Ben Katz

8/7/--
Dear Bev,

Oh, wet Alex, a jar, a fag! Up, disk, curve by! Man Oz, Iraq, Arizona, my Bev? Ruck's id-pug, a far Ajax, elate? Who?

That's the answer to your riddle, but you probably already know that. It is the shortest palindrome that is also a pangram. All the letters of the alphabet, and the same backwards and forwards. Seventy-seven letters. And you said your name would be part of it too.

Unless you happen to go by Iraq, I'm guessing I'm writing to a Bev then?

I await your response.

Sincerely,

Hugo

P.S. You seem pretty hung up on word-games, but now its my turn. How about you give me another pangram? This time, in German.

8/15/--
Dear Bev,

Good try, and I'm glad to see that you remembered the umlaut. But you forgot the ß. It's all right, it happens to the best of us. May I offer a possible solution? Here:



Or for that matter, in Hebrew:


Or maybe in Russian:


I do know a thing or two about words. So you've got me all figured out, right? Guy headed to new job on random island working in fonts. Wounded from series of failed relationships.

Examples of failed relationships:

1. Broke up with girl who used term “begs the question.”
2. Broke up with girl who didn't know what the Petitio Principii was when I explained breaking up with the ex-girlfriend who used “begs the question.”
3. Broke up with girl who threatened to hit me with her purse if I mentioned the term “circular definition” once more while explaining previous two anecdotes.

All this begs, err, raises the question. Why are you interested in a fellow like myself?

9/7/--
Dear Bev,

I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. To be honest, this whole job thing isn't exactly what I thought it would be. It's not that I don't like it; it's just that it's a little strange.

Apparently the Doctor needs to build a new facility for his research. He says that until the building is finished we all have to make do in temporary trailers. I don't mind it so much except for the fact that there is a pen of spider monkeys living kiddy-corner (or is it caddy corner or cater corner? Depends on where you're from) to me. They looked cute at first but keep rattling their bars and screaming, as if they sense something ominous. Did I mention how much I hate monkeys?

This would be all right if I was actually doing any work that was related to that ancient Tuvalese script. Instead, I've just been researching western font styles nothing even remotely interesting.

9/25/--
Bev,

Here's an idea of my typical day:

We get a memo through the network asking us to dig up all possible variations of, say, Verdana. We comb through a huge database of all available fonts, researching not only alternatives but also the history surrounding the original. For instance, Verdana (and Tahoma, its twin brother) is actually a relatively recently devised font. Commissioned by Microsoft in the mid-80s specifically for computer use. Developed by Matthew Carter, the famous typographer. Then we play computer solitaire until it's 5:00pm, after which we all make the trip to the mess hall for another night of island cuisine (read: nuts and berries). Finally we all retire to our quarters to continue playing computer solitaire until bedtime. Except for me. I play scrabble against myself.

I wish you were here Bev. I would enjoy the company of someone able to engage me on an intellectual level. There aren't any women on the island, save Dr. Emoto's secretary. But she just follows him around all the time, and if you look at her too long she gives you creepier looks than the monkeys.

10/9/--
Bev,

I'm so glad to hear that you're taking a vacation! But where to? A person like you wouldn't take a cruise. So banal. So pedestrian. Tuscany? Prague?

As to your last question, I was writing my thesis on something pretty obscure. Have you ever heard of Lorem Ipsum? Or Lipsum for short. Actually, you probably haven't heard of it. More likely, you've seen it. Back in the day and I mean back in the sixteenth century typesetters needed a placeholder so that they could design projects before they got the actual content. Hence the requirement for text that, while mimicking a final product, was actually meaningless.

Enter the term greeking. Any modern language wouldn't do, so it was necessary to use a dead language. Latin worked perfectly (though it was still called greeking). Lorem ipsum is the first part of a nonsense text that became standard and is still used heavily to this day.

The only thing is, the Latin used wasn't meaningless. It's a text from Cicero  I've figured out that much.

Anyway, have a great vacation, and be glad you aren't here. The spider monkeys have been keeping me up at night. Yesterday I grabbed a stack of particularly dusty texts from the library trailer and threw an encyclopedia of Catholic history at a particularly ill-favored looking monkey.

He just screamed louder.

Sincerely,

Hugo

P.S. Have you ever seen a woman kill a man with her thighs? I have.

