for 31 May 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler Polly, That piece on angry kids, rising expectations, and the lack of stability was great. I laughed, but it was too true. I'm interested in other comments you might have received - did others find it rang true? Best, Jeff Swan <jswan@service911.com> Jeff, it rang true for two people: 1. you and 2. me. Everyone else found it rang utterly false. "Erroneous on almost every level!" they cried, waving their hands in disgust. "Inaccurate, if not downright mendacious!" they declared, becoming notably agitated. "Fictitious! Fallacious! Fraudulent! Fanciful! Fake! Fishy!" they brayed, spitting visibly. No matter. There's only one person I aim to please here, Jeff. I do it all for you. Spitting visibly, Polly  Subject: psuedo-intellectualizing goodness. Polly, I can't be quite sure, but was the message of today's Filler something like "Don't Worry Be Happy" ? Or was it more like "No Future Now" ? I remember reading the Third Wave by Alvin Toffler (or however that is spelt) and all the stuff mentioned in your article was put much differently, and in a more positive light. But I'm pretty sure it was all there. Maybe the message was "Alvin Toffler is a good predator". I don't mind the modern working world too much except when people use it as an excuse to turn their stupid lives into an episode of Party of Five. I mean, I like being miserable as much as the next person, but I mean, you gotta move on. So was the message something like "Get a Grip, Honeydrip" ? or um, "Everyone Has Problems" ? Or in keeping with the fact that I mentioned the Third Wave, was today's Filler an examination of the conflict between the the third and second wave societies as the "NEW ECONOMY" supersedes the old? The younger hipster, resigned to a life of constant change, is a bitter foil to the older yet earnest uh, not-so- hipster. It's quite poignant, actually. So maybe the message was "Drugs and alcohol are a legitimate way to deal with your disillusionment" ? Or was it "Wallow in your own crapulence" ? I never really watched the TV shows you mentioned. What I learned from the TV shows I watched was that self-involved, whiny, melodramatic FBI agents suck my ass dry. No nonsense, get shit done Air Force investigators are cool (Project Blue Book). The End. Regards, Malcolm Jean Technical Coordinator <mjean@fitt.ca> Well, technically (muhahaha), there was no message. Or maybe medium is the message. Yeah, that really resonates, doesn't it? Look, I don't fucking know. You read the fucking cartoons, you draw your own conclusions using your big Canadian brain, using all the inspiration you can summon up from that crack pipe of yours. Man, thanks to that fucking rabbit I'll be making crack jokes until even Leno's moved on from them. Has Leno moved on from crack jokes yet? Can I get a lifeline? Yes, adding insult to injury for your benefit, Malcolm. I do it all for you. I only get peevish as a means of throwing the rest of the masses off my scent, so I can speak one on one with you. In fact, the message for everyone else but you was "Wallow in your own crapulence." but for you, the message was "You truly do belong here with us among the clouds!" Maybe if we could get Filler on the syllabus of a lit class at some accredited university, we could find out from some fine tenured professor exactly what the message of today's Filler is. I'm sure he'll know way better than I do. Reacting sluggishly to change in today's rapidly shifting global economy, Polly Polly, I was just reading the OJR article on you and I found it infuriating. It says you receive 30-40 emails a week. Now I know I've written you twice and yet I've never been made fun of in your column or even replied to. I guess I have to face it. I'm damned dull. It seems that it doesn't matter what percentile you get in schools, it doesn't correspond to how interesting you are to other people. Or maybe it does correspond, but in a negative manner. My problem is that I don't know how to talk to women I find interesting or alluring. It's easy for me to talk to other people, because I don't care about offending them. I guess the one trick I have to learn is to stop caring about the people I'm want to have interested in me. As you can see, I'm not an english major. If you don't write me back, or at least make fun of me, I will be forced to save all my money for a trip to africa. There I will see to it that I am eaten by lions. While fatal, this will at least grant me a certain posthumous seductive mystery. I hope. Brad <bdavis@saintandreas.org> Hmm. No. Being eaten by lions will most definitely not help to grant you any seductive mystery. You know what I find both seductive and mysterious? Cases of fine wine. Also, $50 gift certificates for In N Out Burger — very seductive! But who sent it? A mystery! I'm kidding, of course. I've milked this gig for enough perks as it is, I'm sure you need that cash more than I do, what with all the fruitless wooing you have to do. I'd strongly suggest that you develop a very bitter attitude towards the opposite sex. Counterintuitive, I know. This will help you to care less what they think, which will help you to seem less pathetic and annoying when you're around them. Suddenly