in its unique combo of Old Testament meets Irish, as though we’re named for the leader of a lost tribe of Gaelic Jews, that I think people can be genuinely confused.

So what can be done about this?

For starters, the ball is really in your court for three reasons:

1. I am older and I had the name first and this is my idea so there
2. Anything I do to attract attention to the issue will be like a popcorn fart into a roaring jet engine compared to the transcendent impact of your celebrity stellar-ness
3. The spelling of your name is plainly in error
4. You wouldn’t want it to seem like you were picking on “the little guy” – what a PR nightmare! Can you say “publicist overtime?”

Now that we’ve established you’ll need to personally do something drastic, there appear to be three feasible courses of action:

1. You correct the typo in Kelly to remove the superfluous E in your name. At first glance, this may seem counter-productive, but my theory is that at least in this scenario I will get the benefit of some substantial widespread confusion, rather than simply the annoyance of a visit to my blog from the occasional slacker who doesn’t even know that your name was misspelled. Here are some other reasons:
   • It’s a tragic waste of a perfectly good vowel
   • If you were going to add another letter to your last name, it should be something WAY more interesting than E.
   • Baby, You’re Amazing(ly bad at spelling Kelly)
   • I’d sooner spell it Kellee
   • Guys with extras E’s in their last name are weeenies
2. You change your first name to something non-conflicting. Elmo or Phineas are my immediate ideas, but there are others to consider and you are super creative. I trust you – as long as it’s not Josh, Joshua, J, or Hoshua we’ll be fine.
3. You engage in a protracted, well-funded media campaign to clarify that there is an extra E in your last name, that you’re totally comfortable with it, and that people shouldn’t confuse you with other people of the same name, especially the certain Josh Kelly found at joshuakelly.com or twitter.com/jmkelly (NOTE: include the http part and it’ll be a live link to my pages).

Of the 3, I like 3 best. It’s time for you to own your name, not just answer to it. You have to take the negative and twist it to your own ends. You know, when life hands you lemons…

I don’t know how you ended up with the extra E in your last name — I have a running theory with friends that you got the same intoxicated maternity ward nurse that gummed up the name of DeForest “Bones” Kelley and made Star Trek credits a painful experience for me — but it’s not too late to turn this thing around.

Meantime, you should start to really ROCKIN with the music. I want to hear some oomph out of the JK name. A little grittiness, some rebel music. See what you can do.

Anyhoo. Let me know.

Sincerely,

Josh “The Real Deal” Kelly

San Francisco Bay Area, USA

September 14, 2009

Steve Jobs
CEO
Apple Computer
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014

Hey Steve:

Here’s the idea: “All You Can Eat Apple”

That’s it. It’s beautiful in its simplicity – exactly what the Apple brand is all about. Blow it up to 48pt and put it on an all-white page next to a graceful hand clicking on a cinema screen. It works!

I should probably just stop there and let you stew on that for awhile, connect all the dots. But no, lacking the minimalist discipline of even the most junior Apple product developer, I’m about to lay a bunch of expository prose on you instead. Also, I have other ideas for tier naming, based loosely on the poetry of W.B. Yeats, before customers get to the All You Can Eat level.

That aside, the core of the idea is that instead of buying discrete Apple products at random confluences of innovation and morbid insecurity, customers pay a subscription fee and get regular auto-refreshes of the latest Apple wares. This will accomplish certain business ends, the exact nature of which you can hire certain business people to determine – I see flatter, smoother upward lines going across a tasteful blue-gray chart, instead of those spiky lines you see on charts that look more like Richter scales and have lame color palettes. And on the flip side it will keep folks like me from wanting to write letters like this.

The correct fee structure gets complicated, I know. Maybe the only thing holding this whole idea back is the limited number of people who are both Apple fans and able to operate spreadsheet software. Ask the average Apple fan about multiple regression and they’ll think you’re talking about getting together with several of the old high school crew. So let’s just say there’s an entry-level subscription of $3,000 a year. For that you get an annual MacBook and iPhone upgrade, and a .me account. Or whatever – there’s some economics in there, I’m sure.

In this particular scenario, there’d be a special allowance of $3,000/year for folks who came up with the idea.

The genesis of this idea is that sometimes I get mad at Apple, Steve. I do get mad, and I’m not entirely sure why. I think it has to do with the way the maddening pace of both incremental and substantive product evolution is handled, which seems, of late, less designed to make me feel increasingly empowered as to keep me poised precariously on the verge of being outmoded, obsolete, possibly even ugly. That chubby PC guy in your TV ads looms like a threat – this could be you if your MacBook ages to ¼” too thick, or .2 GHz too slow.

