The chronics

There are few greater sources of amusement at a publication than reading the chronics — that is, the works of crazy people who send letters and emails or call up on the phone, again, and again, and again. I can’t think of a single publication I’ve worked where we didn’t have some.

I encountered one of the most entertaining when I worked at the Cato Institute, where, after several months of intermittent harassment by email, an unbalanced woman began calling up masquerading as some sort of self-appointed agency that “audited” organizations and “monitored their compliance.” (With what or for whom, she couldn’t say.) Eventually, it became an occasional, if perplexing, pleasure to speak to the loon, and my colleagues and I used to enjoy forwarding her calls to unwitting friends down the hall.

Once we managed to convince her that Cato was dedicated to ensuring that Skynet didn’t go live and decide our fate in a microsecond.