Dear Snoring Man in 9B on Flight 1446,

You seem like a nice, gentle man. I'm sure you're a fine citizen, too.

And on last night's (12/12/06) red-eye from LAX to PHL, you slept the entire time. Normally, that's admirable since most people have trouble sleeping on flights.

However, you snored about 85% of the time. In another venue, your snoring would have qualified as "performance art."

Your snores typically sounded like the Looney-Tunes-cartoon snore, which was actually funny for the first three minutes and nothing but tedious thereafter. Actually, I must clarify. If your snores were only of the cartoon/foghorn variety and continued in a rhythmic, predictable sequence, they may have been easier to ignore. But no.

Dispearsed randomly throughout your four-and-a-half-hour respiratory repertoire were two other species of snore, both emitted at about 95 decibels and occuring randomly throughout the flight.

The first type sounded like you were suddenly being attacked with a cable around your neck from behind. Of course, each time the phantom attack occurred, you perservered. Or maybe it wasn't a phantom attack. It could have been the passenger in 10B. But the lights were out and I couldn't tell for sure.

The second type was nothing short of a death rattle. Even the flight attendant was startled when she heard those blurts. Unlike the violent struggle of your "phantom attack" snores, these death rattles sounded like complete submission to the afterlife. Except your soul never left Planet Earth. In my one-tenth-asleep stupor, I didn't know what I was witnessing. Was it Easter? Groundhog Day (the movie)? Heavan Can Wait (ditto)? A cat with 79 lives?

Oh, we tried to alert you. You may even be wondering today where those faint bruises on your side came from. But you were amazing. Everytime any passenger nudged you, you would awaken for maybe two seconds, fall back to sleep and with three seconds you'd be snoring again. How you weren't awaken by the sound of your own snoring will forever remain one of life's great mysteries.

So please, Mr. Snore-Master in 9B, refrain from sleeping on flights until you have a private jet. We all thank you.