you'll be charming and fabulous. Well, actually, you'll be sullen and peevish, but many women your age (I'm guessing 25) find this peevishness well-nigh charming and fabulous. If you're over 25, I'd suggest breaking out the fine wine and Burger Doodles instead. Mmm, sexy Burger Doodle. No quicker way to a woman's heart than via the Burger Doodle express. (Burger Doodle = fast food burger joint, largely indistinguishable from each other, i.e. "Let's stop at Burger Doodle, OK?" meaning anywhere with burgers, list of preference order soon to follow.) Bored yet? No? Dull people are so difficult to bore. Dull doodle, Polly Okay, so my undergrad project in Anthropology and Gender Studies was on tattooing and body piercing; there was an eerie amount of cite-overlap with this week's Filler. Basically I suggested that the appeal of body modification is that it provides a "permanence" that job, spouse, and natal home no longer can. So what I want to know is, if I cash in my chips and go to grad school, will Terry illustrate my thesis? Anna Boroughs <boroughs@law.duke.edu> Wow, with an undergrad project like that, you must've gone to Duke. So, tattoos and body piercing really bring a person lots of stability, huh? I better fill in some of my more transient single friends on this very important news. But I'm sure, with the very academic way you put it, it made a lot of sense. Or seemed to, to the academic mind — which is a wonderful thing to waste, I might add. I think the main thing college does for us is, it gives us absurd amounts of confidence in our most fleeting notions and passing whims. What more does one need for success in this rapidly changing global economy, after all? Just cash in your chips and send the proceeds to me. Insecurely overconfident, Polly Stealth Food Dear AB: The usual fine piece with, as usual, not enough length to carry the thoughts as far as I'd have liked. One analogy does offer itself, however: Innumerable polls have shown that Americans almost all believe in heaven and indeed think that's where they're going; few believe in hell, and almost none think they or anyone they know is going there. Nor is it coincidence that Christmas is widely celebrated while Easter...well, Easter has become an excuse for spring clothes. Don't ask about Good Friday. We prefer birth without death; resurrection without crucifixion; and war without lots of grunts walking through the mud, scared shitless, and blowing away anything that moves because the alternative is their being blown away. But you, of all people, should know that. Remember: dry socks. Alan S Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> It's not really a length thing — to be honest, I can usually only carry a thought so far before I start thinking about maybe getting some peanut M&Ms or drinking one of those terrific cherry-flavored wine coolers, and then I lose my place and have to take a nap. Celebrating spring in some sassy new combat fatigues, Ambrose Beers Once again, an outstanding job. I always look forward to your work. If you have a minute, could I get your opinion on Kosovo? It seems that the Gulf War was less a campaign waged in the desert against Iraqis than a campaign waged in the media for mindshare with the American people and our allies abroad. And it was a very successful campaign. But what the hell were we doing in Yugoslavia? The only thing that made sense to me were the complaints from the military about the lack of clear tactical and strategic goals. Regards, b r e t t <b@chiba.3jane.net> If I have a MINUTE, you want my opinion on KOSOVO? Ahh, Brett. You're such an optimist. ("And if you have an extra fifteen seconds, could you summarize your thoughts on abortion and Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese?") But to summarize very vaguely, I guess I could just say that the fact that you've noticed the complaints from the military about the lack of clear goals probably comes close to stating the problem: You're not sure what we're doing in Yugoslavia because the people who decided to get us involved in Yugoslavia aren't sure what we're doing in Yugoslavia, or what we hope to accomplish. Comforting thought, yes? Ambrose Beers You've shared an interesting perspective. I was reminded of a conversation I had in a tent with members of my section in the week after the Gulf War had ended. I was in a Marine Corps Reserve unit. The gist of the conversation centered around the technological marvels we had seen during the war and how the individual ground soldier would be replaced. I made an assertion at some point that I'll paraphrase for you. Armies, Navies, and Air Forces are projections of foreign policy. It will always be impossible to replace a soldier with a robot, airplane, or any other marvel of technology. Only a human being can represent the political will of a nation. You will always have to field the soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen to hold ground captured or fought for by a nation. There is an old Chinese proverb that states "...land is the nation, it is what we are... To believe you hold ground without troops is fantasy. Good Article. Sgt. Gregory C. Rollins USMC ret. <caigregr@hotmail.com> I remember a similar conversation a sergeant