11/3/--
Bev,

Thanks for the card from the Poconos. I didn't expect your vacation to take your there, but I admit there is a certain “je ne sais quoi” about a trip close to home.

I didn't mean to scare you with the whole thighs thing. And I did mean it literally. (So you've seen a woman kill a man with her thighs figuratively? How?) It was about two weeks ago. I was on one of my nightly strolls, when I turned the corner near the communications shed and saw one of the scientists from the team we're working with engaged in a heated argument with, believe it or not, Dr. Emoto's secretary, Hildegard. He kept shouting “I don't want to be part of this,” and “You'll never get away with it.” Hildegard just stood there until he really started to raise his voice, at which point she — well — at least it was over rather quickly. I didn't stick around to see what happened next. I never liked the fellow either. He was writing a book on optically induced sickness, and would spend hours droning on about it. Visual system one this, visual system two that; blah blah blah. See, and he didn't even get to finish it.

The next day we all got a memo that his position was terminated. I'll say.

Problem is, I was pretty sleepy when I saw the whole thing. So I just can't be sure of myself.

P.S. On the plus side, we finally have chicken casserole again at the dining hall.

11/13/--
Bev,

I've got some great news. The monkeys have shut up! This morning there was a big commotion around the cages. Dr. Emoto, his secretary, basically everyone within our compound was there. It was quite horrendous. There were monkey guts everywhere. And lots of blood. It seemed as if they had each been ripped limb to limb.

There are now only four of the monkeys left. They must be the culprits. The scientists don't believe that they could be responsible, but who else could it have been? And they haven't moved, except once when one of them grabbed Dr. Emoto's cigar when he was tapping on the cage. All of the scientists seem pretty concerned by the whole thing. Apparently the monkeys were supposed to be super-intelligent, not dead.

Me, I say good riddance. Maybe I'll be able to sleep at night.

11/29/--
Bev,

Can that really be true? You mean to tell me that a whole section of Antarctica just split off from the mainland? I don't believe you. Then again, I can't imagine you'd be the sort of person to lie to a fellow.

12/15/--
Bev,

I apologize for not writing in such a long time, but so many things have happened.

First, I figured out that the monkeys have been signing to me. I remember sleeping through an ASL class in high school and I'm sure of it. I managed to dig a book on it out of the library (the facility has beautiful space for books).

Oh yeah, we also got a pretty big tsunami a few hours after the last time you wrote. In fact, now the rest of the island is underwater. For some reason that really bothered Dr. Emoto. We were giving a presentation to him on one of our fonts that the science team has been paying particular attention to when it happened. He was the only one that seemed nonplussed. Until, of course, the waters started to recede. Now they only cover about the first ten feet of the thirty-foot building. He mumbled something about “not being an underwater base if it isn't underwater” and ran out of the room.

For the most part, however, I've adjusted to life here in the facility. If only the air-conditioning worked.

12/25/--
Bev,

Merry Christmas! I'm sorry about the Eastern Seaboard being partly underwater.

I've really had a breakthrough with the spider monkeys. The big one, the one that has been gesticulating, has been signing the same eight-letter word every day for the past week. Today, I finally figured out what it is.

Scrabble. That's right, S-C-R-A-B-B-L-E. I think there is a board in the recroom. I will get to the bottom of this.

Also, we've finished our part of the project. The science team and Emoto have been really taken with one of the fonts we found. Says that it is particularly pleasing to the eyes.

1/5/--
Bev,

You wouldn't believe the things Pope Alexander the Sixth has been up to.

At least, that is what he calls himself. I snuck the scrabble board into his cage (ever since we moved into the facility, they've kept the monkeys in separate ones) late one evening and the next morning he'd spelled it out. He kept pointing to himself and to the board, and wouldn't do anything else until I said it out loud. Then he started jumping around and screaming, but after a few minutes of that spelled out a new word.

“Nietzsche.” So I went down to the library to bring him Thus Spake Zarathustra, but he wasn't happy until I brought him the whole collection. Cheeky little fellow. He's been reading ever since. Only pauses to ask me for more books, and for more cigars.

1/15/--
Bev,

Pope Alexander the Sixth beat me six times in scrabble today. He keeps getting triple triples. I despise him.

Sincerely,

Hugo