Fiona Apple and your tiresome fans, How I hate you...Let me count the ways...

Dearest Fiona:

I'm on to you. Don't think for a second that your transparent little gloom and doom game is fooling me or anyone else who is not a 13-year-old girl. I knew you were a fake the first time I was unfortunate enough to accidentally see the music video for "Criminal." You tried to look like a homeless person the director found doing smack in the stalls of the Greyhound bus station restrooms and then paid you $5 to strip down to your underwear and writhe around on the floor while mouthing your trite, little lyrics. But, unfortunately for you, I could tell that the bruises were a little too strategically placed and came from the hand of a makeup artist. It was obvious you were trying way too hard to look like a crackwhore- you should've been taking your cues from Courtney Love on that one, she has looking like a crackwhore down to a science.

I don't care that you pretend like you're bat-shit crazy and have meltdowns during awards shows and interviews. Honestly, that's the only time when you verge on being moderately interesting. I enjoy seeing a nice Mariah Carey-esque breakdown just as much as the next girl, but you're not even overly convincing. I'll even admit I'm only slightly annoyed by the fact that you are a vegan (which, in itself, is vaguely irritating) and did record a message on PETA's hotline urging people not to eat turkeys on Thanksgiving. If Sting can save the rain forests, I guess you can lend your support to saving domestic fowl from the Butterball factory. Somehow, though, the plight of the turkey, one of the dumbest creatures on the planet, seems to make protecting- Oh, say, several million trees, totally pale in comparison. PS- You might get more guests at the holiday dinner table if you'd stop serving that Tofurkey garbage, but maybe that's just me.

My main problem with you is not even music-related. I think your wounded and tortured artist bit is an utter sham. If I thought you were legitimately wounded and/or tortured I would wholeheartedly pledge my undying support. I might even be convinced to join the "Free Fiona" movement, but let's not push it. What really chaps me is that you've built your entire career around the art of displaying tragic and forlorn looks to the camera. Looks that have always reminded me of how my cat looked that time my Dad backed over him with his car in our driveway.

I'm still confirming this with my sources, but I have evidence to expose you as the fraud that you are. You didn't grow up in New York City with your little show business roots. You were not an emotionally disturbed teen. I don't buy into all those years of extensive psychotherapy and treatments. I don't think any of your despair or anguish is authentic or genuine. I think you're boring and normal and completely ordinary and this routine is a carefully planned façade.

Your real name is Sunshine O'Grady. You were born and raised in a hippie commune in Phoenix, Arizona. Your record collection consists entirely of The Mamas and The Papas, Peter, Paul and Mary, and The Carpenters. I know for a fact that your favorite color is pastel pink, not black. Your bedroom is decorated with rainbows and unicorns and your favorite movie is Jerry Maguire just because of that fucking, "You complete me" horseshit line which, no doubt, sends you into a flood of tears each time it's uttered. You're no sexual freak. You are, in fact, still a virgin and you've been wearing a Promise Ring that your childhood boyfriend gave you after you let him get to "second base" with you that time when your parents were out-of-town at the James Dobson conference in Omaha.

So, don't give me that pained stare behind those blank, Dan Quayle eyes and expect me to believe the lie you continue to perpetuate. You are nothing more than a marketing strategy that some record exec devised after reading Girl, Interrupted back in 1994. You don't appeal to the chronically depressed and alienated; you appeal to the people who want to pretend like they're chronically depressed and alienated. You may have duped the teenage girls and stupid males who comprise your fan base, but I know the truth and I'm not buying into your fabricated pain and mental afflictions story. I have seen the face of crazy, my friend, and it is most certainly not you. As Jack Nicholson's character said in As Good As It Gets, "Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."

Sincerely,

A Concerned Friend

PS- You wouldn't happen to have Paul Thomas Anderson's number lying around anywhere, would you?