for 27 September 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Polly~

i'm just curious...the letters that people write in to Suck... --especially the lame whiny ones-- are those real?

do you make them up as filler inspirations? or are there really people in the world that would send Suck an e-mail saying:

"Someone said 'Everyone is a critic' and its the truth, so here is my 2 cents. Your comics look great, the words suck. I think you are probably a highly inteligent person. So why do you ramble like a fool? You sound like a lesbian-scientist on crack! My advice... calm down a bit and write something that makes sense.

Andrew Magill <andrewmagill@yahoo.com>"

is it real? or is he some strange galatical/tactical joker writing in to sound clever? it just sounds so much like someone who i would make fun of in a chat room.

yours truly, long time suckster, occasionally clever but mostly just curious,

thephil
<>

Dear ThePhil,

Believe it or not, all the mail is 100% real. I would write fake mail, don't get me wrong, it's just that the stuff I get is so much better than anything I could write. Plus, it's much more interesting for me to try to come up with something stupid based on an email than it is for me to come up with a stupid email, then come up with a stupid column to base on the stupid email — or, worse yet, come up with a stupid final joke, then write a stupid column on it, then write a stupid email to create a big, stupid excuse for the whole mess. I think John Irving did this with a whole novel once — "A Prayer for Owen Meany." You know, everyone's favorite stupid novel. "Oh my God — so that's why his voice was so high! It all makes sense now!"

Not only are there really people in the world that would send Suck an email saying what you quoted, there are also people in the world that would send Suck an email saying this:

"Hey gang. Love yer work."

I mean, almost all the mail we get has something weird about it.

Let's just review a letter we ran yesterday:

"Yes I would like to sponser you. I have a pair of gym socks here that well, smelly rather frusty. I insist that you take them as I think that your site has too many scantly clad fish. And yes I know that fish have no feet, but i am thinking that they coulds use it as a shawl. I think that your fish would look very 'mod' with these socks."

Now, what exactly does the word "frusty" mean? And why do they "smelly rather frusty"?

These are the kinds of artistic choices that simply baffle the mind, and keep our reader mail fresh and friendly.

Frustily,

Polly

Dear Polly,

I'm always afraid to write anything to you guys because I might end up just like the folks in today's Filler, but I just had to compliment you on your excellent work. Perhaps it's only me, because I love well executed running gags, but I was laughing out loud nonetheless! And I don't even know what the Hamptons are! Good stuff.

Jason
<>

You know, I hardly know what the Hamptons are, either, Jason.

You are not alone.

Polly

despite my bad reputation i've never flamed you before. i almost think of you as one of my peers, fighting the good fight against thesuck.net. as such i'm just going to write you a normal letter like i would write to anyone, not a performative filler thing.

last week when you were talking about psychiatry and the book of revelations and lsd etc you said something like "X number of deep therapy sessions to achieve Y" or "X number of acid trips to achieve Y". well you should have a more careful attitude towards your health. just as much as some strong medicine can have a strong help it can make you suseptible to a strong disease. there's no inherent benifit in a *strong* cure, except to say that IF you observe its correct placement in the entire universe of things going on inside and outside of you you can hit the right notes so to speak, and then they will be loud. going into strength-of-cure without mindfulness of the fullness around you is going to get you sucked into loudness-without-melody which is just a shrieking hell... which of course changes into catharsis, which is good. but the bad side isn't good just because it changes into good when it reaches its fullness. don't create the false impression for your peers that strength in-itself (the very concept of which is false) is worth meddling with.

the other thing i think you should think and talk about more, in the psychological line, is your family, and all your little followers' families. as remarkably simple and obvious as this may sound, the vast majority of the psychological problems of you and your peers are because these are all people who were chased away from their parents by evil forces. as leonard cohen would say, "it begins with your family but soon it comes around to your soul". not to play anthropologist but even the fact that people feel the need to NOT live with their own parents is the cause and symptom of an extremely deep disease. the ideal of the nuclear family, that is. if you could somehow re-position your psychiatric witticisms to allude to the fact that most of this pain comes from not being near your parents (or not being able to be near your parents), it would do a lot of good. you'd have to be subtle about it though -- how far are these people (in their thinking caps) away from thinking that their family is the least bit important.

stay down in it, doing the good work.

Demmy Rooster
<demmy@treehouse.dyndns.org>

Another fine example of the kind of artistic genius that hails straight from our mailbags.

I'll agree with your assessment that a lot of people our age (assuming we actually are peers) put their families low on the totem pole. I'll also suggest that at least a few of them belong there. I'd also like to point out that it's a very big country, so alienation from one's family can sometimes seem inevitable, and once it starts, it's tough to stop. I'd also like to mention that I'd develop an extremely deep disease if I moved in with any member of my family. This is my own fucking problem, really, as I am a bad combination of intolerant and intolerable.

See, whether or not people are close to their families, they have to learn to be tolerant, patient, accepting, and wise in building their own families, so the same lessons are learned eventually. It's tougher for those who can't handle their own families to start families of their own, because they're so out of practice in dealing with other, pesky, bizarre, stubborn, passive-aggressive people. Unless they're social workers. At any rate, most of us choose to put off the family-creation process for as long as humanly possible.

I can't believe I'm talking about important life lessons. What is this, Touched By An Angel?

Out of practice,

Polly

Hi there,

Just read your piece on Samaranch et al, and thought the above link might interest you...

Roy and H.G are quite famous here in Australia and have never pulled their punches about Samaranch. Most people I know find it astounding that they have a two hour tv show daily during the olympic games.

Their humor is very Australian, so don't be surprised if they make little sense...

Cheers

Ross Floate
<ibook@sway.com.au>

I tried to use the above link, but it didn't lead me anywhere. Is this Australian humor? It makes little sense....

Holly M.

Dear Holly,

Thank you for shining a light on Olympic corruption. Actually, I could live with Samaranch's past if only he ran a clean program now. I thought you let NBC, whose "storybook" coverage minimizes the view of the actual games, somewhat off the hook. (In other words, I'd love to read a follow-up piece.) As a fan of one of the least popular (in the US) Olympic sports (Judo), I have come to regard NBC's coverage as a thin, dry slice of a juicy and flavorful pie. Yes, I am one of the "children" who will watch from start to finish, and I actually enjoy both all three Olympic sports--track, swimming, and women's gymnastics--but I can't help wondering what I might have seen if so much time hadn't been wasted on the story of somebody's brother's kidney transplant. Thanks for