This week's offering is a stew of thoughts aimed in a bunch of directions. Sit back. Sip. Enjoy.

FROM: JH
TO: "country music" singer Shania Twain
RE: latest single

Shania:

Next time you retain some Nashville hired gun to kick out a man-hating pop tune for you, try and remember that there's nothing sexy about poor grammar. Don't you think the exaggerated drawl is already over the top? Hint: women who haven't learned to speak the language properly -- that DOESN'T impress me much. You're a pop star now. Time to brush off the dust.

FROM: JH
TO: Robert Rubin, U.S. Treasury Secretary
RE: Celebrity, 2000

Dear Secretary Rubin:

If it is true, as I read in the Des Moines Register, that you have been mobbed outside recent hearings by D.C. fans seeking your autograph on dollar bills, I say "cool." If it is also true that you have denied autographs on the currency because that would be defacing it, I say "You big nerd." Celebrity comes in bizarre forms these days (Tonya Harding was the subject of a recent cable documentary - a whole hour!) so take it like you find it. You are the man who, along with the Rev. Greenspan, kept the dollar stable for six years. You are, therefore, the closest thing our mindless consumption-obsessed culture has to a shaman. You made the spirits and earnings of millions of Americans soar. Not even Garth Brooks did that. In a word, Secretary Rubin, you are the 90s Elvis. Rock on.

FROM: JH
TO: Sen. John McCain
RE: GOP Presidential effort

Senator:

What are you doing? You're a decorated war hero who refused early release from a Vietnamese POW camp, then challenged President Reagan over the Marines going to Lebanon, and are pressuring the current administration to find a sane, realistic strategy in Kosovo. You confront your poor performance at Annapolis and your first marriage as exactly what they are, failures from which you learned. You pick issues like smoking and campaign finance, some of the messiest, most divisive and least likely to be addressed in any meaningful way by Congress, and then you stick to them. You tell people that being President is important to you, but not the Alpha and Omega. Message: Get out of the race now. With that level of sincerity and credibility, you only sully yourself by getting mixed up with the likes of Forbes and Quayle and that God-awful-plastic Dole-prah. The process we use to elect presidents is beneath you. Go the way of other heroes (See Powell, C.) and do something meaningful with the time you have left.

FROM: JH
TO: local media
RE: 100 year floods

Dear Reporter:

When the rivers rise three feet, please don't use the term "100-year-flood" to describe the event. Even if it is a technically correct term because the geographic area designated the 100 year floodplain is wet, the viewing public gets the impression that we're supposed to get one of these only once every 100 years. Then, when you use the term three or four times in six years, it confuses people and makes them cynical about the information you deliver. I know it's too much to ask you to take time to explain the term, so just call these floods "The Big Wet One." People will get it.

John Hedgecoth creates obscene correspondence in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.