From the spiked Atlantic article about Gary Baum's FoE! Log and Dave Eggers: most of Gary s material comes from the kindness of sources; he also has, as he explains, "a whole series of email from weirdos." He reads me the most recent such exchange: "Hello, Dave/Gary," begins the first email, "I see Dave has taken up skywriting over Santa Monica. Cheers, Andy."

"He thinks I m Dave, so he s going to play some sort of McSweeney's type game. Let me show you the little interplay we went through. This is the typical weirdo type person. 'Dear Andy: As you may know, I live just north of LA. What skywriting are you referring to?' He writes back: ;If you're Dave, you know. If you are just an aspiring journalist/writer, then you are on your own.' Okay, whatever. 'Dear Andy. I don't play cryptic games on email.' And he writes. 'If you want to be a journalist when you grow up you might want to learn how to get stories without being spoonfed.' I thought, I could go and deal with this or I could just move on and get away from the weirdos. So that was it with us. We haven t discussed anymore."

What did Andy want?

"I guess he wanted me to research some skywriting thing he did. Or Eggers did. Or I did, because he thinks I'm Eggers. You notice how I get weirdos. Sometimes I get the weirdest crap—and then I look at the address and it's from a college professor!"