BABBLE ON: AUGUST 2005

Babble On
Where You @?

Twenty-five years after the launch of the Internet, the world is set for another historic technological breakthrough. As of this issue of SNOWBOARDER, each one of our reader-interaction columns will be given its very own e-mail address with the @snowboardermag.com postscript. In other words, reader mail will now go to BabbleOn@snowboardermag.com, reader questions to QuestionAuthority@snowboardermag.com, and reader photos to OpenShutter@snowboardermag.com. Really cutting-edge stuff!

So now that we have cleared up where we’re @, it is time for you to tell us where you’re at. E-mail all pertinent commentary, critiques, observations, aggravations and comments about the kid whose mom sent in the poem he plagiarized from a Robot Food ad to BabbleOn@snowboardermag.com.

DEAR SNOWBOARDER MAGAZINE,
First off, I’d like to start by saying your magazine is sick. Next, I just have to say something to the people out there who complain about global warming: Do these people realize it’s partly their fault? They’re throwing the wrong stuff out and making the hole in the ozone bigger. So, until they can back up their complaints, I’ve said enough.

Lee Haugen
Via e-mail

First off, we’d like to start by saying we have no idea how Lee found out that SNOWBOARDER was sick. The clinic we went to said everything would be confidential. Secondly, it isn’t contagious and things should start to clear up as soon as the penicillin kicks in. Nonetheless, all other publications we have shared a newsstand with in the last six months should go and get checked as soon as possible.

DEAR BABBLE ON,
I am in a real slump right now and I can’t seem to get out of it. I’m feeling really depressed and I don’t know why. However, I think it will get better; I am starting up paintball once more this Sunday and I already started snowboarding again, and those are the only two things that seem to make me happy. I probably shouldn’t write in talking about my problems, but no one else wants to listen.

Subscriber,
Jake Skjerven
North Saint Paul, Minnesota

P.S. This letter probably sounds really selfish.

Just when Jake was two bummers away from squeezing his big toe into a shotgun trigger guard, along came SNOWBOARDER with just the news that might keep him from becoming a Twin Cities casualty. For the first time in the history of SNOWBOARDER’s Babble On and Question Authority, we have come across a double threat. Jake Skjerven is the first reader in SNOWBOARDER’s 18 years to have a letter printed in Babble On and a query posed in Question Authority. While neither passage is of particular note, the two episodes combine to create one hell of an interactive reader. Kudos to you, Jake. The bar has been raised and only time will tell if the Open Shutter barrier will be broken by another reader who can pontificate and ponder as well as point and shoot.