for 29 November 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Polly:

You and your friend Steve talk constantly, endlessly analyzing the minutiae of your daily lives and discounting almost everyone and everything that comes into contact with the two of you. It doesn't take Chuck Woolery to recognize the high probability of a love connection between the two of you. So what gives? What are you waiting for, the Director's Cut of "When Harry Met Sally" to hit DVD? Why be happily miserable alone when you can be happily miserable together?

Justine Cryer
<justinesarahc@yahoo.com>

Yes, Steve and I talk constantly, endless analyzing the minutiae of our sad little lives an discounting almost everyone and everything that comes into contact with the two of us. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that if we became involved, we'd turn our unflinchingly critical lenses on each other and fry in the magnified glare of each others' ruthless scrutiny. Hell, we already bicker like irritable siblings over the smallest crap.

Here's the thing, Justine. You've got to trust me on this: you really don't want to spend all your time with someone who's exactly like you. I'm a cynical asshole. That means I have lots of cynical asshole friends, but my significant other needs to be an upbeat idealist. Sure, he'll make me roll my eyes and guffaw loudly every time he opens his mouth and spews hopelessly naive tripe, but I need his cheerful expressiveness in my life. I'd be crazy to align myself with a crusty curmudgeon when I'd do much better with a dreamy-eyed little optimist. You know, like I was, before my hamsters ran out of water and ate each other alive.

Uh, of course, I was the one who forgot to put more water in the Habitrail.

No one but myself to blame,

Polly

Polly,

You let me tell you something, You know, I'm about due for a new job, too. I've been fired from my last 3. Man! I suck. Anyways, I'm kinda glad I'll never get to really meet you in person. I'd end up just like Steve. You'd call me up to talk about some crap and I'd end up not even getting the panties. Wait — did you ever date Steve? How come Steve gets a girl with a leather book? Oh well — Don't change your writing one bit. I mean it. Yer hilarious.

Cisco
<ciscov@avaya.com>

Panties. God, I hate that word. I mean, I really, really hate that word. Why must female underwear sound so...lurid?

Anyway, now that you ask, I have to tell the truth. I did date Steve, way back in the day. But it was my senior year in college and Steve had already graduated, which meant I was very busy chasing down other men like a scary harlot, and he was struggling through Public Policy grad school like a...well, like a Steve. Plus, he used to always eat off my plate, which annoyed me. It didn't annoy me when other people did that, just when Steve did it. We annoyed each other, really. He thought I was shallow. He was right. This was after the hamster incident, understand, and after countless other incidents, each more harrowing than the last. Oh, poor me.

Now we're both old and disgusting, but we still think we're better than everyone else.

You know, Cisco, sometimes I have to wonder who could possibly be deluded enough to read this reprehensible drivel . But I'm too shallow to spend too much energy wandering down that path. Besides, you told me I shouldn't change a thing, didn't you?

Shallow, stagnant, fetid, etc.

Polly

Don't ever change, Polly.

Or, maybe, change a little, if you want to.

But don't change for anyone else. Change for yourself.

But, uh, don't change for yourself, just because you feel like you're not okay just the way you are. Because you ARE okay, just the way you are, okay?

That is to say, if it really FULFILLS you, who you REALLY ARE INSIDE ALREADY, then go ahead, change as much as you like. Or need to. Or whatever.

Hey, no pressure. We like you either way. Stay the same, change, what the hell. It's all good.

I have no life.

E-Dog, Seattle

My god. You're like the unconditional positive regard-spewing parents I never had.

Except my parents never truly believed that it was "all good," and even if they did, they'd never deign to utter such a pedestrian phrase.

Not that you shouldn't, E-dog.

So, we really are free to be you and me, aren't we?

Basking in the glow of your delusions,

Polly

Who has white socks with red toes and heels? Can I sniff them? I bet they smell like roses.

Jeff A Tyrcha
<surfermonmon@lycos.com>

They do! They smell just like roses! How did you know?

Stinky man behind the curtain,

Polly

What kind of smack must I talk to get my letter posted? And by the way, what kind of Jackass name is Polly anyway?

Kelly Ann Sidebottom
<kas@wyoming.com>

Well, Ms. Sidebottom, you can start by telling me you love me fully and completely for exactly who I am, no matter what. Next, you could urge me to never, ever change, unless I sort of feel like changing, in which case it's A-OK for me to change. Next, you can ask to wash my feet with your long, luxurious hair, and you can tell me that my toe cheese smells like ripe mangoes!

Now that you know the formula for making it onto the Fish page, you really have no excuse. Sure, saying that I have a jackass name is a nice start, but I'm going to encourage you to try a little harder next time.

Jackass,

Polly

Hi Polly!

Ah, I don't know how many "sitting on the beach" / "candlelight dinner" /"be the mother of my dozen" you get every day, but want I wanted to tell you

a) Filler is absolut erste oberleckersahne. Or, as americans would say, great. or: exciting.

b) Please don't loose your bitterness and angst. Don't get wiser. You are the light at the end of the tunnel, you are showing us geeks that a bitter, frigthened individual can be adored by... how many readers do you have?

c) For the 'not-so-fresh' feeling (Nov. 22 filler): In german, it would go like this: "F¸hlst du dich manchmal... wie soll ich es sagen.. nicht mehr ganz frisch?" (¸==ue for those of you who don't know ¸). or in my local dialect: "Nu ['Nu' being the most important word of this dialect] da sitzte nu am Strand, nuor, und disch froocht so a Hundevieh, ob de disch nu nimmer ganz so helle fiehlst wie vorher, nuor?"