Being an Apple fan is like being in love with a girl who you assume has been getting continuously more attractive since 1984 all because of you, while it slowly dawns on you that she doesn’t even know your name. It gets worse as you get older.

I had one of the first Macs, I’ve had several since, and now I have 2 iPods, an iPhone, an iMac, 2 MacBooks, iTunes and .me subscriptions, and a bus shelter size poster of Einstein with the Apple logo on it (mounted on masonite). And in all that time, the only reward for my loyalty comes annually when you don your mock turtleneck to mock my current gadgetry by releasing something that says, in essence, “think of that MacThing you bought 3 months ago as your grandma’s sofa wrapped in plastic and smelling of mothballs. Because now we offer iThis and MacThat!” And then the hand models come out and gesture effortlessly at touch screens and click mice while screens morph and shift and Twitter crashes under the weight of the Pavlovian RTs. My hands are puffy and unmanicured, is what you’re trying to tell me, and I have last year’s iWorks. You know what? My hands and iWorks worked just fine until you went and made me yearn.

In short, now more than ever, you’re in the fashion business. That anti-establishment idealism about Apple – back when it seemed like a movement fueled by a line of empowerment tools – has become something sustained by peer pressure or consumer yearning, more like clothes or music. You went all rockstar/fashion icon on us, and now we’re supposed to like Apple. To not like Apple is to be old, chubby, dim-witted, ugly. For now.

I know you’re super successful right now, but I do feel a little backlash coming. It feels like it did right before that dark period when the soda pop guy kicked you out and then came the march of the clones (I had a PowerPC myself, just to spite Apple). It’s the same vibe that’s starting to make the chubby PC guy in the TV ads more sympathetic than Justin Long. I mean, I kinda want that guy to backhand Justin Long lately, even though I like Justin Long. Justin Long is funny, he was great on Ed, and I think he’s probably nice in person. Why does Justin Long have to make the poor nerdy chubby guy feel like a poor nerdy chubby guy? It’s gone on too long, this constant, subtle berating. Try as you might to make him likable, the fact is that Justin Long keeps insinuating himself into the immediate proximity of this schlep and taking pains to kindly point out his flaws, wrap him in something silly, or just be present to witness his humiliations. Why can’t Justin Long just speak his piece and then stay away, only offering advice when asked? Every so often, Justin just shows up and reminds the guy of his inadequacies. Thanks! Why does he do that?

Is Justin Long secretly afraid that he’s not good enough in some way, like maybe Justin Long costs about twice as much?

Here’s the thing: at some point, it’s the chubby PC guy running down the aisle in those flimsy red Dolphin shorts hurling a hammer at a giant screen showing a close-up of Justin Long, and then the slack-jawed audience flees the building.

You also feel it when you go into an Apple store and try to buy something, only to be confronted with the reality that Apple says “poo poo” to cash registers. Well, there was nothing ever wrong with the cash register, Steve, because you always used to know where to buy stuff and you didn’t have to find a roving consultant in a colored T-shirt and beg to give them your credit card. It’s double the affront that the good ol’ fashioned checkout counter’s been replaced by something called a “Genius Bar”. You might find some bright folk there at the Genius Bar, to be sure, but genius goes a bit far. And if it’s the customer you’re referring to as the Genius, well, perhaps you haven’t listened to questions like “so how do I make pictures in my camera go INTO the computer box?” for the 35 minutes right before you find out the Genius Bar lost your appointment. As an aside, a disturbing number of these colored T-shirt people want to engage in conversations about things like what bands you like – it happens enough that it seems like somewhere in a training manual it must say “remind customers that they’re THIS close to being that schleppy PC guy if they don’t play along”. I had a guy who wouldn’t LET me pay for a new MacBook until he showed me the new combinations of mouse fingerings, none of which I’ll ever use.

In short, a nice mail-order business would replace this brand touchpoint just fine, thank you.

What you’re getting from this letter, I hope, is something of a love/hate message. The product is strong, but there’s something about the whole brand experience, or the way you encounter certain enthusiasts of the brand, that sometimes makes me want to hate it anyway. And I think there has to be a way to “graduate” from some of the fashion trappings of the current Apple. What I want is a way to re-engage for the long haul on a basis that does not seem so darned persnickety. I’m not buying Macs to be fashion forward, Steve, but you can still save me from my chubby PC guy fate.

