To Whom it May Concern

Dear Chatty-McChatty-Pants on NJ Transit:

I don't care how smart you think you are and how many names you drop. I don't care how much money you make, or how you manage to keep from being materialistic despite your success, or about the downfall of civilization, or how you're too good to watch TV. I just want to get home after a long, long, long day.

Kindly shut your pie hole.

Shhhhhh,
Tangent Woman

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Dear Other Guy on NJ Transit who Offered me a Tissue Following my Allergy Attack,

Bless YOU. Everyone should be so kind and sane on public transportation.

Gratefully,
Tangent Woman

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Dear Hot & Crusty:

I would never, never have patronized an establishment with such a yucky name were it not for your promise of chocolate chip muffins -- the only place in Penn Station who seemed to have them. "Seemed," because five mini-morsels on the top of a wheat muffin does NOT equate to a chocolate-chip muffin. Boo to you.

Sincerely,
Disappointed and famished

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Dear Lindsay Lohan:

You were so adorable and innocent in The Parent Trap. I loved you in Mean Girls, and I didn't even altogether hate Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. You are a good actress, and I'm glad you're not so emaciated, and I'm still fairly certain I don't believe my former co-worker who told me she saw a crack pipe in the bag you left behind at a club.

But I hate, hate, hate those leggings you've been wearing, and I wish you'd put them away. But worse than the leggings, I think, was your failure to remove those little loopy straps from your dress -- the ones intended to hold the dress up on the hanger in the store, the ones you're supposed to snip off before you wear it -- for your segment on the Ellen DeGeneres show. It looked sloppy and silly and not at all becoming a movie star, and I wonder if someone got fired right after she sat there in the RiffRaff Room, biting her lip, not even seeing that you were about to do push-ups in a dress or hearing that Ellen was ragging on you for your promiscuity and wildness, but just staring at those little satin straps hanging from your armpits, willing them to disintegrate.

I know I did.

Love and scissors,
Tangent Woman

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Dear M and B,

Congrats on your engagement! You're a great couple and I'm so happy for you.
I hope I'm on the A list!

Love,
Tangent

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Dear J and B,

Congratulations on your latest addition! Aidan is adorable, but I cannot believe that my Size-2-on-a-fat-day friend just delivered a nearly 10-pound baby. B, you'd better have gotten her a heck of a Mother's Day gift.

Love you guys and can't wait to meet the littlest one (who appears in the photo to be nearly as big as his two-year-old sister!).

Love and hugs,
Tangent