I have not attained Grampa Simpson-level crank status when it comes to harrassing periodicals with my own crabby point of view, but I have written a handful of letters to the editor in my life. Four, actually, which not knowing the size of your hand, I'd say qualifies as a handful.

Given that small number, I've had a remarkable success rate at getting them published (75%!). The latest, I just discovered, is in Newsweek. Unfortunately, it was the issue of Newsweek the US mail didn't see fit to deliver to me over the Thanksgiving holiday -- I got the issue that followed, though. But, thankfully, the local newstand still had last week's issue on their stands, so I was able to grab it for quiet bragging rights.

I won't quote the letter here, because it deals with subject matter I'd rather not talk about on my day-job site. I don't talk religion and politics at the dinner table, nor do I blog about it here, as a green screen-named person on starwars.com. Those web savvy enough to find my other blogs online might find it. Or those with the Nov 27 issue of Newsweek can find it (it has "Growing Up With Autism" as the cover story).

Newsweek edits letters to the editor, and as things go, my letter wasn't too badly edited. They took out paragraph breaks, which makes one sentence seem like an out-of-the-blue statement, but the intent is pretty well preserved.

The last letter to the editor I wrote before that was in 1996, to Star Wars Insider. It was four years before I worked for Lucasfilm. I think I might have been ranting about how little coverage West End Games got in the publication. Little did I know WEG would implode a few short years later -- but not before Galaxy Collector did the profile piece I was hoping someone would do. That letter never got published.

Previous that, I wrote to the local newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, countering a rather close-minded opinion piece about condoms in high school. I was probably 18 at the time. It got published. I recently re-read it and man did I want to smack that snotty 18-year old know it all around.

Before that, I wrote to the G.I.Joe Marvel comic book back in 1987. It got published (in issue #86, I think) and the editors rather butchered my missive. My query was asking if there was some sort of symbolic connection between the character Snake-Eyes and the number six. They edited it, so it looks like my question is "Is there a connection between Snake Eyes and G.I.Joe issue #6?) I was 13 years old. I was mortified that my oh-so-brilliant question was reduced to something so stupid.

That's probably why I don't write that many letters to the editor.

ph