So let’s forget for a moment that in the entire time I’ve owned an Apple product I’ve never received early info on new products, a discount, or any sort of personal acknowledgment. Just treat me as the slobbering gadget-obsessed database entry that I am, and put me on a reasonable obsolescence schedule that neither makes me the object of derision, nor requires that I camp in front of a glowing retail store until the people with the colored shirts come and unlock the door to dole out iPhone porridge and MacBook gruel. Just figure out what it’s going to cost me per annum to stay relatively up to speed with this stuff and leave me be. Send me my updates in the mail, maybe, for fear that I involuntarily break wind in one of your heavily lacquered retail environments.

Again, there’d be a 1:1 corollation between any per annum fee and the discount afforded the originator of the idea that spawned the fee.

I hope this letter finds you well. Sincerely glad to see you back in action. Now let’s start a re-revolution, eh?

Best Regards,

Josh Kelly

San Anselmo, CA

Q: How can an airline make you more productive? -Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines

A: Hey Gary – I like the cupholder idea below a lot. Do that! And as your team’s busy wedging those little buckets into some impossible nook of every passenger’s already impinged personal space (quick fix: hand out holders that can strap just above our knees with an elastic band), it’s a good time to think about how air travel got to where it is today and what might be done to radically change the entire experience. Because that experience is mostly sucky, Gary, and cupholders alone cannot negate a preponderance of sucky. Think big, Gary!

I’m thinking increase fares by, say, 50% across the board. And maybe slash half the flights as well. The evidence is all around us that airline travel is far too accessible and volume-driven. Ignore the outcry from the folks who’d secretly rather be at an airport Radisson than at home with their families or in the office with their bosses (this and the liberal application of expense accounts motivates 43.6% of “business” travel until someone convinces me otherwise); watch the relief from all who now feel burdened by the expectation that they should hop on a plane to go eat a ham sandwich with a client at the slightest suggestion. You can reward remaining frequent travelers, and those who book 3+ months in advance for their well-deserved vacations, with special fares for folks who truly need to fly.

How did we ever make do back when air travel was a rationed luxury, back before we even had faxes, video conferences, and email? We got by just fine, of course. So let’s ratchet up the cost again. With a little margin to play with, perhaps you can carve enough room around a coach seat to open a laptop (the calls for connectivity seem a bit misguided in a world where airline seats do not afford enough room to type…or even just tie your shoe) or provide foodstuffs suitable for sentient beings (the test: would you choose to consume it if not confined for 3 hours in a metal tube hurtling through the sky at 500 MPH?). People will again understand that flying is something to evaluate carefully for its contribution to productivity and should not be confused with productivity itself – jetting to Phoenix is not an accomplishment.

Create a world where we expect less travel and expect more from it. That is how you can make me more productive. Thanks for asking!”

July 24, 2006

Mr. Donald Trump
The Trump Organization
725 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Dear Mr. Trump:

This evening, after Barron nods off and you’re finally sipping Cristal with Melania on the deck of your Manhattan aerie, try this exercise. Gaze deep into the night sky. Pick the most distant, faint star visible to your naked eye. Consider that the light you see from that star left its origin a thousand years ago or more. Somewhere well beyond it are the fringes of all existence, the boundary marked by the first primordial matter that jettisoned into oblivion at the instant of the Big Bang. Kaboom! Beyond that, an aged (yet ageless) glowing man in white robes and a long beard sits on a golden throne amid fluffy clouds, smiling his all-knowing smile.

Thus transfixed, think to yourself, “my company has just crowned the most beautiful creature to be found anywhere in all of this creation”.

I speak, of course, of the new Miss Universe, nee Miss Puerto Rico, nee Zuleyka Rivera Mendoza.

The 2006 Miss Universe pageant was a feast for the senses! Such beauty! Such style! Such grace and intelligence! I think you’d agree that women are the superior gender; you must then agree that the most superior human beings on earth were on display at the Shrine Auditorium last night!

Which brings me to my question. Can we truly be certain that Ms. Mendoza is the fairest of all in the entire universe? Granted, it’s hard to dispute the judges on this (after all, I may be one myself someday). I mean, va va voom! Although Miss Japan had it going on in a big way too. But to find out if Zuleyka’s title is truly justified, I think we need to start with a definition of just what this “universe” thing really is.

