for 7 January 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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The Suck 1000 Calendar Dear Sucksters, I agree with you on this calendar deal, have thought so for years, but was hoping that your suggested revisions would be stupider. Historical awareness seems as inappropriate to our time and place as the metric system and the atomic clock. Speaking of which, you should work out a new system for weeks and hours, too. But keep it stupid, simpleton! Stupidly yrs, Colin Rankine <crankine@bintinc.com> If there's one thing you can count on us to do, it's to keep it stupid. Or as the Colonel would say, "Keep it extra crispy!" Unoriginal recipe, the Sucksters  Sucksters, First, I wanted to say I was surprised and glad to see a month named after Joe Hill, as I am a member of the IWW, just as he was. But you didn't have a link to the IWW Web site! Here's the URL, in case you guys couldn't find it: http://www.iww.org. Second, I was pretty offended at your claim that capitalism tends "to improve conditions for most people." Growing up middle class in America, it is made vey easy for one to ignore the very real and very horrible things that capitalism does all over the world, but that doesn't mean it's not still doing them. For example, in Nigeria, Shell has completely devastated the environment of nearly the entire country and displaced many of the people who originally lived there. Many work for unlivable wages, and those who agitate for better conditions are tortured and killed. You know that big issue of medical mistakes and how many people are being hurt and killed by them? Well, hospitals all over the United States are replacing registered nurses with medical technicians — people who have three weeks or less of medical training but have the same duties as the trained nurses they replace. Why are hospitals doing this? Because a janitor with two weeks of training can be payed a lot less than a registered nurse. A concept that most Americans understand is that the goal of corporations is to maximize profits. What they don't understand are the consequences of that goal. Especially in this day and age, where the goverment is basically a plutocracy, corporations can do just about anything they want to exploit workers and the environment and to continue making folks like you thank them for it. Raphael Crawford-Marks <raphaelc@ inreach.com> PS If you publish this, please don't call me a communist or a socialist. I'm not. I'm an anarchist (specifically, an anarcho-syndicalist). The IWW Web page has some good links to anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist pages. OK, let's get this straight. You wrote in to dispute the very controversial statement that capitalism tends "to improve conditions for most people"? And that makes you a syndicated anarchist? We'd say it makes you a troublemaker. Troublemaker. Agitating for worse conditions, the Sucksters Dear Sucksters: I love you so much, I really do. I'm Canadian, and even in spite of the libelous, grotesque, giant rabbit thingie with its little crack pipe and bad diction, I love you. But what's with this Suck 1000 series, eh? Every single one of these features has been boring and dull and pointless and not even remotely funny and ... wait a sec. I get it! You haven't just lost your edge. You're not just throwing something together at the last moment because you're too flaked out after Xmas to write anything really entertaining or incisive. You're making an arch, satirical point about how boring and pointless year 2000 hype is. Now that's really clever. Nina Scott-Stoddart <opanon@ sympatico.ca> With fans like you, Nina, we can't lose. We love you so much too — we really do! Edge, shmedge. the Sucksters Toy Story It is all very well to characterize those who oppose toy advertising around the holidays season as killjoys and whiners. However, if you widen the debate what you see is a televised landscape where every program has an advertising tie-in or is sandwiched by targeted advertising (yes, even the apparently benign Thomas the Tank Engine is a sales pitch). I don't suppose for a moment that we will stop the gimme culture or peer pressure (for both adults and children) to get our hands on the latest toy/executive gadget. You have to make a judgement on how knowing kids are and whether they can see the Big Sell or whether they are more naive and therefore susceptible to these techniques. What this whole thing does is to gradually reduce the quality of children's television to a series of either one-dimensional or literally cartoon characters aimed at selling toys (vide Power Rangers). As with the relationship between haute couture and perfume, we all know where the real money is. Peter Garelick <peter.garelick@dtn.ntl.com> There are certainly complaints to be made about the cruddy quality of children's programming aimed at selling toys, but then I don't own a TV so I don't have many of those complaints. As the piece tries to argue, there's lots of resistance even in the giving in to consumer impulses. And to my mind, there's nothing wrong with buying a toy anyway. Best, Eugen Subject: My god Did you write that? Go home, light a candle, play a RECORD on a GOOD turntable, eat something you made, and read a book (the kind with a cover and pages). Then immediately rent the video of Fahrenheit 451; fast-forward to where Julie Christie is staring at her "big-screen" monitor (is it a Sony?), waiting for the TV image to tell her what to do; and ask yourself if Ray Bradbury's vision of the future is here today, created by our blind love of gadgets and technology. Let's not dial into the Web for a week and do things that don't require batteries, bandwidth, modems, or gizmos straight from CES or Comdex. Let's not even watch that crap on MTV or the latest streaming, screaming video. Can your audience do it? I doubt it. Do you ever wonder why there are no kids playing in the parks, why no one under 15 knows what a pickup baseball game is, why vulgarity is a way of life, why images are everything?We've done it! <jzelesnikar@ cyrus.net> It's really a lot easier to read by electric light, thanks. And my turntable's pretty all right — not one of them multithousand dollar models, but it works. I don't have a VCR or a TV, but I still think I can say that no, Ray, the world's oldest adolescent with the attitude of the world's oldest man was not quite on the mark with that future vision. Eugen In the beginning I thought this was going to be another one of those toys-are- the-root-of-capitalist-evil type essays. The quotes from the Furby epoch of maniacal consumerism was the carrot leading me on. Alas, cruel fate, why dost thou mock me? Toys are part of something we as humans require in order to sustain our meek and pitiable lives? Are you joking? Did you go to an Ivy League school? Are you ... gasp, shriek ... a Republican? I think the Brits had it right in their time-transcendent comments on Furby: Kids are impressionable, and advertising exploits that, and parents get so caught up in the wave of I-want-I-want, thinking that their kid, if not in possession of (insert toy-of-the-year here) by Christ-mahs time, is going to turn out horribly deranged and someday open fire on the school during recess and blame his parents because he didn't get the Pikachu doll for Christ-mahs a few years back. It's a kinda sad circle we've gotten ourselves into, and an essay taking the side of the toys peddlers is a bit scary. Though, maybe I missed the point. But the essay is coming from Suck, so I'm sure not many people are reading it. Just your typical holiday curmudgeons and bah-humbug cynics like me. Have a happy, uh, holiday season? A loyal reader, Matt Downs <mwdowns@unity.ncsu.edu> I'm not a Republican, and my school was way below Ivy League, but I, too, have no patience for people who consider selling-and-getting the root of all evil and did indeed intend to strike a blow for the right of kids to want — and then destroy — any ol' stupid thing they want, and for their parents to wait online for it, guilt free! I hope you can continue to enjoy Suck in the future. Merry Christmas, Eugen Hey, got a good book for you. You've probably already read it, but if not ... It's Technics and Civilization, by Mumford. You can find it at Stacey's on Market Street and some other places. Written about 1930, it still applies heavily, although the author is a little taken in by socialist ideals that have been shown to be dead ends with time. Your article, though, reflected a lot of the criticisms of a consumerist economy that Mumford shares with you. His reflections on the effect of the machine on human society would interest you as well, I think. Trey Butler <Trey.Butler@schwab.com> PS Good article, with a nice punch at the end. Makes me wonder if it'd be worth keeping the tree around for Burning Man. My sarcasm was perhaps too heavy — I was actually railing against anticonsumerism, and from everything I know about Mumford (not a lot firsthand, actually) I don't think I'd care for him much either. Consumer sovereignty is far more powerful than corporate sovereignty. Best, Eugen |
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