This past week I received an amazing piece of hate mail regarding my dumb column about the Atkins diet. The e-mail address this hate mail came from was from a New Zealand Web site, which leads to only two possible conclusions; either I got hate mail from someone in New Zealand, or I got hate mail from somebody who doesn't live in New Zealand but is really interested in who got voted off New Zealand's hit reality show, "NZ Idol" last night.

At least I can take solace in the fact that while nobody on this campus would even consider thinking about reading anything I write, there are people who find time in their busy schedules of throwing boomerangs at all the koalas that infest their houses to read my columns online. Granted, these people might then go and send me spiteful e-mails complaining about how I didn't thoroughly research a column which was clearly researched using only Subway and Arby's commercials, but the point is that they are at least reading my columns.

Contrary to the explicit definition of the term, hate mail is easily one of the best things that ever happens to me on any given day. Oh sure, fan mail is always a great boost to my already dangerously inflated ego, but when somebody sends me an e-mail telling me how great I am, they aren't telling me anything that I don't already know.

Hate mail, however, is hilarious. This delightful message I got from New Zealand is actually the second piece of international hate mail I've ever received. Last semester somebody in Italy e-mailed me to tell me that I shouldn't make jokes about Michael Jackson's affinity for first graders because he has won a lot of awards for his music. I have also received hate mail from all across this country, from places like New York, Georgia and New Mexico.

There is really no greater feeling in the world than getting hate mail, and if you've never experienced it, I recommend you start your own Web site where you post pictures of Donald Rumsfeld's head Photoshopped onto the Pope's body or something stupid like that.

Getting hate mail could be described as the ultimate high, and like most cost-effective drugs, I am now addicted to that feeling. Therefore, in an attempt to get people who don't speak American to send me e-mails explaining to me, in great detail, how they missed a joke, I will now spew random slanderings of the entire populations of foreign nations.

The thinking behind this is that someone in Poland will be searching Google for "Atkins American 'NZ Idol' Arbys Rumsfeld" for whatever reason and sees the phrase "people in Poland all smell like wet bananas and leave huge chunks of dandruff in their hats" without bothering to read the rest of the article on the only web page that matched all those terms (mine), and will immediately dispatch a notice to me explaining, in broken English, that, first of all, there aren't all that many bananas in Poland, and, secondly, people in Poland wash their hair just like people in other countries so the dandruff thing is just stupid, and, third of all, I know I'm just trying to be funny, but I'm not, so why don't I just stop trying because I just come off as just stupid.

Much like how a person in Italy would e-mail pro-Michael Jackson propaganda to some dork in Oshkosh, Wis. Come on, foreigners; bring it on!

Hungarian people are bad at sex. People in Paraguay don't get toilet trained until they're teenagers. It's a known fact that everybody in Finland saves flakes of their own dead skin in purple, velvet pouches.

Did you know everyone who lives in Uzbekistan grows their fingernails out six inches so that they have a valid excuse not to wipe themselves? Or did you hear the rumor about how every single square-inch in Ireland is covered by a microscopic layer of stomach bile? And what would you say if I told you that all Canadians become sexually aroused upon smelling sweaty boots? Or that Nicaraguans prefer drinking tea that has had powdered dish detergent mixed into it with a used cotton swab?

The entire country of Turkey smells like a wet monkey. The entire country of Iceland listens to Halls and Oates, but every single person is ashamed to admit it because none of them have any self-confidence. The entire country of Botswana thinks Michael Jackson has some really good ideas and they can't understand why people would say so many bad things about him.

All babies in Mexico have mono brows. All nuns in Portugal are former serial killers who are looking for a new life on the lam. All people in Poland smell like wet bananas and leave huge chunks of dandruff in their hats. All dogs in France are jealous of their owners who smoke because they think smoking looks so cool that they wish they could do it.

Everyone in Laos likes Andrew Dice Clay. Everyone in Djibouti thinks rainbows are overrated. Everyone in Fiji has TIVOed that commercial with the old lady who falls down and says "I've fallen and I can't get up!" and they watch it over and over again and laugh uncontrollably. Everyone in Qatar wears those Rastafarian hats and hemp shirts and sits on futons in their parents’ attics smoking marijuana and proclaiming that Bush is the real criminal. Everyone in Guyana drops out of high school so they can work on their cars and try to find jobs as mechanics.

The countries of Nepal, Slovenia, Guinea-Bissau, South Korea and Vatican City all smell like old, wet newspapers and the carpets in old people's houses. The countries of Sweden and Mongolia are using billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to fund a massive war against each other, but nobody knows about it because the war is being fought entirely by ninjas. The countries of Lithuania, Ghana and the Dominican Republic all have laws requiring the entire populations to wear hats because three-fourths of the senators there are under the influence of the national bald-rights groups.

There. Now hopefully, within the next six years, I'll be getting an e-mail from some guy in Mongolia that reads, "This is a complaint about Chris Becker's article about the secret ninja war between Mongolia and Sweden. First of all, it couldn't be a secret because everybody knows that Mongolian ninjas are pretty loud so that's just stupid right there."