Definitions vary, but the universe is generally considered to be a finite or infinite space-time continuum that includes the summation of all matter that exists and the space in which all events occur.

That’s a lot of responsibility to squeeze into one little Mikimoto tiara!

I reiterate that Miss Universe (nee Miss Puerto Rico) may indeed still be the fairest being in the entire universe as I’ve just defined it. But I might be more confident in that conclusion if I’d been presented with at least one representative from outside the Milky Way galaxy. Instead, we had only occupants of Earth, which is just one little blue speck of cosmic dust among the millions of galaxies, containing perhaps trillions of planets, that, presumably, must contain at least two or three other forms of life that should have been permitted to compete for this lofty and all-inclusive title.

Where was, say, Miss Gropnoid 7, who might be composed entirely of a putrid yellow gas yet able to communicate telepathically with heartbreaking clarity? What of Miss Eastern Alpha Centauri, with her 27 tentacles, one giant eye, and juggling prowess non pareil? Shouldn’t there have been at least one gal with a traditional “little green [wo]man from Mars” appearance? Wouldn’t a little lady with E.T.’s heartlight have won the judges over? Shouldn’t there be at least one contestant who sports a titanium bathing suit constructed for dips in molecular acid pools, or whose talent would be shape-shifting? Was there even a Miss Iceland?

I observed a profound dearth of diversity among the contestants, who clearly all fell squarely in the earthling and humanoid camp. Were I a resident of another world, I might even suspect the fix was on. I only hope these unrepresented alien creatures don’t get miffed and invade us with their advanced weapons technologies. Boy, wouldn’t you feel guilty.

On the bright side, I think you’ve taken care of the time issue nicely – by adding 2006, you place the contest and its winner in a point on the temporal continuum that is understood to mean the particular version of 2006 contemplated on the show, and you don’t have to worry really about those pesky mirrored dimensions and alternate realities that might be occurring simultaneously. Plus, even if there were another 2006 going on right now in an alternate dimension, I think we can assume you’d have a carbon copy Trump in those dimensions running something called the Miss Universe 2006 pageant as well. So the outcome would be the same, except water might go down the drain the other direction. And Carson Kressley would be straight.

But this is all so obvious. Clearly, the issue with the title is space, not time. What a relief!

So the way I see it, you might go three ways to address the tear in the fabric of the cosmos that your pageant has created:

1. Change the title to Miss Known Universe (or an accepted variation like Miss Observable Universe or Miss Visible Universe) to more accurately reflect the limits of human knowledge (which is piddling, I’m sure you’ll agree, as you squint out at the star above Manhattan that may yet prove to be a helicopter)
2. Send radio signals out into the aether inviting other forms of life to participate (hint: use binary code. You know, 1s and 0s. Because it’s widely accepted that there is a universal language among nerds). They may not hear it for a few thousand years, but at least you’re on record as having tried when they come for us with their plasma guns. We can just say “What? You didn’t get our message?”
3. Go to the opposite extreme. What the heck? Claim more turf with the title by calling it “Miss Multiverse”. This may be more in keeping with your splashy style! And it would be so “over-the-top” absurd – no one from a different galaxy would perceive that you would seriously presume to anoint a pan-universal champion. They’d see it as pure showmanship.

Here’s one more thing to consider about #3 – you could be trumped (no pun intended) by a competitive pageant that acknowledges our universe may be part of a system of many other universes, known as the multiverse. [Note: I’m not at all threatening to start a competitive pageant if you don’t, say, make me a judge at next year’s pageant…just alerting you to the strategic risk involved].

In closing, I thank you for producing such an exceptional pageant this year. I look forward to even greater glory next year (whether I am participating as a judge or not), when creatures from throughout the space-time continuum may compete for the chance to truly represent everything that exists everywhere. Imagine how trivial a speech about world peace will seem when the first contestant strides to the microphone and at last speaks (or transmits or shrieks or clicks, as the case may be) of intergalactic peace?

Best regards,

Josh Kelly

P.S. – what do we do about life forms that don’t have genders as we know it, like if they reproduce by means of mitosis or cloning? I have some thoughts on this, but probably best to share with you and my fellow judges next year.

P.P.S. – feel free to forward this along to the heads of The Miss Universe Organization or to your partners at NBC. I just thought I’d start with you because, well, you da man!

P.P.P.S. – do judges get paid?