of mine told me about, something he and his fellow soldiers discussed in their tent — just about a week after the Gulf War ended. It went something like: Sgt: Oh my GOD is it hot. (long silence) Pfc.: Wish we had some beer. I hope I got that right — it's been a while, and of course it's secondhand. But, yeah, I think the entire military establishment is pretty clear on the fact that it takes ground troops to win real, meaningful victories of any kind. Which makes you wonder why the military keeps cheerfully agreeing to participate in these air war fictions. This makes item number 1,004,987 on the list of things I don't understand about the military. I'll have to remember to update my hard copy. Armed and dangerously bored, Ambrose Beers A masterpiece. I particularly enjoyed the irony when you touted the effectiveness of the "Bradley" for its use as a machine to run over troops with when this is actually an apt description of the effectiveness of this "weapon" which is itself endemic of the problems plagued by the entire strategy of new military hardware. In short, it SUCKS. Truly insightful and deserving of some type of award. I'm envisioning the Sucksters banding together to form some type of modern day HARPERS. You guys really need to have a contest called "Meet the SUCKSTERS" where some lucky saps get to go out for a evening with some of your staff and bathe in the soothing glow of your worldly (read alarmingly accurate) observations like moths to the flame. Thanks really, I am blown away. SUCK for all my friends! Robert Bergman <rbergman@chnnet.com> The Bradley Fighting Vehicle is, believe me I know, a magnificent piece of shit. Mostly I'm impressed that we simply managed to get some of them to the battlefield; generally they break down just outside the gates of the motor pool. My impression of a Bradley: BRRRRM BRRM BRRM BRM BRM BRM PFFFFFffffffffttttt.... (SSSSSSsssssssss...) Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes this evening's performance. Oh, right: And we keep meaning to do that Harper's thing — but our Lewis Lapham is on some kind of postdoc fellowship in Israel right now, which gums up the whole works. Good idea, though. Listlessly performing pmcs, Ambrose Beers Thanks for an interesting read. I can understand that high-technology weaponry, when ineffective (or at least easily fooled by a collection of paper mache cut-outs and toilet paper roll dummies) is a waste of money. That's bad. I was more perplexed by the idea that it is bad for us to have a certain "faith" in our military capabilities. I think the whole premise of having an overwhelming force available is that the same force should never have to be used. If CNN reports that our planes and bombs are absolutely accurate and unstoppable, shouldn't that serve as a deterrent against Milosevic-types riding roughshod over their own people? Granted, news organizations need to report the truth, and local dictators can gain in all kinds of ways by expressly resisting the big bad, USA. On the whole though, I think it makes our lives easier if the world generally lives under the assumption that when the US says, "Don't do that, or we will do terrible things to your country," they believe us. Highlighting our own foibles would tend to undermine that assumption. If you're suggesting that an excessive faith in the ability of the military to strike cleanly and stealthily will encourage our government to use military force more frequently, I think that night be a valid argument, but I didn't see that in the column. I mean really, I would much rather have the friends and people I know in the military learning to jump out of airplanes, training like Jackie Chan, and writing occasional new-media web columns rather than being sent off to actually kill people (in part) because the rest of the world thinks we're wankers. BTW how is that whole army thing working out for you? Tom Vilhauer <vilhauer@hotmail.com> But I don't think all those BBDs (big, bad dictators) need CNN to tell them that the US military threat is hollow; I think the US military manages to make that point all by its little crew-cut self: Bombing Iraq, off-and-on, for going on a decade, without accomplishing the objective; firing a few cruise missiles at very nearly random targets to supposedly retaliate for Osama bin Laden's attacks on our embassies in Africa, and blowing up not much more than a medicine factory in one of the shit-poorest countries in the world; pulling out of Somalia after taking eighteen casualties; doing Balkan peacekeeping missions that are nowhere near as aggressive and serious as those conducted by our allies in the things (the French, of all people, are well-known for their vigorous efforts to capture Serbian war criminals); and so on, but lunch is almost over. If they really bought it, they wouldn't have known ahead of time to build a bunch of decoys; the rest of the world is on to that whole bombing-from-three-miles-up secret, and they didn't read about it in Sassy. As for me: I am NOT training like Jackie Chan. I am training like a soldier in the Freedonian militia. Not very impressive, this place. Thanks for asking. Locked and oh my God am I loaded, Ambrose Beers |
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