You too? I thought it was just me!

A Santa Fe, New Mexico woman has filed a restraining order against David Letterman, claiming that he "used code words to show that he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host" (quote from the Yahoo/AP article.) Well, this is amazing stuff, and I must say there can be only one response to it:

It's about bleeding time someone caught Letterman!

Listen, I'm a huge fan of Dave's but I've known for years that he sends out secretly-coded messages from his show. He's sent them to me since his morning show in the early eighties. I especially like the ones that include throwing pencils at the camera, because it means that I get to drive over the speed limit in Connecticut.

Here are just a few other examples:

(August 4, 1985) Letterman is speaking to Brother Theodore. He unexpectedly wipes his brow with his sleeve and blurts out, "I'm a big fan. Do you rant like this often?"

The "fan" and "Do" should be obvious enough. The wiping his sleeve was a sign that I should wrap my entire body in plastic and stand in a bucket in my front garden. Oh, how the neighbors complained.

(September 12, 1990) Letterman is asking Tom Hanks about a trip to England. "Did you meet any Earls?" he asked. He then winks once and twitches his left shoulder.

I knew immediately that I must go ten-pin bowling. I shot a 114, 145, and 172. A 7-10 split killed the first game but I got a turkey at the end of the last game.

(February 9, 1995) A rerun was on, but there was a subliminal noise everytime Dave spoke that commanded me to run down to the off-license and buy a six-pack of Miller Light. I must confess, I cheated on that one and got the Miller Genuine Draught instead.

(May 19, 1998) Letterman is asking Cher about her latest album. He says to her, "You have quite a dictionary...excuse me, I mean encyclopaedia of work there."

Almost seven full years before the Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas, he demonstrated that he knew it would exist, and I, after he followed up his comment with a sip of whatever mind-control juice is in his mug, and threw not one, but two index cards over his shoulder, knew that I must become the King of Morocco.

I'm still working on that one, I admit.


(March 42, 1999) There is no such thing as March 42. If there were though, Dave would have signalled me to lie nude in a hammock on 42nd Street in New York City. So I did that on April 1, 1999 instead. Amazingly, I attracted absolutely no notice, except for an elderly woman, who shouted, "Nice wallbanger you got there, hon!"


(December 19, 2005) Dave shouts to the audience as he makes his enterance, "Howdy!" I knew at once that he has instructed me to build a box-girder bridge across the Atlantic Ocean to Portugal. Even now, I'm surfing the web for reliable transatlantic bridge-building firms with solid deep sea diving experience and their own giant octopus (It was a special part of the coded message.) Right now, I'm down to 14 firms.

For my sake, the sake of this poor, set upon, fruitcake-in-love New Mexico woman, and for the sake of the millions of viewers who watch him, this madman must be stopped.

We must insist that he restrict all coded messages to Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise from now on.

I say restrict, because he's obviously been sending them messages as well. Cruise? Bouncing on couches, paranoid rants against psychiatry, marrying Katie Holmes...it should be obvious. He's either getting messages from Dave or the poor blighter is off his nut.

Oprah? How do you think he got her to come on his show?