Maybe Phil Fish is an okay guy after all.
Ok, so at least I'm not just crazy.
So I spent some time in the classroom that teaches numbers and I've got it all worked out now. Hooray! Alphabet is still throwing me for a loop, though. Need a Rosetta stone all up in here.
I'll link this here because its nice. Spoiler free guide (http://shillatime.org/fez-spoiler-free-guide.pdf). It does a really good job of just giving you a little nudge in the right direction. Anything close to really spoilery is written backwards so you have to really want it to read it. At the end of the guide it looks like they do spoil things directly but it gives fair warning when it gets to that point.
Subject: Hello from future Fez contest winner.
Dear GOG,
The primary reason that I believe I should win one of your mystical fancypants Fez hats is that I saw myself win one in a dream. And not just any dream, but a revelation that showed how this unassuming little hat would allow me to save the world from a threat unlike any it has known before.
The year will be 2033, the evening of October 17th. I'll be drinking heavily from a case of Red Bull, feverishly anticipating the midnight release of Fez 7: The Red Felt Fiasco at the new brick-and-mortar GOG store that just opened in my area. I'll be in line, waiting to pick up my preorder of the Digital Extreme Deluxe Limited Leather-Embossed Download Edition of the game, and I'll be very excited, because it comes with a neural jack for the instant transfer of credits to Phil Fish as you download all of Fez 7's DLC directly to your cerebral cortex, a huge electric billboard (with angel wings of blue energy) that follows your onscreen persona in the game and reads "PAID IN ADVANCE!" while playing an audible fanfare, plus a voucher to download the OST from the US government (Jeremy Soule is now the president, and DirectSong is a shadowy organization rumored to operate under the Department of Defense). I'll be wearing the special hat that I won in a contest 20 years prior; when Fez, the original game, first appeared at GOG.com. Because that's just how big a fan I am.
By this time, Phil Fish will have assimilated the collective Japanese gaming industry in his bid to control the world, realizing that their true strength has always lied in their ability to design and field giant robots faster than those of other nations. We'll all be horrified to learn that he's actually using the release of Fez 7 as a distraction tactic to invade, and soon, death will rain from the skies.
It is during the aforementioned death-rain that the fez will speak to me, and tell me that I am the savior spoken of in The Prophecy™ (?). When I face Phil Fish in a final contest for the powers of the fez, I will defeat him not merely by rotating the camera—while pressing X furiously—but BY ROTATING THE VERY SECOND DIMENSION ITSELF.
So for the good of all mankind, I humbly request that you bestow upon me the magical, mystical fez (and please, not one of the 19 decoys). I promise to use its powers only for good, and never to create a bizarre Japanese game show that involves rotating the world to expose people in compromising private circumstances to public humiliation.
Sincerely,
MJR