Have a good time,

Peter Hauptmann / Germoney
<hauptmannp@yahoo.com>

Mother of my dozen? Is that some kind of German phrase? Around here you're pushing your luck just to say, "I want you to give birth to my one very-low-birthweight child, via Cesarean Section."

But then again, you Germans clearly have a lot of energy, considering you'd bother to say "absolut erste oberleckersahne" for "great."

Anyway, who said I was a bitter, frightened individual?

You're frightening me.

Bitterly,

Polly

Polly.

Umm...I started reading filler as an unemployed postcolligiate kid who spent his summer drinking and meeting girls. Fast-forward two and a half years, and I'm now a semi-employed freelance designer/writer who spends his time drinking and trying to figure out why three of those girls he met since he started reading Filler totally ripped my heart out. Status quo? I suppose, so, although I was never really a big fan of theirs, although my cousin Philip in Ireland once owned their "Join the Army" album. I think the reason that Status Quo never really caught on here was Ford's odd reluctance to sell the Cortina on these shores. Furthermore, though it was hailed by Spin as "Album of the Year" in 1991, Bandwagonesquewas doomed to obscurity in North America, simply because their Big Single had a line about a girl buying some records by Status Quo, thus Americans of non-indie/jangle-Alex-Chilton-is-God persuasions were flummoxed, not knowing that the record would make perfect sense if only they could choose between the Escort and the Cortina instead of the Escort and the Taurus...well, that and Rothmans windshield stickers are kind of hard to come by on the West Coast. I dunno.

Stick a fucking fork in me, I'm hammered.

Love and kisses,

Davey Johnson
<keroscene@earthlink.net>

I started writing Filler as a post-collegiate kid who spent the year 'round drinking and not meeting men. Fast forward five years, and now I'm still writing Filler, drinking less, and never meeting anyone. One of my cheerleading buddies from high school just moved to town, though, so I should be knee-deep in man-titties in no time.

I once dated a guy named Philip from Ireland! Maybe he was your cousin. His feet didn't smell anything like roses, but he used to sound just like Darby O'Gill when he'd talk about how he'd "love a bit of a Shepherd's Pie right now — browned five minutes, maybe less..."

Ok, so...I didn't understand the rest of your letter.

Stick a fucking meat thermometer in me, I'm hungry.

Polly

Thanks for the reference to the Michael Moore column. He certainly deserves the prize for rhetorical inflation — although those Republican hacks worrying over the virginal freshness of the punch card ballots give him some stiff competition (one of them was on NPR this morning accusing the Palm Beach counters of "manhandling" the ballots). I'm still trying to puzzle out why Moore cares about Al Gore losing a few votes, though.

Speaking of rhetorical excess, did you see David Broder's column today? He says this will be the grimmest Thanksgiving since 1963 — grimmer, in fact, since in '63 we had Johnson, at least.

Lemuel Shattuck
<lemuel_s@excite.com>

Dear Lemuel,

Michael Moore, methinks, is upset at the prospect of Al Gore losing votes because a Bush win increases the odds that America's richest Grand Funk Railroad fan may have to spend some of the money he makes off his unfunny books and movies to pay for his relatives' health care.

I'm sure David Broder had a better time in '63 than he does now: He's what, 37 years older, dumber and balder? It is indeed a tragedy that the Texan who may take the White House this time around doesn't have a useless war to get us into. Ah well, we can always hope.

Yrs,

Mr. M

I'm sure someone has already mentioned this: Pee Wee got busted in Sarasota (a place not very different from Palm Beach), not Panama City.

Joshua Peters
<jpeters@KBA.com>

Dear J. Peters

Let me give you a one-handed salute for catching that error. Apologies are due to the fine citizens of Panama City.

Mr. M

Very apt metaphor, the Election Result : Grainy Photograph analogy you make with the Blowup movie reference. To put it in digital terms, the hand count is a high res scan of a low res image.

You should know, however, that one Nick Gillespie, a lowly editor of a disreputable and libertine pamphlet called Reason just flat-out stole your exact movie reference and analogy, and was so brazen as to flaunt the act of plagiarism in titling his article.

Follow this link to outrage.

Will you take this lying down?

With indignant exhortations,

Pete
<peter.obryan@firstunion.com>

Dear Pete,

Thanks for the heads up. I know this Gillespie character — some even claim a doppelganger-type resemblance. He trails me everywhere I go, steals my thoughts and words, and even sleeps with my missus. I'm not happy about it, but I'm learning to live with it.

Indignity, I might add, is for dying men, as are exhortations.

Color me lying down,

Mr. M

The Shit

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It, by Eugen Sandow

Bamboozled, A Spectacular New Film by Mr. Spike Lee

G. Beato's all-new Soundbitten

William Demarest, Sultan of Snarl, in The Lady Eve (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

George Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire, directed by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler

1995

Bobby Darin, Darin at the Copa (Atlantic)

Shinji-San in the floating world of indeterminate duration, by Peter Richardson

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1996, Merge)

45, by Bill Drummond

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Singing in the Rain (ASV)

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist?Send your suggestions to us.