(A letter sent from Darfur, Sudan)

Greetings there, Band Aid 20!

Wow, I DIDN'T know it was Christmas time! How kind of you to inform me. Was the holiday named after that character whose Word is taught by those finely-attired missionaries? I enjoy their enthusiastic leaflets, but someone should let them know that Islam has a pretty tight hold on folks here.

Your song's great too, I love it - even though my mother hates it; in her own words, "Why can't a talented team of British and Irish music stars write a NEW one instead of rehashing that trite, wishy-washy and racist trash?" She stated that according to its lyrics, the horrors we suffer are the result of picking the wrong religion and climate, rather than the international meddling and the war between tribes... My mother's totally demented! It can't be THAT bad if her own son survived for so long!

Warm Wishes,

Ibrahim, Age Thirteen

P.S. Man, Coldplay's leader seems really twiggy... Order him some strawberry muffins!

[William Shakespeare]

When I do heed the poesy of old,
And grieve for subjects sung with vanish'd grace
Till nought was left behind there to behold
But fading youth that ages did deface,
Then I do find 'tis not a mind's shrewd glance
From which that I my humble art devise,
But from the roses of thy countenance
And Summer, ever-burning in thine eyes;
The Muse endures, as others rise and fall
For I choose more to gaze than to adorn:
The sweetest and most tender bud of all
Once born, in worship's view again is born.
Thine oath of beauty Time cannot consume,
Since every poem's to provoke love's bloom.

[Poe]

Alone, I find
My barren mind
Is but a wizen womb --
It duly cries for men of classic verse in hidden tombs,
The men of epic mastery confined in silent tombs.
Aha! That face!
Her virgin grace
Like shy wings of a dove!
The day now ends;
The dusk descends
As stars crowd up above --
Oh God! Those are but memories of this sweet wife beloved,
A lucid show of solemn dreams about this wife beloved.
The echoes taunt,
In ghoul-form haunt
And thus inside me burn --
Ah, ghostly lot!
I beg, do not
Compel the heart to yearn,
As she hath gone to join the angels, never to return;
Up to that higher land of Eden, never to return.

[Dr. Seuss]

Inside a cabin dwells the Bobb,
Who moved clear of the noisy mob.
Come dinner time, he sits to eat
A flaming Flurge and Mermle meat.
He freezes as a common spud
When things go 'OOF!' and things go 'THUD!'
He loves to scuttle, sew and itch,
And sports a major nervous twitch.
In lieu of mornings in a store,
He'd rather count to twenty-four;
In lieu of evenings by the vine,
He'd rather count to fifty-nine.
Each day he writes a timid ode,
And each month - grinds them by the load,
For they will never be the verse
Of Epo, Teaks and Heaksa Perse!
Oh, what an unproductive slob
Is our good friend, the useless Bobb!

(The verdict in the trial of Michael Jackson)

"Has the jury reached a verdict?"
"Yes, your honor."
"What have you decided?"
"We've found these groups guilty:

The scummy moms and dads who pimped their boys to a weird phantom for filthy money, sometimes even leaving them unsupervised in the Neverland Ranch for days on end;

Michael's folks, whose hard love has made their marvelous black boy into an eerie Yoko Ono look-alike;

The US media, due to the hokey sympathy which soon evolved into mockery, and this idiotic coverage of one loopy has-been when much more urgent matters are out there;

Every cosmetic surgeon morbidly preying on hordes of emotionally unsound celebrities, and the American outlook on life, mainly the adulation of youth and the quite unhealthy aesthetic hegemony.

...Oh, and we find Michael Jackson not guilty, due to the lack of evidence and the fishy nature of his accusers. However, we find his bedtime conduct thoroughly yucky, and advise him to consider that mangey monkey of his as a sleeping partner."